Microsoft Word - BEING AND TIME - INTRODUCTION.docxA paraphrastic condensation, with outline and notes
Thomas Sheehan Stanford University ©All rights reserved
PRE-NOTES 1. Abbreviations: SZ = Sein und Zeit, 11th ed. M-R = Being and Time, trans. Macquarrie and Robinson S-S = Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh and Schmidt 2. The numbers at the right margin before each paragraph, separated by an “equals” sign indicate the page and the paragraph of, respectively,
• Sein und Zeit, 11th edition • Being and Time trans. Macquarrie-Robinson • Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh-Schmidt.
3. The letters a, b, c, d, (etc.) indicate
the paragraphs on the page of those texts, beginning with the very top paragraph (= a), even if that paragraph begins in the middle of a sentence.
4. Within the text, all footnotes are Heideggers, from SZ eleventh edition. 5. The mark ¶ in superscript within the text indicates one of Heidegger’s marginal note from GA 2. Those notes appear at the end of the text. 6. Editor’s notes appear at the end of the text. 7. In-der-Welt-sein, usually translated as “being-in-the-world,” is here rendered as “engagement with the world of meaning” or simply “engagement with meaning.
2
HEIDEGGER’S PREFACE TO
THE SEVENTH EDITION (1953)
1. This book was first published in the spring of 1927 in the Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie und phänomenologische Forschung, edited by Edmund Husserl and simultaneously as a separate book. 2. This seventh edition presents the text unchanged but with some revisions in citations and punctuation. With only minor exceptions the page numbers are the same as earlier editions. 3. Earlier editions designated this text as “First Half,” but I have deleted that. Presenting the second would require rewriting the first. However, if the question of being is to stir our ex-sistence, the path staked out in the current text remains necessary even today. 4. My Introduction to Metaphysics (published this same year, 1953) may help clarify the question of being. It presents the text of a lecture course from the summer of 1935. Editor’s notes to the Preface to the seventh edition: ¶ 1, Jahrbuch für Phänomenologie: Heidegger’s title for Husserl’s Jahrbuch is mistaken. It should be: Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung. ¶ 2, as a separate book: ** ¶ 3, remains necessary even today: Heidegger added this sentence in the eighth edition (1957). ¶ 4, Introduction to Metaphysics: Introduction to Metaphysics: Revised and Expanded, trans. Richard Polt and Gregory Fried (New Haven: Yale University Press, 20142).
3
SZ = MR = SS 1a = 19a = xxix-a
1. Plato, Sophist 244a4-8 [In a dialogue with the young mathematician Theaetetus, the Eleatic Stranger expresses puzzlement:] . . . δλον γρ ς μες μν τατα [τ ποτε βολεσθε σημανειν πταν ν φθγγησθε] πλαι γιγνσκετε, μες δ πρ το μν μεθα, νν δ' πορκαμεν. . . .
“It is clear that these matters [namely, what you mean in saying ‘is’ or ‘has being’] have long been known to you. We used to think we understood, but now we have become confused.” ¶
1a = 19b = xxxix-c
2. An unasked and unanswered question. Nowadays we have no answer to the question of what it means that something is or has being—and we are not even troubled by the fact that we don’t know. So we must renew the question. Our goal in this book is to work out concretely the question of what accounts for “being” at all. Our provisional aim ¶ is to show that time is what accounts for our ability to have any understanding of being. ¶
* * *
1. Plato, Sophist 244a4-8 2. An unasked and unanswered question 3. Topics of the next two chapters
4
Editor’s notes to the Preface to the entire book ¶ 1, is / has being: The Eleatic Stranger uses ν (without the definite article), the present participle of the verb εμ (“I am”; infinitive εναι: “to be”). This ν points to the “is-ing” (the being) of something that “is- in-being,” i.e., that “has being.” ¶ 2, provisional aim: “Provisional” because it is the immediate aim of SZ I, whereas SZ II will take a further step and use “time” as the clue for dismantling the history of ontology. ¶ 2, time is what accounts for…understanding of being: Literally, “time is the possible horizon for understanding being at all.” Here “possible” is not set in contrast to “actual” but instead means “that which makes possible” (ermöglicht) the understanding of being.
5
THE QUESTION
CHAPTER 1
OF THE QUESTION
§ 1 NECESSITY:
WE NEED TO RE-ASK THE QUESTION: “WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE INTELLIGIBILITY OF BEING?”
1. INTRODUCING THE PROBLEM
1. The question has been forgotten 2. Being, as universal, is allegedly empty and need not be questioned 3. This mistaken view derives from three correct presuppositions of Aristotelian ontology
2. THREE TRADITIONAL PRESUPPOSTIONS ABOUT BEING AND THE MISTAKES THEY GIVE RISE TO
4. First: “Being is the most universal”—but not as a genus 5. Second: “As the most universal, being cannot be defined”—but it still remains a problem. 6. Third: “Being is self-evident”—but what accounts for it?
3. REJOINDER
7. It is the task of philosophy to investigate the so-called “self-evident.” 8. Hence the need to reformulate the question
7
§ 1
WE NEED TO RE-ASK THE QUESTION: “WHAT ACCOUNTS FOR THE INTELLIBILITY OF BEING?”
1. INTRODUCING THE PROBLEM
2a = 21a = 1a
1. The question has been forgotten. Today, there’s a renewed interest in metaphysics, but without a real “struggle” like what Theatetus called a “war of the giants over being.” This utterly important question stimulated the work of Plato and Aristotle but then subsided from serious consideration, only to reemerge once again in Hegel’s Logic. However, what Plato and Aristotle wrested from the phenomena has been trivialized.
2b = 21b = 1b 2. Being, as universal, is allegedly empty and need not be questioned. The question has been trivialized and declared superfluous ever since the Greeks—and precisely because of their accomplishments. People say that “being” is the most universal and empty concept and, because we already understand it, need not and in fact cannot be defined. The Greeks found the question obscure and disturbing, but nowadays it has supposedly become “clear” and “self-evident.” Even to raise the question of “What accounts for the intelligibility of being?” is considered to be an error of method.
2c = 21c = 2b 3. This mistaken view derives from three correct presuppositions of Aristotelian ontology. The claim that an inquiry into being is unnecessary is rooted in three presuppositions of ancient Greek ontology, the basis for our ontological categories. But before we can interpret that ontology and those categories [= SZ II], we first have to clarify the question of being along with the very source of all concepts of being [= SZ I, especially I.3]. In the present section we will simply review three truths of traditional ontology and the mistakes they lead to, so as to see the need to re-ask the question of what accounts for being.
2. THREE TRADITIONAL PRESUPPOSITIONS ABOUT BEING AND THE MISTAKES THEY GIVE RISE TO 3b = 22b = 2c
4. First: “Being is the most universal”—but not as a genus. Aristotle says that being ¶ [ν, the condition of “having-being”] is the “most universal” concept;12 and Aquinas writes that “ens” [“having-being”] is what we first apprehend in everything we we apprehend.3 This universality, however, this is not the universality of a genus. οτε τ ν γνος [being is not a genus]. Rather, being (ν, ens) transcends genera and species: it is transcendens, a “transcendental” [in the medieval scholastic sense of the term].
Aristotle envisions the unity underlying all instances of being not in terms the highest genus of things but rather as a unity of analogy. His analogical approach placed the question of being on a new foundation (even though it depended on Plato’s formulation of the question). But Aristotle, along with the medieval Thomists and the Scotists, failed to clarify the analogy of being. Later Hegel’s Logic interpreted being as the “indeterminate immediate” and the basis for all other categories; but Hegel generates a multiplicity of categories rather than an analogical unity. Hence, to call being (i.e., the metaphysical “is” of things) the “most universal” leaves it obscure and in need of discussion.
4a = 23b = 3a 5. Second: “As the most universal, being is indefinable”—but it still remains a problem. This indefinability is deduced from the fact that being is the most universal.4 As far as it goes, that is true insofar as “definitio
1 Aristotle, Metaphysics II 4, 1001a21 [See Editor’s note.] 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics II 4, 1001a21 [See Editor’s note.] 3 Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae I-II quaestio 94, articulus 2 [corpus]. [See Editor’s note.] 4 Pascal, Pensées et Opuscules, 6th revised edition, ed. Léon Brunschvicg (Paris: Librairie Hachette, 1912), 169.12-16: “One cannot undertake to define ‘being’ without falling into this absurdity: one cannot define a
8
fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam” [Things are defined in terms of their closest genus and their specific difference.] But this means we cannot definte being, insofar as
• being is not a thing: “enti non additur aliqua natura”: “Being” cannot be determined by having anything entitative added to it.
• and secondly, insofar as being is the highest, most general concept, it cannot be placed under a genus—i.e., it cannot be derived from or defined in terms of anything higher. (Likewise it cannot be represented by anything lower than itself).
Nonetheless, the “is” of things—their way of being—is still a problem to be solved. We are simply saying that being cannot be a thing. ¶ Therefore, it can’t be defined by way of a logic that is based on a traditional ontology and that applies only to things rather than to the “is” or way of being of things. So even though we cannot define being, we still have to ask: What accounts for the fact that we can and do understand it?
4b = 23c = 3b 6. Third: “Being is self-evident”—but what accounts for it? We use and understand “is” or “being” in all our relations, even in our relations to ourselves; hence, if being is self-evident and always already understood, it seems we needn’t raise questions about it. However, this everyday intelligibility reveals a puzzling fact: a priori we do understand being, but we do not understand what makes it intelligible. Therefore, we need to ask anew “What accounts for the fact that we can and do understand being?”
3. REJOINDER 4c = 23d = 3c
7. The task of philosophy is precisely to investigate the “self-evident.” Does one say that being is self- evident? But, as Kant points out, investigating the self-evident is precisely the philosopher’s job.5
* * *
word without beginning with this: ‘It is…,’ either expressed or implied. Therefore, to define ‘being’ one has to say ‘It is…,’ thereby using the very word that is defined [in the definition].” The text is from the Opuscules, “De l’Esprit géométrique et de l’Art de persuader” [ca. 1658], section 1. 5 Kant, Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, Akademie-Ausgabe XV, 180, Reflexion 436.
9
Heidegger’s marginal notes to § 1 ¶ 4, Aristotle says that being: That is, what-has-being, beingness [German: das Seiend, die Seiendheit]. ¶ 5, “Being” [“Sein”] is not anything like a thing: No! Rather, it’s that nothing can be decided about the clearing [Seyn] with the help of such conceptuality.
____________ Editor’s notes to § 1 ¶ 1, The question has been forgotten: At SZ 8d Heidegger summarizes: the question of being (1) has venerable origins, (2) but lacks an answer, and (3) even a proper formulation. ¶ 1, “a war of the giants over being”: At Sophist 246a4-5 the Eleatic Stranger tells Theaetetus that there appears to be a war of giants going on about the nature of being [γιγαντομαχα περ τς οσας]. The γιγαντομαχα refers to the mythological war of the giants vs. the Olympian gods mentioned by Xenophanes (ca. 540 BCE; frag. 1, line 21) and Pindar (fl. ca. 450 BCE), Nemean Ode 1, 65-67, etc. ¶ 2, What accounts for the intelligibility of being?: Heidegger articulates the question about the “Sinn von Sein” as the question regarding (1) “worin gründet die innere Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit der Offenbarkeit des Seins” (GA 16: 66.15–6), i.e., “what accounts for the intrinsic possibility and necessity of the openness [= the intelligibility] of being”; and about (2) “das von woher und wodurch . . . das Sein west” (GA 73, 1: 82.15f.), i.e., about “whence and whereby being becomes meaningfully present.” Title, no. 2, mistakes they give rise to: While being is in fact most universal, indefinable, and self-evident, these facts lead to three misunderstandings that Heidegger points out in what follows. ¶ 4, the “most universal” concept: The text at Metaphysics II 4, 1001a21 reads: τατα [= τ ν κα τ ν] καθλου μλιστα πντων. “These two [i.e., both “one” and “is/has being”] are the most universal of all things.” Heidegger substitutes “τ ν στι” for τατα. ¶ 4, in everything we we apprehend: Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit (Summa theologiae I-II, 94, 2, c.): “Being” [i.e., the condition of “having-being”] is what is apprehended first of all. The understanding of such being is included in everything, whatever it may be, that anyone apprehends. ¶ 4, is not the universality of a genus: SZ adds: οτε τ ν γνος [neither is having-being a genus], taken from Metaphysics B 3, 998b 22, where the complete text is: οχ ιν τε δ τν ντων ν εναι γνος οτε τ ν οτε τ ν. “Neither of these two kinds of things [can] be a single genus, neither oneness nor having- being.” ¶ 5, their specific difference.]: For example, we define “human being” by locating it under/within the genus “animal” and, within that genus, under the species “rational animal.” On genus and specific difference (γνος and ιδοποις διαφορ) see Aristotle, Posterior Analytics II 13 and Topics V-VI, and Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, chap. 3, n. 10. ¶ 5, enti non additur aliqua natura: The Latin text actually says: Sed enti non possunt addi aliqua. “But no other things can be added to being.” Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, I, 1, responsio. ¶ 5, anything entitative added to it: The German is: daß ihm Seiendes zugesprochen wird. “Entitative” here refers to any “thing-like” element.
10
1. THE QUESTION 1. How is being intelligible?
2. THE STRUCTURE OF ANY QUESTION 2. The three elements of any theoretical question. 3. Applying that three-fold structure to the question of being
3. WE ALREADY HAVE AN IMPLICIT UNDERSTANDING OF BEING 4. Ex-sistence entails an implicit understanding of being 5. We seek to make that implicit understanding explicit 6. This pre-conceptual sense of being may be burdened by inadequate presuppositions
4. RENDERING OUR IMPLICIT UNDERSTANDING OF BEING EXPLICIT
7. Two of the elements of the question about being 8. The third element of the question about being 9. Turning the question of being back upon the questioner.
5. THIS SEEMS TO BE CIRCULAR REASONING, BUT IS NOT 10. This seems to be circular reasoning 11. But it is not a vicious circle 12. The unique reciprocity of ex-sistence and being. The topics of the next two sections.
11
1. THE QUESTION
5a = 24c = 4a 1. How is it that being is intelligible? This is the fundamental question, and it needs to be clarified. In this section we study (1) the structure of any question and (2) the distinctive character of the fundamental question “What accounts for the fact that being can be understood?”
2. THE STRUCTURE OF ANY QUESTION 5b = 24d = 4b
2. The three elements of any theoretical question. Questioning is a form of seeking, and seeking takes its direction from what is being sought. Questioning is a seeking for knowledge, specifically for what, that, and how the thing is. A scientific-theoretical question has three moments:
• Befragtes: the subject matter: the thing we are questioning. • Gefragtes: the focus: what we are asking about that thing • Erfragtes: the goal: what we are asking for regarding that thing
Questions come from questioners, who have their own way of ex-sisting as questioners. There are casual questions and explicit questions. In explicit questions, all three factors of the question need to be clarified.
5c = 25b = 4c 3. Applying that threefold structure to the question of being. We now use those three moments to formulate the question “What accounts for the intelligibility of being?”
3. WE ALREADY HAVE AN IMPLICIT UNDERSTANDING OF BEING 5d = 25c = 4d
4. Ex-sistence entails an implicit understanding of being. If the thing being sought—in this case, the intelligibility of being—guides our search for it, it must be somehow already available to us. Above [at SZ 3b] we hinted that we always already understand being. Starting from that base we raise the question “What makes that possible?” Even if we do not yet know what the word “being” means, we do have an implicit, pre-conceptual sense of what “is” (and thus “being”) signifies. That pre-conceptual sense remains a fact even if we haven’t yet got the framework for understanding what makes being intelligible
4. RENDERING OUR IMPLICIT UNDERSTANDING OF BEING EXPLICIT
5e = 25d = 4e 5. We seek to make that implicit understanding explicit. Although it is indefinite and occasionally dim, this implicit understanding of being is a positive experience that we need to render explicit. We cannot do that right at the outset but must wait until we finally work out the full concept of being [in SZ I.3].
6b = 25e = 5b 6. This pre-conceptual sense of being may be burdened by inadequate presuppositions. Our implicit sense of being may well be fraught with traditional notions that influence the way we generally understand being.– In any case, even if we lack an adequate concept of it, what we are seeking is not entirely unfamiliar to us.
6c = 25f = 5c
7. Two of the elements of the question about being. First, das Gefragte: We are questioning things, but what we asking about them is their being, which is not a thing at all. Rather, being is what determines that something is; it is what we understand when we understand that something is. Therefore, we may not approach being as if it were a thing, nor can we trace it back to a source in yet another thing. That would be
12
what Plato calls “spinning a yarn” (μθν τινα διηγεσθαι).1 Rather we have to show how being is different from any thing. Secondly, das Erfragte: What we are asking for (i.e., what we hope to find out about being) is what accounts for the intelligibility of being, i.e., how it is that we can understand being. The concepts we use for that will be different from the concepts we use for things.
6d = 26b = 5d
8. The third element of the question about being. Thirdly, das Befragte. We are asking about being, but being is always the being of things. Hence the subject matter we start with is things: whatever has being. We are asking about their being, i.e., how the are in themselves. Such things must be already accessible, and we must be sure we have the right access to them. There are two issues here: 1. The various way something can be—for example:
• what it is • how it is • that it is • its being real • its objectively present • its subsisting (in the case of numbers) • its being valid • its existing ¶ • even the fact that “there-is” (es gibt) such and such a thing.
2. What specific thing should we start with in order to find out how being is intelligible? ¶ Does any specific thing stand out as exemplary ¶ in manifesting being? And if so, why would it have priority?
7b = 26c = 6b 9. Turning the question of being back upon the questioner. Given the above, we must
• explain how to view being • clarify how to conceptualize its intelligibility • choose the right thing to start with • get the right access to that thing.
But these four activities—explaining, clarifying, choosing, and getting access—are activities of a questioner, that is, of ourselves. So first of all we must question the questioner: we have to clarify ourselves in our own being. ¶ Questioning is a way that we are: our being consists in (and is determined by) asking about the being of things, including ourselves. I call this specific way of being “ex-sistence” [Dasein]. In order to understand how being is intelligible, we must first explain our own being. ¶
5. THIS SEEMS TO BE CIRCULAR REASONING, BUT IS NOT
7c = 27b = 7b 10. This seems to be circular reasoning. When we say that the being of ex-sistence consists in questioning the being of anything and everything, it seems we presume the very thing we are trying to find, namely being (in this case the being of ourselves). But that is a mere formal charge (and a sterile one), one that always comes up when one questions first principles.
7d = 27c = 7c 11. But it is not a vicious circle. There are three steps to our argument here:
• In order to know what and how something is, we must already have an implicit understanding of being (the “is”).
• But we do know what and how things are; that is, we do have a prior unthematic understanding of “is” and “are,” i.e., being.
• Therefore, our argument does not move in a vicious circle. We are not deriving or deducing anything
1 Sophist 242c8.
13
and certainly not deducing the meaning of being from the presupposed being of ex-sistence. The science of ontology has always presupposed and has been guided by this normal, “lived” understanding of being that ultimately ¶ belongs to the very structure of ex-sistence. But we are not deducing anything from it. We are simply trying to show what accounts for the already operative relation between (1) our way of being and (2) the being of anything and everything.
8b = 28b = 7d 12. The unique reciprocity of ex-sistence and being. The question about what accounts for being is not circular but instead is a matter of reciprocity, a remarkable “back-and-forth relation” [reci-proci-tas], between
• what we are asking about (being as the Gefragtes) and • the very asking as a mode of our own being: ex-sistence as the Fragen.
* * *
Heidegger’s marginal notes to § 2
¶ 8, its existing: This is still the usual concept [of existing] and not yet a different one [viz., Heidegger’s own sense of “ex-sistence.”] ¶ 8, how being is intelligible: Here two different questions are lined up together. It could be misunderstood, especially regarding the role of ex-sistence. ¶ 8, stand out as exemplary: This is misleading. Ex-sistence is exemplary insofar as its essence is to sustain the disclosedness of being, and thus it has a co-role to play [Bei-spiel] in bringing being as such into play regarding its resonance.” [Ed. Re resonance/Anklang cf. GA 65: 107ff. = ET 85ff. and GA 71: 75-88 = ET 63-66.] ¶ 9, clarify ourselves in our own being: Ex-sistence: as held out into the nothing of the clearing and held as relatedness. ¶ 9, we must first explain our own being: But the intelligibility of being is not read off of ex-sistence.
¶ 11, “lived” understanding of being that ultimately: That is: from the very origin of ex-sistence [German: d. h. von Anfang an].
¶ 12, and is pre-given: Here again, as in SZ 7a, this is basically a simplification, even if it is correct. Ex- sistence is not something from which we could abstract [the notion of] being; rather, ex-sistence is the place where being is understood.
_________ Editor’s notes to § 2 Title of § 2: At SZ 8c Heidegger says the topic of § 2 is the formal structure of the question of being and the conditions necessary for working it out. ¶ 2, is guided by what is being sought.: GA 2: 7.4 substitutes the word “Geleit” [“guide”] for “Direktion.” ¶ 2, three moments: In scholastic terminology these three would be called respectively obiectum materiale, obiectum formale quod, and obiectum formale quo, the last being the perspective/aspect (viz., intelligibility) in terms of which the second (viz., Sein/being) is being questioned. ¶ 2, ex-sisting as questioners: Here the German term “Dasein” is first introduced. ¶ 12, reciprocity: In the 1930s Heidegger will call this back-and-forth reciprocity “Gegenschwung” (oscillation), the unified either-or of Da-sein and Da-sein. See GA 65: 29.15 et passim; 70 126.18; 75: 59.15; 78: 335.13, etc.; cf. GA 26: 270.4-5.
15
§ 3 PRIORITY-1:
THE ONTOLOGICAL PRIORITY OF THIS QUESTION IN RELATION TO THE ONTIC SCIENCES
1. INTRODUCTORY
1. Topic: (1) the function and (2) the aim and motivation of this question 2. Review. First topic: the function of this most basic and concrete of questions
2. THE FUNCTION OF THIS QUESTION 3. The sciences progress by questioning the basic structures and concepts of being. 4. Scientific crises and paradigm shifts 5. Five examples of scientific crises and paradigm shifts 6. A science’s basic concepts are confirmed by a regional ontology qua “productive logic. Two examples 7. Purpose: to overcome ontic and ontological naveté and oscurity
3. THE AIM OF THIS QUESTION AND WHAT MOTIVATES IT? 8. Our question aims at the a priori conditions of all science and all ontology 9. The ontological priority of this question. The transition to its ontic priority.
16
§ 3
PRIORITY-1:
1. INTRODUCTORY
8c = 28c = 8b 1. Topics: The (1) function and (2) the aim and motivation of this question. In § 3 we discussed the formal structure of this unique question about being, the question that this book aims to work out and eventually solve. In this section we spell out (1) the function, (2) the aim, and (3) the motivations of this question.
8d = 29b = 8c 2. The first topic of this section. The previous two sections showed that the question of being has venerable origins but lacks an answer and even a proper formulation This question is the most basic question (not a matter of airy speculation) and the most concrete question (not the “most general” question). We now ask, first of all, about the function of this question: what purpose does it serve?
2. THE FUNCTION OF THIS QUESTION 9b = 29c = 8d
3. The sciences progress by questioning the basic structures and concepts of being. “Being” is always the being of a thing, i.e., what-and-how a thing is.
• Things may be divided into various regions (e.g., history, nature, space, life, ex-sistence, language). • In turn, these regions can become the subject matter of specific ontic sciences. • But pre-scientifically, i.e., in our everyday experience, we have already worked out, implicitly, the
basic structures of such regions [e.g., we know the difference between “nature” and “human history”].
• The sciences then demarcate and fix these regions explicitly by establishing the basic concepts [Grundbegriffe] that guide how the sciences make sense of those regions.
• In turn, real progress in the sciences is achieved not merely by acquiring new data but more importantly by how the sciences call those basic structures and concepts into question.
9c = 29d = 9a
4. Scientific crises and paradigm shifts. Progress in the sciences happens by way of more or less radical paradigm shifts. A science’s ability to undergo such paradigm shifts indicates how far that science has progressed. When a crisis arises between the relation between (1) a particular scientific method and (2) what it investigates comes, the current paradigm becomes unstable. In fact, this is beginning to happen with a number of sciences today.
9d = 29e = 9b
5. Five examples of scientific crises and paradigm shifts. 1. mathematics: the debate between formalism and intuitionism. 2. physics: the rise of relativity theory. 3. biology: new definitions of “life” and “organism,” vs. mechanistic and vitalistic notions. 4. humanities: the urge towards historical [geschichtlich] reality. 5. theology: Luther on the primacy of faith leads to a more basic relation to God.
10b = 30b = 9c 6. A science’s basic concepts are confirmed by a regional ontology qua “productive logic.” That is to say:
• The basic concepts of a science provide an understanding of a region of things.
17
• In turn these concepts can be confirmed by a prior ontological inquiry into that region (a “regional ontology”)—the way Plato and Aristotle interpreted the being of the things within specific regions [e.g., Aristotle’s Physics].
• Such a regional ontology is a “productive logic” (not just a “methodological logic”), one that makes sense of the being of the things within a specific region and thus makes those things available to the positive sciences.
Two examples. In the science of history a “productive logic” would get to the being of humans as historical, i.e., their very “historicity” [as in SZ § 74], in contrast to merely theories about historical knowledge or the things this science studies. Another example of a “productive logic” is the transcendental logic of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, which gets to the being of Newtonian nature.
11b = 31b = 10b 7. Purpose: to overcome ontic and ontological naveté and obscurity. Distinguish four kinds of science and what each of them treats:
• the ontic-positive sciences: things within specific, delimited areas • regional ontologies: the being of specific areas of things, e.g., the being of history, nature, etc. • ontology in the broadest sense: the being of any and all things • fundamental ontology: what accounts for the intelligibility of being at all.
Absent fundamental ontology, all ontology remains naïve and blind, even ontology in the broad sense, which works out a non-deductive derivation of the possible kinds and ways of being.
3. THE AIM AND MOTIVATION OF THIS QUESTION
11c = 31c = 10c 8. Our question aims at the a priori conditions of all science and all ontology. The question regarding the intelligibility of being aims at the a priori conditions (1) not only of the ontic-positive sciences that investigate things of such-and-such a region and thus operate with an implicit understanding of being (2) but also of ontology itself [whether regional or broad]. All ontology remains blind until it carries out the fundamental task of clarifying how being is intelligible.
* * *
18
Editor’s notes to § 3 Title of § 3, ontic sciences: The ontic sciences are “positive” sciences (cf. “positivism”), i.e., they focus on data that are posited (Latin, posita, which here means: given a posteriori and empirically) to be investigated. ¶ 5, formalism and intuitionism: For an accessible account see Ernst Snapper, “Three Crises in Mathematics: Logicism, Intuitionism and Formalism,” Mathematics Magazine (1979, 52, 4), 207-216 ¶ 7, fundamental ontology: This term first appears at SZ 13d; I use it here, ahead of time, to clarify what is at issue in these paragraphs.
19
§ 4 PRIORITY-2:
THE ONTIC PRIORITY OF THIS QUESTION RESTS ON THE ONTIC PRIORITY OF EX-SISTENCE
1. THESIS: SCIENCE (INCLUDING THE SCIENCE OF BEING) IS SOMETHING EX-ISTENCE DOES
1. Science, including ontology, is a possibility of ex-sistence. 2. REGARDING EX-SISTENCE
2. Existence is somehow intelligible to itself. 3. We have a “pre-ontological” understanding of our ex-sistence. 4. Our “essence” is ex-sistence: having to become our own being 5. Deciding one’s own ex-sistence. The terms “ex-sistentiel” and “ex-sistential”
6. The ex-sistential analysis: provisional and full. 3. ALL ONTOLOGY GROWS OUT OF EX-SISTENCE
7. The science of ontology arises from our pre-theoretical understanding of being. 8. Both regional and fundamental ontology are grounded in the analysis of ex-sistence.
4. THE ONTIC-ONTOLOGICAL PRIORITY OF EX-SISTENCE 9. Ex-sistence has priority over other things in three ways 10. Our ex-sistentiel life is the basis of this entire investigation. 11. Traditional philosophy glimpsed the ontic-ontological priority of human being.
5. FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY 12. Fundamental ontology is the analysis of ex-sistence 13. Fundamental ontolog simply gets to the root of our pre-theoretical understanding of being.
20
§ 4
RESTS ON THE ONTIC PRIORITY OF EX-SISTENCE
1. THESIS: SCIENCE (INCLUDING THE SCIENCE OF BEING) IS SOMETHING EX-SISTENCE DOES 11e = 32a = 10e
1. Science, including ontology, is a possibility of ex-sistence. Husserl argues that science is the ensemble of fundamentally coherent true propositions, but this definition is not complete and fails to get to the meaning of science. Doing science is one possibility of our ex-sistence—but only one possibility and not the closest one to us. To anticipate: Ex-sistence is distinctive by comparison with other things.
2. REGARDING EX-SISTENCE 12b = 32b = 11b
2. Ex-sistence is somehow intelligible to itself. Ex-sistence does not merely occur [vorkommt] among other things. Rather, our ontic distinctness consists in the fact that our very ex-sistence is to be concerned about that ex-sistence: our ex-sistence is at stake for us. We have—and are—a relation to our own ex-sisting. Hence with some degree of explicitness we do understand our ex-sistence: it is somehow intelligible to us. Understanding our own being [along with the being of everything else] goes with ex-sistence. We are ontically distinct [i.e., as things] in that we are onto-logical [i.e., we understand being].
12c = 32c =11c 3. We have a “pre-ontological” understanding of our ex-sistence. We will reserve the proper sense of the term “ontology” for the theoretical science of the intelligibility of things. When we say that ex-sistence is onto-logical [i.e., that we understand being], we are referring not to the science of being but to our pre- scientific [pre-ontological, pre-theoretical] lived understanding of being. “Pre-ontological” is not the same as “ontic”—that is, our understanding is not confined to things—but instead indicates that our way of being consists in understanding both our way of being and the being of everything else.
12d = 32d = 11d 4. Our “essence” is ex-sistence: having to become our own being. The being ¶ to which ¶ I can and in fact always do relate to in one way or another is what we call Existenz. We are not a “what” [i.e., we do not have an “essence” in the traditional sense]. Rather, our “essence,” our inevitable way of being, consists in ex- sisting, i.e., having to become our being as our own. We are ex-sistence [Dasein], which expresses the fact that our being is ours to become.
12e = 33b = 11e 5. Deciding one’s own ex-sistence. I always understand myself in terms of ex-sistence, my ability to become myself (or to fail to become myself). I’ve either stumbled into ways of becoming myself, or I’ve grown up with them, or I’ve chosen them. We each must decide whether to take over our ex-sistence and become it or, to neglect it. The question of ex-sistence is clarified only by personally ex-sisting. The terms “ex-sistentiel” and “ex-sistential.” I will use two adjectives regarding human being:
• “ex-sistentiel” refers to the specific personal elements of my ex-sisting. • “ex-sistential” refers to the common structural elements of ex-sistence that all persons have; and
“ex-sistentiality” refers to the ensemble of all such structures. Ex-sisting ex-sistentielly-personally does not require any theoretical understanding of the ex-sistential- structural elements of ex-sistence. Our analysis aims at the structures that constitute ex-sistence ¶ is thus is an ex-sistential analysis. But its possibility and necessity is already indicated by [and will be discovered through] the ex-sistentiel–personal elements of ex-sistence.
13b = 33c = 12b 6. The ex-sistential analysis: provisional and full. Insofar as Existenz is our way of being, an ontological analysis of human being must focus on ex-sistentiality. The very structure of Existenz already entails the idea
21
of being. However, we will have to postpone the full concept of ex-sistentiality until we have adequately worked out what accounts for the intelligibility of being [in SZ I.3].
3. ALL ONTOLOGY GROWS OUT OF EX-SISTENCE
13c = 33d = 12c 7. The science of ontology arises from our pre-theoretical understanding of being. Science is an activity in which we relate to things that we need not be. But the ex-sistence that does science is unique: it is necessarily in a world of meaning [Sein in einer Welt]. Our [pre-theoretical] understanding of being includes a threefold, interrelated understanding of
• our own ex-sistence—as correlative to • the world of meaning • the being of things that we are not.
The ontic structure of ex-sistence is necessarily ontological, i.e., it entails a pre-thematic understanding of being; and all ontology is founded on and motivated by the ontic structure of ex-sistence.
13d = 34a = 12d 8. Both regional and fundamental ontology are grounded in the analysis of ex-sistence. All regional ontologies are grounded in fundamental ontology, which is the ex-sistential analysis of ex-sistence.
4. THE ONTIC-ONTOLOGICAL PRIORITY OF EX-SISTENCE
13e = 34b = 12e 9. Ex-sistence has priority over other things in three ways:
1. ontic: As a thing among other things, we are unique: we are Ex-sistenz. 2. ontological: In turn, as ex-sistence we are onto-logical; that is, we have an understanding
of both our own being and the being of all non-ex-sistential things. 3. ontic-ontological: As (1) things that (2) understand being, we are the condition that makes
possible the science of ontology. Therefore, first and foremost we have to investigate ex-sistence’s way of being.
13f = 34c = 12f
10. Our personal-ex-sistentiel life is the basis of this entire investigation. This book’s ontological-ex- sistential analysis has its roots in ex-sistence qua ontic-ex-sistentiel; that is, we are indeed things (“entities,” hence ontic), but things that understand being (hence onto-logical). Therefore, we have to
1. show that ex-sistence—in its ex-sistential structure—entails the personal-ex-sistentiel possibility of conducting an ontological inquiry;
2. then, through that inquiry, disclose ex-sistence’s ex-sistential structure; and thus 3. acquire an adequately grounded set of problems [leading to a full fundamental ontology].
In showing the ontic priority of ex-sistence in this section, we have also established the ontic priority of the question “How is being intelligible?”
14b = 34d = 12g 11. Traditional philosophy glimpsed the ontic-ontological priority of human being. Early on, philosophers did see the ontic-ontological priority of ex-sistence but did not grasp or problematize it. For example:
• Parmenides, frag. 3: [νοεν/minding and εναι/being “go together.”] • Aristotle: ψυχ τ ντα πς στι πντα. 1 “Man’s being [ψυχ] is somehow all things.” Our ψυχ
has ασϑησις (sensation), which discovers data, and νησις (mind), which discovers the being of things: what and that they are.
• Thomas Aquinas: In his work the ontic-ontological priority of human being over things emerges but is not clarified. He worked out the “transcendentals” (transcendentia), i.e., the most basic, trans- generic characteristics of things, characteristics that lie beyond any modus specialis entis [= beyond all species and genera of things]. One of those transcendental characteristics is verum [the intrinsic
1 De anima III 8, 431b21; cf. III 5, 430a14ff. [See Editor’s note.]
22
openness of things to the understanding]. He demonstrated this via the nature of the soul, which is ens quod natum est convenire cum omni ente, i.e., a thing that by its very nature “comes together with” all other things, but Aquinas did not clarify this.2
Obviously, all of this has nothing to do with “subjectivizing” everything.
5. FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY
14c = 34e = 13b 12. Fundamental ontology is the analysis of ex-sistence. In showing the ontic-ontological distinctiveness of ex-sistence we have also shown the ontic-ontological distinctiveness of the question about being. But § 2 showed that there is a unique relation between ex-sistence and the question of what accounts for being, and thereby intimated that in order to get clear on that question we first have to analyze ex-sistence in terms of its way of being. Such an analysis is what we call fundamental ontology.
* * *
2 Thomas Aquinas, Quaestiones de veritate qu. I a. 1 corpus. Cf. the short work “De natura generis,” a somewhat more robust “deduction” of the transcendentals that deviates from the De veritate. [Ed. That work is of dubious authenticity. It is online at http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1225- 274,_Thomas_Aquinas,_De_Natura_Generis,_LT.pdf.]
23
____________
Editor’s notes to § 4 ¶ 1, Husserl…true propositions.: Cf. Logische Untersuchungen I §§ 62-66. ¶ 2, at stake for us.: Ontic vs. ontological. Ontic: of or pertaining to the thing-character (the Seiendes- character) of something as contrasted with its ontological- or being-character. (2) Hence “ontic distinctness”: what makes human being distinct as a thing among other things. (3) At stake: Something is at stake when it has been wagered (promised, pledged, lent out) and can be lost. ¶ 3, intelligibility of things: Note that Heidegger calls ontology the “inquiry into the intelligibility of things” (“Fragen nach dem Sinn des Seienden”), thereby implicitly interpreting “Sein” as “Sinn.” This reading has remained constant in all editions of SZ from 1927 through today. Only in GA 2: 16.23 is it changed, without notice or explanation, to the “Sein des Seienden.” ¶ 3, understanding…our way of being and the being of everything else: SZ 147c says that this thesis is only dogmatically asserted here but proven in SZ § 31. ¶ 4, Existenz. At GA 29/30: 432.33-35 = 299.5-8 Heidegger defines Existenz as one’s structural relating to things in their being in such a way that this relating co-constitutes one’s way of being. ¶ 4, having to become our being as our own: This issue is taken up in § 9. ¶ 5, existentiality…ensemble of all such structures: The two terms referring to human beings—ex- sistentiel-personal and ex-sistential-structural—map, however imperfectly, onto (1) “instance” and (2) “essence”—for example, (1) Mary or John or Jane as personal instantiations of (2) “human being” or “rational animal” or whatever species-essence one takes as befitting all three. For Heidegger, Existenz as our essence is both that which we are ex-sistentially-structurally and what is ours to become ex-sistentielly-personally. Cf. Aristotle’s distinction between formal “cause” (what X is: τ εδος / τ παρδειγμα that one instantiates, however imperfectly) and final “cause” (what X is to become, if it is to be perfectly itself: τλος, τ ο νεκα). ¶ 6, already entails the idea of being: GA 2: 17.28 adds the word “überhaupt” after “Idee von Sein.” ¶ 7, Sein in einer Welt: The exact term “In-der-Welt-sein” first appears at SZ 41a, but Heidegger anticipates the notion here. ¶ 11, somehow all things: Heidegger writes: ψυχ τ ντα πς στι (“The ψυχ is somehow things”), mistakenly omitting the word πντα, “all.” On the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of SZ he corrected it: “Das πντα ist in S.u.Z. aus Versehen herausgeblieben” (“In SZ the πντα was left out by mistake”): lecture course “Übungen im Lesen,” February 13, 1952, omitted at GA 83: 654.8. ¶ 11, comes together with: GA 2: 19.16 adds the phrase “d.h. übereinzukommen,” i.e., “that is, agrees with.”
24
OF THE BOOK
§ 5 THE TASK OF SZ I:
ANALYZE EX-SISTENCE TO GET THE FIELD FOR DISCOVERING HOW BEING IS INTELLIGIBLE
1. SOME DIFFICULTIES IN ACCESSING EX-SISTENCE
1. What is the right way to access ex-sistence? 2. We usually misunderstand our ex-sistence. 3. Ex-sistence is both closest to us and farthest from us 4. Ex-sistence can obstacle an understanding of ex-sistence.
2. SZ I.1: A PREPARATORY ANALYSIS OF EX-SISTENCE 5. Our first task: an ex-sistential analysis of ex-sistence. 6. The proper access to ex-sistence is through its everydayness. 7. The ultimate goal: not philosophical anthropology but what makes being intelligible.
3. SZ I.2: TEMPORALITY
8. Ex-sistence as temporalityg
4. SZI.3 TIME AS UR-TEMPORALITY 9. Time accounts for the intelligibility of being 10. Chronological time as a series of nows. 11. Ex-sistential time 12. Ur-temporality [Temporalität]
5. THE ULTIMATE GOAL 13. The kind of answer we are after 14. The goal: to show that all ontology necessarily arises from ex-sistence.
26
§ 5 THE TASK OF SZ I:
ANALYZE EX-SISTENCE TO GET THE FIELD FOR DISCOVERING HOW BEING IS INTELLIGIBLE
1. SOME DIFFICULTIES IN ACCESSING EX-SISTENCE
15b = 36a = 15a
1. What is the right way to access ex-sistence? We have established that ex-sistence is the primary subject matter of our investigation. But what is the right access to it?
15c = 36b = 15b 2. We usually misunderstand our ex-sistence. Although ex-sistence is ontically-ontologically prior, it is neither given as such primarily nor can we grasp its being “immediately.” Yes, ex-sistence is the closest to us of everything that is: we are it, each of us. But that’s precisely why ex-sistence is ontologically farthest from us. And yes, ex-sistence does entail understanding our own being (and maintaining an interpretation of it). But we can’t take this pre-theoretical understanding as an adequate clue to what our being properly is. The reason: because we tend to understand ourselves in terms of the world of things. ¶ It’s as if we let the world’s way of being “reflect back” onto us.
16b = 37b = 16b 3. Ex-sistence is both closest to us and farthest from us. We showed that ex-sistence has ontic-ontological priority. However, whereas our own being is ontically closest to us, it is ontologically (i.e., in terms of its proper “categorial” status) farthest from us—and in fact hidden from us—despite our pre-theoretical understanding of it.
16c =37c =16c 4. Ex-sistence can obstacle an understanding of ex-sistence. So ex-sistence itself puts up obstacles to a proper interpretation of itself. This is not because of any cognitive deficiencies on our part, nor is it due to a lack of proper concepts for the task.
2. SZ I.1: A PREPARATORY ANALYSIS OF EX-SISTENCE
16d = 37d = 16d 5. Our first task: an ex-sistential analysis of ex-sistence. Our interpretation of ex-sistence develops and decays according to how we ex-sist; moreover, there are many ex-sistentiel perspectives on ex-sistence: philosophical psychology, anthropology, ethics, political science, poetry, biography, history, and so on. These perspectives may have an immediate ex-sistentiel-personal purchase on us, but they fail to reach our basic ex-sistentiality. Ex-sistentiel and ex-sistential analyses are not mutually exclusive, but they do not coincide. If we grant that philosophical knowledge is possible and necessary, then ex-sistentiel interpretations can require ex-sistential analyses. Only when SZ I.3 works out the complete structure of ex-sistence will the gains of SZ I.1 and I.2 get their adequate ex-sistential justification.
16e = 37e = 16e 6. The proper access to ex-sistence is through its everydayness. Since the analysis of ex-sistence is the first requirement for answering the question of what accounts for being, the right access to ex-sistence is capital.
• Negatively, we mustn’t dogmatically apply “self-evident” ideas of being to ex-sistence, nor employ traditional categories without a strict ontological review.
• Positively, our access and interpretation must allow ex-sistence to show up from itself. That means starting with everydayness.
SZ I.1—which is only a preliminary-preparatory analysis of ex-sistence—will spell out the basic structures of everyday ex-sistence.
27
17b = 38b = 17b 7. The ultimate goal: not philosophical anthropology but what makes being intelligible. The ultimate goal of this preparatory analysis is to work out the question of what accounts for being. SZ I.1 will not provide a complete regional ontology of ex-sistence—something that would be necessary if we wanted to construct an adequate philosophical anthropology or to provide the ontological foundations for that. At best our analysis will provide some elements for such an anthropology, and important ones at that. SZ I.1 is both an incomplete and a provisional analysis of ex-sistence: it merely lays out the structures of ex- sistence’s way of being while leaving the interpretation of those structures for SZ I.2. SZ I.1 merely prepares for establishing ex-sistence’s temporality as the horizon [in § 65 [on temporality]. SZ I.1 merely prepares for establishing temporality. Thereafter [in SZ I.2, chapter 4] we will reinterpret the structures of SZ I.1 at a more advanced and properly ontological level.
3. SZ I.2: TEMPORALITY 17c = 38d = 17c
8. Ex-sistence as temporality. I argue that temporality is what finally accounts for the intelligibility of the being of ex-sistence. To confirm that thesis, SZ I.2. chapter 4 will reinterpret the structures of ex-sistence that have been laid out in SZ I.1, but now in terms of temporality. However, that will not yet constitute an answer to our main question about what accounts for the intelligibility of being in general, ¶ but it will have prepared the ground for such an answer.
4. SZ I.3: TIME AS UR-TEMPORALITY
17d = 39a = 17d 9. Time accounts for the intelligibility of being. In § 4 we mentioned that ex-sistence’s ontic structure entails a pre- theoretical understanding of being. Our aim is to show that we always, if implicitly, understand being in terms of time. Working from temporality as the being of ex-sistence, SZ I.3 will demonstrate conceptually that time is the horizon or field for understanding and interpreting being. To do this we first have to distinguish our understanding of time from the traditional notions of time stretching from Aristotle to Bergson. We will show [cf. SZ I.2. chapter 6] that the traditional notion of time originates from ex- sistential temporality—as against Bergson’s thesis that time in the traditional sense is actually space.
18b = 39b = 18a 10. Chronological time as a series of nows. “Time” has long functioned as an ontic criterion for distinguishing various realms of things:
• the “temporal” (natural occurrences, historical happenings) vs. the “non-temporal” (spatial and numerical relations);
• “timeless” propositions vs. the “temporal” assertions of such propositions; • “temporal” things vs. the supra-temporal or eternal.
In the above cases “time” and “temporal” refer to things that are “within time,” where “time” is understood as a series of now-moments. Obscure though it is, such “temporalness” has been taken as a criterion for distinguishing realms of reality. No one bothers to ask why that is the case, much less search for the deeper meaning underlying this naïve truism. Instead, it is taken as self-evident that time is simply a series of now-moments.
18c = 40a = 18b 11. The ex-sistential notion of time. By contrast, SZ I.3 will show that and how the central problems of all ontology are rooted in the experience of time correctly understood.
18d = 40b = 18c 12. Ur-temporality [Temporalität]. The goal of SZ I.3 is to understand the ur-temporal (or “original-temporal”) character of being (as vs. things that are “within time”). SZ I.3 will demonstrate that
• being is always grasped in terms of time and • all modes and derivations of being become intelligible in terms of time.
28
This requires that we revise our terminology. • “Time” will longer mean a series of now-moments. • “Temporal” will no longer mean “being within time-as-a-series-of-now-moments.” • Even the being of the “supra-temporal” and the “non-temporal” will be shown to be temporal in a positive
sense. In saying that being, along with its modes and features, are determined by time, we are using that term a different sense from the usual one. By “time” we mean “ur-temporality” [henceforth: “ur-temporality”; in German: Temporalität]. Fundamental ontology is a matter of demonstrating that ur-temporality is what accounts for the intelligibility of being.
5. THE ULTIMATE GOAL
19b = 40c = 18d 13. The kind of answer we are after. Granted that time is what makes being intelligible, the answer to our question cannot be some isolated proposition that could be passed around as “new information.” The answer must be “old” enough—i.e., original enough—to let us reopen possibilities that the ancient Greeks first broached. [In SZ II] we will use time as the clue to guide our research into the history of ontology.
* * *
29
Heidegger’s marginal notes to § 5 ¶ 2, the world of things: That is, in terms of objectively present things. ¶ 8, being in general: καϑλου, καϑ’ ατ [i.e., universally; in itself]. [Ed. Here “being” h refers above all to the being of non-ex-sistential things: von Herrmann, Hermeneutische Phänomenologie, I, 179.14-16.]
____________ Editor’s notes to § 5 ¶ 2, “reflect back” onto us: The term here is “Rückstralung,” a rewrite of his earlier “Relucenz” of 1921/22. Cf. GA 61: 117ff. See below, SZ 21b. ¶ 3, “categorial” status: see below at SZ 44d. ¶ 7, ontological foundations for that: MR wrongly inserts a paragraph break here. ¶ 7, properly ontological level: Even though SZ I.2, chapter 4, gives a renewed interpretation of the structures of ex- sistence laid out in SZ I.1, that renewed interpretation will have to be “repeated once again” (“eine erneute Wiederholung,” SZ 333b) after SZ I.3, when the question of being has been adequately resolved. ¶ 8, the intelligibility of the being of ex-sistence.: GA 2: 24.5 substitutes “desjenigen Seienden” (“of that kind of entity”) for “des Seienden.” ¶ 9, understanding and interpreting being: Later Heidegger will say that this “time” or “ur-temporality” (Temporalität) was only a preliminary designation for the clearing (die Lichtung). ¶ 10, various realms of things: The scare quotes in what follows indicate Heidegger is using “time,” “temporal,” and “timeless” in a sense other than his own.
30
§ 6 THE TASK OF SZ II:
DESTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF ONTOLOGY
1. INTRODUCTION TO SZ II 1. Ex-sistential historicity makes possible ex-sistentiel-personal history. Alreadiness and the past. 2. Historicity makes possible the science of history 3. From historicity [SZ I.2] to the history of ontology [SZ II] 4. SZ I.1 shows how we fall prey to tradition. 5. Tradition usually conceals its transmission
2. AN OVERVIEW OF SZ II’S DESTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF ONTOLOGY 6. The devolution of traditional ontology. 7. The destruction of the history of ontology. 8. The positive and negative aims of this destruction 9. The limitations of this destruction.
3. THE DIVISIONS OF SZ II • SZ II.1: KANT
10. SZ II.1: Kant on being and time 11. SZ II.1: Kant’s twofold failure
• SZ II.2: DESCARTES 12. SZ II.2: Descartes. 13. SZ II.2: Descartes (continued).
• SZ II.3: THE GREEKS AND TIME; ARISTOTLE 14. The Greeks and time: οσα as a thing’s being-present 15. The clue to all this: ex-sistence as λγος 16. What the Greeks missed 17. SZ II.3: Aristotle on time 18. SZ II.3 (continued): The influence of Aristotle’s treatise.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS 19. The destruction in SZ II is at the service of the being-question 20. We should not overestimate the results of this study
31
§ 6
THE TASK OF SZ II: DESTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF ONTOLOGY
1. INTRODUCTION TO SZ II
19d = 41a = 19c
1. Ex-sistential historicity makes possible ex-sistentiel-personal history. Scientific research, including fundamental ontology, is an ontic possibility of ex-sistence. How does that pertain to the science of history [Historie]? Ex-sistence qua temporal is our way of being; in turn, it makes possible historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] as another element of our way of being. Historicity—i.e., being historical—is prior to and the foundation for living one’s own personal history. ¶ Historicity is the ex-sistential way of being that (1) allows us to have and to live an ex-sistentiel- personal history and that (2) makes it possible for us to have a “world history.” ` “Alreadiness” and the past. Factically I always am “what” and how I already am [“wie und ‘was’ es schon war”]. ¶ This entails that, whether I am aware of it or not, I always already am my past—but not like some possession that I drag along behind me that still occasionally affects me. No, I am my past: it is an element of my way of being. Moreover, (to put it roughly) my past “happens” from out of my future. ¶ Regardless of how I now am and currently understand my ex-sistence, I have grown up into and in an inherited way of understanding myself. That is how I first and foremost understand myself, it’s how I see and regulate my possibilities. My inherited past—which is always social, i.e., the past of my “generation” (Dilthey)—does not follow along behind me but always already goes ahead of me. ¶
20b = 41c = 19d 2. Historicity makes possible the science of history. Whereas historicity as an ex-sistential structure may often remain hidden, the science of history works at discovering, studying, and preserving what tradition has passed on to us. But note: the science of history is an ontic inquiry. It is based on, made possible by, and therefore presumes ex-sistential historicity. On the one hand, as long as our historicity remains hidden, we cannot [properly] discover history or carry out historical research. But on the other hand, even peoples that lack a science of history still have historicity as the structure of their ex-sistence. A culture can lack a science of history only because ex-sistence itself is historical [geschichtlich].
20c = 42b = 20b 3. From historicity [SZ I.2] to the history of ontology [SZ II]. We have established the ontic-ontological necessity of the question “How is being intelligible?” In pursuing that question and the historicity of ex-istence, it becomes clear that the question about being is itself characterized by historicity. The inquiry into being has its own history, which we have to investigate and positively appropriate in its inner possibilities. The progression of the book, therefore, is, first, to show that the being of ex-sistence is temporality and historicity [= SZ I.1-2]; then to show that ur-temporality makes being intelligible [= SZ I.3]; and finally to work out certain historical [historisch] elements of the question of being [= SZ II].
21b = 42c = 20c 4. SZ I.1 shows how we fall prey to tradition. In studying everyday ex-sistence with its implicit historicity, SZ I.1 will show (1) that we tend to interpret ourselves in light of what things reflect back to us; ¶ and (2) that we get trapped in a tradition that prevents us from asking the right question and making our own choices, especially about how to understand being.
21c = 43b = 20d 5. Tradition usually conceals its transmission. When tradition becomes dominant, it cloaks what it bequeaths to us under the rubric of the “self-evident.” This blocks access to the original sources of its concepts and categories. Tradition uproots our historicity while hiding the fact it has no ground to stand on. Hence, despite our interest in and
32
efforts at objectively correct history, we are blocked from positively returning to the past, appropriating it, and using it productively.
21d = 43c = 21b 6. The devolution of traditional ontology. Above, § 1 showed that the question “How is being intelligible?” has been neglected, or badly formulated, or forgotten. Greek ontology still influences us today in such a way that when we understand either ex-sistence or being, we do so in terms of things. Greek ontology has devolved into a “self-evident tradition” that might get “reworked” as it was in Hegel. The Middle Ages took over this uprooted Greek ontology dogmatically and as a whole. Scholasticism (by way of some admittedly significant work) then turned it into a fixed, systematic doctrine that led through Suarez’s Disputationes metaphysicae [1597] to the transcendental philosophy of modernity, which influenced even Hegel’s “logic.” ¶ Moreover, as the question of being got neglected, particular regions of being assumed the role of guiding issues— cf. Descartes’s ego cogito, the subject, the “I,” reason, spirit, person, etc.—without the structure of their being getting clarified. The result is that either unquestioned ontological categories dominate these topics without being questioned, or dialectics gets enlisted to provide an ontological interpretation of the substantiality of the subject.
2. AN OVERVIEW OF SZ II’S DESTRUCTION OF THE HISTORY OF ONTOLOGY
22b = 44b = 21c 7. The destruction of the history of ontology. To understand the history of the question of being, we must loosen up the sclerotic tradition of ontology and undo its concealments. Taking the question of being as our clue, we shall destroy the traditional content of ancient ontology so as to get to the original experiences in which the classical Greeks [= Plato and Aristotle] determined the nature of being and by which we have been guided ever since.
22c = 44c = 22b 8. The positive and negative aims of this destruction. We will display the birth certificate, so to speak, of our basic concepts of being. This is neither to relativize ontological viewpoints nor to throw off the tradition. Instead,
• positively, we seek (1) to find the genuine possibilities embedded in the tradition and (2) to keep the tradition within its limits as regards its formulation of the question and its demarcation of the field.
• negatively, we are aiming not at the past but at today’s treatment of ontology (whether doxography, ¶ intellectual history, or the history of problems). We do not aim to annihilate the past.
Our aim is positive, while its negative function remains implicit and indirect. 23b = 44d = 22c
9. The limitations of this destruction. The destruction of the history of ontology [in SZ II] aims at, and is possible only within, the formulation of the question of what accounts for being, which is our first goal [= SZ I.3]. We will carry out the destruction only with regard to the decisive stages in the history of that question.
3. THE DIVISIONS OF SZ II
SZ II.1: KANT
23c = 44e = 22d 10. SZ II.1: Kant on being and time. Positively the destruction is focused on (1) the togetherness of time and being in the history of ontology, and on (2) whether or not ur-temporality ever was or could have been worked out in principle. Driven by the phenomena themselves, Kant’s doctrine of schematism was the first and only attempt to broach the question of ur-temporality. However, after SZ I.3 works out ur-temporality, SZ II.1 [= GA 3, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, orig. 1929] will show (1) how obscure Kant’s doctrine of schematism was, (2) how and why it entirely misses ur-temporality (cf. his designation of schematism as “an art hidden in the depths of the soul,” Critique of Pure Reason B 180f.), and (3) why he shrank back from it. If we hope to show how being is intelligible, we have to clarify, explicitly and in principle, ur-temporality and
33
the phenomena entailed by it—which is difficult precisely because (as Kant puts it) this entails the most hidden judgments of “common reason,” which, he says, is the “philosopher’s job” to analyze.
23d = 45b = 23b 11. SZ II.1: Kant’s twofold failure. Using ur-temporality as the clue, SZ II.1 will interpret Kant’s chapter on schematism and his doctrine of time. We will show that he was unable to envision ur-temporality because (1) he neglected the problem of being and, in connection with that, (2) he failed to provide a thematic ontology of ex-sistence (or, in Kant’s terms, of the subjectivity of the subject). Instead, (1) Kant took over dogmatically Descartes’ positions (even where he had surpassed them); and (2) he stayed with the traditional notion of time (“one now-moment after another”) even as he relocated time within the subject. Hence he failed to work out a transcendental determination of the structure and function of time. Kant stayed with the tradition on these two issues—subjectivity and time—and thus never even saw the problem of how the “I think” and time are connected.
SZ II.2: DESCARTES 24b = 46a = 23c
12. SZ II.2: Descartes. In taking over Cartesian subjectivity, Kant decisive failure lay in omitting an ontology of ex- sistence. Descartes’ “radical” new foundation for philosophy (“I think, therefore I am”) had neglected to work out the meaning of the being of the “I am.” In SZ II.2 we will (1) lay out that unexpressed foundations of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum and will (2) show how those very foundations—particularly his notion of the cogito’s absolute “certitude”— made him completely miss the question of being that goes with human being.
24c = 46b = 23d 13. SZ II.2: Descartes (continued). The Meditations overlooked the being of the sum and instead regard the res cogitans sive mens sive animus [the self as a thinking thing or mind or spirit] ¶ as a fundamentum inconcussum, an unshakeable foundation, to which he merely applied medieval Suarezian ontology. He defined the res cogitans as an ens, which in medieval philosophy meant an ens creatum as over against God as the ens increatum. (Note that createdness = pro-duced-ness, which is an essential item in the ancient conception of being.) Instead of a new beginning, Descartes burdened modern philosophy with an ill-fated traditional prejudice that long blocked the way to what SZ intends to do, viz., (1) work out an ontology of mind [= SZ I.1-2] in the light of (2) ur-temporality [= SZ I.3] and then (3) use that as the key to engaging critically with ancient ontology [= SZ II].
SZ II.3: THE GREEKS AND TIME; ARISTOTLE 25b = 46c = 24b
14. The Greeks and time: οσα as a thing’s being-present. Although Descartes’ dependence on medieval scholasticism and its terminology is well known, it is less clear how medieval philosophy determined (or not) the being of the res cogitans. But we cannot resolve that issue until we show how ancient ontology dealt with the question of being—and what it missed. Our destruction of ancient ontology will dismantle it in light of ur-temporality. We will show that the Greeks interpreted being in terms of things—nature in the widest sense—and that time figured into this interpretation. Some outward evidence: they understood being as παρουσα = οσα = the presentness [Anwesenheit] of things. That is, they understood the being of things in terms of a definite moment of time: the present [die Gegenwart].
25c = 47b = 24c 15. The clue to all this: ex-sistence as λγος. The clue for approaching Greek ontology has to be ex-sistence, understood as ζον λγον χον, the living thing whose being is determined by the ability to speak. That is, λγειν (cf. § 7 B) is the key to unlocking the being of whatever we speak about. Thus in Plato ontology becomes dia-lectic. But Dialectic has become a philosophical embarrassment. A proper “hermeneutic” of λγος will allow us a more radical understanding of the problem of being. The Marburg Neo-Kantians claim Aristotle lacked an understanding of Platonic dialectic—whereas in fact he rendered it superfluous by raising the issue to a higher and more radical level. Aristotle took up where Parmenides left off. Parmenides [fragment 3] had seen the necessary correlation of νοεν and εναι—minding and being. Aristotle went
34
further and saw νοεν as the direct awareness of what is present in its presentness, so that νοεν has the ur-temporal structure of “making something meaningfully present.” Things that show up in and for νοεν as making-present are seen as things in the most proper sense: they are understood in terms of the present, as having presence (οσα).
26b = 48b = 25b 16. What the Greeks missed. However, in interpreting being in this way, the Greeks missed both how and why time necessarily functions in all of this. The reason is that they took time as a thing and then sought its being in terms of things and thus ended up with a nave understanding of both time and being.
26c = 48c = 25c 17. SZ II.3: Aristotle on time. Within the limited scope of SZ we will not give a detailed ur-temporal interpretation of the foundations of ancient ontology either in general or at its scientific apex in Aristotle. Instead, by interpreting his Aristotle’s treatise on time (Physics IV 10, 217b29 – 14, 224a17), we will discern the basis and limits of the Greek science of being.
26d = 48d = 25d 18. SZ II.3 (continued): The influence of Aristotle’s treatise. Physics IV is the first detailed interpretation of time that we have, and the most influential. It determined all subsequent interpretations, including those of Kant and Bergson. Thus, despite all its new distinctions, Kant’s orientation to being remains that of the Greeks.
4. CONCLUDING REMARKS
26e = 49b = 25e 19. The destruction in SZ II is at the service of the being-question. The question of being attains its proper specificity only by way of the destruction of the history of ontology. The destruction will prove we cannot avoid the question of what accounts for the intelligibility of being, and will show what it means to “retrieve” that question.
* * *
35
____________
Editor’s notes to § 6 ¶ ¶ 1, living one’s history: More literally: “history in the sense of living [one’s] history in the world.” Following this sentence, Macquarrie-Robinson incorrectly inserts a paragraph break that does not appear in the German. ¶ 1, alreadiness: We are always our “essence,” or as Heidegger puts it (channeling Aristotle’s τ τ ν εναι): our “wie und ‘was’ es schon war.” Cf. GA 2: 114, note a, which is reproduced in our note to “a priori perfect” at SZ 85b. ¶ 1, my past. . . drag along behind me: This phrase (“‘hinter’ ihm herschiebt,” SZ 20.7) recalls another from Heidegger’s review of Jasper’s Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, GA 9: 3.32 = 27.25: “eine mitgeschleppte Beigabe.” ¶ 1, my past “happens” from out of my future: The past is not the same as “alreadiness” (one’s essence as das Gewesene). Whereas one’s past “happens” from out of one’s futurity, one’s futurity is based in and generated from out of one’s alreadiness: SZ 344b: “aus ihr [= Gewesenheit] erst Zukunft und Gegenwart sich zeitigen.” ¶ 1, already goes ahead of me: Alreadingess (das Gewesene) always goes ahead of ex-sistence (“west ihr stets voraus”: GA 11: 58.3). Likewise thrownness does not lie “behind” ex-sistence (“liegt nicht hinter ihm,” SZ 284b). Re generation: see SZ 384c, below, and Hans Ulrich Lessing, Rudolf A. Makkreel, and Riccardo Pozzo, editors. Recent Contributions to Dilthey’s Philosophy of the Human Sciences. Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog, 2011, 26-31. ¶ 4, reflect back: reluzent; see above, SZ 15c: Rückstrahlung. ¶ 6 [scare quotes]: These allude to the fact that Heidegger considers Hegel’s Logic to be actually metaphysics. ¶ 8, doxography (Doxographie): A term coined by the classical philologist Hermann Alexander Diels,1848-1922: the study of the opinions of various philosophers. ¶ 13, animus: Descartes adds: sive intellectus sive ratio (“or intellect or reason”), Oeuvres Complètes de René Descartes: Meditationes de prima philosophia, VII, 28. ¶ 20, “What does ‘being’ mean? What accounts for it?” I use a hendiadys to capture the two possible meanings of “was heißt ‘Sein’?” where the German verb can mean “means, is called” and/or “evokes” (cf. GA 8: Was heißt Sein?)
36
§ 7 METHOD: PHENOMENOLOGY
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS 1. The theme of the book. The question of method 2. Guided by the issues themselves 3. Phenomenology: not a subject matter but a method 4. This section: only the preliminary concept of phenomenology. 5. Etymology of “phenomenology.” Division of this section.
§ 7 A. THE CONCEPT OF PHENOMENON
6. The primary and secondary senses of phenomenon. 1. The first excluded sense: Appearances manifesting something else that remains hidden
7. Symptoms, symbols, indications, etc.: appearances through which something else indirectly shows up 8. Why these are not true phenomena 9. Thus far: three possible meanings of “appearance.”
2. The second excluded sense: “Appearances” (Erscheinungen) à la Kant 10. A fourth meaning of phenomenon: “appearance” in Kant
3. Further remarks 11. An appearance can become a semblance. 12. The three other instances of phenomenon are founded on the first (= the genuine) instance 13. The phenomenological sense of phenomenon vs. the merely formal sense 14. A preview of what immediately follows.
§ 7 B. THE CONCEPT OF λγoς
1. The original meaning of λγoς 15. Searching for the original meaning of λγoς 16. Λγoς as “letting something be seen” 17. Discourse lets something be seen
2. Λγoς as λϑεια-2 18. Λγος qua σνϑεσις: letting something be seen-as 19. Λγος as λϑεια-2
3. Λγoς-as-judgment and λϑεια-3 20. Λγος as judgment is not the primary locus of λϑεια. 21. Λγος as judgment can be either true or false.
4. Further remarks 22. How the other meanings of λγος are derived 23. Conclusion
§ 7 C. THE PRELIMINARY CONCEPT OF PHENOMENOLOGY
1. The formal meaning of “phenomenon” 24. The formal meaning of phenomenology 25. Phenomenology: a descriptive method rather than a subject matter
2. The de-formalized, properly phenomenological meaning of “phenomenon” 26. The de-formalized phenomenon of our study is usually goes unobserved 27. That de-formalized phenomenon is being 28. Ours is a phenomenological ontology
3. Phenomena can be covered up 29. Being is usually hidden, covered up 30. Three ways a phenomenon can be covered up 31. Accidental and necessary covered-up-ness. How a phenomenon can degenerate 32. We cannot just “take a look” at being but must wrest it from things
4. Concluding remarks (terminology, hermeneutics, transcendental, Husserl, etc.) 33. Defining “phenomenal” and “phenomenological” 34. We begin with ex-sistence, because we alone understand being 35. Subject matter: ontology. Method: hermeneutics 36. Being as transcendental. 37. Phenomenological ontology begins and ends with ex-sistence. 38. Re Husserl: possibility is higher than actuality 39. The language of SZ
37
§ 7
27b = 49d = 26a
1. The theme of the book. The question of method. The thematic object here is the being of things or the intelligibility of being in general. With that, the method seems to be already prescribed—ontology seeks to make the being of things stand out and [then] to explain being itself—but the methods governing traditional ontologies are highly questionable. We are using “ontology” here in a formally broad sense and will not try to clarify its method by merely tracing out its history.
27c = 49e = 26b 2. Guided by the issues themselves. We do not mean “ontology” as a specific philosophical science among others, nor to we have to measure up to any established study. We seek to measure up to the demands of only the “things themselves.” They alone will set the measure for whatever discipline results from this.
27d = 49f = 26c 3. Phenomenology: not a subject matter but a method. The question of what accounts for the intelligibility being is the fundamental question of philosophy, and we will treat it phenomenologically. Phenomenology is not a standpoint or special direction but a method: not a “what” (a specific subject matter) but a “how” (a way to do research) without, however, devolving into a mere “technical device.” We must work out its genuine concept and principles as these are rooted in a confrontation with the things themselves.
27e = 50b = 26d 4. This section: only the preliminary concept of phenomenology. Phenomenology’s maxim—“Get to the things themselves!”—is set over against
• ungrounded constructions • accidental findings • adopting undemonstrated concepts • pseudo-questions that have long paraded as “problems.”
But insofar as this maxim is the self-evident principle of all science, how does it become an explicit title for phenomenological research? We need to investigate this “self-evident” principle in order to clarify our procedure. What follows is only the preliminary concept of phenomenology.
28b = 50c = 26e
5. Etymology of “phenomenology.” Division of this section. “Phenomeno-logy” = αινμενον + λγος—but this is not to be taken superficially as “the science of phenomena.” We will examine each Greek word individually [in § 7 A and B below] and then combine them [in § 7 C]. The history of the word itself (presumably from the school of Christian Wolff [1679-1754]) is not important here.
INTRODUCTORY REMARKS
28c = 51b = 27b
6. The primary and secondary senses of phenomenon. In its primary sense, αινμενον (from middle voice ανεσϑαι, to show up) is “that-which-shows-up”: something insofar as it is open and manifest to us. The verb ανω means to bring something to the light of day, to place it in the light. Its stem α- is related to ς, “light” in the sense of brightness: that wherein something becomes manifest or visible. In its primary sense a αινμενον is what shows up in and of itself, what is manifest. In the plural, φαινμενα are all things that lie in the light of day, i.e., what the Greeks sometimes called τ ντα (things). A thing can show up in and of itself in many ways, depending on our access to it. In a secondary sense αινμενον can mean “mere semblance” when something shows up as it is not so that it merely “looks like” or “seems to be.” (In Aristotle, φαινμενον γαϑν means the mere semblance of the good: Eudemian Ethics, VII 2, 1235b25.) The connection between the primary and the secondary meanings of αινμενον is this: Only because something claims to show up as a true phenomenon can it show up as a mere semblance. That is, the primary sense is already included in the secondary sense, and the secondary sense is a privative modification of the primary one. We reserve the term φαινμενον for the primary sense. As regards what immediately follows: A “phenomenon” is an appearance, but there are two meanings of appearance that we exclude from the field of proper phenomena, namely (1) “appearance by way of something else” and (2) “mere appearance” à la Kant. We take up each in turn.
1. FIRST EXCLUDED SENSE: APPEARANCES MANIFESTING SOMETHING ELSE THAT REMAINS HIDDEN 29b = 52a = 27c
7. Symptoms, symbols, indications, etc.: appearances” through which something else indirectly shows up. The symptom of a disease [no. 3 in the chart above] shows up as itself—for example, as a rash—but in turn the rash indicates something else: a disturbance that is really there but does not show up directly. Here we have “the appearance of a disease through a symptom.” The disease does not show up directly for itself; instead, it is made manifest via the symptom that does show up. Thus “appearing by way of something else” is not a showing-of-itself. ¶ (However, this “not” is different from the privative “not” of mere semblance [cf. paragraph 11, below]). What does not show up directly (the disease) can never merely seem to show up [in the secondary sense of phenomenon: cf. the chart]. Besides symptoms, other examples of the “something else” through which a thing might appear include symbols, indications, and so on.
PHENOMENA
Primary sense 1. A genuine phenomenon: something that shows up as it is Secondary sense 2. A semblance: something merely seems to show up, or shows up as it is not
__________________________________________________________________________________ Two excluded senses: two forms of “appearance” [Erscheinung] 3. “Appearances” through which another hidden thing shows up indirectly (e.g., symptoms, symbols) 4. “Mere appearances” (Kant)
§ 7 A: THE CONCEPT OF PHENOMENON
39
29c = 53a = 28b
8. Why these are not true phenomena. Neither the symptom nor the disease are true phenomena in the sens