Being-in-the-World

Division 1

Chapter 1

This chapter seeks to characterize the theme of the Dasein Analytic and to distinguish it from other investigations. Section 9 presents a positive description of the theme. Sections 10 & 11 are negative in character, describing what the Dasein Analytic is not (i.e., it is not anthropology, Psychology or Biology).

Section 9

The theme of the Analytic is Dasein. Thus, we ourselves are the beings to be analyzed.

Now, what is peculiar about the beings which we ourselves 'are' -- is that something like our Being can be an issue?

In its Being, Dasein relates itself to its Being (Dasein in its Being comports itself to its being--it relates to itself). Put most simply, Dasein cares about its life, its existence.

These characteristics of Dasein have a double consequence:

(1) The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its 'to-be', i.e., in its comportment to its Being.

In speaking about Dasein's 'comportment' to its being, we are not speaking of a relation of two things external to each other. Not:

'Dasein' <=> 'Being'

but, rather --

the sense of comportment, the 'to-be' belongs to the very Being of Dasein. There is a reflexivity here which we could characterize as a self-comportment.

Now the unity that is characterized by this self-comportment, by Dasein's dynamic movement towards itself, this unity Heidegger characterizes as Existenz: the 'essence' of Dasein lies in its Existenz.

And in light of this characterization we can see how only Dasein 'exists'.

This, in turn, will give us a way of speaking about Dasein that is distinct from our way of speaking about things:

(a) those structures that are proper to Dasein - and only to Dasein - will be called existentials;

(b) those structures that pertain to things, to thing-like structures, will be called categories.

For example: "understanding" will be an 'existential' and "heaviness" will be a 'category.'

(2) Since only Dasein can be an issue for itself, the sense of mineness emerges with it. (It is not a 'thing' which is beyond indifference about its being)

Dasein is in each case mine.

Now these characteristics of Dasein are unified in two modes of Existenz. That is to say, there are two ways in which one can 'take up' their existence (which in each case is their existence) viz either as their own or, in some sense, as not their own. Heidegger describes these two modes of Being as:

(A) Eigentlichkeit (that which is my own [eigen]): "Authenticity"

(B) Uneigentlichkeit (that which is not my own [uneigen]): "Inauthenticity"

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Now with this Chapter 1 begins to move into the analytic. Heidegger notes that these characteristics of Dasein indicate a peculiar phenomenal domain: we do not 'come across' Dasein as we do entities that are things. Rather, Dasein exists--authentically or inauthentically--in a general structure which Heidegger describes as average everydayness.

This is the undifferentiated structure, the phenomenal content that will serve as the starting point for the hermeneutical (or interpretative) analysis

[cf 43/69-44/70]

Being and Time begins with Dasein's average everydayness.

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This is the general structure that will serve as the field for the uncovering of the existential structures that ground it and make it possible.

One such structure, which we shall begin to investigate, is the existential structure of Being-in-the-world.

(Only because Dasein is essentially a Being-in-the-world can we have something like 'average everydayness).

(I) Review

(A) The 1st Introduction has served to pose the question that is before us. Specifically, it has served to reawaken the need to repeat the Question of Being and, most important for our purposes, the 1st Introduction as formulated the question (of Being) in such a way that access to this question is to be gained by interrogating a particular being as to the nature of its Being. Specifically, das Befragte (that which is to be interrogated) is Human Being (Dasein) We are to seek out the Being of Human Being, the Meaning of Dasein.

(B) The 2nd Introduction formulated a method by which we could gain access to the Being of Human Being (Dasein). A method most appropriate to the problem of Being i.e., to the problems of ontology. Such a method is hermeneutic phenomenology: It is hermeneutic (interpretive) because the concept of Being is such that it is not immediately manifest, rather, it is for the most part, something hidden -- phenomenal contents (in the empirical sense) must be interpreted in such a way as to yield their ground.

And the ground of everyday experience is transcendental in nature. We are attempting to look 'behind' everyday experience in order to uncover the conditions for the possibility of everyday experience. This need to 'look behind' phenomena in the ordinary sense is the reason why the peculiar logos of phenomenology is hermeneutical in character. Structurally connected to this is the peculiar phenomenon of phenomenology viz., Being (Sein) -- for Being is nothing less than the transcendental structure of beings i.e., it is the transcendens pure and simple (p 38/62).

Putting these two Introductions together we can see that the task before us is nothing less than a phenomenological interpretation of Dasein. And this means an uncovering of the transcendental structures of Human Being i.e., those structures that ground and make possible the 'possibilities' of every particular human being.

And this is to say, our task is to uncover the Being of Human Being i.e., the Being of Dasein (viz., the Care-structure): this is the goal of the Dasein Analytic.

(C) Now Chapter 1 provides us with a preliminary sketch of that which is to be the theme of our investigation. The theme of the analysis is Dasein. Heidegger gave us some characteristic of this 'entity'.

(1) its 'essence' lies in its Existenz

(2) Dasein is in each case mine

Furthermore, my existence is carried out within the framework of two modes of existence:

(i) 'that which is my own' (Eigentlichkeit): Authenticity

(ii) 'that which (in some sense) is not my own' (Uneigentlichkeit): inauthenticity.

Heidegger notes further that whichever way Dasein 'takes hold' of its existence it does so proximately and for the most part in the undifferentiated phenomenal context of average everydayness.

Now this provided the clue for the starting point of the hermeneutical analysis. The general structure ('average everydayness') will serve as the field for the uncovering of the existential structures that ground it and make it possible.

This leads us to the present theme: for one such structure is the existential structure of Being-in-the-world: only because Dasein is essentially a Being-in-the-world can we have something like 'average everydayness.'

Being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-Sein)

Chapter 2

This chapter gives us a preliminary indication of this structure (chapters 3, 4 ,5 will look into it in greater detail).

We must first note that the concept Being-in-the-world denotes a unitary phenomenon--it must be seen as a whole. Noting this, we can nevertheless methodologically 'break it down' into different moments.

(1) the 'in-the-world' will allow us to explicate the sense of 'world' in the expression. From this Heidegger will uncover the worldhood of the world (chapter 3).

(2) we can then seek out the 'who' of that entity which has Being-in-the-world as the way in which it is. Heidegger will uncover 'the who' of average everyday Dasein (chapter 4).

(3) lastly, we can step back and investigate, on a deeper level, the sense of Being-in as such. Here we will see -- from the side of Dasein itself -- the fundamental structures underlying the concept of Being-in-the-world (chapter 5).

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Prior to all this, however, Heidegger gives us an initial description of the notion of Being-in as it is to be used with reference to Dasein. The method here is to first show how this term is not used, and then it indicates its proper sense.

(a) we are not to think of Dasein's Being-in-the-world in terms of 'one thing' 'being inside' 'another thing' (as water is 'in' a glass). Dasein is not 'in' the world as things are 'in' space.

(b) rather, Being-in an existential structure and as such belongs only to Dasein -- Dasein is in the world in the active sense of dwelling or residing.

This denotes the manner in which Dasein is concernfully caught up in its projects and activities.

Heidegger uses the expression fascination, Dasein is immersed and absorbed in its comportment towards the concerns of its everyday life and activities.

Now this positive characterization serves to heighten the distinction between it and the negative characterization. As an existential, Being-in as being-alongside the world does not imply a 'spatial relatedness' in the sense of objects (things) being 'next to' or 'beside' one another.

Instead, Heidegger explicitly states that this way of characterizing the matter with reference to things is inadequate: things, strictly speaking, are not alongside one another, cannot be 'near' to each other -- for if this were so, they would such as to be encounterable, i.e., they would be such as 'to be a world': things, in fact, are worldless.

This, of course, does not imply that they are not, somehow, 'out there', in the world. Of course they are, but not as Dasein.

Though it is also important to see that, in a specific sense, Dasein is also capable of been seen 'as an object' in relation to other objects. That is, Dasein can be taken to be an object merely present-at-hand. To do this, however, is to 'break away' from viewing Dasein as Dasein and to see Dasein merely as a 'body', with a certain weight and 'properties'.

In this sense, Dasein can be seen as factually being present-at-hand. This is one indication of a kind of structure that Heidegger will call Dasein's facticity (and which will include notions like our body, our finitude, our history, our past--in short, our situation).

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Still and all, what we must emphasize here is the positive sense of dwelling that characterizes Dasein's primary sense of Being-in -- and it is in this connection that Heidegger specifically uses the term concern (Besorge) -- it is to characterize the existential sense in which Dasein comports itself to the world.

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Note on method 58/85: Heidegger addresses himself to the way in which he has been characterizing these structures -- first in a negative sense, then a positive indication: he points our that this procedure is in accord with 'the things themselves' -- for Dasein has a tendency to 'explain itself' in terms of what it is not (e.g., as a thing).

So really the 'movement' in this section has simply followed the phenomenal context i.e., that way of Dasein 'seeing in a certain way and yet for the most part wrongly explaining'.

Now, one of the ways that Dasein has done this is to conceive of our relation to the world as essentially a 'knowing of the world'. And it is to this structure of 'knowing the world' the Heidegger turns to in section 13.

Section 13 Knowing the world as a founded mode of Being-in-the-world.

(A) Heidegger first discusses this problem of 'knowledge' in relation to a technical problem in the history of philosophy: 'knowing' an object became equated with having that object 'correspond' to its image in the knower's mind. From this the problem evolved of how to 'know' that the image inside the mind corresponded to the object outside (this issue need not concern us here--though it is important to point out how fundamentally misguided Heidegger believed this whole approach to be i.e., the whole approach of seeing things in terms of 'inner' and 'outer' or, more specifically, in terms of subject-object.

One use of the term "Dasein" was to overcome this distinction cf Grundprobleme pg 90 'because of the common separation of a subject with its immanent [sphere] and an object with its transcendent sphere -- because in general the distinction between inner and outer is constructed...we will no longer speak of a subject, of a subjective sphere...but rather we understand [this] entity as Dasein).

(B) Of more direct importance here is the sense in which 'knowing the world' involves a necessary disengagement from our primary comportment t the world: knowing the world involves a 'stepping back' from our concernful dealings in everyday involvement's and the adaptation of a specific attitude, a specific manner of concern with the world--we no longer see the world in terms of 'pragmata' but in terms of 'theory'. Our dwelling becomes focused down to a 'kind to staring': we see entities and judge them as they are 'present' to an observer. For example: we 'see' that the chalk is only 20 cm long-yet in doing that we have disengaged ourselves from our primary concern with this entity viz its readiness to hand as a tool for use.

And in doing this we can also see how knowing the world is a founded mode of Being-in-the-world. For it is, above all, a specific way of Being-in-the-world and not, the primary way. There are thus two conclusions here:

(1) knowing is not a matter of an inner subjective sphere gaining access to an outside objective sphere (the 'hyphen' shows how Dasein is always already 'in-the-world').

(2) knowing in the sense of theoretical knowledge is a specific way in which Dasein can be in the world. It is founded upon the primary mode of concernful absorption and involves a disengagement from such a primary mode.

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Now, having gained a preliminary sense of Being-in-the-world and having shown that 'knowing the world' is not our primary relation to the world, we may begin our more concrete investigations into this notion of Being-in-the-world.

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