The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (111 page)

In what sense though? What is
Dasein
? What does it take to be a ‘who’?

Intentionality is primordial here.
²⁷
Dasein
is characterized by its various intentional relations to other beings. In fact it is constituted by such relations (e.g. pp. 73–74/p. 48 and
Metaphysical Foundations
, p. 167). They are in a sense antecedent to it. It follows that there is no conceiving of
Dasein
save in a way that involves the objects of its intentional acts: the things, as I put it in the previous section, in whose midst it is firmly planted and of which it makes sense. So the kind of Being that
Dasein
enjoys is indeed a way of
being
here
or being
there
, among other beings. It is, in one of Heidegger’s most celebrated and most expressive coinages, ‘Being-in-the-world’ (Pt One, Div. One,
Ch. II
).

This is clearly a non-Cartesian conception of
Dasein
.
²⁸
In this respect it is in line with much that we have witnessed in this enquiry since its opening chapter. Where Heidegger is perhaps at his most innovative, as far as these ideas go, is in his insistence that these relations of intentionality are, ‘primarily and for the most part’,
²⁹
practical
(see e.g.
Basic Problems
, §15(c)).
Dasein
has concerns and projects, and it is fundamentally
engaged
with the world as it pursues these concerns and projects. It is related to things as to equipment, equipment that it uses thus or so and for this or that purpose. The
contemplative
relations of intentionality on which philosophers have tended to focus are arrived at only as a kind of abstraction from these practical relations, when ‘concern holds back from any kind of producing, manipulating and the like’ (p. 88/p. 61). Heidegger expresses this both forcefully and amusingly in the following passage:

The ontological distinction … between ego and non-ego … cannot in any way be conceived directly and simply, as for instance in the form that Fichte uses … when he says, ‘Gentlemen, think the wall, and then think the one who thinks the wall.’
³⁰
There is already a constructive violation of the facts, an unphenomenological onset, in the request ‘Think the wall’…. The request ‘Think the wall,’ understood as the beginning of a return to the one who is thinking the wall, as the beginning of the philosophical interpretation of the subject, is saying: Make yourselves blind to what is already given to you in the very first place…. But what is thus antecedently given? How do the beings with which we dwell show themselves to us primarily and for the most part? Sitting here in the auditorium, we do not in fact apprehend walls – not unless we are getting bored…. What is primarily given … is a thing-
contexture
.

In order to see this we must formulate more clearly what
thing
means in this context and what ontological character the things have that are the initial beings here. The
nearest things
that surround us we call
equipment
. There is always already a manifold of equipment: equipment for working, for travelling, for measuring, and in general things with which we have to do. (
Basic Problems
, pp. 162–163, emphasis in original)

This difference between
Dasein
’s practical engagement with things and its contemplative engagement with things maps onto another fundamental difference that Heidegger wishes to draw between kinds of Being, this time between kinds of Being enjoyed by ‘whats’. ‘Whats’ with which
Dasein
is
practically engaged are ‘ready-to-hand’
³¹
(p. 98/p. 69; cf.
Basic Problems
, pp. 162ff.). ‘Whats’ with which
Dasein
is contemplatively engaged are ‘present-at-hand’
³²
(p. 67/p. 42; cf.
Basic Problems
, p. 109).
³³

But let us return to
Dasein
itself and its various kinds of Being. One of the reasons why
Dasein
is an appropriate starting point for any enquiry into Being, as Heidegger points out, is that it is itself there from the start (§2; cf.
Basic Problems
, p. 19).
Dasein
is precisely the sort of being that conducts such an enquiry. It is the sort of being that raises and addresses the questions that we have been raising and are now addressing. It is the sort of being for which Being is an issue (cf. pp. 32 and 67–68/pp. 12 and 42).
³⁴

But there is another, more particular sense in which
Dasein
is the sort of being for which Being is an issue.
Its own
Being is an issue for it. It not only engages with that which is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand. It confronts questions about
how
to engage with such things, about which possibilities to realize, about how to act out its own Being.
Dasein
understands itself in terms of what it expects, including what it expects of its own future self, and in terms of what it retains, including what it retains of its own former self. Heidegger expresses this in terms of what he calls the ‘ecstases’ of temporality (pp. 376ff./pp. 328ff.). He is alluding to the Greek word ‘
ekstatikon
’, which denotes a stepping outside of oneself. For by the ecstases of temporality he means the temporal aspects of
Dasein
’s intentional relations to beings and possibilities beyond its own present self, for instance the futurity of its expectations, whereby it so to speak steps outside itself. In the same vein, and yet again showing sensitivity to etymology, Heidegger reserves the word ‘existence’ (which derives from the Latin ‘
ex
’, meaning ‘out of’, and ‘
sistere
’, meaning ‘to stand’) for ‘that kind of Being towards which
Dasein
can comport itself in one way or another, and always does comport itself somehow’ (p. 32/p. 12). It follows that existence, so understood, is another kind of Being that is peculiar to ‘whos’.

It is clear, even from this lightning summary of what Heidegger says about the Being of
Dasein
, that time is of crucial significance to it. And indeed, because of the centrality of
Dasein
to Heidegger’s account of Being
more generally, time is likewise of crucial significance to what he says about the Being of ‘whats’. It is in temporal terms that
Dasein
makes sense of anything. It is in temporal terms that anything, including
Dasein
itself, makes sense.
Dasein
is guided in everything it does by its own future possibilities, constrained in everything it does by its own past encounters and commitments, always engaged with what is currently given to it as ready-to-hand or as present-at-hand.
³⁵
Such is the nature of its existence. Similarly, the way in which it is engaged with what is currently given to it is as enabling it to realize or to shun some of those future possibilities, or as tokens of some of those past encounters or commitments. Such is the nature of its sense-making. Such indeed is its nature. For it is of the very essence of
Dasein
to make sense of things. (See esp.
Basic Problems
, pp. 275ff.) Its own Being, which is an issue for it, is Being-in-the-world among other beings; and it can only address the issue of its own Being in terms of their Being, by grasping the possibilities that they afford it, which is to say by making sense of them. It must, to use one of Heidegger’s most important words,
care
about them. (See esp. Pt One, Div. One,
Ch. VI
, entitled ‘Care as the Being of
Dasein
’.) But such also is the nature of the things of which it makes sense. Their Being is their Being as made sense of by it. (Recall that ‘the “source” which the geographer establishes for a river is not the “springhead in the dale”.’
³⁶
) The temporality of
Dasein
is therefore their temporality. The meaning of Being, which is what Heidegger has been seeking, is in a sense time.
³⁷

The remarks in this section do not of course begin to do justice to Heidegger’s execution of his project, which includes countless achievements towards which I have not even gestured. Among these are:

• his treatment of the way in which existence, that kind of Being which is peculiarly
Dasein
’s, can be authentic or inauthentic, depending on whether the choices that
Dasein
makes are truly its

• his discussion of language and its role in
Dasein
’s making sense of things
³⁸

• his insights into mortality and the way in which it allows
Dasein
’s Being to be characterized, in yet another of the evocative terms that he coins, as ‘Being-towards-death’

and many more. I must pass over all of these. One reason for this is that my primary concern remains with meta-metaphysics, and I need now to
turn from how Heidegger executes his metaphysical project – let there be no doubt, incidentally, that the project that he executes
is
a metaphysical one, an attempt to make maximally general sense of things; I shall say some more about this in §5 – to how he conceives it. How he conceives it is a matter, very largely, of how he situates it in the history of metaphysics as a whole.
³⁹

4. Overcoming the Tradition

Heidegger’s view is that, where the aim of metaphysicians should be to make sense of Being, and was at the inception of their discipline in the West to make sense of Being, they have for some two thousand years allowed this aim to become submerged by others and have been preoccupied instead with beings (see e.g. ‘History of Being’). We need to recapture that feeling of mystery, that feeling of astonishment, that feeling of disturbance, which Being itself once induced.
⁴⁰
And ‘we’ here does not just mean ‘we metaphysicians’. The suppression of these feelings is part of
Dasein
’s ‘everyday’ encounters with things.
⁴¹

Heidegger talks a great deal about
Dasein
’s ‘falling’ (e.g. §38). He insists that ‘this term does not express any negative evaluation’ (p. 220/p. 175). But we can hardly fail to hear its religious overtones. Nor are these irrelevant to this neglecting of Being, or this ‘forgetting’ of Being, on our part.
⁴²
Our situation as Heidegger conceives it is not unlike man’s situation in the traditional Judæo-Christian myth of the Fall – even to the extent that it has been brought on by our pursuit of a certain way of making sense of things (Genesis:3).
⁴³
We are, in Heidegger’s view, in the grip of a kind of naturalism. We have been proceeding as if the only way to make sense of things is the (natural-)scientific way. But the only things that can be made sense of in that way are beings. In fact, within the parameters set by certain paradigms of scientific investigation, the only things that can be made sense of in that way are ‘whats’: ‘whats’ that are present-at-hand, of no intrinsic value, subject to invariant laws, and susceptible to our most fundamental categories of thought – even while remaining completely independent of that thought. And so it is that Being has either been ignored completely or been treated on the model of such ‘whats’, as something which, ‘over against becoming … is permanence[,] over against appearance … is the always identical[,] over against thought … is … the already-there[,] over against the ought … is the datum …’; as something which, in sum, is ‘enduring presence’ (
Introduction
, p. 202).
⁴⁴
We need to rekindle an awareness of Being as something
strange
, something which differs fundamentally from beings and resists any attempt on our part to make the same kind of sense of it as we make of them.
⁴⁵
We need, in fact, to relearn the elemental lesson of phenomenology, a lesson of which ancient thinkers, it now appears, already had a rudimentary grasp. For granted that Being is ‘that on the basis of which beings are already understood’ (pp. 25–26/p. 6), to make sense of it is to make sense of how sense is made of things. In effect, then, we are being invited to consider afresh the truly remarkable and singular fact that sense is made of anything, and to try to make sense of that (cf.
Basic Problems
, p. 227).

In describing Being as strange I am skirting one of the basic paradoxes of Being: that it is at once that which is most alien to us and that which is most familiar. It is that which is most alien to us precisely because we allow beings to occupy all our attention. It is that which is most familiar to us because it is that on the basis of which we understand beings. Indeed, as we saw in the previous section, and indirectly in the previous chapter, the investigation of Being must be at root a self-investigation.
⁴⁶
(I shall come back to this point at the end of the section.)