Winter, Week 3 Meeting - Part IV

I.V: Findingness and Moods (§29, §30)

Thrownness is revealed in findingness. Findingness is a structural moment or element of being-in, which often manifests itself in the form of moods. When we are thrown into being-x, we find ourselves as x, and so as thrown into x. 'Findingness' is our preferred translation of Befindlichkeit, which M&R translate as 'state-of-mind'. 'State-of-mind' is profoundly misleading because what Heidegger means by Befindlichkeit is neither mental nor a state. (Alternative translations include 'attunement,' 'disposition,’ ‘disposedness’ and Haugeland’s ‘sofindingness’). Findingness is dasein's receptivity, its ability to "tune in", if you will, to the "vibes" that are there (thanks to Richard Polt for remembering the 60's).

Moods are modes or manifestations of findingness. Because of the German word he uses (Stimmung), Heidegger often thinks of moods in musical terms. They are like the soundtrack to one's life, and they constitute the framework or mise-en-scene within which things show up in a certain way. Thus moods are disclosive or uncovering. (In a film, when soft music is playing a stare shows up as an indication of affection, but with a different kind of music it can reveal resentment or imminent aggression). Moods uncover entities in the way they matter to dasein. We noticed that in the analysis of fear (§30), the three structural moments correspond to the three structural moments of being-in-the-world: in fearing (being-in), dasein is fearful for itself (the ‘who’) in the face of a fearsome entity (the world). This shows that, as Heidegger says, moods—and findingness in general—disclose the whole of being-in-the-world.

We recognised that moods are only one mode of findingness, and so that there are other modes – notably, perception or sensation. Further, what Heidegger means by 'mood' covers not only feelings or affects (joy, hate, fear, indifference etc), but more broadly one's general disposition (e.g. a cheerful disposition) and even the mood of a community or era (the Zeitgeist).

We discussed whether cases of dasein always find themselves thrown into a mood (roughly, whether moods are passive), given that it is possible to control one's mood and sometimes to effect a counter-mood. (Which, note, suggests that we are always in some mood or other.) We decided that even though we can perform activities to encourage a change in our mood, this amounts to a receptivity to a new mood rather than an active choice of mood.

Winter, Week 3 Meeting - Part V

I.V: Understanding (§31)

We did not discuss Heidegger's analysis of understanding in §30, although we did note that understanding has to do with possibilities and is something like the 'active' or 'spontaneous' counterpart to the 'receptivity' of findingness. We will discuss this further next time.

Winter, Week 1 Meeting - Part I

Admin

During the winter term, we will meet Thursdays 6:00-8:00 p.m., odd weeks, room TBA. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, January 24, and we will read §§28-31 of Division I, chapter 5.

Anyone who wasn’t at the meeting but still wants to continue with the group, please send either Nate (nsz at uchicago) or Kate (kwithy at uchicago) an e-mail, so that we can keep you on the e-mail list.

Finally, we’d like to let you be more involved in running the discussion group. There are two things you can help us with: First, you could volunteer to kick off the discussion, summarizing what you think are important points in the reading, pointing out passages that were confusing or tricky and seem worth discussing, drawing a chart on the board, asking a general or comparative question about the topic in the reading, etc. Second, you could volunteer to note down what we discuss in our group meeting and write the main points up for posting on the blog. You can volunteer for either by posting a comment here.

Winter, Week 1 Meeting - Part II

Situating I.IV

We began our discussion by recalling the place of this chapter in the structure of Division I: we are investigating dasein as being-in-the-world; I.III analysed the world, I.V will cover being-in, and I.IV discusses ‘who’ (not ‘what’) it is that is in the everyday world.

Last time, we saw that not just equipment, but also other cases of dasein show up within the work-world. How, then, do they show up? We charted the ontological structures common to both equipment and others (click the chart to see it full-size):

Winter, Week 1 Meeting - Part III

I.IV: Being-with and dasein-with (§26)

Others are encountered from out of the work-world, and they are encountered as dasein – more specifically, in their being as dasein-with (Mitdasein). I share my everyday world with these others, which is accordingly a with-world (Mitwelt). This is possible because dasein is essentially being-with (Mitsein) – being-with(-others) is an existentiale; it is part of what it takes to be dasein. Thus being-with is “autonomous” and “irreducible,” and Heidegger does not face the problem of other minds – it’s impossible to make sense of oneself as dasein without already being able to make sense of others as cases of dasein, too.

We wondered about the sense of ‘with’ at issue here – is it that (i) a carpenter can only be a carpenter if there are others to purchase tables, produce hammers and so on (playing the other roles that make up the whole context of carpentry), or that (ii) a carpenter can only be a carpenter if there are other carpenters, such that the social role of ‘carpenter’ is available in the first place? We decided that both were involved in being-with others in a with-world. Recall that the with-which of equipment-use has to do with the other equipment involved in the relevant, purposive context (the nails and boards that go along with the hammer, say). This supports the idea that ‘with’ in ‘being-with’ has to do with other roles in the relevant context of existence (the carpenter’s boss, customers and co-workers, say). At the same time, being-with is supposed to capture the normativity involved in existence, the way that one’s way of life can be shared and lived in a common, standard manner. This supports the idea that ‘with’ in ‘being-with’ has to do with the possibility that (numerically) more than one case of dasein be able to live any particular way of life.

We briefly discussed being-alone as illuminating being-with: being-alone is not the opposite of being-with(-others), but a deficient mode of it that is possible only if dasein is essentially being-with. The reason is that being-alone is to be understood as being-with others in the mode of indifference or not mattering – which is also why the mere presence of more others doesn’t change one’s being-alone (one can be equally alone on a crowded bus as in an isolation chamber).

Finally, we flagged that, just as others are usually understood in terms of the work world, and so in terms of what they do, so too I typically understand myself in terms of what I do.

Winter, Week 1 Meeting - Part IV

I.IV: Das Man (§27)

We began by noting that the various English translations of ‘das Man’ – ‘the They,’ ‘the One,’ ‘the Anyone’ – each have drawbacks. In particular, ‘the They’ implies that it refers to everyone else but me, whereas das Man is something to which I belong, and ‘the One’ implies that it refers to just one, perhaps exemplary, entity, whereas das Man is someone whom anyone and everyone can be (and usually is).

We wondered about the extent to which das Man is the same as, or coextensive with, societies or communities. We noted that there will be overlapping das Man structures at various levels – i.e., norms that govern being at the U of C, living in Hyde Park, being an American, being an international academic, etc.

Das Man is the ‘who’ of everyday being-in-the-world, the ‘subject’ of everydayness. In my everyday life, I am a ‘they-self.’ As a they-self, I am not my authentic self. We briefly discussed some of the difficulties in making sense of this: the authentic self is in some way opposed to das Man, and yet Heidegger enigmatically says that it is an “existentiell modification” of it. Indeed, das Man is an existentiale, so authentic cases of dasein will not be removed from, apart from, or in opposition to das Man.

We suggested that what is distinctive about being authentic has to do with taking responsibility, rather than going against social norms (although sometimes this can be part of taking responsibility). This conclusion came out of discussing tricky examples of ‘firsts’—when someone creates and/or wears the first pair of shoes, when someone becomes the first lawmaker of the Wild West, when someone first comes up with a revolutionary theory. These cases are difficult to situate in terms of das Man. On the one hand, there is something new and unprecedented in such activity, so they look like examples of bucking (or creating) social norms. On the other hand, such phenomena as shoes, law in the West and, say, quantum physics, don’t come into view until they are possibilities for dasein, which is to say, until they are ways to exist, or equipment with which to exist, that can be shared by more than one case of dasein (this is part of the point in saying that being-with is an existentiale). We brought out this latter point by reflecting that even the Wild West bandit is governed by a set of social norms, and can only occur in a social context in which such banditry is possible, for instance where there is already a sheriff to be riled up. Again, this led us to think of authenticity less in terms of creating new ways to live ex nihilo, and more in terms of taking responsibility for maintaining or modifying those ways of living already available and intelligible within one’s world.

Winter Quarter Meetings

We will continue to meet every two weeks throughout the winter quarter to finish Division I of Being and Time. We will be sending out an email over the break to figure out our meeting times and days (at least for the first meeting).

If you lack for reading material over the break, you could check out some introductory books on BT. We recommend these:

• Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction
• Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary of Heidegger's Being and Time
• William Blattner, Heidegger's Being and Time: A Reader's Guide
• Mark Wrathall, How to Read Heidegger

Happy Holidays!
Kate and Nate

Autumn, Week 10 Meeting

At this meeting we discussed the world, worldhood and equipment. We began with a restatement of Heidegger's concept of world in plain language: "[A] world is a system of purposes and meanings that organises our activities and our identity, and within which entities can make sense to us" (Richard Polt, Heidegger: An Introduction, p54). We then considered:

1. The four senses of world (§14):

(a) 'World' means a totality of present-at-hand entities. We suggested understanding this sense of 'world' in terms of 'what's there.' We debated what would count as examples of intraworldly entities in this sense, and considered material objects, numbers, spaces and unicorns. While we didn't come to a consensus about them all, we did agree that material objects count as a good example of 'what's there' in this sense of 'world.'

(b) 'World' means the being of intraworldly entities. We suggested understanding this sense of 'world' in terms of 'what could be there.' We glossed this sense in terms of a set of constraints, rules or possibilities for being an entity in the realm or domain in question. We talked about Euclid's axioms as an example of this sense of world, since they give the rules by which we can make sense of, and know about, geometrical entities.

(c) 'World' means that wherein a factical dasein lives. We suggested understanding this sense of 'world' as the 'lived world' or 'lifeworld,' and had an extensive discussion of the 'world of stacking (books in the library)' as an example of this sense of world. We pointed out that this is a world in which entities show up both publicly (a 'we-world,' constituted by social practices) and meaningfully (a world of significance). We noted Heidegger's description of this sense of world as being that which is closest to us, the everyday environment surrounding us. We also noted a parallel between Heidegger's use of 'present-at-hand' in his description of the first sense of 'world' and his use of 'factical' in his description of the third sense of 'world.' On this parallel, 'factical dasein' would seem to mean a dasein that's 'there.' (Note: Heidegger will expound upon this sense of 'there' in I.5.)

(d) 'World' means worldhood, the "a priori character" of any world, in general--what belongs to, or makes sense of, a world, insofar as it is a world.

We noted that Heidegger's use of 'being-in-the-world' as another term for dasein's existence uses 'world' in the third sense. We also went on to discuss the third and fourth senses of 'world' in more detail, as summarized in the numbered points below.


2. We noticed that the phenomenon of the world is usually overlooked because it is so close to us that it's difficult to see, like a pair of glasses. Heidegger's analysis of the world, then, is phenomenological in this sense: it attempts to allow the world, which normally hides itself in its very obviousness, to show itself. Heidegger starts with our closest, everyday world (the environment, an example of the third sense of 'world') and with the entities we encounter in it (equipment, or ready-to-hand entities). (§14, §15) Heidegger describes our life in this world as our "dealings" with the ready-to-hand (and, we noted later, with other people who share this world, too). He refers to such dealings with the term 'concern,' and he calls the sort of understanding by which we can make sense of our world and the entities in it 'circumspection' (a conception of understanding which uses the metaphor of sight, like our phrases 'now I see,' 'see what I mean,' 'point of view,' 'shed light on,' and so on).


3. Using the example of the world of stacking, we considered what it is to be an entity in this world (again, an entity Heidegger calls 'equipment' and 'ready-to-hand'). A book shows up as an entity in the world of stacking by making sense in terms of the activity of stacking (the living of the stacker's way of life, so to speak). Heidegger discusses the being of equipment by pointing out a number of interconnected structures in terms of which the book makes sense as an entity in the world of stacking. The overall name for this structure is the 'in-order-to' structure. The book shows up in the world of stacking because it's used in order to shelve and arrange the library's collection. The in-order-to structure has three related components. (a) The book shows up in terms of the role it plays in the activity of stacking. Heidegger calls this kind of usefulness the 'in-which' of the book's readiness-to-hand. (b) The book shows up as that which the stacker stacks; Heidegger calls this the 'with-which' of the book's readiness-to-hand. We noted that the book itself only makes sense within the larger context of other equipment involved in stacking: the stacks themselves, the stacker, the stacker's co-workers and boss, library browsers, the library's floors and rooms and building, call numbers, carts, etc. Strictly speaking, all these together constitute the with-which element of the in-order-to structure, here. (c) The book shows up as being useful for a certain task, used toward a certain purpose, in this case, keeping the collection organized so browsers can find it. Heidegger calls the purpose of a piece of equipment's role the 'towards-which' of its readiness-to-hand. We noted that the in-order-to structure, particularly when we consider the 'towards-which' element, points to, or refers to (or, Heidegger says, "signifies") further 'in-order-to' structures. For example, the book is useful in order to organize the collection, which itself is in useful in order for, say, the stacker to keep her job and continue to get paid, which is in order to fulfill work-study requirements, in order to keep getting financial aid, in order to stay in college, in order to get a degree, in order to be a chemist. (§15, §16, §18)


4. We noted that this last 'in-order-to' is special, and distinct from the others. Strictly speaking, Heidegger doesn't call it an 'in-order-to' relation; he calls it a 'for-the-sake-of' relation. All the work of stacking ultimately makes sense insofar as it's done for the sake of being able to live in the world in question. In this sense, dasein's existence--while it only makes sense in terms of the world and equipment in which and with which it exists--ultimately makes sense as something for the sake of its ability to be, a possibility of its being (for example, being a stacker, earning money for nourishment, being a chemist). Dasein's 'for-the-sake-of-which' is something like a 'life-project', a way of being around which someone organises his life. One's for-the-sake-of-which will determine, and make sense of, the activities one engages in and the ready-to-hand entities that one encounters (e.g. books, banks, test tubes--which themselves make sense in terms of the in-order-to relation). (§15, §18)


5. The upshot of points (4) and (5) above is that to be a case of dasein is always to use equipment or encounter ready-to-hand entities (equipment), and ready-to-hand entities only make sense with reference to that ability-to-be, for-the-sake-of-which dasein exists. Thus to understand either dasein or intraworldly entities, we have to make reference to both. This is one way in which we can see Heidegger overcoming a Cartesian-style subject / object split, which is a way of thinking about people and entities that simply doesn't illuminate our everyday dealings with entities in the environment (because it doesn't let these phenomena show up intelligibly).


6. Finally, we saw that worldhood (the 'worldly' character of the world, what makes it count as a world) is the structure of all these references or relations. To be a 'world' in the fourth sense, to be worldly or 'world-ish,' is to make sense in terms of the in-order-to and for-the-sake of relations. Heidegger's term for this overall structure, the structure of a world as such, is 'significance.'


7. We noted a few more details about Heidegger's view of equipment. Items of equipment have appropriate and inappropriate uses. Thus a book is used appropriately for stacking, reading and so on, but used inappropriately for hammering. Of course, the book can be used in order to hammer, but this does not make it a hammer. It is a book used inappropriately, as a hammer. (§15) The phenomenon of appropriate and inappropriate uses of equipment shows that in using equipment, we also encounter the public world which determines such appropriate and inappropriate uses. Not only does a piece of equipment only show up by fitting intelligibly into a larger context of equipment all involved in that world, a case of dasein only makes sense of itself as a denizen of its world by encountering other cases of dasein with whom it shares that world (e.g., the boss, other stackers, browsers and borrowers). We need not literally see these other people and entities; rather, they are implied, and so show up for us, insofar as the very activity of stacking books makes sense, at all. (§15). The entities encountered in our dealings with equipment always imply or refer to a larger context of other entities, practices and norms. If this context is different (e.g., purchasing books in a bookstore rather than checking them out of the library), then the item of equipment shows up to us differently, it plays a different role in the in-order-to structure of its world. Items of equipment, or entities that are ready-to-hand, are what they are only in terms of their place in such a context or totality of references. (§15, §16)


8. Finally, Kate suggested that while in the case of the work-world or environment, these references will be the in-order-to and so on, Heidegger's mention of primitive man (§17) implies that there may be worlds where we are not primarily concerned with using things (perhaps: the religious world, the art world, the intellectual world). These will be worlds insofar as they are referential totalities (i.e. have worldhood), but will have different kinds of references than the work-world.

Autumn, Week 8 Meeting

NB: The reading for next time is I.3 (§14-§24). We will focus on §14-18. We will not be talking about the sections on Descartes (§19-21), and will probably not talk about the sections on spatiality (§22-§24) (which are nonetheless well worth reading).

1. We began with the question of method in raising the question of being. The method of ontology is phenomenology (§7c), which is: letting that which shows itself (the phenomenon) be seen from itself in the way in which it shows itself from itself. Phenomenology is a descriptive method, does not make assumptions, and is a special kind of seeing.

We saw that phenomenology is the method appropriate to ontology because being is the phenomenon par excellance – it does not usually show itself since it lies hidden in entities, so it needs to be allowed to show itself. Being shows itself only through entities, and does so particularly in dasein. So phenomenological ontology must begin with the analysis of dasein's being (the existential analytic). This analysis starts with dasein's everydayness (§9, §5) – its ordinary, everyday going about its life – rather than with any special or extraordinary situation.

We discussed the hermeneutic or interpretive character of the existential analytic. How does an interpretation of dasein's being connect to the ordinary understanding of hermeneutics as textual analysis? We did not reach a satisfactory answer. But we did note that in carrying out the existential analytic, we figure out how to proceed as we proceed. So perhaps this issue will become more clear as we read further.


2. We tried to get a sense for what Heidegger means by existence (§9), particularly in relation to dasein's understanding of being and the fact that being is an issue for it. We recognised that only dasein exists, and contrasted existence with presence-at-hand, which is an appropriate term for the being of entities unlike dasein. We suggested that existence may have to do with the activity or the act of be-ing (as opposed to the passivity of the present-at-hand), but worried about the appropriateness of this vocabulary. We noted that existence has to do with ability and possibility, but did not discuss further what 'possibility' means.

Heidegger scholars do not agree on what Heidegger means by 'existence.' We mentioned Kate's preferred reading (that existence is dasein's ek-sistent standing-outside-of-itself in understanding being), and John Haugeland's reading (that existence is the actuality of dasein's being lived by people in each case). We tried to draw a parallel between Heidegger's terms (existence, facticity, (falling)) and the traditional terms 'existentia' (that-being), 'essentia' (what-being) (and 'accident,' how-being). Is such a parallel appropriate? Is Heidegger in some way collapsing the traditional distinction between existentia and essentia?


3. We distinguished dasein in general from cases of dasein, on analogy with tuberculosis. Like tuberculosis, dasein always occurs in particular cases – that is, in each case (je). (The translators are sloppy in including this 'in each case' in their translation.) Cases of dasein are addressed by personal pronouns ('I am', 'you are'), so are probably people. Thus you and I are not daseins, but are cases of dasein. Accordingly, cases of dasein can each say that dasein is 'mine' ("dasein is in each case mine"). As a feature of dasein in general, this is called 'mineness' (Jemeinigkeit) (§9).


4. We saw that dasein can be mine in different ways: authentically or inauthentically (§9). Thus cases of dasein (people) can be authentic or inauthentic. We noted that Heidegger will spend the bulk of the book talking about authenticity and inauthenticity – but lamented his failure to provide examples. By way of rough orientation: Jesus and Socrates are uncontroversially authentic cases of dasein; for inauthenticity we can have in mind someone like 'the man in the suit who buys in to the system.' But need authentic and inauthentic cases of dasein be recognisably different? (Kate recommended Jonathan Lear's recent book, Radical Hope, for a brilliant portrayal of an authentic case of dasein).

We did not discuss much what it takes to be in/authentic, but did note that it has to do with (not) 'winning' or 'choosing' oneself, and suggested that this has to do with taking over or owning up to being dasein. We saw that inauthenticity is not a lesser or lower degree of being than is authenticity – unlike in Plato's Republic, in which the beautiful city is in some sense more real than other cities.


5. We distinguished the fact of dasein's being-present – its facticity – from the factual being-present of present-at-hand entities (§12). Facticity is dasein's concrete determination in each case – the details and particularities that fill out and make up any particular human life. Heidegger's will later say that 'existence is always factical,' which means that dasein's existence always happens or occurs in and as the living of a particular, determinate life. We wondered what it means to say that dasein's 'destiny' is bound up with the being of entities which encounter it in the world, and suggested that this may have to do with the fact that what kind of life you lead and what is possible for you is bound up with what kinds of entities happen to be part of your world.


6. We saw that dasein's basic state of being is being-in-the-world (§12). ('State' is not to be understood as something like a 'mental state,' or as optional or contingent. Rather, being-in-the-world is an aspect of dasein's constitution or structure, its make-up). We discussed the way in which being-in-the-world is an articulated unity (somewhat like an aeroplane), such that its parts can be considered separately but are not actually separable, and so must always be considered in terms of the whole. The following three chapters of Being and Time are organised around an investigation of each of the three aspects of being-in-the-world.

We distinguished being-in as such from a spatial relationship of insideness, illuminating this by way of Heidegger's claim that present-at-hand entities can never 'touch' each other. Only dasein can touch something qua encountering it, since only dasein is in the world in the right way. We further illuminated being-in by considering its basic mode, being-amidst-the-world. (We rejected the translation of bei as 'alongside' on the grounds that it implies a spatial separation, opting for 'amidst' instead). We saw that to be amidst the world is to be absorbed in it, and considered Heidegger's list of examples (having to do with, undertaking, considering, etc.) (SZ, p. 56). This list covers both 'practical' and 'theoretical' activities, which indicates that being-in is supposed to precede and ground the practical-theoretical distinction. But the list does not include perceiving and knowing, which are the traditional ways in which the human being's engagement with the world is expressed. This led us to a discussion of knowing.


7. The standard picture of knowledge (§13) is that it is the relation between a subject and an object which somehow meet up. We saw that Heidegger holds that knowing is possible as a relation to entities only when we hold back from our concernful engagement with them. This holding back allows us to just look at entities, and to see them as merely present-at-hand objects. Heidegger considers traditional epistemology to be grounded in the forgetting of the fact that this mere looking is based on our being-amidst-the-world.

Finally, we mentioned Heidegger's response to the objection that his notion of being-in-the-world presupposes that the knowing subject connects up with the world, and does not explain how this is possible. Heidegger responds by saying that it is not clear that such an explanation is needed at all, and that such an approach is flawed because it is 'constructivist' – it tries to conjoin two items, subject and world, instead of recognising the original unity of dasein and world in dasein's being-in-the-world.

Autumn, Week 6 Meeting

Here's a summary of our discussion from last Thursday:

1. Dasein (§4, §5)

a. By way of review, we recalled that dasein is the entity to be interrogated in asking the question of the meaning of being, since it is the entity that understands both its own being and the being of other entities. We made a list of things that Heidegger says about dasein: it has to do with man or human beings; we are, each of us, dasein; it's the entity that inquires; it has possibilities; it has discourse; it has the potentiality for logos; it's something for whom being is an issue; it relates to its being; it tends to understand its being in terms of the world; it is ontically near but ontologically far; it's not quite the same as what's traditionally called the 'subject' in philosophy.

b. We saw that 'Dasein' is an ordinary German word meaning 'existence,' and literally means 'being (sein) there (da).'

c. We proposed that dasein is distinct from other entities because it reflects on or thinks about itself, how it should live, what it is, and so on. But we worried that understanding this self-relation as 'reflection' or 'thinking' might define dasein in a way that cuts it off from ordinary life and going about in the world. We related this to the idea that dasein's being is an issue for it – that its being is caught up in some kind of questionability.

d. We talked about what it means to say that dasein's being is existence, and noticed that this is different from other statements of the human 'essence.' We did not reach a satisfactory interpretation of what 'existence' means. In particular, we wondered whether the claim that dasein "has its being to be" just means that dasein is, or whether this is an Aristotelian claim that says that dasein must become what it is in the sense of satisfying its function or fully realising its essence. Similarly, we wondered about what it means to say that dasein has the possibility to be itself or not be itself, and tentatively related this to the idea of people existing 'authentically' or 'inauthentically' (without defining these terms). We wondered if this was an ethical or moral claim, or something else entirely.

e. We reached an interpretation of the terms 'existentiell' and 'existential,' deciding that the existential describes ontological questions, investigations and claims about the being of dasein in general, while the existentiell describes cases of Dasein as entities living out their own particular lives in each case. We looked at the following paraphrases of the terms, by re-arranging Heidegger's words at the end of Being and Time, §3: The existential is 'the character of an understanding of the context [Zusammenhang, hanging together] of the structures that constitute existence,' the existentiell is 'the understanding of oneself which leads along the way of deciding one's existence (by taking hold or neglecting).'

f. We acknowledged that dasein's pre-ontological understanding of being is not a set of beliefs, but is embodied in practices. For example, our understanding of what it is to be masculine or feminine is not a set of beliefs so much as the particular ways in which we speak, act, move, and carry out our lives. We talked about the claim that ontology cannot simply take over dasein's pre-ontological understanding, since dasein has a tendency to misunderstand its own being and because its understanding is always filtered through a tradition and that tradition's ways of understanding being, which may not be suitably grounded in the phenomena. So we can't just make assumptions about what it is to be dasein. We saw that this is why the existential analytic – the analysis of dasein's way of being – is necessary for Heidegger's project.


2. Being and Time

We talked about what kind of results Heidegger will come to in this text, and in particular the fact that they will not be free-floating assertions or slogans. We noticed that Heidegger ends the book with a series of questions rather than a set of claims. We related this to his talk of phenomenology, and the idea that what he is trying to do is to make something manifest to us, to show us something.


3. The Phenomenon (§7a)

a. We talked about the phenomenon as the self-showing (that which shows itself in itself and from itself). We wondered whether something might show itself to one person in one way and to another in a different way, and so what the criterion is for a phenomenon showing up adequately, correctly or truthfully. We distinguished the phenomenon from:

i. Semblance, which shows itself, but not as it is in itself. We gave the example of the sun, which seems to move around the earth.
ii. Appearance, which does not show itself but is announced or indicated by something else, which does show itself. We gave the example of the Black Death, which does not show itself but is announced by black lumps, which do show themselves.
iii. Mere appearance, which does not show itself from itself. We mentioned, but did not fully discuss, this.

We noticed that the concept of phenomenon underlies semblance, appearance and mere appearance, since these all involve something showing itself. They are each distinguished from the phenomenon because they lack one of its components (showing itself, in itself, from itself).

b. We worried that under certain descriptions, the example of the sun can demonstrate either semblance or appearance (or even mere appearance). We pointed out that Heidegger is here not so interested in perfectly distinguishing these three from one another (and indeed allows them to overlap), but is trying to distinguish all three from the phenomenon as the self-showing.


4. Logos (§7b)

a. We noted that logos is a kind of telling or discourse. We looked at these four features Heidegger points out about logos: (i) It lets a phenomenon show up, (ii) it lets something show up in a public way, in a way that communicates, (iii) it lets something show up as something, and (iv) it uncovers entities, taking them out of their hiddenness and into the truth.

b. We flagged the fact that while we know that discourse or logos is speaking when it is fully concrete, we don't really know what it is. Heidegger will discuss it fully later.

c. We noticed Heidegger's brief discussion of truth in this section, which describes truth as discovery or making manifest and falsity as deceiving or covering up. We wondered about the criteria for this – how we can be sure that something is made manifest as it is?

d. We mentioned that Heidegger derives the traditional interpretations or translations of 'logos' ('reason,' 'judgment,' 'concept,' 'definition,' 'ground,' 'relationship') from his own interpretation of it as letting something be seen.


5. We did not talk about temporality as the meaning of dasein's being and as the horizon for all understanding of being (§5). We did not talk about the destruction of the history of ontology and why this is necessary for Heidegger's project (§6), although we did note that Heidegger does not get to this portion of the planned text. Finally, we did not put Heidegger's accounts of the phenomenon and of logos together into his concept of phenomenology (§7c), but will talk about this next time.