Introduction , Being and Time 1 Summary and Talking Points - - PDF document

“Introduction”, Being and Time 1 Summary and Talking Points Heidegger begins Sein und Zeit with an introduction to his philosophy in general. His fundamental task throughout his career was to work out the meaning of Sein, Being or “to-be” taken not as a verb but as a noun. To this end, his goal in this chapter is manifold: he wants to illustrate to his reader why the meaning of the word “Being” remains a problem, and a problem which was last treated as such in Aristotle; next, by renewing this unaddressed problem he wants to “recover the question of the meaning of Being”; finally, in doing this, he wants to work out how to formulate the question in such a way that it doesn’t reduce it to a mere linguistic question but preserves its character as an experience

• f mystery and wonder in the face of the fact of Being.

This is all to say that, in technical terms, Heidegger is attempting to create a fundamental

• ntology that starts from the transcendental universal concept “Being”. With SZ he is attempting to

create a first philosophy which he claims is prior to all other supposedly first philosophies (i.e., metaphysics), and is a necessary condition of these metaphysical theories which they have nonetheless managed to overlook. He is also accusing all previous philosophers of either giving up on or overlooking the need to explicate this first and most fundamental ground. The never composed second part of his treatise would have been a reading and re-interpretation of the history of philosophy (in particular, the history of metaphysics or “first-philosophies”) from the point of view of this failure to adequately explicate the meaning of Being as the ground of all philosophic and scientific inquiry. Aristotle was the last thinker to make this question a theme of philosophical research. Since that time, “a dogmatic attitude has taken shape” which declares the question vapid and pointless, and insists that “Being” “Has become clear as day” and no longer represents a genuine problem for understanding. (42) He lays the foundation for this investigation by establishing three facts about Being that the “dogmatic attitude” overlooks in treating the meaning of Being as a non-issue: (1) Being “is” a transcendental universal and a unity, which transcends the manifold categories; (2) A conceptual articulation of the meaning of Being must be fundamentally different from that process of definition used to articulate an entity’s characteristic mode of Being; (3) The self-evidence of the common use of the verb “to-be” does not make the meaning of Being comprehensible or available to thought. The fact that we apprehend that things are only further indicates the mysteriousness of the meaning of Being . Heidegger proceeds by explicating the three structural moments which belong to all questions whatsoever, and illustrating how these moments occur within the question of the meaning of Being: (1) What the question asks about, which is Being, “that which determines [entities] as [entities]” (46) and is itself not an entity. This is not a question about the cause of entities, but a question of the prevailing ground upon which entities and causal relations between them are possible; (2) That which the question seeks as its goal is a conceptual determination of what Being means. This is guided by an “average and vague understanding” that entities are, but the “to be” of these entities is not transparent; (3) Finally the question also includes in its structure what is to be interrogated in this asking and seeking. This structural moment of the question is more obscure because in order to ask after the Being of anything, that thing must be available as it is in-itself, an availability which is highly dubious so long as the questioner is dealing with entities encountered within one’s world. Heidegger contests that if the question of Being’s meaning is to be “brought to complete clarity concerning itself” then the question

“Introduction”, Being and Time 2 Summary and Talking Points will require explication of understanding and conceptual comprehension of meaning as distinct “ways of regarding Being” and ways which belong to the Being of that entity which can ask questions as one of its possible modes of Being. (47) Hence the question of the meaning of Being requires explication of the Being of Dasein as that entity which is to be investigated in the inquiry. Dasein always is in such a way that it has an understanding of Being, an understanding “which ultimately belongs to the essential constitution of Dasein itself.” (49) From the foregoing reflections it can be shown that this question has an ontological priority. This question is not a vague and pointless inquiry into linguistic meanings, or hazy pseudo-mystical

• speculation. Rather, “it is the most basic and at the same time most concrete question” (50) because it

seeks “the a priori condition of the possibility not only of the sciences which investigate [entities] as such [… but] also at the condition of the possibility of the ontologies which precede the ontic sciences and found them.” (52) The question of the meaning of Being is a question directed at that universal a priori condition “which determines [entities] as [entities]” (46). Conclusion: How Heidegger’s philosophy is both an existential philosophy and a critical theory founded

• n ontology.

 Both historical and futural

• Historical because it is looking back upon history in a two fold way. (1) It is trying to

reorient our relation to and understanding of western history and philosophy. (2) And it is trying to do so by recovering those experiences where Being discloses to and makes itself felt by human beings. Both of these related historical tasks essentially consist in attempting to view historical individuals and cultures in regards to the fact that they existed, and in existing stood within a nexus of concepts, meanings, and individual and social possibilities. This nexus—their world—precedes individual entities as the context or horizon within which they are encountered. Therefore this horizon of meanings and possibilities also precedes the way the Being

• f entities is experienced as a phenomenon by the individual human being or a
• society. The way the Being of entities is experienced is in turn an indicator of how

that individual or society stands in relation to the question of Being and Being as

• such. In this sense, Heidegger’s ontological project is historical—history is the

history of humanity’s changing relationship to Being and the question of the meaning of Being.

• Heidegger treats modern and contemporary history this way as well, and

characterizes the modern and contemporary historical moments in regards to how they stand in relation to Being by examining how they understand the Being of entities.

• This critical and historical dimension of his philosophy is foundational for its futural
• element. By deconstructing the way people historically and in the present have

understood entities, and the way they relate to Being as such, he is trying to renew

“Introduction”, Being and Time 3 Summary and Talking Points the question of Being and its meaning. In this regard Heidegger’s thought can be viewed as an existential philosophy because its practical aim is to awaken in the individual reader the experience of questioning Being, either from wonderment, perplexity, joy, angst or boredom. He is trying to rescue a fundamental experience—asking what the Being of entities’ and one’s own existence mean—and rescuing that experience from all systems of thought that would provide a positive and final definition of what the Being of entities and human subjects means. His historical project serves this purpose by deconstructing how our systems of definition have actually covered over the question of the meaning of Being and make man’s relation to Being through that question obscure, or illustrate how a given system of understanding is predicated on a definition of Being in terms appropriate to entities but inappropriate to that which determines entities as the entity they are. In this rescue the possibility of entering into new relations with Being, and of allowing Being to announce itself to human experience in new ways, is

• pened and maintained.
• The critical moment in his philosophy serves the end of this futural and creative

moment: in order to renew the genuine experience of asking about the meaning of Being as such—and to begin on an individual and societal level to work out any kind

• f understanding of Being—the usual ways the Being of entities is understood must

be disrupted so that human beings can again experience uncertainty and wonder. The first part of Sein und Zeit, “The Preparatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein”, seeks to accomplish this task by analyzing what the human being’s “average- everyday” way of experience entities, other people and the world reveals about the basic structure of the individual’s existence. Which is to say “The Preparatory Analysis” illustrates how our typical way of living-in and dealing-with the world nearest to us is actually grounded in universal facts about our own existence that are alien to typical way of interacting with the world. Specifically, Heidegger describes man’s existence as the structure “Being-in-the-world”, which he will conclude in this section occurs as “Care” or the individual’s reflexive concern with the ways they are realizing their possibilities and becoming themselves—which is fundamentally structured by their death, the ultimate and most individual of all of the human person’s possibilities. Man exists as that entity which is concerned with its own existence because he is aware that that existence will ultimately come to an end, and because of this finitude he must give a certain character and meaning to his existence by acting on what possibilities he will cease upon and realize and what

• nes he will let go.
• Asking about the meaning of Being is one of these possibilities, and for Heidegger
• ne which can only be ceased upon if the individual human person acknowledges

the finite nature of their own Being. Thus, awakening this question involves the human being or the society which asks it in the process of authentically deciding what possibilities they will cease upon and what possibilities they will let go, of

“Introduction”, Being and Time 4 Summary and Talking Points deciding what they will value and what kind of character they will craft for

• themselves. The critical dimension of Heidegger’s philosophy consists in shaking off

the ossified layers of definition—both of entities in the world and of oneself—in

• rder to engage in the existential project of creating definition, and understanding

that this process of giving meaning to the world and to one’s own life is the way one relates to Being.