Winter, Week 10 Meeting (Part III)

What depends on Dasein?

We began the second hour of our meeting by juxtaposing passages from §43 and §44 to show that there is a structural similarity between the way that reality does and does not depend on Dasein and the way that truth does and does not depend on Dasein. We read passages from SZ 212 and SZ 226.

To get clear (or perhaps less clear) on this, we discussed the popular philosophical problem of whether a tree makes a sound if it falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it. We agreed that there is some brute event taking place, and that in order to make sense of this as a noise consisting of sound waves (as physicists might) or as a meaningful sound (as hikers might), we have to have dasein (as the entity that makes sense of things) in the picture. This does not mean that there must be someone with appropriate organs around to hear the noise in order for it to happen, but rather that there must be cases of dasein (with an understanding of being) around in order for the event to be intelligible as any kind of event. This applies retrospectively: we can make sense of a tree falling in the Jurassic period as making a noise in the sense (at least) of emitting sound waves, because we do so from our perspective, as currently existing cases of dasein, and because we have at our disposal a way of making sense of things (namely, physical science) that makes human-independent occurrences intelligible for us.

Heidegger's point is that what's going on with entities doesn't depend on dasein, but that any kind of making sense of this – including making sense of an occurrence as dasein-independent – does depend on dasein.

Winter, Week 10 Meeting (Part IV)

Truth (§44)

We didn't have time to discuss Heidegger's account of truth in detail. We did note that, according to Heidegger, truth is traditionally construed as a correspondence or agreement between assertions and entities (or ‘the world,’ or ‘reality’). By contrast, and for similar reasons as were involved in his repudiation of the traditional conception of reality, Heidegger argues that the traditional concept of truth as correspondence or agreement depends on the ability of dasein to discover entities and disclose being. Thus, he calls dasein's discovery of entities 'truth,' on account of the entities’ being ‘set free’ or ‘uncovered’ by dasein so that they can show up to it (rather than remaining covered up, in obscurity). Truth, for Heidegger, is a way of being: being-true, being-uncovering. But this is only part of Heidegger's account of truth, and it leaves out his argument. For further discussion of this section and the reality section, you should look at Richard Polt's Heidegger: an Introduction (pp. 80-84).

Next Quarter: Invited Speakers

Next quarter we will have two guest speakers from the University of Chicago. John Haugeland will visit us first, to discuss death and dasein. Then Jonathan Lear will visit a bit later, to discuss authenticity. Prof. Lear's discussion will spring from one of his most recent books, Radical Hope, which you could read over break (it's short and compelling) if you want some background for his talk.

As of the end of winter quarter, we plan to meet again on Thursday, April 3, from 5:00-7:00 p.m. We'll try to find a room in Cobb, as usual. This will likely be our meeting with Prof. Haugeland, so prepare your thoughts about what it is to be towards death and what in the hell 'dasein' means!


Have a good break,
Kate and nate

Winter, Week 8 Meeting - Part I

Care (§39, §41, §42)

In the first hour of the meeting, we put together all of the concepts that Heidegger has used to illuminate dasein’s being throughout Division I of BT. We began with an overview of Division I thus far: Heidegger aims to reawaken the question of the meaning of being (Introduction), and proceeds through an analysis of dasein’s being (the existential analytic) because dasein is the entity that understands being (I.1). Since dasein’s basic constitution of being is being-in-the-world (I.2), Heidegger analyses world (I.3), the ‘who’ (I.4) and being-in as such (I.5). Now, in I.6, the task is grasp the unity of dasein’s being, which Heidegger calls ‘care.’

To demonstrate and understand this unity, we produced the following chart, which collects most of the major concepts that Heidegger has introduced (click the chart to see it full-size):


We noted the following thing about Heidegger’s (ridiculously) hyphenated version of ‘care’ (“ahead-of-itself-being-already-in(-the-world) as being-amidst (encountering, intraworldly entities))”: The ‘as’ in that formulation signifies that dasein’s being—its disclosedness, its being the ‘there,’ its understanding of being, its existence, its being-in-the-world—must happen through its dealings with particular entities, that is, through its everyday, fallen being-in (in the same way that a basketball game must happen through particular plays, players and equipment). This parallels something we noted in describing the structure of dasein’s disclosedness, following Haugeland, as a coin, with ‘being-in’ being the metal of which ‘the who’ and ‘the world’ are sides: To be dasein is to be-in, to be-amidst, to be-with, to relate to entities; and being a self and having a world are not separate entities or events from this being-in, they are rather two aspects of it, two ways of bringing it into view. We also recalled that dasein’s comportment toward entities as entities involves both (1) comporting toward (or discovering) entities as entities, having entities encounter it or show up to it in their being, which is ontic-ontological, and (2) disclosing being, which happens on the ontological level. Accordingly, the second and third columns of the chart reflect the ontological level of dasein’s disclosedness and of care, while the right-most column reflects the ontic-ontological level, and being-in-the-world as a whole happens through these two basic structural aspects together.

We also noticed that it is relatively easy to see how these three dimensions will map onto time, although Heidegger will be appealing to a conception of time radically unlike our ordinary one.

We wondered why Heidegger calls this structure ‘care’ – particularly given that he rejects many of the ordinary connotations of ‘care’ as inappropriate. We suggested that ‘care’ refers to something like ‘taking life seriously.’ Even if a case of dasein leads an ironic life or is a carefree slacker, they still take their ironic or slacker lifestyle seriously. The slacker is invested in being a slacker, and guides his life in terms of slacker-values. So ‘care’ is supposed to capture the fact that human life always occurs as immersed and invested, and is never first of all a matter of a neutral subject confronting an objective world.

Winter, Week 8 Meeting - Part II

Angst (§40)

The limit-experience of Angst is supposed to reveal the unity of dasein’s being in care. Recall that to identify the being of an entity, we need to look at dasein’s disclosure of its being, since dasein is the entity that understands being. So to get at the being of dasein, we need to consider dasein’s self-disclosure. However, because it is falling, dasein has a tendency to misunderstand its own being. We need an experience in which dasein discloses itself in a way that does not involve misunderstanding, and so an experience which disrupts its falling. Angst is such an experience because it involves a breakdown in the everyday, public world into which dasein falls.

Angst is a mood or mode of findingness, and so involves the same three structural moments as fear (§30). But unlike fear, the in-the-face-of-which that threatens in Angst is not an innerworldly entity approaching from a definite region. It is completely indefinite and poses an indefinite threat. (Compare the anxious portions of horror movies before the bad guy is revealed, in contrast to the fearful scenes following this revelation). Since it is no thing, what threatens is nothing. And since it does not approach from anywhere specific in the world, it is nowhere. There is nothing in particular that we are anxious about; rather, we are anxious in the face of everything and nothing. In colloquial language, we might say that we are anxious in the face of the fact that there are meaningful things and that we have to deal with them. This is to say that the in-the-face-of-which of Angst is the (everyday, fallen) world. Thus Angst discloses the ‘amidst-innerworldly-entities,’ or falling, dimension of care.

The about-which of Angst is dasein’s authentic ability-to-be-in-the-world. Consider fear again: that about which one fears is oneself – one is afraid for one’s specific lifestyle, bodily integrity, or property. But in Angst, that which threatens is indefinite, so that to which it poses a threat is also indefinite. One is not anxious about any of the particulars of one’s fallen, worldly life, but about the fact that one has such a life at all. This reveals that cases of dasein are in the business having lives – that is, of projecting themselves onto possibilities. (We suggested that one might have such an anxious realisation after graduating, or at any point at which one must make ‘life choices’). This is the revelation of dasein’s authentic self, and so of the projective or ‘ahead-of-itself’ moment of care.

The final moment in the structure of moods is the mood as such – fearing itself, or Angst itself, as disclosive. Although Heidegger barely mentions it, since Angst is a mood it involves the disclosure of moodedness itself, and so the ‘already-in-a-world’ or finding aspect of care.

There was some discussion in the meeting about whether to map this last moment of Angst onto ‘amidst-innerworldly-entities’ / falling (on the grounds that the mood of Angst is an experience within a life that disrupts falling). If we did this, the in-the-face-of-which of Angst (the world) would go with the ‘already-in-a-world’ moment of care (on the grounds that already-being-in-a-world belongs to thrownness and facticity). We decided that the reading outlined above is more compelling, although Heidegger does not make it clear exactly what he has in mind.

Winter, Week 5 Meeting - Part I

Understanding (§31)

We pointed out that understanding, like findingness, is a moment of dasein’s disclosedness, the ‘there’ where entities can show up intelligibly to dasein. Like findingness, understanding is a structural moment of being-in which discloses the ‘who’ and world of dasein simultaneously (or “equiprimordially”). Specifically, understanding discloses possibilities in terms of which entities are intelligible to dasein. Heidegger says that this sort of disclosedness has the structure of projection. In understanding, dasein ‘projects entities onto their possibilities.’ We also pointed out that understanding is a broader phenomenon than cognition or knowledge, and involves a practical competence or skill in everyday dealings with oneself, others and intraworldly entities. Finally, we discussed how understanding operates on the ontological level (disclosing the kind of being that characterizes dasein, equipment or things, in general) and on the ontic level (disclosing particular ways to be dasein, equipment or things).

Understanding discloses dasein’s being in terms of that for-the-sake-of-which dasein exists, dasein’s ability-to-be [Seinkönnen, MR: “potentiality-for-being”]. To say that dasein exists is to say that dasein is able to understand itself as whoever it is, for instance as an American, as a carpenter, as someone devoted to justice. We noticed that Heidegger does not say which sorts of things are supposed to count as ‘for-the-sake-of’s.

Understanding discloses the being of equipment in terms of the worldly structure of significance, letting the ready-to-hand show up intelligibly in terms of its usefulness and its relation to the surrounding equipmental totality, or context of co-equipment. Understanding discloses how entities can, and should, be used. For instance, books, in the world of working at the library, are disclosed in terms of the roles they play in shelving, browsing and borrowing, along with the other books, shelves, floors, call numbers, co-workers, the boss, and so on.

Finally, understanding discloses the being of things (present-at-hand entities), for example, in terms of the theoretical laws explaining how they can possibly behave. Physical law, for example, says that it’s possible for entities with mass to gravitate toward entities with greater mass.

We wondered whether the possibilities upon which we project entities are dasein-independent, since they seem to belong to the entities themselves – particularly for present-at-hand entities. What is possible and impossible for such entities is determined by the laws of nature, and it would seem that these hold regardless of whether there are cases of dasein around (for example, by the law of gravity it is impossible for the chalk to fall upwards). But the laws of nature, and the possibilities and impossibilities that they afford, are ways of making entities intelligible, and so require that there is an entity that makes intelligible: dasein. So while the chalk certainly wouldn't fall upwards in the absence of dasein, this wouldn’t ‘show up’ as an impossibility (since there would be no understanding dasein for them to show up to). We will discuss this kind of issue further when we read §43 on reality.

We also flagged the fact that understanding is always finding (and vice versa), and so that projection is always thrown. Among other things, this means that dasein is always thrown into a range of available possibilities upon which it can project entities (including itself). For example, because we are thrown into 20^th-century America, we can't understand ourselves as Samurai warriors, and we don't discover cicadas as edible.

Further, the entities themselves constrain the possibilities in terms of which they can be made intelligible – and this means that projection is not 'free-floating' but is beholden to entities and can get them right or wrong. Thus Nate could grasp the chalk as edible, but if he did so he would be getting the chalk wrong, and he gets the chalk right when he projects it onto its specific usability by writing on the blackboard with it.

This led us to discuss why Heidegger says that dasein tends to understand itself in terms of its world (and therefore misunderstand itself). We began to address this by discussing falling.

Winter, Week 5 Meeting - Part II

Falling (§38)

Falling is a movement that belongs to thrownness – it is dasein's falling away from itself into the world and absorption in entities. This ‘away from’ is not a failure to be dasein, but is part of what it takes to be dasein. Kate suggested that we understand falling as like a drag on thrownness that connects dasein up with the world of entities. Note that the characterisation of being-in thus far has been primarily at the existential-ontological level, illuminating the being of dasein by showing how it discloses being. But being is always the being of entities, and dasein is the entity that discloses being (it is ontico-ontological). Falling is supposed to account for the fact that (i) dasein always takes place as an entity in each case, and (ii) its understanding of being is always the understanding of the being of entities.

Thus Heidegger says that falling “is used to signify that Dasein is proximally and for the most part alongside the ‘world’ of its concern” (SZ 175). This ‘alongside’ is an ‘absorption in …’. So falling involves being swept up in intraworldly entities. This begins to explain what it means to say that dasein falls away from itself. We recalled Heidegger's previous discussions of dasein's tendency to misunderstand itself as being just like the intraworldly entities that it deals with in the everyday world. In this misunderstanding, dasein loses its grip on the way in which it is different from other entities. So in being fallingly absorbed in its dealings with intraworldly entities, dasein misunderstands itself and in this sense falls away from itself.

We also noticed that in being absorbed in concernful dealings with entities, we typically discover them in the way that das Man does. This is because we are thrown, and so fall, into das Man. Human life wouldn't work if we came to it as blank slates and had to confront and discover entities by ourselves with nothing to go on. We always start from our tradition's ways of finding and understanding entities. For reasons that we will come to later (namely, death), das Man tends to cover over the way in which dasein is different from other entities. Thus das Man embodies and exacerbates dasein's fallen tendency to misunderstand, and so fall away from, itself.

Since falling is an existentiale, it must characterise dasein regardless of whether it is authentic or inauthentic. So the standard interpretation of falling as equivalent to both inauthenticity and everydayness cannot be correct. We found it difficult to discuss falling in a way that remained neutral between authentic and inauthentic falling, in part because Heidegger almost always talks about falling in its inauthentic mode, and never discusses authentic falling at length. This makes it hard to see what falling itself, and authentic falling, are. What is it to be authentically absorbed in the world of concern? or to be authentically determined by das Man?

Winter, Week 5 Meeting - Part III

Authenticity and Inauthenticity (§38)

We know that both authentic and inauthentic cases of dasein fall, and that authentic dasein is not outside of or above everydayness. To help us understand this, Jim likened fallen everydayness to a basketball game. Any human life whatsoever happens on the court; to stop playing would be, according to this metaphor, to cease to exist (to be dasein) entirely. So both authentic and inauthentic cases of dasein are playing basketball (fall into everydayness), and the difference between them will consist in how they do so (authenticity as an existentiell modification of everydayness). We suggested that inauthentic dasein might be thought of as playing basketball without knowing or caring about what it takes to win, while authentic dasein would be playing to win.

Heidegger will discuss authenticity (but not authentic falling) in more detail in the opening chapters of Division II. By way of anticipation, we suggested that authenticity involves some kind of struggling against das Man-ish ways of disclosing. But since this struggle cannot culminate in stepping outside of das Man and everydayness, it must rather result in something like taking responsibility for the ways in which one discloses. Heidegger will further elaborate this in terms of crisis moments in which we confront our finitude: Angst, death, and conscience.

In contrast, inauthenticity involves an unquestioning absorption in entities and going along with das Man and its disclosedness (idle talk, curiosity, ambiguity). But we noted that this need not look like an unreflective or passive life – as Heidegger says, falling drives dasein to “exaggerated ‘self-dissection’” (SZ178). Thus inauthenticity can include even the philosopher who spends his/her life writing and thinking about human nature.

Winter, Week 5 Meeting - Part IV

Idle Talk, Curiosity, Ambiguity (§35-37)

We concluded by connecting our discussion of falling and its in/authentic modes back to dasein’s everyday disclosedness in idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity. Even in philosophising, we may be engaged in nothing more than idle talk – just passing along philosophical catchphrases without fully appropriating what they make manifest. And since most of us are stuck in such everyday disclosedness, we’re pretty much all inauthentic. As much as we would like to consider ourselves authentic, on Heidegger’s account authenticity is exceedingly hard and rare.

Winter, Week 5 Meeting, Part V

Conclusion

We didn’t talk about the section on discourse and language (§34), and we didn’t talk much about interpretation (§32) and assertion (§33). But now that we have most of the structural components of dasein’s being on the table, we will be going on to discuss the unity of these in ‘care’ via a discussion of the limit-experience of anxiety (§39-42).