Heidegger

Rout ledge Philosophy GuideBook to

Heidegger

and Being and Time

P36

Two assumptions about the distinctive character of Dasein orient

this analysis from the outset - assumptions which Heidegger initially

presents simply as intuitively plausible, but later tries to elaborate

more satisfactorily. The first (already introduced) is that Dasein’s

Being is an issue for it. The continuance of its life, and the form that

life takes, confront it as questions to which it must find answers

that it then lives out - or fails to. The second is this: ‘that Being which

is an issue for this entity in its very Being, is in each case mine’ (BT,

9: 67). In part, this merely draws out one implication of the first

assumption; for any entity that chooses to live in a particular way

makes that existential possibility its own - that way to be becomes

its way to be, that possibility becomes its own existentiell actuality.

This is why Heidegger glosses his talk of Dasein’s `mineness’ by

saying that one must use personal pronouns when addressing it. It is

his way of capturing the sense in which beings of this type are persons,

but without employing such prejudicial philosophical terms as

`consciousness’, ’spirit’, or `soul’; he thereby asserts that they have,

if not individuality, then at least the potential for it.

P66 .

Heidegger sees no conflict between his claim that Dasein’s

Being is Being-with and his earlier characterization of Dasein’s Being

as in each case mine; rather, the former constitutes a further specification

of the latter. That notion of `mineness’ encapsulates two main

points: first, that the Being of Dasein is an issue for it (that every

choice it makes about which existentiell possibilities to realize is a

choice about the form that its own life will take), and second, that

each Dasein is an individual, a being to whom personal pronouns can

be applied and to whom at least the possibility of genuine or authentic

individuality belongs. To go on to claim that the Being of such a being

is Being-with does not negate that prior attribution of mineness; for

to say that the world is a social world is simply to say that it is a

world Dasein encounters as ‘our’ world, and such a world is no less

mine because it is also yours. Our world is both mine and yours;
intersubjectivity

is not the denial of subjectivity but its further specification.

And this further specification deepens our understanding of the

condition under which each Dasein must develop (or fail to develop)

its mineness or individuality. For if Dasein’s Being is Being-with, an

essential facet of that which is an issue for Dasein is its relations to

Others; the idea is that, at least in part, Dasein establishes and maintains

its relation to itself in and through its relations with Others, and

vice versa. The two issues are ontologically inseparable; to determine

the one is to determine the other.

This understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and

intersubjectivity determines Heidegger’s characterization of Dasein’s

average everyday mode of existence. For it entails that Dasein’s

capacity to lose or find itself as an individual always determines, and

is determined by, the way in which Dasein understands and conducts

its relations with Others. And the average everyday form of that
understanding

focuses upon one’s differences (in appearance, behaviour, life

style and opinion) from those with whom one shares the world, and

regards them as the main determinant of one’s own sense of self. Our

usual sense of who we are, Heidegger claims, is purely a function of

our sense of how we differ from others. We understand those differences

either as something to be eliminated at all costs, thus taking

conformity as our aim; or (perhaps less commonly) as something that

must at all costs be emphasized and developed - a strategy which only

appears to avoid conformity, since our goal is then to distinguish

ourselves from others rather than to distinguish ourselves in some

particular, independently valuable way, and so amounts to allowing

others to determine (by negation) the way we live. The dictatorship

of the Others and the consequent loss of authentic individuality in

what Heidegger calls ‘average everyday distantiality’ is therefore

visible not just in those who aim to read, see and judge literature and

art as everyone reads, sees and judges, but also in those whose aim

is to adopt the very opposite of the common view. Cultivating

uncommon pleasures, thoughts and reactions is no guarantee of

existential individuality.

Dasein, as everyday Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection

to Others. It itself is not; its Being has been taken away by

the Others. Dasein’s everyday possibilities of Being are for the

Others to dispose of as they please. These Others, moreover, are

not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can represent

them . . . . One belongs to the Others oneself and enhances their

power. The Others whom one thus designates in order to cover

up the fact of one’s belonging to them essentially oneself, are

those who proximally and for the most part ‘are there’ in

everyday Being-with-one-another. The ‘who’ is not this one, not

that one, not oneself, not some people, and not the sum of them

all. The ‘who’ is the neuter, the ‘they’.

(BT, 27: 164)

In other words, this absence of individuality is not restricted to some

definable segment of the human community; on the contrary, since it

defines how human beings typically relate to their fellows, it must

apply to most if not all of those Others to whom any given Dasein

subjects itself. They cannot be any less vulnerable to the temptations

of distantiality, and so cannot be regarded as having somehow avoided

subjection to those who stand as Others to them. ‘The Others’ thus

cannot be thought of as a group of genuinely individual human beings

whose shared tastes dictate the tastes of everyone else; and neither do

they constitute an intersubjective or supra-individual being, a sort of

communal self. ‘The they’ is neither a collection of definite Others

nor a single definite Other; it is not a being or set of beings to whom

mineness belongs, but a free-floating, impersonal construct, a sort of

consensual hallucination to which each of us gives up the capacity for

genuine self-relation and the leading of an authentically individual

life. Consequently, if a given Dasein’s thoughts and deeds are (determined

by) what they think and do, its answerability for its life has

been not so much displaced (onto others) as misplaced. It has vanished,

projected onto an everyone that is no-one by someone who is, without

it, also no-one, and leaving in its wake a comprehensively neutered

world. As Heidegger puts it, ‘everyone is the other and no-one is

himself. The “they”, which supplies the answer to the question of the

“who” of everyday Dasein, is the “nobody” to whom every Dasein

has already surrendered itself in Being-among-one-another.” (BT, 27:

165-6)

From: heidegger-bounces at an-archos.com
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Dreyfus BITW p60

The mode of argument will have to change along with the

questions. Heidegger does not expect to prove his theses and

thereby overcome the traditional subject/object distinction, or its

more recent variations such as the internalist/externalist debate

concerning meaning. “An analytic does not do any proving at all by

the rules of the ‘logic of consistency”‘ (363) [315] . But he does not

think his inability to provide proofs results in a standoff, such as, for

example, John Searle and Donald Davidson confronting each

other over whether to do philosophy from a first-person, subjective

or a third-person, objective perspective. Heidegger proposes to get

out of this traditional Cartesian confrontation by focusing on the

more basic way of being that he calls existence. He will seek to show

that the traditional picture is prima facie implausible and will

sketch out an alternative, viz. that subjects and objects can be

understood only in terms of being-in-the-world. This alternative is

to be “concretely demonstrated” (359) [311] .

Heidegger proposes to demonstrate that the situated use of

equipment is in some sense prior to just looking at things and that

what is revealed by use is ontologically more fundamental than the

substances with determinate, context-free properties revealed by

detached contemplation. (This is the subject of this chapter.) But

to see why the traditional model of self-sufficient subjects related to

self-sufficient objects by means of mental content is never appropriate

we need to look more deeply. Thus, Heidegger seeks to

supplant the tradition by showing that the ways of being of equipment

and substances, and of actors and contemplators, presuppose

a background understanding of being-originary transcendence

or being-in-the-world. (See chapter 5.)

To begin with, we need to recall that the stand Dasein takes on

itself, its existence, is not some inner thought or experience; it is the

way Dasein acts. (What makes a Japanese baby a Japanese baby is first

and foremost what it does and how things show up for it, and only

derivatively its thoughts, assuming it has any.) Dasein takes a stand

on itself through its involvement with things and people.

In everyday terms, we understand ourselves and our existence by way of

the activities we pursue and the things we take care of. (BP, 159) To exist

then means, among other things, relating to oneself by being with beings.
(BP,

157)

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