The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things (116 page)

6
Cf. Hubert L. Dreyfus’ claim, on p. 10 of Dreyfus (
1991
), that ‘Heidegger’s primary concern is … to make sense of our ability to make sense of things.’

7
There is much in this idea that would have given the early Wittgenstein pause: see
Ch. 9
, §§4 and 5.

8
Cf. the later Wittgenstein (
Ch. 10
, §1).

9
See e.g. Copleston (
1963
), p. 435. Cf. Dreyfus (
1991
), p. 32, and Moran (
2000
), p. 228.

10
I have been greatly helped by Crowell (
1990
). See also Jordan (1979) and Frede (
2006
), pp. 52ff.

11
In
Ch. 17
, §6, we saw Husserl liken his view to Leibniz’ monadology. That likeness is in effect what is at stake here. Heidegger unsurprisingly distances himself from it (the monadology): see
Basic Problems
, pp. 300–301.

12
I have taken the liberty of replacing John Macquarrie’s and Edward Robinson’s ‘entities’ by ‘beings’ in their translation: see n. 15.

13
This still leaves a great distance between Heidegger and naturalists. His own phenomenology, if not as pure as Husserl’s, is still quite different from any of the standard human sciences – from human biology, most blatantly, but also from psychology or anthropology (p. 71/p. 45; cf.
History of the Concept of Time
, §4(c)) – albeit not different enough for Husserl’s liking (see Husserl (
1997
)).

14
I use the term ‘reality’ here in as neutral a way as possible. Heidegger himself uses it in various more restricted ways: see e.g. pp. 166, 228, and 254–255/pp. 128, 183, and 211.

15
The original German words are ‘
Seiendes
’ and ‘
Sein
’. Translators differ in how they register this distinction. In
Being and Time
John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson usually translate ‘
Seiendes
’ as ‘entities’ and ‘
Sein
’ as ‘Being’ with a capital ‘B’: see their n. 1 on p. 19. I have altered their translations throughout as far as the former and its cognates are concerned, because I prefer ‘beings’. But I have followed their practice as far as the latter is concerned. This is principally to avoid some potential confusions, e.g. in the phrase ‘sort of being’ which will feature prominently in the following section. I shall also take the liberty of adapting the renderings of other translators to conform with this practice.

16
This is the present participle, different from either of the nouns mentioned in the previous note.

17
Cf. the end of his essay ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, where he adverts to what he calls ‘the basic question of metaphysics’,
viz
. ‘Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?’ (p. 110).

– Note that the metaphor of concreteness, which occurs at the end of this quotation, recurs at p. 29/p. 9, where Heidegger asks, concerning his question, ‘Does it simply remain – or
is
it at all – a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities,
or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete
?’ (emphasis in original). He clearly hopes to convince us that it is the latter. Here there is a curious link with Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein, in Wittgenstein (
1961
), 5.5563, writes, ‘Our problems are not abstract, but perhaps the most concrete that there are.’

18
‘
Noematic
’ is the adjective corresponding to the noun ‘
noema
’ which was introduced in its plural form in §4 of the previous chapter. ‘
Noetic
’ is the adjective corresponding to the noun ‘
noesis
’. Where a
noema
is roughly some way in which an object can be given, a
noesis
is roughly some act of an object’s being given in some way. See Husserl (
1962
),
Ch. 10
, passim.

19
Immediately after this quotation Heidegger emphasizes the difficulty of the enterprise. ‘Being,’ he says, ‘does not become accessible like a being. We do not simply find it in front of us…. [It] must always be
brought to view
’ (ibid., pp. 21–22, emphasis added; cf.
History of the Concept of Time
, pp. 87–88). Again there are comparisons to be drawn with Wittgenstein: cf.
Ch. 10
, n. 15, and
Ch. 17
, §3, the material in parentheses at the end.

20
For very helpful discussions of the material considered in the section (albeit not always taking the same line as I do), see Dreyfus (
1991
), Introduction and Chs 1 and 2; Mulhall (
1996
), Introduction; Moran (
2000
), pp. 226–230; and Carman (
2006
).

21
If it were not for connotations from elsewhere in this book (see esp.
Ch. 2
, §2), we would do well to call them not ‘kinds’ of Being, but ‘modes’ of Being. For they are different ways to be.

22
We shall return to this, and to its significance, in the final section.

23
Cf., in connection with the issues raised in this paragraph, Wittgenstein (
1969
), p. 58, and Quine (
1960
), pp. 241–242 (to which ibid., §27, is further relevant).

24
In common with most Anglophone commentators, and indeed with most of his translators, I will leave this word untranslated. In what follows I have taken the liberty of amending the few translations in which this practice is not followed.

25
Indeed he even occasionally uses it as a sortal noun to denote the beings themselves. See e.g. p. 92/p. 64, where he asks a question about ‘every
Dasein
,’ and p. 284/p. 240, where he says that ‘one
Dasein
can …, within certain limits, “be” another
Dasein
’ (emphasis removed).

26
Cf. the translators’ n. 1 on p. 27; and Hofstadter (
1982
).

27
As of course it was for Husserl.

28
And it goes with a non-Cartesian conception of what is not
Dasein
: cf. §§19–24.

29
This phrase is taken from the quotation indented immediately below.

30
See Smith (1889), p. 85.

31
The German word is ‘
zuhanden
’. Translators differ in how they render it. I shall take the liberty of amending all translations in which it is not rendered as ‘ready-to-hand’.

32
The German word is ‘
vorhanden
’. Translators differ in how they render this too. I shall take the liberty of amending all translations in which it is not rendered as ‘present- at-hand’.

33
See further §§14–18 and
Basic Problems
, §15.

34
Paul Ricoeur, in Ricoeur (
1968
), says in this connection that
Dasein
’s thinking of Being is ‘a thinking of Being, in which the genitive “of Being” is at once both “subjective” and “objective”’ (p. 91). That seems to me to sit uneasily with the fact that such thinking is an activity of beings, not of Being. But what we can say with respect to
Dasein
is that the question of its Being, in the sense of the question
about
its Being, is a question of its Being, in the sense of a question
emanating from
its Being.

35
In Heidegger’s own words,
Dasein
, ‘resolutely open to what is to come and preserving what has been, sustains and gives shape to what is present’ (
Nietzsche 2
, p. 99, adapted from plural to singular).

36
Cf. also p. 34/p. 13.

37
Cf. p. 38/p. 17. And cf. Sheehan (
2003
), §2.

38
Note in particular his Wittgensteinian emphasis on the variety of ‘language-games’ we play at p. 204/p. 161 (see
Ch. 10
, §2).

– I shall have a little to say about the role of language in
Dasein’s
making sense of things in
Ch. 20
, §3.

39
Among the many excellent discussions of how he executes it, and in particular of how he executes the parts of it that I have highlighted, see Dreyfus (
1991
),
Ch. 3
; Cooper (
1996
),
Ch. 3
; Mulhall (
1996
), Introduction and
Ch. 1
; Inwood (
1997
), Chs 3 and 4; Moran (
2000
),
Ch. 7
, passim; King (
2001
),
Ch. 1
; and Glendinning (
2007
), pp. 59–82. For a superb account specifically of how time features in the project, see Turetzky (
1998
), pp. 182–193. For a fascinating account of how language features in the project, see Brandom (
2002e
). (But this essay contains some flaws. In particular, beware a tendency to construe
Dasein
as a kind of Being. Also helpful, though suffering from the same flaw, is Brandom (
2002d
).)

40
‘Once’ induced? Heidegger begins
Being and Time
with a quotation from Plato’s
Sophist
, 244a, in which one of Plato’s protagonists expresses perplexity at what is meant by ‘being’ [‘
seiende
’ – see above, n. 16]. And in
What Is Philosophy?
, pp. 79 and 81, he cites Plato’s
Theaetetus
, 155d, and Aristotle’s
Metaphysics
, Bk A,
Ch. 2
, 982b 12ff., to show that both Plato and Aristotle saw philosophy as grounded in wonder and astonishment. But really Heidegger wants us to recapture something older still. Already in Plato there was, he believes, a wrong turn: see pp. 47–48/p. 25 and
Basic Questions
, p. 120.

41
This is reminiscent of the anti-Wittgensteinian suggestion that I canvassed in
Ch. 10
, §6, that we need to return from the everyday to the properly metaphysical. The matter is complicated however. The everyday for Wittgenstein was to be understood as the authentic. Not so for Heidegger; precisely not. ‘We understand ourselves in an everyday way,’ he says at one point, immediately adding, ‘or …
not authentically
in the strict sense of the word, … [i.e.] not as we at bottom are
able
to be own to ourselves’ (
Basic Problems
, p. 160, emphasis in original; cf.
Kant
, §§42ff.). An additional complication within this complication is that Heidegger is at pains to distinguish between the inauthentic in
Dasein’s
everyday self-understanding and that which would prevent it from counting as genuine self-understanding. Given all of this, and given also the effort that we saw Wittgenstein expend in
Ch. 10
, §5, in trying to extricate the everyday in his sense from the everyday in any more colloquial sense, it would be rash indeed to jump to the conclusion that there is a direct opposition between the two thinkers here. It is far more probable, in fact, that they are offering variations on a single theme. (For a very helpful discussion of Heidegger’s conception of the everyday, see Mulhall (
1996
), pp. 106–109. And see again Mulhall (
1994
), cited in
Ch. 10
, n. 9.)

42
For Heidegger’s definition of ‘forgetting’, see pp. 262 and 388–389/pp. 219 and 339, and
Kant
, pp. 241–242.

43
Cf. ‘Truth’, §6. For a fascinating discussion of Heidegger in this connection, see Mulhall (
2005
),
Ch. 2
.

44
Cf. §44 (a). In Chapter
20
we shall see Derrida develop this emphasis on presence.

45
Cf. Bergson’s pitting of intuition against analysis (
Ch. 16
, §2).

46
Cf. p. 36/p. 15 and p. 69/p. 43, where Heidegger makes the related point that
Dasein
is that which is in one respect ‘closest and well known’, in another ‘the farthest and not known at all.’ Cf. also
Basic Concepts
, §2;
What Is Philosophy?
, p. 27; and
Thinking
, p. 110.