Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation: Mitsein (being-with), and Responsibility

Sarah Sorial

A thesis submitted to the School of in the University of New South Wales in the fulfilment of the award of Doctor of Philosophy.

2005 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor, Rosalyn Diprose for her encouragement, support and generosity in the writing of this thesis. I would especially like to thank her for her unwavering confidence and interest in the project and in my ability to put it all together. Thanks also to the School of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales for the resources and the space to complete this thesis.

To my friends - Wojciech Nadachowski, Ann Murphy, Dave Cranmer, Toni Hurley, Mai Paola, Isis Ibrahim, Daniel Nourry, Greg Leaney, Mary Symons and Chelsea Friend – thankyou for your friendship, humour and inspiration. I would especially like to thank Ann Murphy for proof reading the manuscript, Anthony Sorial for his computer expertise and Lydia Sorial for always being the calm voice of reason. I would also like to express my thanks to my family - Venice, Sobhi, Lydia and Anthony - for their unceasing patience, unconditional generosity and love. It is to them that I dedicate this work.

Some of the material in chapters four and five has been published in the following journals: “Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of ’s Embodiment: An Ethics of Touch and Spacing” appeared in Philosophy Today, Vol. 48 no. 2, Summer 2004 and “Heidegger and the Ontology of Freedom” in International Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming, June 2006).

iii Abstract

The argument of this thesis is that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute another form of solipsism and is not incongruent with Heidegger’s account of Mitsein (being- with). By demonstrating how individuation is bound up with Mitsein I will also argue that this concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived here as responsibility for one’s Being/existence that nevertheless implicates others. By tracing the trajectory of

Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time to the later text, Time and Being, I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to Dasein as an individual contains an ethical moment. Ethics, not conceived of as a series of proscriptions, in terms of the

Kantian Categorical Imperative for example. Nor ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and responsibility for another, as in Levinasian ethics, but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. The ethical moment in Heidegger, I argue, is not one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of changing oneself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in response to the call of

Being. I will show how, given that Dasein is always Mitsein, others are situated in such an ethics.

Central to the thesis is an examination of the relation between indivduation and Mitsein.

While Heidegger is always careful to distinguish his form of individuation from accounts of individuation or solipsism, such as those of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant or ’s, Heidegger’s conception of solipsism and its relation to his account

vi of Mitsein remains somewhat obscure. As a consequence, there are several problems that this concept raises, all of which have been the subject of much debate. At the centre of this debate is the apparent tension between the concept of individuation and the notion that ontologically, Dasein is also a Mitsein. This tension has led to a number of interpretations, which either argue that the concept of individuation is inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein, or that it constitutes yet another instance of Cartesian subjectivity and that as a consequence, it is inherently unethical.

This thesis contributes to this debate by submitting that the concept of individuation, while primary or central to Heidegger’s ontology, is not in tension with his account of

Mitsein. I use Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular to argue for this claim.

I suggest that it is precisely this concept of individuation that can inform an ethics and theory of political action on account of the emphasis on individual responsibility. The second part of my argument, also made with the aid of Nancy, is that this can inform an ethics and a theory of political action, not at level of making moral judgements, or yielding standards of right and wrong, but at the level of individual and by implication, collective responsibility for one’s own existence. Given that there is no real separation between the and ontological levels in Heidegger’s work, a taking responsibility at the level of one’s own Being will invariably play itself out ontically in factical life in terms of moral responsibility and judgement.

I explore the concrete political implications of this through an examination of

Heidegger’s account of freedom. I argue that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the

vi ontology of self-presence and his alternative conception of it provides us with a way of thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set of rights, but as a mode of being-in-the- world and as the basis for collective political action. I use the work of to develop a theory of political action, freedom and judgment from this revisionary conception of freedom.

vi Contents

Acknowledgments iii

Abstract vi

Introduction 1

1. Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation 12

2. Individuation, Mitsein and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Logic of the Singular 70

3. Ontology and the Question of the Ethico-Political 122

4. Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of Dasein’s Embodiment: An ethics of touch and spacing 177

5. Freedom and Collective Responsibility: Heidegger, Arendt and Political Action 220

Conclusion 266

List of References 272

ii ii Introduction

The argument of this thesis is that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute another form of solipsism and is not incongruent with Heidegger’s account of Mitsein (being- with). By demonstrating how individuation is bound up with Mitsein, I will argue that this concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived here as responsibility for one’s

Being/existence. By tracing the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time to the later text, Time and Being,1 I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to Dasein as an individual contains an ethical moment. Ethics, not conceived of as a series of proscriptions, in terms of the Kantian Categorical Imperative for example.

Nor ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and responsibility for another, as in

Levinasian ethics; but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. The ethical moment in Heidegger, I argue, is not one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of changing oneself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in response to the call of Being; a call that has already claimed Dasein in some way. To be, I will argue, is to be responsible for the conduct of oneself.

1 The primary focus in this thesis is on Being and Time, however, I also refer to other texts such as Time and Being, “The Letter on Humanism,” Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology to substantiate this reading. While I concede that Heidegger’s work undergoes various shifts in emphasis, most notably, the shift from a preoccupation with Dasein to that of Being, I am reading him as having a single preoccupation, in line with his idea, expressed in the Nietzsche lectures that each thinker pursues a single trajectory. This preoccupation, on my reading, is the question of Being, as accessed through Dasein.

1 Heidegger and individuation

Heidegger’s notion of individuation, also referred to as his existential solipsism, is a recurring one in his work. While he is always careful to distinguish it from other accounts of individuation or solipsism, such as those of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant or

Edmund Husserl’s, Heidegger’s formulation and its relation to his account of Mitsein remains somewhat obscure.2 For example, in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics he writes:

In becoming finite … there occurs an individuation of man with respect to his Dasein. Individuation – this does not mean that man clings to his frail little ego that puffs itself up against something or other which it takes to be the world. This individuation is rather that solitariness in which each human being first of all enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world. What is this solitude, where each human being will be as though unique?3

In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he reiterates that his formulation of individuation is not another form of solipsism because it is concomitantly being-with- others:

Existence as together and with one another is founded on the genuine individuation of the individual, determined by enpresenting in the sense of the

2 While individuation is a recurring theme in Heidegger’s work, the concept is replaced with an authoritarian claim in 1933 that one decisive individual should decide on behalf of the German people as a whole. In an appeal to German students on 3 November 1933, Heidegger invests Hitler with supreme moral authority, claiming that one should not guide one’s life by moral maxims, because “the Fuhrer himself and alone is present and future Germany and its law.” In “Aufruf an die Deutschen Studenten” of 3 November 1933, Freiburger Studentenzeitung, vol. 8, no. 1, 1933, p.1. Reprinted in Herman Philipse, “Heidegger and Ethics” Inquiry, 42, p.439. I will address this tension between individuation and the fate of the Volk under a dictator in chapter five 3 , The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude trans. William McNeill and Nicolas Walker. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, p.6. Hereafter cited as FCM.

2 instant. Individuation does not mean clinging obstinately to one’s own private wishes but being free for the factical possibilities of current existence.4

In Being and Time, the concept of individuation initially emerges in the discussion of

“mineness” and is fleshed out in terms of the mood of anxiety, authenticity and being- toward-death. In experiencing the mood of anxiety, Heidegger writes:

Anxiety individualises Dasein for its ownmost being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities … anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individuation.5

The experience of authenticity is described as one where Dasein isolates itself from the world of the ‘they,’ the only public or social world described in Being and Time. The experience of being-toward-death discloses to Dasein the extent to which it is solitary, non-relational, and that ultimately, each Dasein dies alone, irrespective of how many people are by its side.

Despite these assertions and qualifications that individuation is not intended as a reproduction of individuation in the Cartesian, Husserlian or Kantian sense of the term, there are several problems that this concept raises, all of which have been the subject of much debate. At the centre of this debate is the apparent tension between the concept of individuation and the notion that ontologically, Dasein is also a Mitsein. This tension has led to a number of interpretations, which either argue that the concept of individuation is

4 Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Bloomington & Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998, p.288. Hereafter cited as BBP. 5 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford & Cambridge: Blackwell, 1962, p. 187-8; 232. Hereafter cited as BT.

3 incongruent with the notion of Mitsein, or that it constitutes yet another instance of

Cartesian subjectivity and that as a consequence, it is inherently unethical. Others have argued that the concept of Mitsein, while being underdeveloped, is not only central to

Heidegger’s ontology, but can be used as the basis upon which to construct an ethics.

Alternatively, it is argued that while Heidegger’s work is not explicitly ethical, it nevertheless challenges the way in which we relate to one another, thereby rendering ethics, conceived in terms of an obligation toward others, possible.

For , for example, Heideggerian individuation is inconsistent with his conception of das Man, rendering the idea ‘incoherent,’ ‘confused’ and

‘incomprehensible.’6 For Jacques Taminiaux, it represents the culmination of the modern metaphysics of subjectivity, where Dasein’s relation to itself is described in terms of a solipsistic closure.7 For Patricia Huntington, while there are resonances of “receptivity and solicitude for others” evident in Heidegger’s notion of care, “we also hear a deeper, masculine, and even heroic undertone resonate in his descriptions of authentic resolve … for all the talk of overcoming abstractions and giving up myths of mastery, Being and

Time remains shot through with an ethos of stoic resolve reminiscent of the masculinist posture.”8

6 Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p. 151. 7 Jacques Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. Michael Gendra Suny: Albany,1991, p.xix. 8 Patricia J. Huntington, Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998, p. 5-6.

4 The consequence of this, as for example argues, is that Heidegger’s conception of individuation, insofar as it constitutes a preoccupation with one’s own being, constitutes an ethical closure.9 For Herman Philipse, there are several reasons as to why Heidegger’s thinking is inherently unethical. Firstly, there is the tension between the account of individual authenticity and the idea of Mitsein. Secondly, there is Heidegger’s replacement of his individualist decisionism with an authoritarian variety, where one decisive individual decides on behalf of the German people as a whole. Thirdly, and related to the previous point, there is the problematic, if not paradoxical account of individual authenticity and the idea of a Volk, in which the destiny of the individual is tied to the destiny of a nation or of a people as a form of collective authenticity. These points, coupled with his agreement with Hitler that “the individual, wherever he stands, does not count”10 and various claims about ethics and morality in general, suggest that

Heidegger’s career as a moral philosopher was not very promising. Nor is the attempt to use his work to inform a ethics or theory of political action.11

Other interpretations, such as that of Frederick Olafson use Heidegger’s notion of Mitsein to develop a justification for moral commitments towards others that overcomes the traditional dilemma of moral heteronomy versus moral autonomy (Philipse 1999: 445).

The problem however is that while Heidegger did emphasise that being-with is a fundamental or ontological characteristic of human life, he never showed what Olafson

9 Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” trans. Peter Atterton in Philosophy Today, Summer 1989 for example. I address this claim in greater detail in chapter three. 10 Martin Heidegger, Letter of December 20, 1933 to the staff and faculties of Freiburg University, quoted in Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie. Frankfurt & New York: Campus Verlag, 1988, p.229. 11 Herman Philipse, “Heidegger and Ethics” in Inquiry, Vol.42, 1999, p.445.

5 intends to demonstrate. That is, that “our relation to one another can by itself yield standards of right and wrong.”12 Or, as Philipse points out, he could never positively answer the question “as to whether this choice that we are called to make is itself subject to any standard of judgement” (Philipse 1999: 445).

Other interpretations, such as that of Krzysztof Ziarek, argue that while there is no imperative in Heidegger to respond to the other, or an insistence of an obligation to the other, by challenging the way in which we have traditionally conceptualised our relation to the world and to each other, Heidegger’s ontology creates the conditions upon which we can construct an ethics.13 Ziarek argues that if, as thinkers such as Levinas and

Derrida, Irigaray and Nancy argue, violence and oppression originate in the wake of thought that effaces , then Heidegger’s ethos of thinking constitutes an intervention into the “originary moment of violence inherent in thought itself” (Ziarek

1995: 394). Heidegger’s work “… locates the operations of violence and erasure of alterity on a different level, by re-examining the structural inscription of violence in the

‘metaphysical’ practices of thought” (Ziarek 1995: 394).

This thesis contributes to this debate by submitting that the concept of individuation, while primary or central to Heidegger’s ontology, is not in tension with his account of

Mitsein. I use Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular to argue for this

12 Frederick Olafson, Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics: a study of Mitsein, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1998, p.3. 13 Krzysztof Ziarek, “The Ethos of Everydayness: Heidegger on poetry and language” in Man and World, 1995; 28(4) p. 394

6 claim.14 I suggest that it is precisely this concept of individuation that can inform an ethics and theory of political action on account of the emphasis on individual responsibility. The second part of my argument, also made with the aid of Nancy, is that this can inform an ethics and a theory of political action, not at level of making moral judgements, or yielding standards of right and wrong, but at the level of individual and by implication, collective responsibility for one’s own existence. Given that there is no real separation between the ontic and ontological levels in Heidegger’s work, a taking responsibility at the level of one’s own Being will invariably play itself out ontically in factical life in terms of moral responsibility and judgement.15

The structure of my argument is as follows: the first chapter examines the way in which the problem of solipsism emerges in the philosophical tradition, Heidegger’s critique of it, as expressed in the “Age of the World as Picture” and how his conception of the subject differs from that of Cartesian subjectivity. I examine the ontological structure of

Heidegger’s Dasein, primarily in terms of Heidegger’s claims that Dasein is also ontologically a Mitsein. I then examine the possible tension that arises between this account of Mitsein and the radical individuation that Heidegger endorses in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and death. Finally, I examine the tension between

14 I am in debted to François Raffoul for drawing attention to the possibility of reading Heidegger in this way in his comprehensive book dealing with this issue, Heidegger and the Subject, trans. David Pettigrew and Gregory Recco, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1998. 15 I examine this in greater detail in chapter three and again in chapter five in terms of Hannah Arendt’s theory of political action and freedom as intersubjective. See also Heidegger’s interview, “Only a God can Save us now” in Der Spiegel, trans. Maria P. Alter & John Caputo, in Philosophy Today, XX (4/4), 1976. Heidegger answers the question about his concern for political situations by claiming: “at the time I was completely taken up with the questions that are developed in Being and Time (1927) and in the writings and lectures of the following years. These are the fundamental questions of thinking which in an indirect way affect even national and social questions.” p.269.

7 individuation and the form of authentic Mitsein in terms of the destiny or fate of the Volk in section 74 of Being and Time.

In the second chapter, I suggest that it is possible to reconcile this tension between

Mitsein, authenticity and individuation, by drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular. I should point out that Jean-Luc Nancy raises a similar concern to that of the commentators previously referred to insofar as he argues that while Heidegger did attempt to show that being-toward-death is only possible because Dasein is not a subject in the Cartesian or liberal sense of the term, when it came to the question of community, Heidegger went astray. As a consequence, Dasein’s being toward death was never really implicated in its being-with.16 While I use Nancy’s logic of the singular to defend Heidegger’s notion of individuation as consistent with Mitsein, I argue that

Dasein’s individuation in the face of its being toward death is not problematic or inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein.

The third chapter addresses the question of whether an ethics of responsibility or theory of political action can be constructed on this concept of individuation. This is necessary on account of Heidegger’s claims made in both Being and Time and the “Letter on

Humanism,” that his preoccupation with ontology precludes an examination of ethics, and that ontology has little to do with ethics and action. My discussion in this chapter is framed in the context of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger. I exclusively examine

Levinas’ claim that Heidegger’s ontology closes the ethical relation to the other on

16 Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural trans. Robert D. Richardson & Anne E. O’Byrne, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.p.14. Hereafter cited as BSP.

8 account of its preoccupation with one’s own Being, and the role the understanding plays.

In this chapter, I argue against Levinas’ claim that for Heidegger, the relation I have with

Being by virtue of the ontological takes priority over the relation I have to the other. On the contrary, I want to suggest that it is only by virtue of Being that I can have an ethical relation to the other in the first place. A conclusion that interestingly enough,

Levinas reaches in his final engagement with Heidegger.

I suggest that the ethical moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take responsibility for its own Being. Based on the argument developed in chapters one and two that Dasein is also a Mitsein despite its individuation, its responsibility for its own Being necessarily entails a responsibility for the other. The consequence of my argument is that ontology and ethics – conceived as responsibility for the conduct of oneself – are not as mutually exclusive as Levinas contends.

Chapter four builds upon the notion of individuation as responsibility for self and responsibility for others by arguing for an ethics based on the concepts of spacing and distance. With Jean-Luc Nancy, I develop an account of ethics based on the concepts of touch and spacing, from out of a discussion of Heidegger and the question of embodiment. I argue against the claim that Heidegger’s work constitutes a disavowal of corporeality and suggest that while the body is not directly addressed in Heidegger’s work, it is consistently evoked in other ways. My argument suggests that rather than abandon the body, Heidegger inadvertently creates a space for it; a space that opens,

9 rather than closes ethical obligation. I do this primarily through an examination of

Heidegger’s reconfiguration of the relation between space and time.

The fifth chapter examines Heidegger’s account of freedom. Here, I examine Heidegger’s later formulation of freedom as expressed in The Essence of Human Freedom and examine why it remains of value in a perusal of an ontological interrogation of freedom. I argue against the claim that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the subject unravels

Dasein’s ontological structure as explicated in Being and Time. By reading the later formulation of freedom against the earlier, the second section of this chapter traces the parallels and similarities between the two conceptions of freedom in order to show the way in which Heidegger’s thinking remains consistent. The final section fills out the contours of Heidegger’s indeterminate conception of freedom. I argue against the claim that Heideggerian freedom constitutes a disavowal of community or Mitsein, by demonstrating how Heidegger reconciles the rift between freedom and fraternity. This final chapter draws out the political implications of this with specific reference to Hannah

Arendt’s conception of political action as based on an ontological conception of freedom.

Rather than downplay the notion of individuation on account of criticisms that suggest that it is inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein, and that it is unethical insofar as it constitutes a preoccupation with one’s own Being, this thesis will argue that it is precisely because of this concept that Heideggerian ontology can inform an ethics and a theory of political action. The ethical moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned to take responsibility for its existence. To be, for Heidegger, is to be

10 responsible for how one conducts oneself, to claim one’s actions as one’s own and to claim responsibility for the consequences of those actions.17

17 The ethics that announces itself here is ironically, one that Heidegger failed to heed.

11 Chapter One Heidegger and the problem of individuation

The argument of this thesis is that Heidegger’s concept of individuation is fundamentally different from the type of solipsism Heidegger sought to evade and that it is consistent with the account of Mitsein. Moreover, I argue that it contains an ethics of responsibility for one’s own existence, and for that of the other as a necessary implication. This chapter is intended to set up the problematic of individuation as it emerges in Heidegger’s thinking, with the primary focus being on the earlier texts Being and Time, Fundamental

Concepts of Metaphysics and Basic Problems of Phenomenology.1 The first section examines the way in which the problem of solipsism emerges in the philosophical tradition, Heidegger’s critique of it in terms of the problem of mediation, the problem of other minds and the problem of alienation or nihilism as expressed in both Being and

Time and the “Age of the World as Picture.” The second section examines the ontological structure of Dasein, primarily in terms of Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is also ontologically a Mitsein. In the final section, I examine the possible tension that arises between this account of Mitsein and the individuation that Heidegger endorses in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and death, and between individuation and the form of authentic Mitsein in terms of the destiny or fate of the Volk in section 74 of Being and

Time.

1 The reason why I have chosen to focus exclusively on these texts and not on the later ones, despite the fact that I read the later work as consistent with the earlier work is that the earlier texts focus on the analytic of Dasein as a way into the question of Being, while the later texts shift the emphasis from Dasein to the relation Dasein has with its own Being. In this sense, the later work reiterates the theme of individuation, insofar as it concerns the exclusive relation between Dasein and its Being, or concerns the preoccupation Dasein has with its Being.

12 i. Philosophy and the problem of solipsism.

This section explores the way in which the problem of solipsism emerges in the philosophical tradition by way of Rene Descartes. I have chosen Descartes as my point of departure because he is Heidegger’s primary interlocutor. As Heidegger writes: “… the aim of the existential analytic can be made plainer by considering Descartes, who is credited with providing the point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry by his discovery of the ‘cogito sum’” (BT46/71). In what way then, is Descartes responsible for the rise of solipsism and what are the problems associated with a conception of the subject as individual? The answer lies in the consequences of Descartes’ method of radical doubt, employed in his attempt to establish a secure foundation for knowledge.

As Edmund Husserl points out, this demand for a systematic account of knowledge gives rise to a philosophy oriented toward the subject itself.2 The turn toward the subject is made at two levels. The first involves that the philosopher must withdraw into himself and attempt to overthrow and rebuild all the sciences that he has, until then, been accepting by doubting their validity. It suggests, as Husserl points out that “philosophy – wisdom – is the philosopher’s quite personal affair. It must arise as his wisdom, as his self-acquired knowledge tending toward universality, a knowledge for which he can answer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights” (CM

2). The second level is the reduction of everything to the pure ego: “the mediator keeps only himself, qua pure ego of his cogitations, as having an absolutely indubitable

2 Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology trans. Dorion Cairns. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, p. 2. Hereafter cited as CM.

13 existence, as something that would exist even though this world were non-existent” (CM

3).

The method of radical doubt gives rise to both dualism and solipsism. That is, that the mind and body are two distinct and independent substances, which can interact with each other; and solipsism because what we are logically left with is a solitary ego existing independently of not only its own body, but others as well. The problem here is not so much that there really isn’t a world, but that the subject is a self-enclosed consciousness, cut off and in logical isolation from the world. As Husserl argues, “thus reduced, the ego carries on a kind of solipsistic philosophizing. He seeks apodictically certain ways by which, within his own pure inwardness, an Objective outwardness can be deduced” (CM

3).

There are primarily three problems with Descartes’ account that Heidegger either explicitly or implicitly addresses. The first is the problem of mediation. That is, of how a subject can take leave of this inner sphere of ownness in order to procure knowledge of the outside world. Heidegger writes:

The more unequivocally one maintains that knowing is proximally and really ‘inside’ … the problem [arises] of how this knowing subject comes out of its inner ‘sphere’ into one which is ‘other and external,’ of how knowing can have any object at all, and of how one must think of the object itself so that eventually the subject knows it without needing to venture a leap into another sphere. (BT 60/87)

14 While it is possible to argue in response that this sphere of immanence is not to be interpreted as a ‘box’ or ‘cabinet’ in which representations are stored, this does not, for

Heidegger, answer the central question of how knowledge, in terms of both its acquisition and communication, makes its way out of this sphere of immanence and achieves transcendence (BT 60-1/87). Part of the problem here lies in the way in which we conceptualise the mind and its relation to the outside. The problem seemingly emerges because we think of the mind as invisible, private and inaccessible to the outside world.

The second problematic consequence of Descartes’ method of doubt is the problem of other minds – of how a subject can encounter another subject as a subject rather than as an object of its representation. If, as Descartes maintains, the mind is what is inaccessible and invisible, then it follows that I alone am able to grasp it. On this account, I cannot reach other lives and other thought processes. Because I am unable to access the psychic or mind of the other directly, it follows that I can only seize the other’s mind indirectly, as it is mediated by bodily experiences. So while I can see others in the flesh, I can never know what the other is thinking, or that their experiences of colour, and sound for example, are the same as mine. If this is the case, then how is it possible to suppose that there is someone who experiences his or her body as I experience mine?3

The third problem is that this conception of the subject fails to disclose Dasein ontologically, which in turns, leads to alienation and nihilism. For Heidegger, by positing the subject as detached from the world, and by conceiving the world as something that

3 For a further discussion on the problem of solipsism as arising from the way we conceive of the mind, see M.C.Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997, p. 113-4 and chapters 1 & 7.

15 can be known by the subject in isolation from a concrete engagement with it obscures or conceals ontological Being: “One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an ‘I’ or subject as that which is proximally given we shall completely miss the phenomenal content of Dasein” (BT 46/72) and “when … we come to the question of man’s Being, this is not something we can simply compute by adding together those kinds of Being whose nature has yet to be determined” (BT 46/74).

A related problem is the conception of the world that this leaves us with. In the “Age of the World Picture”4 and his lectures on Nietzsche, Heidegger examines the effects this conception of subjectivity has in terms of alienation and nihilism.5 He argues that what has characterised modernity since the Renaissance is not that it merely substitutes one world view in the place of another, but rather that the modern world defines itself by an attempt to “conquer the world as image” (AWP 129). To conceive of the world as such an “image” or “picture” means that Man must embark on a project of conquest; of objectifying or representing the world by imposing his own meaning upon it.

4 Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture” in Question Concerning Technology. Trans. W.Lovitt. Harper and Row, 1977. Hereafter cited as AWP. 5 It should be noted that this problem of alienation had already been raised by Husserl and Hegel. According to Hegel, there are five specific problems that arise from conceiving of the world and others as objective realities. Firstly, it creates a split between reason and passion. Once men identify themselves as spiritual beings, they contrast themselves with their own bodies. Alienated from the natural world, people conceive of themselves as immaterial souls, and become embarrassed by their ‘animal functions.’ They come to perceive their senses and passion as enemies that must be controlled by their reason. Secondly, it not only alienates man from his body, but also from others. Consequently, it renders the subject as alienated from a sense of community. Thirdly, men become alienated insofar as they feel inessential to the way things are. To conceive ourselves as mere spectators of an objective reality is to deny that we have any responsibility for the articulation of that reality. While we can understand the world as a series of causal laws, we do not understand it as our world, invested with the meanings we give it; it is not a world that matters to us, as such. Finally, as alienated, we cannot be free. See David Cooper, : A Reconstruction, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999 p. 22 and Edmund Husserl, The crisis of the European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: an introduction to phenomenological philosophy, trans. David Carr, Evanston: Northwesstern University Press, 1970.

16 More specifically, Heidegger characterises modernity as the age of science and technology, an age where art moves into the sphere of aesthetics, meaning that art has become commodified: a mere object for the expression of human activity. It is an age where human activity, however barbarous, is conceived and legitimised as a part of culture and where there exists a demise of the gods (AWP 116). The phenomenon underlying these characteristics is that rather than cultivate a relation to the world that enables Man to be immediately responsive, open and receptive to whatever experience is being presented, be it technology, art or science, Man seeks to master and control the revealing of Being that presents itself. Man attempts to reveal Being, rather than allow

Being to reveal itself to Man (AWP 131).

Heidegger traces the development of the philosophical subject to the Pre-Socratics, particularly to the thought of Protagoras. But the subject announced there was a radically different conception of subjectivity than that found in the modern world. For Protagoras,

“Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, and of things that are not, that they are not.”6 While Heidegger remarks that this statement shares close affinities with

Descartes' thinking, the fundamental difference is that what is being presented to this

Greek subject is presented in a realm of “unconcealment in which Being comes to presence” (Nietzsche IV: 93). What Heidegger means by this is that by lingering in the realm of the unconcealed, the subject belongs in a fixed radius of things present to him, as opposed to an origin around which the world orbits. In the Greek notion of subjectivity: “there is no here of the thought that the being as such has to be

6 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume IV: Nihilism. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, New York: Harper & Row Publishers, 1991, p.91.

17 oriented toward the self-posited ego as subject, that the subject is the judge of all beings and their Being, and that by virtue of this judgeship the subject may with absolute certitude decide about the objectivity of objects” (Nietzsche IV: 95).

For Heidegger, the interpretation of subjectivity in modernity differs because this notion of unconcealment is forgotten. For the modern subject, Being becomes accessible when the ‘I’ as subject represents an object, or when an object is “brought forth” by a subject and becomes fixed in its place. Such bringing forth confirms and affirms the place of the subject. Through the power of representation, the subject becomes the “reference point of beings as such” (AWP 128).

By drawing this difference between the Greek and modern conceptions of subjectivity,

Heidegger seeks to explore the way in which we have arrived at the positing of the

‘subject’ in modernity and how this subject has acquired this power of representation. He asks, “Whence does that dominance of the subjective come that guides modern humanity and its understanding of the world?” (Nietzsche IV: 96). What differs is that the traditional guiding question of metaphysics, “What is being,” is transformed at the beginning of modern metaphysics into a question of method: “the path along which the absolutely certain and secure is sought by man himself for man himself, the path by which the essence of truth is circumscribed. The question ‘what is the being’? is transformed into a question about the absolute, unshakable ground of truth” (Nietzsche

IV: 97).

18 Heidegger takes the practice of modern science as paradigmatic of the modern emphasis on method, security in repeatable results, and the attainment of certainty. For Heidegger, the specific scientific method that is refined in modernity serves to objectify the world:

“the objectifying of whatever is, is accomplished in a setting – before, a representing , that aims at bringing each particular being before it in such a way that man who calculates can be sure, and that means, be certain, of that being” (AWP 127). (emphasis added). This methodological approach signals an epoch where science and art are no longer conceived as a ‘bringing forth’ or Techne. This refers to the manner in which through art and handicraft, Man participated in conjunction with other contributing elements of nature to bring forth a thing into being.7 In becoming concerned with the attainment of certainty, Man distances himself from Being, no longer receiving that which is “represented” with openness, but by seeking to control and fix it.

Heidegger sees this phenomenon as the logic of the history of the West, which begins with Greek philosophy, is carried through by Christian theology and ratified in the thought of Descartes, who continues and transforms subjectivist philosophy. Heidegger isolates Descartes' statement, “I think therefore I am” as the beginning of modern philosophy. In the Cogito: “all consciousness of things and of being as a whole is referred back to the self-consciousness of the human subject as the unshakable ground of all certainty. The reality of the real is defined in later times as objectivity, as something that is conceived by and for the subject as what is thrown and stands over against it”

(Nietzsche IV: 86). Taking its cue from Descartes, “the whole of modern metaphysics

7 Heidegger. "The Question Concerning Technology" in Question Concerning Technology and other essays, trans. William Lovit, New York: Harper & Row, 1977, p.7-8.

19 taken together, Nietzsche included, maintains itself within the interpretation of what is to be and of truth that was prepared by Descartes” (AWP 127).

For Heidegger, in modernity Man therefore, “… becomes that being upon which all that is, is grounded as regards the manner of its being and its truth. Man becomes the relational center of that which is as such” (AWP 128). Once Man has assumed this position of subject, his relation to the world must necessarily change. This change takes the form of a reconfiguration of the world in the form of an object, or a picture:

world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world but the world conceived and grasped as a picture. What is, in its entirety, is now taken in such a way that it first is in being and only is in being to the extent that it is set up by man, who represents and sets forth … The Being of whatever is, is sought and found in the representation of the latter. (AWP 130) (emphasis added)

To be a subject in modernity Man attempts to determine meaning, as opposed to allowing meaning to reveal itself to him: Being is found in “Man's setting forth.”

Taking this as a representational model, Heidegger conceives the modern experience in terms of Greek tragedy because the subjectivist position that Man occupies means that the world becomes for Man, something to be conquered, mastered and controlled: “man brings into play his unlimited power for the calculating, planning and molding of all things … it is one of the pathways upon which the modern age rages toward fulfillment of its essence, with a velocity unknown to the participants” (AWP 135). The consequence of this is that “man has fallen out of being without knowing it.” After the age of the

20 Greeks, “the light of the [human] clearing was diminished by the blazing fire of arrogance, which only calculated the measure from the entity.”8 The tragedy is that this hubris of Man, this “insurrection” against Being, invites its nemesis: nihilism.

There are then, three problems that arise as a consequence of conceiving the subject as a detached and disengaged spectator of a world unfolding before it. The problem of mediation, the problem of other minds – that is, of how a subject can encounter another subject precisely as a subject rather than as an object of its representation – and the problem of nihilism. It is primarily the problem of others and the nature of our intersubjective relations that will be of central concern in this thesis. The problems of mediation and nihilism will remain peripheral to the central theme of solipsism or individuation.

The first question that presents itself is whether Heidegger’s account of Dasein as ontologically being-in-the-world and being-with-others overcomes solipsism given that there is a radical sense of individuation that permeates Heidegger’s text. My way into this question is via Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s notion that our intersubjective relations are founded on the experience of empathy. Husserl offers a formulation of as a way of responding to the problem of other minds in Cartesian

Meditations. In the fifth meditation, Husserl argues that in reducing the I to an absolute transcendental ego by the phenomenological epoché, the I does not become a solus ipse.

In experiencing the world, I also experience others as also existing, on the one hand, as

8 Heidegger cited in Michael Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with modernity: technology, politics and art, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, p.95.

21 objects in my world, but at the same time, as subjects in the world, experiencing the same world that I experience. Moreover, others experience me at the same time as I experience the world and others in it:

… within myself, within the limits of my transcendentally reduced pure conscious life, I experience the world (including others) – and according to its experiential sense, not as … my private synthetic formation but as other than mine alone, as an intersubjective world, actually there for everyone else, accessible in respect of its objects to everyone. And yet each has his experiences, his appearances and appearance-unities, his world-phenomenon; whereas the experienced world exists in itself, over against all experiencing subjects and their world phenomena. (CM 91)

The first step in the argument is thus identifying that we experience others as subjects, who experience the world in the same way I do. But in what way then, do I relate or encounter the other as a subject? What is the basis of my encounter with the other?

Husserl writes:

the ‘other’, according to his own constituted sense, points to me myself; the other is a ‘mirroring’ of my own self and yet not the mirroring proper, an analogue of my own self and yet again not an analogue in the usual sense. Accordingly … how can my ego, within his peculiar ownness, constitute under the name, ‘experience of something other’, precisely something other? (CM 94)

For Husserl, the other is given to me by necessity and not by choice, as an actuality that I have to acknowledge. In my own experience, I experience not only myself, but others and this is not the same as my experience of objects. The experience of others occurs in a particular form, the form of “experiencing someone else” (CM 148). The basis of this experience is the concept of ‘mirroring’ or ‘pairing,’ where the other is both analogous to myself and not analogous. The reason being that while I can recognise the other as a

22 subject because the other seems to experience the world in the same way I do, there is also a certain gap or an emptiness in my experience of the other. For Husserl, other humans are only given to me through ‘indications’ or ‘appresentations,’ which have their own form of verification, since the experience of the other is not given in its original state

(CM 114).

The character of the existent ‘other’ has its basis in this kind of verifiable accessibility of what is not originally accessible. Whatever can become presented, and evidently verified, originally – is something I am; or else it belongs to me as something peculiarly my own. Whatever, by virtue thereof, in that founded manner which characterizes a primordially unfulfillable experience – an experience that does not give something itself originally but that consistently verifies something indicated – is ‘other.’ (CM 114)

The other is thus a phenomenological modification of myself, grasped within my

‘ownness” on the basis of something like analogy.

In seeking to explain the experience one subject has of another, Husserl uses the notion of empathy to illustrate these concepts of mirroring or pairing as the basis for the experience of the other. For Heidegger, Husserl nevertheless fails in giving an adequate account of intersubjective relations for two reasons: firstly, because he fails to explain why we feel empathy in the first place, and secondly, because relations with others are reduced to the sphere of the subject’s “ownness” thereby reproducing solipsism.

Empathy, for Husserl, refers to the way in which I can read into another’s actions an expression of an inner state that is similar to my own. For example, I can see and recognize that another person is grieving over the death of a loved one because I have had

23 a similar experience and it provoked a similar response, but I cannot live the other’s experience of grief. As points out in her 1917 publication on Husserl and the problem of empathy, we can never obtain an orientation from which one can perceive the other’s pain, joy or embarrassment directly. I can live in the other’s experience on account of it being analogous to my own, but I do not undergo that experience in myself in an original fashion. Empathy is a non-primordial experience, which reveals a primordial experience:

The subject of the empathised experience, however, is not the subject empathizing, but another … These two subjects are separate and not joined together, as previously, by a consciousness of sameness or a continuity of experience. And while I am living in the other’s joy, I do not feel primordial joy. It does not issue live from my ‘I.’9

I cannot therefore, experience the other’s pain in full bodily presence. Rather, it is given to me in the same way objects are given to me in memory, in a kind of representation or as a kind of perception: “empathy is a kind of act of perceiving” (Stein 1964: 11).

Further, as Dermot Moran points out, it is by virtue of my own experiences that I understand there are other viewpoints on similar experiences. When I experience another person, I apperceive them as having the kind of experiences I would have if I were in his or her place. On the basis of these kinds of ‘paring’ experiences, I experience the other person as a body like myself; as a sensuous, living and animate body that is an expression of a person’s psychic self.10 And in the end, it all ultimately comes back to the subject.

While we are factically and concretely intersubjective, in the sense that others give me

9 Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Trans. Waltraut Stein, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964, p. 11. 10 Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology. London & New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 177.

24 my name, teach me a language, and inculcate me into a world of shared social and cultural meanings, this is only possible because as an ego, I am able to make sense of these directions and this socialisation (Moran 2000: 177). The understanding of the mental life of the other lies in one’s own self-understanding:

‘In’ myself I experience and know the other; in me he becomes constituted – appresentatively mirrored, not constituted as the original. Hence it can very well be said, in a broadened sense, that the ego acquires – that I, as the one who meditatingly explcaites, acquire by ‘self-explication’ every transcendency … everything I, qua transcendental ego, know as existing in consequence of myself, and explicate as constituted in myself, must belong to me as part of my own essence. (CM 149)

Consequently, it is arguable that Husserl does not overcome solipsism, given that everything is reduced to one’s sphere of ownness. Further, the concepts of ‘pairing’ or

‘mirroring’ and empathy, still does not answer the more fundamental question of what it is that enables us to experience empathy in the first place. This is precisely the criticism that Heidegger directs at Husserl. For Heidegger, Husserl has failed to address the ontological dimension to intersubjective relations – this being that we are only able to experience empathy for another not because of an ability to recognise the behaviour of the other as mirroring my own, but by virtue of the fact that we are ontologically being- with-others, and it is on this basis that we can empathise or understand the other.11

11 For an analysis of Heidegger and the problem of empathy, see Lawrence Hatab, “The ecstatic nature of empathy: A Heideggerian opening for ethics” in Journal of Philosophical Research, Volume XXVI, 2001. Hatab argues that Heidegger does not in fact, downplay or disregard the role of empathy, but that it is a genuine possibility in human experience; that it should not be understood as a subjective phenomenon; that it is natural in a way that can trump psychological egoism and open up alternatives to ethical egoism; that the role of empathy demonstrates the limits of rationality in ethics and the structural defects in utilitarian and deontological theories. For these reasons, Hatab concludes that while empathy is not sufficient for an ethics, it may be a necessary condition for human moral development. p. 359.

25 The question thus arises as to whether Heidegger’s account of Dasein overcomes solipsism, given the centrality of the notion of individuation. The problem emerges in several ways: in the account of mineness, anxiety, authenticity, being toward death and in section 74, where he describes authentic being-with in terms of a destiny or fate of a nation or peoples. At stake here is not only the coherency of Heidegger’s account, but its potential for an ethics or theory of political action.

By showing the way in which the Heideggerian subject (Dasein) differs from its

Cartesian predecessor and the way in which Mitsein is part of Dasein’s ontological structure, this thesis argues that the type of individuation that emerges in Being and Time is fundamentally different to the metaphysical solipsism Heidegger sought to evade. The value of Heidegger’s analytic, I argue, is that it demonstrates that the solipsistic ego of metaphysics is both an ontological and logical impossibility. In doing so, it opens up a space for a conception of ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. This argument is further developed in the second chapter where I will argue that while Heidegger is emphatic in stating that Dasein is individuated in authenticity and death, in terms of being completely alone, cut off and isolated, Dasein’s isolation is that which opens it up to a relation with the other. That is, individuation is only possible because it is concomitant with being-with and, as such, is not inconsistent with the account of Mitsein.

26 ii. Heidegger’s solution to the problem of solipsism: the analytic of Dasein

To understand the way in which the problem of individuation emerges in Being and

Time, it is first necessary to address the general objectivities and structure of this text.

Heidegger’s thought is aimed at redressing the forgetfulness of Being that he identifies as endemic to the philosophical tradition since Aristotle, and the nihilism that it brings it in its wake. In the previous section, I outlined the way in which he makes a connection between the rise of nihilism, the forgetting of Being and the Cartesian conception of subjectivity as immanent, self-contained and self-certain. Part of the solution to this dilemma is a reconceptualisation of the subject in terms of Dasein: a subject that is immersed in the world, already understands how it functions, and has a serious investment in it:

We must keep in mind that knowing is grounded beforehand in a Being-already- alongside-the-world, which is essentially constitutive for Dasein’s Being. Proximally, this Being-already-alongside is not just a fixed staring at something that is purely present-at-hand. Being-in-the-world as concern, is fascinated by the world with which it is concerned. (BT 61/88)

There are two parts to Being and Time which cannot be separated: the question of Being and the analytic of Dasein. As previously pointed out, Heidegger project is to determine the meaning of Being, which he believes has been forgotten for a number of reasons: namely, because it is deemed the most universal of concepts, it is considered the emptiest; because it is it is indefinable, and because it is self-evident. Heidegger rejects

27 each of these claims.12 While he concedes that Being is elusive, self-evident and universal, this does not mean that we cannot determine its meaning. Being is elusive because it is not an entity, a concept, or spirit. Moreover, it is not reducible to entities, but it is that with which we are all marked. So if we are going to understand the problem of

Being, we must allow it to exhibit or manifest itself in a way that is essentially its own. If we are to gain access to Being, we must first give a proper explication of the entity/Dasein in which Being is going to manifest itself.

But why is Dasein chosen as the exemplary being and in what sense does it have priority?

There are three related reasons as to why Dasein has been chosen as the entity that exhibits Being. Firstly, it is the only entity capable of asking about Being. For Heidegger, to ask a question is to already have some sense of that which is asked about. Because

Dasein can ask about the question of Being, it must already have a sense of it. Further proof of this sense of Being is found in Dasein’s everyday statements, such as “the sky is blue” and “I am happy,” all of which point to the fact that Dasein already lives with a vague and indeterminate understanding of Being: “we do not know what ‘Being’ means.

But even if we ask ‘What is Being,’ we keep within an understanding of the ‘is,’ though we are unable to fix conceptually what that ‘is’ signifies. We do not even know the

12 In response, Heidegger suggests that just because being is the most universal concept, by no means suggests that it is clear or needs no further discussion. Rather, it is the darkest question of all, one that needs clarification. Secondly, the fact that it is indefinable means that it needs further interrogation. Thirdly, Heidegger does not deny that Being is self-evident. He argues that we have a vague and indeterminate understanding of being, demonstrated by our most banal statements such as the “sky is blue” and “I am merry.” However, the very fact that we already live with an understanding of being (or what he refers to as a pre-ontological understanding) demands that we need to raise the question again. An examination of these various prejudices in relation to the question of Being indicates that we not only lack an answer as to the meaning of Being, but that we don’t even know how to formulate the question. See BT 3-4/22-23.

28 horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed. But this vague average understanding of Being is still a fact” (BT 5/24).

Moreover, Heidegger argues that questioning constitutes who we are as subjects. He writes: ‘looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it – all these ways of behaviour are constitutive for our inquiry” (BT 7/26). These modes of questioning are ones that belong to us, which is why we the inquirers are the only entities capable of carrying out this investigation.

Secondly, Dasein is the only entity that has ontological priority, insofar as it is both ontic and ontological: “understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s

Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological” (BT 12/32). Ontic here refers to the level of everyday and our everyday understanding of existence. It includes such aspects as Dasein’s faciticty, the particular, concrete, inescapably contingent, yet worldly involved aspect of human existence. That is, Dasein’s body, its history, culture, family, upbringing, education and so forth. Interestingly, Heidegger includes such disciplines as ethics, politics, anthropology, history, mathematics and sociology, because these disciplines study Dasein in its ontic dimension only – as entities rather than as the beings that pose the question of the meaning of Being. Ontology on the other hand, is an inquiry explicitly devoted to the meaning of Being.13

13 Heidegger gives various formulations of this distinction throughout his work. Arguably, the clearest and most explicit formulation can be found in FCM, where he reiterates and elaborates that firstly, we fail to make the distinction between Being and beings precisely where we continually make use of it, specifically, whenever we say ‘is;’ secondly, that the distinction is obscure; thirdly, that we are already “moving within the distinction as it occurs. It is not we who make it, rather it happens to us as the fundamental occurrence

29 Dasein is ontically distinct because in its very being, Being is an issue for it. That is, because it is able to ask the question, because it cares about its Being in one way or another, it is also ontological. Which means that Dasein has priority because it already has a relationship to its own Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.

The kind of Being towards which Dasein comports itself is existence. This means that the meaning of Being is disclosed in existence, in the strong sense of the word. That is, it is disclosed in space and time, in Dasein’s being-there, in its practical involvement in the world of things, in the concrete and practical choices it makes in relation to its existence.

All of which points to a fundamental difference between Heidegger and the tradition of subjectivity that precedes him: Being is disclosed in existence rather than in consciousness.

Thirdly, we care about existence in some way insofar as the world matters to us, in both an implicit and explicit sense.14 This concern of humans for their being is called existenz:

“We shall call the very Being to which Dasein can relate in one way or another, and somehow always relate, existence” (BT 12/33) and “Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence, in terms of its possibility to be itself or not to be itself” (BT 12/33).

of our Dasein.” Fourthly, that this distinction does not happen from time, or arbitrarily, but fundamentally; and finally, that it is understood at all times, but is not explicitly articulated. See p.357. 14 For a further discussion on the idea that we are beings for whom things matter to us, and the relation to Kierkegaard, see Charles Guignon, “Philosophy and Authenticity: Heidegger’s search for a ground of philosophising” in in Essays in Honour of Hubert L.Dreyfus, Mark A. Wrathall and Jeff Malpas (eds.), Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. Guignon points out that the “theoretical attitude” is untenable because as Kierkegaard and Heidegger argue, only a being who cares about something has the ability to pick things out from the field of experience in order to get an understanding of the world. See, in particular, pp. 79 & 83.

30 Therefore, the question of being can only be answered through a clarification of the

Being of the creature to which Being is disclosed: “Dasein possesses an understanding of the Being of all beings unlike itself” (BT 13/34). But this understanding is grounded in its existence: “Dasein possess – in a manner constitutive of its understanding of existence – an understanding of the Being of all beings unlike itself” (BT 13/34). For this reason, ontology must be conducted as an existential analytic.15

Given the emphasis on the analytic of Dasein as the way into the question of Being, it could be all too easy to conclude that the human subject remains the primary point of access, and that consequently, Dasein is no different to either the Cartesian or transcendental ego, both of which derive an understanding of the world on the basis of an understanding of self, and both of which reduce all knowledge and understanding of the other to the sphere of ownness. But what separates Heidegger from this egoism and what is crucial for the purpose of the problem of individuation, is the way in which Heidegger conceives of the human subject: as a being without self-mastery and self-determination in the traditional or liberal sense of the term, because it is thrown into a world not of its making. Commenting on the project of Being and Time, Heidegger writes:

One need only observe the simple fact that in Being and Time the problem is set up outside the sphere of subjectivism – that the entire anthropological problematic is kept at a distance … for it to become strikingly clear that the ‘Being’ into which

15 For a further discussion on the nature of subjectivity in Heidegger see and Jean-Luc Nancy, “’Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject: An interview with Jacques Derrida” in Who Comes After the Subject?, Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy (eds), London and New York: Routledge, 1991. Derrida argues that while this conception of the subject is not the absolute, origin, pure will, identity to self, or presence to self of consciousness, and is rather defined as the noncoincidence with self, the act by which Heidegger “substitutes a certain conception of Dasein for a concept of subject still too marked by the traits of the being as vorhanden, and hence, by an interpretation of time” means that he insufficiently questioned the subject’s ontological structure.

31 Being and Time inquired can no longer remain something that the human subject posits.16

This is because the human subject here is not defined in terms of a thinking substance or a transcendental ego that reduces and understands from out of its sphere of ownness, but is understood in terms of existence:

Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence – in terms of a possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself … the question of existence never gets straightened out except through existing itself. The understanding of oneself which leads along this way we call ‘existentiell’. The question of existence is one of Dasein’s ontical ‘affairs.’ (BT 12/33)

The characterisation of Dasein in terms of existence intends to capture the sense in which

Dasein is not an isolated, self-contained subject that exists independently of an external world.17

16 “Letter to Father William. J. Richardson,” in Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1963, xviii. 17 Heidegger’s analytic begins in the world of equipment, in order to demonstrate the way in which Dasein already has a familiarity and primordial understanding of how things function. In describing this world, he claims that he is not describing the characteristics of equipment objectively, such as substantiality, materiality, extendedness and so forth. Rather, he wants to describe things in the way in which we concernfully deal with them. The things we encounter in concernful dealings with things he denotes by equipment. Equipment is what lies beneath “thinghood” – it is the instrumentality of the things we encounter. A specific kind of world is uncovered through this primary relationship; it is the world of “equipmentaility.” This is a whole world, because “strictly taken, there is no such thing as ‘an’ equipment.” What is disclosed here is firstly, the world of “in-order-to,” or the world of usability: we use a hammer in order to nail sole to the leather, in order to have a shoe, in order to walk without injuring one’s foot and so forth; secondly, the world of reference which refers to the way things refer or relate to other things, in a web of relations or an interconnected whole. The in-order-to refers to another plane, which structures the in-order-to: the work, the product as the ‘towards-which.” The making of the shoes explains the set up of the shoemaker’s workshop, the functional meaning of this general set up is prior to any particular object and its own Being. In turn, this higher plane, which still belongs to the world of beings, points to an even higher plane, this time, a plane that has to do with being: the “for-the-sake-of”, the existential project in which the shoe takes place as an element of that project. I examine this in greater detail in chapter 4 in the context of the question of embodiment. Related to this is also the distinction between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand. The former refers to the idea that we do not encounter the world theoretically or thematically, but as ready-to-hand. We only know how to use the hammer in the act of hammering. Moreover, this activity is not a “blind one” but is one that has “its own kind of sight.” All these dealings with equipment subordinate “themselves to the manifold assignments of the in-order-to.’ And the sight with

32 In conceiving of Dasein as existence, and existence as the understanding of Being,

Heidegger effectively reformulates the agent of conventional ethics and politics away from emphasis on self-mastery toward conceiving Dasein’s existence in terms of possibility. As being-in-the-world, Dasein’s existence/essence is characterised by projection and anticipation because Dasein exists in terms of its possibilities. Dasein is already thrown into the midst of its possibilities which it has realised or is about to realise: “as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call ‘projecting’ … as long as it is, it is projecting” (BT 145/185). These possibilities are not posited as as objects of knowledge, but constitute Dasein’s mode of existence. As Heidegger puts it:

Dasein always has understood itself and always will understand itself in terms of possibilities. Furthermore, the character of understanding as projection is such that the understanding does not grasp thematically that upon which it projects – that is to say, possibilities … as projecting, understanding is the kind of Being of Dasein in which it is its possibilities as possibilities. (BT 145/185)

Dasein is always projected or moving towards a particular possibility, is always being- after-something which it does not yet have, striving to become something it has not yet realised. But this is not to suggest that in realising its possibilities, Dasein is complete.

For Heidegger, Dasein is conceived in terms of a constitutive lack, which means that no matter how many possibilities it actualises, it remains incomplete. For Dasein to be complete is to cease to be:

which they thus concern themselves is circumspection.” The latter refers to theoretical attitude toward entities in the world, however, this only occurs in a particular context – contexts such as when a piece of equipment does not work, or is absent, such that it impedes the progress of a project. See for example, section 15 of BT.

33 It is essential to the basic constitution of Dasein that there is constantly something still to be settled. Such a lack of totality signifies that there is something still outstanding in one’s potentiality-for-being. But as soon as Dasein ‘exists’ in such a way that absolutely nothing more is still outstanding in it, then it has already for this very reason become ‘no-longer-being-there. (BT 236/280-1)

This suggests that the projection of possibilities, rather than their actualisation is what is of fundamental importance to Heidegger. What I want to argue is that Dasein’s constitutive lack, which propels it into this dynamic of projection and possibilities, also suggests that the structure of the subject is open to the world and the other. That is,

Dasein can be conceived in term of openness or a clearing in which disclosure takes place. Dasein is perpetually projecting itself into this clearing (its future possibilities), which it can never conquer. Rather each projection merely reproduces the clearing in the form of other possibilities. Dasein’s movement or projection is not one of self- constitution or the unfolding of an essence but an experimentation with the possible identities that it might become and the possible lives that it might lead.18

As such, Dasein is never present to itself because it is always outside of itself, or ahead of itself:

ontologically, Being towards one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being means that in each case Dasein is already ahead of itself in its Being. Dasein is always ‘beyond itself’ not as a way of behaving towards other entities which it is not, but as Being towards the potentiality-for-Being which it is itself. This structure of Being, which belongs to the essential ‘is an issue’, we shall denote as Dasein’s ‘being- ahead-of itself.” (BT 191-2/236)

18 See Charles E. Scott, “Nonbelonging/Authenticity” in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, John Sallis (ed.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 p. 71.

34 To describe Dasein as “ahead of itself” or “beyond itself” or in terms of possibility suggests that Dasein is displaced in the world in which it finds itself thrown. As ecstatic,

Dasein can only be something when it “looks away from ‘experiences’ and the ‘centre of its actions’” (BT 119/155). This suggests that the meaning of Being cannot be located by means of self-reflection:

the self is there for the Dasein itself without reflection and without inner perception, before all reflection. Reflection, in the sense of a turning back, is only a mode of self-apprehension, but not the mode of primary self-disclosure … the Dasein does not need a special kind of observation, nor does it need to conduct a sort of espionage on the ego in order to have a self; rather, as the Dasein gives itself over immediately and passionately to the world itself, its own self is reflected to it from things. (BBP 159)

Thus, Dasein can only find itself “in what it does, uses, expects, avoids – in those things environmentally ready-to-hand with which it is proximally concerned” (BPP 159).

iii. Dasein as Mitsein v Mineness.

From the above discussion on the structures of Dasein, it became evident that the human subject Heidegger posits, while remaining central to the analytic, is somewhat different from both the Cartesian and transcendental subjects. The fundamental difference lies in

Heidegger’s conception of the subject as outside, as transcendent and as being-in-the- world rather than as interiority or in terms of an ego existing in a sphere of ownness. This also becomes evident in his discussion that Dasein is ontologically a Mitsein. However, this is where the analytic encounters the problems I raised in the Introduction. These arise

35 from an apparent tension between the claim that Dasein is a Mitsein and the account of

Dasein’s individuation in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being toward death.

Following the examination of the world and the way in which we are embedded in it,

Heidegger asks the question: what does the structure of being-in-the-world disclose about the beings, ourselves who are in it? “Who is it that Dasein is in its everydayness?” (BT

114/149). The question as to who Dasein is leads to another structure of Dasein which is equiprimordial with being-in-the-world. This means that this structure is as essential and primordial to Dasein as that of being-in-the-world: Being-with and Dasein-with or

Mitsein. In the discussion of being-in-the-world, I demonstrated the way in which there is never a bare subject without a world. Similarly, there is never an isolated I without others. The others, for Heidegger, are there with Dasein in its being-in-the-world. They are not given as objects, but are there with it or along side it. They can never be perceived as an entity that is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand because like Dasein, the others also share a concern for their own being. The examination of this mode of being (being-with) will enable an examination of what Heidegger refers to as the ‘subject’ of everydayness – that is, “the they” or das Man and in particular, its relation to Dasein as mineness.

In presenting or explicating the subject in its everydayness, Heidegger begins with a world that is familiar to his readers thus far: the world of work and equipment. In the description of the world of equipmentality, Heidegger argues that we find we provisionally encounter others in terms of the web of reference or assignment. For example, a dressmaker uses specific tool in order to make a dress, for a particular person.

36 In the process of making the dress, the dressmaker comes across others such as suppliers and producers. When we walk along a particular field, the field shows itself to belong to a particular person. When we purchase books from a bookshop, we do so from a particular person. While the others encountered by Dasein appear to be instrumental to Dasein insofar as they provide Dasein with a particular service, Heidegger is quick to emphasis that other Daseins are not encountered as ready to hand or present at hand. Daseins are not things we use and manipulate, or things that we apprehend objectively, but are like the very Dasein which encounters them, in that they too are being-in-the-world and with it (BT 118/154).

However, the language of encountering is somewhat misleading because it implies that

Heidegger has started with the premise that Dasein is first my own and isolated, and then in relation with others. By others, Heidegger does not mean everyone else but me, as if though I can stand out from the others. Rather, the others are those from whom we cannot distinguish ourselves from insofar as I too, am another. The ‘with’ here has the same stylistic significance as the ‘in’ in being-in-the-world. Recall that the ‘in’ signifies

Dasein’s investment and involvement in the world and the fact that it cannot be separated from these structures; the same can be said for the ‘with’ in being-with.19 It is an existential structure in the sense that Dasein is only intelligible in relation to others:

19 For a discussion of the significance of the “in” in Heidegger, see Dreyfus, 1999. The word ‘in” is intended to denote our engagement with the world or our involvement. For example, we are not in the world in the same way something is in a box. Rather, we are in the world in the same way we can say that we are in a theatre, or in love, to use two of Dreyfus’ examples; to say that you are in a theatre or in love expresses the fact that you are involved or invested in something and understand yourself from out of this involvement. This is precisely what Heidegger is attempting to capture with the phrase – being-in-the- world; the fact that we have an investment in it, are involved in it and that we can only understand or interpret ourselves from out of it.

37 this with is something of the character of Dasein; the ‘too’ means a sameness of Being as circumspectively concernful being-in-the-world. ‘With’ and ‘too’ are to be understood existentially, not categorically. By reason of this with-like being- in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world of Dasein is a with—world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is Being-with others. Their Being-in- themselves within-the-world is Dasein-with [Mitdasein]. (BT 118/155)

This is an existential characteristic or attribute of Dasein, which means that it forms part of its very ontological structure. Even in cases where Dasein is alone, it is still being- with. This is because one can only experience oneself as alone on the condition that one is being-with others in the first place, otherwise Dasein’s loneliness or solitude is rendered meaningless. So being-missing, being-away are referred to as deficient modes of Dasein-with. It would not be possible to miss someone, if one were not first with them.

It would not be possible to feel to be lonely if one did not have an experience of being- with-others (BT 120/156-7). The point is that in the same way as being-in-the-world is primordial, so too is Dasein’s being-with-others.

The conclusion from this analysis thus far is that being with others belongs to the very

Being of Dasein; because Dasein is concerned with its own Being, by logical implication, this entails a preoccupation with the Being of the other: “as Being-with, Dasein ‘is’ essentially for the sake of others” (BT 123/160). Because this is an existential statement, insofar as it refers to the structure of Dasein rather than its content, this means that even in cases where Dasein does not turn to others, supposing it has no need for them or manages to get along without them, it still remains being-with others. This has a number of implications or consequences.

38 Firstly, it is by virtue of our ontological constitution as being-with that it is possible to have any understanding of the other. But this understanding is not one based on knowledge in the sense that we are able to understand the other by learning of his or her background, interests, occupation, hobbies and so forth. Rather, it is a more primordial existential kind of understanding that is the condition for the possibility of knowledge in the first place. That is, I can know or understand the other in an ontic sense because I am primordially open to the other at an existential level; that is, at the level of my Being.

Similarly, knowledge of the psychic life of the other, his or her mental states are also only possible on the basis of this being-with.

Secondly, there is an implicit (or perhaps explicit) critique of Husserl here. Recall that

Husserl characterises intersubjective relations in terms of empathy. However, for

Heidegger, this presupposes an isolated and self-enclosed subject who can only understand the other on the basis of his or her own self-understanding, with empathy providing an ontological bridge from one subject to another. In this way, the relation to the other amounts to a projection from one self onto that of another self. The relation toward the other is an irreducible relation to Being such that being-with is something that

Dasein is, rather than something it becomes on the basis of an emotion such as empathy.

Heidegger is not suggesting that we are incapable of feeling empathy. His point is that our relations to others cannot be founded on empathy, or are not reducible to it: “empathy does not first constitute Being-with; only on the basis of Being-with does ‘empathy’ become possible: it gets its motivation from the unsociability of the dominant modes of

Being-with” (BT 125/162).

39 However, the centrality of the notion of “mineness” and the emphasis on individuation in the account of anxiety, authenticity and death appears in conflict with the concept of

Being-with. The question becomes whether Heidegger can reconcile the tensions between

Dasein as being-with with Dasein as “mine,” and whether he can reconcile the tension between being-with and the type of individuation that emerges in his discussion of authenticity and being-towards-death.

While Heidegger does state that Dasein is concomitantly Being-with, he also makes the claim that all these modes of Being are based on that fact that Dasein is mine. That is, in all of Dasein’s ways of being in the world, it remains preoccupied with its own existence:

“Dasein is occupied with its own ability-to-be, and this can-be is understood primarily as the can-be of the being that in each case I myself am” (BBP 321). The centrality of to Heidegger’s analytic means that the interrogation of the question of Being is an interrogation of Dasein: “we are ourselves the entities to be analysed. The Being of any such entity is in each case mine. These entities, in their Being, comport themselves towards their Being. As entities with such Being, they are delivered over to their own

Being” (BT 41-2/67). The issue here is that determining the meaning of Being is an individual endeavour, not a collective or communal one. Being is my responsibility, one that I must assume on my own because the Being that is at issue is in each case, my

Being.

The notion of “mineness” means that “Dasein is never to be taken ontologically as an instance or special case of some genus of entities as things that are present-at-hand” (BT

40 42/67-8). The fact that Being is mine means that I cannot be indifferent or ambivalent towards it; that wittingly or unwittingly, my existence has some kind of meaning because

Dasein exists as a caring being. Secondly, Heidegger argues that “in each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way in which it is in each case mine” (BT 42/68). Given that for Heidegger, Dasein exists in terms of its possibilities, Dasein is mine in the sense that I can be in one way or another. That is, my decision to live authentically or inauthentically is always made on the premise that Dasein or my Being, is in each case, mine: “because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself” (BT 42/68).

Put this way, in positing the concept of mineness as determining Dasein’s various ways of being-in-the-world, Heidegger appears to be investing the subject/Dasein with an autonomy and self-determination that goes against both the letter and the motivation of his analytic. It would seem that the choices Dasein can make on the basis that its Being is its own are made in isolation from the others with whom it is being-with. More problematically, Heidegger writes: “in existing, the Dasein thus understands something like its world, and with the disclosure of its world the Dasein is at the same time unveiled to its own self for itself” (BPP 216). In formulating Dasein’s relation to the world in this way, Heidegger problematises his earlier formulation of being-with, where the world was described as a shared world with a set of shared meanings. Here, it would seem that the world exists for an individual Dasein and its disclosure discloses Dasein’s Being for itself.

41 While it may provisionally seem that with the concept of mineness, Heidegger has invested the human being with an autonomy and self-determination greater than that of the Kantian subject, as it turns out, the concept of mineness signifies something else entirely. The who of Dasein, as I will demonstrate in the following chapter, turns out to be more complicated in the sense that the who of the everyday Dasein turns out to be not the ‘I myself.’ I am myself insofar as I am not myself. The not-I turns out to be as structural to Dasein as its mineness.

iv. Dasein, inauthenticity and Individuation.

This problem of individuation, which is foreshadowed in the discussion of ‘mineness,’ emerges in Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic being-with, the two modes of being that constitute Dasein’s possibilities. Of authentic being-with, he says very little, and what he does say, in section 74 of Being and Time appears to conflict with the notion of individuation, as I will show in the final section of this chapter. Heidegger appears more preoccupied with the totalising tendencies of inauthentic being-with, which dominate his discussion of Dasein’s engagement with the community of others.

It would appear then, at certain moments in Heidegger’s discussion of the world of the

‘they’ and more particularly, being-towards-death that authentic Dasein can only be individual Dasein. In this section, I explore the tension between individuation and being- with. In the following chapter, I suggest that it is possible to reconcile this tension between Mitsein, authenticity and individuation, as it arises in Being and Time.

42 In what way then, does the problem of individuation emerge in the discussion of inauthenticity? For Heidegger, in our everyday, inauthentic existence, Dasein is incessantly concerned with how it is perceived by Others, how it differs from others, and whether this difference from the other should be retained or eradicated (BT 126/163).

Dasein, in its everyday Being-with-one-another thus stands in constant preoccupation with Others. As a consequence, in this inauthentic mode, Dasein is not itself, as “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” (BT 126/164). This inauthentic collective of

Others is referred to as the ‘they’ [das Man]. The answer to the question with which we began – who is Dasein? – turns out to be das Man. The issue here is that this description, coupled with the individuation Heidegger endorses as a way out of inauthenticity, contributes to the impression that all concrete relations with others are inauthentic.

Heidegger describes Dasein’s immersion and the loss of itself in the world of das Man as a ‘dictatorship,’ in which Dasein suspends its critical capacities and judgement and slides into what appears to be a world of apathy and anonymity. This inauthentic being-with- one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely such that it becomes indistinguishable and inexplicit. In this inconspicuousness, the real dictatorship of das

Man is unfolded. In this immersion, all that is exceptional, unique and different is subsumed into a totality of ‘sameness’ in which “we take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they [man] take pleasure; we read, see and judge about literature and art as they see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find

‘shocking’ what they find shocking” (BT 127/164). Such an inauthentic community is

43 divested of answerability and accountability because responsibility is endlessly passed on to an indeterminate and unidentifiable ‘they.’

There are three fundamental characteristics of das Man. First, distantiality, which refers to way in which we are constantly preoccupied with how we differ from others, what others think of us and so forth. It also refers to the anxiety we may feel over deviating from norms and socially sanctioned ways of behaving. This eagerness to conform, as I will demonstrate in the discussion of anxiety, is interpreted as a flight from our unsettledness in the world. It is a way of coping with the fact that we are not at home in the world and that it is not as familiar as we would like it to be. The second characteristic is averageness, which refers to the way das Man “keeps watch over everything exceptional that thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that has long been known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes something to be manipulated. Every secret loses its force” (BT 127/165). This in turn, reveals the reveals third aspect: that of levelling level down or delimiting Dasein’s possibilities of existence and its possibilities of Being.

These three characteristics of distantiality, averageness and levelling down constitute the phenomenon of ‘publicness.’ This term denotes the manner by which das Man controls how Dasein and the world get interpreted. It has three important and seemingly problematic consequences: firstly, it circumscribes Dasein’s possibilities of existence.

While the analysis of inauthentic being-with appears critical in places, it is necessary to

44 point out that Heidegger’s problem with inauthenticity is that it levels off Dasein’s possibilities of existence. As demonstrated above, to exist for Heidegger, is to actualise possibilities. While these possibilities will always be circumscribed, to some extent, by

Dasein’s facticity, inauthenticity levels off possibilities that can be actualised. This is not to suggest that Dasein is incapable of action in its inauthentic mode of being-with; it can be moved to action by ‘the they,’ however, it does not take a stand as an individual

Dasein.20

Secondly, das Man disburdens Dasein of its responsibility for its existence and its actions. On account of das Man’s tendency to present every judgement and decision as its own, it deprives or disburdens Dasein of its answerability. No one has to own up to anything or claim anything as one’s own, because it is possible to pass it off onto an unidentifiable and anonymous mass of people. It is always someone else who is responsible. But as we have seen, as a collective, this someone/the they, is in fact no one, insofar as it is not an identifiable and distinguished someone: “In Dasein’s everydayness the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must say that ‘it was no one’” (BT 127/165).

20 It should be noted that part of the problem of everydayness for Heidegger that does not have direct bearing on the themes of this thesis is the Husserlian intuition that our everyday understanding of the world obscures the essence of the thing as it appears to consciousness; hence the reason why the series of transcendental reductions are necessary. For an excellent discussion on the way Heidegger appropriates this insight into his analytic, particularly in relation to the idea of Dasein’s historicity and the concept of destruction, see François Raffoul 1998. In chapter two, Raffoul points out that tradition is inscribed in Dasein’s average understanding and penetrates every way of Being, as well as every understanding and behaviour of Dasein: “Dasein has a tendency to interpret itself in an inauthentic manner, that is to say, on the basis of the world in which it is absorbed. Yet, insofar as it is also proximally an historical Being, its average and most immediate self-understanding is inscribed in what is handed down by the tradition. Thus the explication of everydayness in the first section of Being and Time is accompanied by a de-construction of the layers of the past. Also see BT 2, 21/42.

45 The point here, for the purposes of this thesis, is that das Man disburdens Dasein of its responsibility for its existence, not necessarily at the level of the ontic choices it is presented with, although this is arguably, an implication, but at the level of its very

Being. The ethical moment contained in the notion of individuation, I suggest, occurs in the moment Dasein is summoned from its falling by the call of conscious; a summons that compels it to assume responsibility. The key point here is that, on Heidegger’s account, Dasein does not have the choice to disavow its responsibility. Dasein is compelled to assume responsibility, because responsibility constitutes its very structure as a human being. Given that Dasein is implicated with others, also at the level of its ontological structure, this responsibility, as I will demonstrate in the following chapters, is also a responsibility for others.

The self of the everyday Dasein is thus referred to as the they-self, to be distinguished from the authentic self.21 As lost in the they, Dasein inhabits a world that is familiar and comfortable and for which it has no responsibility, given that the they have articulated the referential context of significance. Dasein is immersed and fascinated by this world; it is complacent and unquestioning; average and unremarkable. From out of this world, it has a particular interpretation of its self, but it is a limited understanding: “this very state of

21 For a further discussion on Heidegger and everydayness, see Frank Schalow, “Repeating Heidegger’s analysis of everydayness: the question of being and the latent concern for materiality” in Philosophy Today, Fall 2002, Vol.46, Iss.3. Here, Schalow argues that a revision of Heidegger’s analysis of everydayness is not merely possible, but in fact necessary. Such a revision fulfils an explicit hermeneutical mandate of retrieving the point of departure for ontological inquiry; that is “of ‘repeating’ the earlier analysis in order to uncover its presuppositions within a wider historical context.” Our immersion in history means that the variables which govern our consideration of the phenomenon of everydayness may be significantly different than those which led Heidegger to undertake his phenomenological analysis in the 1920’s. p. 274.

46 Being, in its everyday kind of Being, is what proximally misses itself and covers itself up” (BT 130/168).

It is at this point in Heidegger’s analytic that several problems emerge. While the discussion of inauthentic being-with dominates the account of being-with in general,

Heidegger does argue that firstly, this account is not intended to be a pejorative or disparaging account of our relations with others. Nor is he passing moral judgement or engaging in any sort of ethics. Secondly, he argues that Dasein does have authentic possibilities, but that this possibility necessitates a severance from the world of being- with, forcing Dasein into a radical individuation. This emerges primarily at the end of the discussion of inauthentic being-with, where Heidegger appears to be presenting us with a choice: “As something that understands, Dasein can understand itself in terms of the

‘world’ and Others or in terms of its ownmost potentiality-for-Being.” The latter option is referred to as “authentic disclosedness” which brings Dasein closer to “truth of existence”

(BT 221/264). Heidegger advises that Dasein should guard and defend itself “against semblance and disguise” (BT 221/264) and engage in a perpetual uncovering or critique of that which it encounters in the world.

The problems that this raises are firstly, the manner in which Heidegger sets up the problematic of authenticity and inauthenticity could infer that the ethical dimension to

Heidegger’s thinking is reducible to an authentic/inauthentic dichotomy. It infers that in authentic solicitude, Dasein is ethical, while inauthentic solicitude is somehow unethical.

47 Commentators such as Seamus Carey22 and Patricia Huntington23 in particular, come to this conclusion.

Secondly, Heidegger’s language at times, infers that authentic Dasein can only be individual Dasein and as a consequence, it is widely contended, by Levinas and

Taminiaux among others, that he may have unwittingly reproduced the solipsism he sought to evade. The choice as set up by Heidegger implies that Dasein can either understand itself in terms of itself, in which case, it seems it would have to withdraw from the world of others, or it can understand itself in terms of others, in which case, it lives inauthentically and circumscribes its possibilities of existence.

In the remainder of this section, I will argue against the conclusion drawn by Carey and

Huntington that authenticity is ethical. I argue that this type of interpretation does not account for the ontological dimension to Heidegger’s thinking, in which the structure of

Dasein, as possibility, transcendence and so forth remains essentially unchanged in the experience of inauthenticity. This means that the account of inauthenticity does not infer that Dasein is an ego in the traditional sense of the word. Moreover, it is necessary to clear away this interpretation of authenticity as ontological and hence ethical, in order to allow analysis of another way that Heidegger’s ontology revises ethics and politics; a way that retains the notion of individuation, albeit, in a fundamentally different form, in terms of a responsibility for one’s own existence, or for the conduct of oneself.

22 Seamus Carey, “Cultivating Ethos through the Body” in Human Studies, 23, 2000. 23 Patricia Huntington, Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998.

48 For commentators such as Carey and Huntington, Heidegger’s postulation of authentic and inauthentic modes of being-with can be read in terms of a choice between an ethical and unethical relation to the other. For Carey, contained in Heidegger’s analytic is an ethical imperative to lead an authentic existence. The choice between authenticity and inauthenticity is a process of self-development or a shift “from everyday, ego-driven or self-interested consciousness to a more open and receptive mode of being that searches out an experience of ontological depth of one’s own experience and that of others”

(Carey 2000: 25). For Carey, the shift from inauthenticity to authenticity in Being and

Time “is an early indication of Heidegger’s approach to ethics” (Carey 2000: 25).

Inauthenticity is described as a state of consciousness in which people attach to and lose themselves within objects and people in the external world by perceiving them as mere objects to satisfy egoistic desire (Carey 2000: 25). Carey makes a further distinction between the ontic and ontological that reinforces the correlation between ethics and authenticity. That is, ontology is ethical and authentic and the ontic is inauthentic and unethical.

Similarly, Huntington argues that Heidegger’s ‘distinction’ between authentic and inauthentic modes of being refers to ethical and unethical relations with others. She reads

Heidegger’s account of authenticity in terms of a higher state of Being to which Dasein must aspire: “these comments elevate the authentic subject above ‘that Self which inertly dissects its ‘inner life’ with fussy curiosity’ and ‘that Self which one has in mind when one gazes analytically at psychical conditions and what lies behind them’” (Huntington

1998: 23). Huntington is right to point out that Heidegger, as discussed above, does at

49 times, refer to inauthenticity and immersion in the world of das Man in disparaging terms, which could lead us to infer that he is favouring authenticity over inauthenticity.

However, the move she makes from inauthenticity to a metaphysical conception of the subject is problematic. Her conclusion is that Heidegger’s thinking fails to develop a genuine possibility of a theory of social recognition because his analysis of authenticity is

“infused with a Greek sense of an ontologically or naturally grounded elitism: Humans are distinguished by virtue of pre-given personality traits and abilities, not by the egalitarian principle that each is capable of cultivating for herself the most supremely developed self-awareness and critical relation to her life conditions” (Huntington 1998:

31). As a consequence, Huntington argues that Heidegger’s thinking reproduces the traditional subject of metaphysics: “for all the talk of overcoming abstractions and giving up myths of mastery, Being and Time remains shot through with an ethos of stoic resolve reminiscent of the masculinist posture of impartiality” (Huntington 1998: 6).

While Heidegger’s language potentially lends itself to such a conclusion, it would be a distortion of his thinking to equate ontology with ethics and authenticity and the ontic with inauthenticity. This largely ignores the subtle interplay between authenticity and inauthenticity that, as I will argue, echoes the relation between the ontic and ontological, already discussed. In response to these interpretations, it is first necessary to point out that Heidegger claims that he is not favouring authentic existence over inauthentic. He states: “Dasein can fall only because being-in-the-world … is an issue for it. On the other hand, authentic existence is not something which floats above everydayness; existentially, it is only a modified way in which such everydayness is seized upon” (BPP

50 28). The point here is that authenticity and inauthenticity are inextricably related, in the same way the ontic and ontological are. This means that authenticity does not require a

‘shift’ from one mode of being to another, nor is it a higher ethical state to which we must aspire. Heidegger is explicit in pointing out that he intends no hierarchy; nor does he privilege authenticity over inauthenticity: “the Dasein’s average understanding of itself takes the self as in-authentic. This inauthentic self-understanding of the Dasein’s by no means signifies an ungenuine self-understanding” (BPP 28). Rather, if we are to understand authenticity in a way that is consistent with the dominant themes in Being and

Time, it is possible to interpret authenticity as a mode of being, a “modification” of

Being, in which Dasein is open to more possibilities of existence and open to its finitude.

To argue that authenticity is a state to which Dasein must aspire is untenable because it fails to account for Dasein’s perpetual oscillation between authentic and inauthentic existence and that for the most part, Dasein exists in the world of the ‘everyday’ and will only ever obtain or experience brief glimpses of authentic existence.

For the most part, this is not a failure or weakness on the part of Dasein, but a fact of its existence. This does not however infer that Dasein is incapable of an ethical relation to the other in its inauthentic modes of Being. Its ontological structure as being-in-the- world, and as open to the other by virtue of its constitution as being-with, remains unaltered in its inauthentic state. That is, even when inauthentic, Dasein cares about its

Being. In inauthentic existence, Dasein remains being-in-the-world (circumspection) and being-with (solicitude). It is this correlation between inauthenticity and a metaphysical

51 conception of the subject that I find problematic in Huntington and Carey’s interpretations.

Inauthentic existence does not alter the basic constitution of Dasein as open, ecstatic and being-with. Dasein remains the condition for the possibility of authentic and inauthentic modes of existence. As François Raffoul points out, while indifference to one’s own

Being appears as the defining characteristic of inauthenticity, such indifference is never absolute. Only a being for whom Being is an issue for it, a being defined in terms of care for its own Being is capable of indifference (Raffoul 1998: 240). The fundamental difference between authenticity and inauthenticity is that authentic existence circumscribes Dasein’s possibilities to be, given the levelling down effects it has on

Dasein, previously examined. As Heidegger states:

Throwness, as a kind of Being, belongs to an entity which in each case is its possibilities, and is them in such a way that it understands itself in these possibilities and in terms of them, projecting itself upon them … the self, however, is proximally and for the most part, inauthentic, the they-self. Being-in- the-world is always fallen. (BT 181/224)

Despite this state of falling or immersion, which is Dasein’s basic state, Dasein still projects itself in terms of its possibilities and remains ecstatic. In inauthenticity, Dasein remains ahead of itself and its Being remains an issue for it. The structure of Dasein as

“ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the world)” as Being-alongside (entities encountered in the world) remains unaltered. Authenticity and inauthenticity are premised upon this structure. Heidegger writes:

52 Dasein can comport itself towards its possibilities, even unwillingly; it can be inauthentically; and factically it is inauthentically, proximally and for the most part. The authentic ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ has not been taken hold of; the projection of one’s own potentiality for-Being has been abandoned to the disposal of the ‘they’. Thus when we speak of ‘Being-ahead of itself’, the ‘itself’ which we have in mind is in each case the Self in the sense of the they-self. Even in inauthenticity Dasein remains essentially ahead of itself, just as Dasein’s fleeing in the face of itself as it falls, still shows that it has the state-of-Being of an entity for which its Being is an issue. (BT 193/238)

For this reason, the move made by Carey and Huntington from inauthenticity to an affirmation to a metaphysical conception of the subject is problematic, as it infers that the constitution, framework or basic structure of Dasein undergoes a transformation in inauthenticity, rather than it being one of Dasein’s possibilities. For Heidegger, inauthenticity can only occur on a prior openness or a general structure of presence to self. Moreover, while inauthenticity or ‘falling into the world’ can be described as a type of closure, Heidegger is quite explicit in pointing out that this is not a closure in the

Cartesian sense where the subject closes itself off from the world and others. Rather, for

Heidegger, inauthentic closure is closure to possibilities and potentialities of existence, both in terms of Being and others. As Heidegger states:

Falling into the world would be phenomenal ‘evidence’ against the existentiality of Dasein only if Dasein were regarded as an isolated ‘I’ or subject, as a self point from which it moves away. In that case, the world would be an Object … If, however, we keep in mind that Dasein’s Being is in the state of Being-in-the- world … then it becomes manifest that falling, as a kind of Being of this Being-in, affords us rather the most elemental evidence for Dasein’s existentiality. In falling, nothing other than our potentiality-for-Being-in-world is the issue, even in the mode of inauthenticity. (BT 176/220)

53 As Raffoul points out, authentically or inauthentically, it is always a matter of self, the self that each time I am, the self that each time I have to be and consequently, the self that

I could never lose (Raffoul 1998: 240). Raffoul draws attention to the ontic and ontological sense in which authenticity and inauthenticity can be understood. The injunction, “become what you are” can be understood in an ontical sense, in which it refers to realising one’s possibilities or ‘rising to the occasion.’ However, the ontological sense in which Heidegger intends to use these terms, manifests the characteristic of a being that is defined by its possibilities (Raffoul 1998: 240). Raffoul points out that if

Dasein has to become what it is, it is “not because it is primordially present to itself, but because its mode of presence is that of having-to-be. Having to become what one is supposes some kind of self-relation and self-presence; it is indeed the primary mode of

Dasein’s self-presence, to the extent that this presence is defined by existentiality, by having to be” (Raffoul 1998: 241). Given this, it is possible to argue that the closure involved in fleeing in the face of oneself is but a mode of Dasein’s existential opening, and that it stands in an essential relation to it. As Heidegger states: “only to the extent that

Dasein has been brought before itself in an ontologically essential manner through whatever disclosedness belongs to it, can it flee in the face of that in the face of which it flees” (BT 184/229).

Moreover, and also indicative that Heidegger is not offering a programmatic ethics, he is emphatic that notions of falling and inauthenticity do not refer to aspects of “human nature,” “corruption” or an unethical relation to the other. His analysis of authenticity and inauthenticity precede any analysis of human nature. That is, authenticity and

54 inauthenticity are examined ontologically. As Heidegger states, “falling reveals an essential ontological structure of Dasein itself. Far from determining its nocturnal side, it constitutes all Dasein’s days in their everydayness … the problematic of this

Interpretation is prior to any assertion about corruption or incorruption. Falling is conceived ontologically as a kind of motion” (BT 179-80/224).

It would therefore appear that Heidegger’s account of inauthenticity does not necessarily revert to an affirmation of the Cartesian subject insofar as inauthenticity is not necessarily reducible to individualism or solipsism in the traditional sense of the term. If, as

Heidegger makes explicit, being-in-the-world and being-with are the primordial and ontological structures of Dasein, then it follows that Dasein would remain ecstatic and open to its possibilities and the other in both its authentic and inauthentic modes.

However, this problem of individuation emerges once again in Heidegger’s analysis of authenticity and being-with.

In ways outlined above, the choice as set up by Heidegger implies that Dasein can either understand itself in terms of itself, in which case it would have to withdraw from the world of others, or it can understand itself in terms of others, in which case, it lives inauthentically and circumscribes its possibilities for existence. It would appear that

Heidegger has decided on the former. For him, if Dasein is to be ‘authentic’ or open to the world and its Being, it must sever its ties with the world of the ‘they,’ the only world of being-with described in Being and Time. While the above discussion deals with the ethical status of authenticity, this does not yet address the problem of individuation. The

55 latter is what this section addresses. Heidegger concession that authentic being-with is possible does not however, resolve this seemingly irreconcilable tension between individualism and being-with that emerges in the discussion of anxiety, being-toward- death and the account of authentic relations with others in terms of a destiny of the people.

v. The problem of individuation.

For Heidegger, Dasein always encounters the world with a particular mood (Stimmung) or state of mind (Befindlichkeit):

to be affected by the unserviceable, resistant, or threatening character of that which is available, becomes ontologically possible only in so far as being-in as such has been determined existentially beforehand in such a manner that what it encounters within-the-world can ‘matter’ to it in this way. The fact that this sort of thing can matter to it is grounded in one’s state-of-mind/mood. (BT137/176)

By mood, Heidegger does not mean private feelings that we project onto the world.

Moods are public and shared states that characterise or colour our being-with:

a … well-disposed person brings a good mood to a group … or another person is in a group that in its manner of being dampens and depresses everything; no one is outgoing. What do we learn from this? Moods are not accompanying phenomena; rather they are the sort of thing that determines being-with-one- another in advance … a mood is in each case already there, like an atmosphere, in which we are steeped and by which we are thoroughly determined.24

The mood of anxiety, for Heidegger is significant because Dasein becomes authentic when it is anxious; a disposition that reveals the structural unity of Dasein as Care

24 Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe vol. 1 29/30, 100.

56 (Sorge). Anxiety () is best understood in relation to the mood of fear, from which it is distinguished. Fear refers to a state of mind possessed by Dasein with reference to something tangible and definite. Anxiety is precisely the opposite, in that anxiousness is instigated by the disclosure of the indefinite. Heidegger describes anxiety as

characterised by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. Anxiety ‘does not know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious is … what threatens cannot bring itself close from a definite direction within what is close by; it is already ‘there’, and yet nowhere; it is so close that it is oppressive and stifles one’s breath, and yet it is nowhere. (BT 186/231)

Anxiety functions to break the familiarity and complacency of Dasein, forcing it into what Heidegger refers to as the uncanniness of no longer feeling at home. It thus opens up Dasein to other possibilities of Being.

However, anxiety also individualises Dasein in wresting it free from the world of das

Man. In anxiety, Dasein comes to the realisation that

the ‘world’ can offer nothing more, and neither can the Dasein-with of Others … anxiety individualises Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities … anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individuation. (BT 187-8/232)

In his concluding remarks on anxiety, he again, appears to endorse a type of metaphysical solipsism. He states that fleeing or falling is not a turning away or a flight from other entities in the world, but a plunge towards others, an immersion in the world. He describes it as ‘fleeing’ because in worldly immersion, Dasein flees from its boundless,

57 albeit contingent, potentiality as possibilities of existence. Anxiety is then set up in opposition to falling or immersion in the world of the ‘they’: “anxiety individualises. This individuation brings Dasein back from its falling” (BT 191/235). This juxtaposition between immersion in the world and anxiety suggests that a radical separation of Dasein and others must occur if Dasein is to be authentic/open to its possibilities.

The question thus becomes one of co-ordinating the tension between the series or pairs of oppositions Heidegger has set up: the tension between authentic existence and das Man, anxiety and immersion in worldly activity. Heidegger’s apparent preference for the first mode of being in the aforementioned oppositions could suggest that there is no integration of the type of individuation to which anxiety gives rise and being-with-others.

As a consequence, he may have reproduced the traditional problems associated with solipsism that he sought to overcome. This ambiguity of solipsism and Mitsein is compounded in Heidegger’s examination of Being-toward-death.

Heidegger defines the existential-ontological conception of death in the following terms:

"death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein's ownmost possibility - non-relational, certain and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped" (BT 259/303). For Heidegger, in the same way that being-in-the-world and being-with are constitutive of Dasein’s ontological structure, being-toward-death is also integral to Dasein’s Being in that Dasein’s finitude is constitutive of its very existence. From the moment of birth, death is an impending possibility of Being that Dasein will inevitably take over; Dasein is already ‘thrown’ towards its end. In this sense, death is certain. It is non-relational, in that it is something

58 peculiar and specific to each Dasein. That is, no one can take Dasein’s place in dying, nor fathom what this experience feels like for the dying Dasein. The only way we can experience the death of another is by being 'alongside' the dying person. Death cannot be outstripped, in the respect that it is impossible to evade it. Heidegger does not however, intend this to be a bleak or morbid account of Dasein’s existence. The conventionally morbid connotations associated with death are precisely what he attempts to undermine.

Rather, for Heidegger, authentic being-towards-death opens up Dasein to its boundless possibilities of Being; a disclosure which is intended to be a liberating and emancipatory experience.

Heidegger once again presents the inauthentic and authentic as constitutive of Dasein’s possibilities of being, and once again, inauthentic being-toward-death or our ‘everyday’ conception of death, is mostly discussed in negative terms. In inauthentic being-toward- death, death is interpreted by the ‘they’ as a ‘mishap’ that is constantly occurring, as something one hears about through ‘word of mouth,’ but also remains distant, in that while the ‘they’ know death to be inevitable, at this moment, they are unperturbed by it

(BT 253/296). In this way, Heidegger claims, “dying, which is essentially mine in such a way that no one can be my representative, is perverted into an event of public occurrence which the ‘they’ encounters” (BT 254/297). In the world of the ‘they,’ death is not conceived of as a possibility, or as non-relational; rather, it is an event to be actualised.

The ‘they,’ in consoling the ‘dying’ and those whom she leaves behind, tranquilize death

(BT 254/297).

59 This functions to circumscribe the possibilities open to Dasein in being-toward-death as the only manner in which we are able to comport ourselves towards death is to evade and conceal it. Heidegger states that the manner in which das Man tacitly regulate our comportment towards death suggests that "it is already a matter of public acceptance that

'thinking about death' is a cowardly fear, a sign of insecurity on the part of Dasein, and a sombre way of fleeing from the world” (BT 254/298). Das Man does not permit us to be anxious, and thus, authentic, in the face of death: "the 'they' concerns itself with transforming this anxiety into fear in the face of an oncoming event. In addition, the anxiety which has been made ambiguous as fear, is passed off as a weakness with which no self-assured Dasein may have any acquaintance” (BT 254/298). This attitude towards death alienates Dasein from its possibilities and potentialities for being. Inauthenticity, characterised by alienation, fear and flight before death is not the only possibility open to

Dasein. Authentic Being-toward-death is also an existentiell and ontological possibility for Dasein.

In authentic being-toward-death, Dasein does not evade or cover up its "ownmost non- relational possibility" (BT 260/304). That is, it does not flee before this ultimate possibility or devise new explanations that would conform to das Man, in at attempt to understand or cope with the phenomenon of death. In inauthentic existence, Dasein's possibilities, as we have seen, are severely circumscribed. The world of das Man functions as a boundary that limits Dasein's potentiality for being in placing a limit on what Dasein can think, feel, and care about, in its being-in-the-world, and the manner in which it can comport itself towards death.

60 Authentic being-toward-death, by contrast, is a mode of Being in which Dasein exists in terms of its possibilities: "we must characterise Being-towards-death as a Being towards a possibility - indeed, towards a distinctive possibility of Dasein itself"(BT 261/305).

This possibility is distinctive, not in the sense of a possibility that Dasein must actualise, in the same way that it actualises the possibilities it encounters in the field of what is ready-to-hand and present-at-hand. In these modes of interaction, the possibilities that present themselves to Dasein appear as something attainable, controllable or consumable.

For Heidegger, "in concernfully Being out for something possible, there is a tendency to annihilate the possibility of the possible by making it available to us"(BT 261/305).

However, death is not something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand that presents itself to

Dasein but a "possibility of Dasein's Being." The paradox is that actualising the possibility of death would mean to bring about one's demise, which in turn, would

"deprive itself of the very ground for an existing Being-towards-death" (BT 261/305).

For Heidegger, death then, is not a possibility that can be actualised, only anticipated. He states: "Being towards this possibility, as Being-towards-death, is to comport ourselves towards death that in this Being, and for it, death reveals itself as a possibility. Our terminology for such Being towards this possibility is 'anticipation' of this possibility"

(BT 262/306). While we come close to actualisation in the process of moving closer to the possibility of death, the closest we can come still does not constitute actualisation:

"the closest closeness which one may have in Being towards death as a possibility, is as far as possible from anything actual” (BT 262/306). Death cannot be actualised because it ceases to be a possibility of Dasein the moment it occurs. This is the paradoxical nature

61 of death for Heidegger: death is the "possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all” (BT 262/307). In death, Dasein's possibilities of being cease to be. It has nothing to actualise and can no longer comport itself towards possibilities. As Heidegger states:

Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be ‘actualised’, nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing … the possibility reveals itself to be such that it knows no measure at all … but signifies the possibility of the measureless impossibility of existence. (BT 262/307)

However, Dasein is also individuated in resolute Being-toward-death. It is individualised not only in the sense that Dasein is thrown back on its ownmost potentiality-for-being, which only it can assume, but in the sense that all its relations with others are unravelled.

Heidegger states that

anticipation allows Dasein to understand that that potentiality-for-being in which its ownmost Being is an issue, must be taken over by Dasein alone. Death does not just 'belong' to one's own Dasein in an undifferentiated way; death lays claim to it as an individual Dasein. The non-relational character of death, as understood in anticipation, individualises Dasein down to itself. This individualizing is a way in which the 'there' is disclosed for existence. It makes manifest that all Being- alongside the things with which we concern ourselves, and all Being-with Others, will fail us when our ownmost potentiality-for-Being is the issue. Dasein can be authentically itself only if it makes this possible for itself of its own accord. (BT 263/307)

In the face of death, people have ‘failed’ us and death is something that each Dasein must face on its own. It is difficult to see from the above paragraph the manner in which

Dasein is to co-ordinate the individuation that emerges in authentic death into its

62 ontological structure as Mitsein.25 Heidegger does state that Dasein’s structure as Being- with remains in place, but there is something inherently paradoxical about his account.

He states: “Dasein is authentically itself only to the extent that, as concernful Being- alongside and solicitous Being-with, it projects itself upon its ownmost potentiality-for-

Being rather than upon the possibility of the they-self.” Does this mean as Tina Chanter argues, that in bringing Dasein face to face with the experience of nothingness, with the possibility of impossibility, Heidegger does not disrupt Dasein’s self-understanding, but merely consolidates its resolve? Does this imply that ultimately, Heidegger’s Dasein stands alone against the world, isolated and torn from others in its finitude? (Chanter

2001: 106). Is this to suggest, as Nancy argues, that while Heidegger did attempt to show that being-toward-death is only possible because Dasein is not a subject, when it came to the question of community, Heidegger went astray and that as a consequence, Dasein’s

‘being-toward-death’ was never radically implicated in its being-with – in Mitsein? (BSP

14). I will return to this issue in the following chapter.

25 For a further discussion on the problem of individuation in the context of Being toward death, see Leslie MacAvoy, “The Heideggerian bias toward death: a critique of the role of being-toward-death in the disclosure of human finitude” in Metaphilosophy Vol. 27 Nos 1 & 2, January/April, 1996. In this paper, MacAvoy argues that while there is no doubt that the experience of being toward death discloses one’s finitude, the concept of death within this context fuels and interpretation of authenticity that is highly individualistic, even solipsistic and exclusive of being with others. MacAvoy interestingly argues that this may be rooted in the traditionally masculine concern with death as definitive of life. Any account of death needs to be mediated through greater attention to the disclosure of human finitude that takes into account the fact that we are born and that we can bear. The difficulty can thus be alleviated if more attention is given to the opposite boundary of Dasein’s existence; namely, its birth. Although, in response, Heidegger does acknowledge the faciticity of birth, both explicitly, in the context of his account of temporality, and implicitly, in the concept of ‘throwness.’

63 vi. Individuation, authenticity and section 74 of Being and Time

In this chapter thus far, I have been exploring the problem of individuation as it occurs in

Heidegger’s Being and Time. I have suggested that Heidegger offers an account of being- with-others that differs from that of Husserl’s and the tradition that preceded him, insofar as Dasein is not a transcendental or Cartesian ego and the others it encounters are not encountered as objects of its perception, but form part of Dasein’s very Being. However, there is a tension between this account of being-with and the radical individuation endorsed in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being-toward-death; a tension that betrays what seems to be, yet another form of metaphysical solipsism. If it is the case that

I am ontologically with others, then how is it also possible that I can be radically individual in the sense of severing what appeared to be, my ontological ties with others?

Part of the problem here is that while Heidegger does claim that authentic being-with- others is possible, this account is no where near as detailed as the seemingly disparaging one he gives of the world of das Man.

He does, however, offer an account of authentic being-with, where the individual’s fate is tied up with that of a nation or a Volk. But this merely creates more problems than it solves for three reasons. Firstly, it is not clear what the difference is between das Man and the Volk. Secondly, it appears at odds with the account of individuation as a taking responsibility for one’s own existence. How is it possible for an individual to take responsibility if in the end, to be authentic is to be swept up in the tide of the fate of a people? Thirdly, it is politically problematic given Heidegger’s involvement in National

Socialism. In this section, I examine Heidegger’s account of authentic being-with offered

64 in section 74 in order to highlight the tension between individuation and community that emerges once again, but in a slightly different context. I then close this chapter by considering some of the political implications of reading the fate of the individual as tied to that of a Volk.

In the previous discussion, it became evident that in elaborating the different aspects of authenticity, Heidegger again and again stressed the same point: Dasein as immersed in das Man is dispersed and lost, but is able to become authentic if it takes hold of its radically individualised self by assuming responsibility for the freedom of making its individual decisions. This radical individuation is disclosed to Dasein in the experience of anxiety. Fleeing from angst, we are immersed in das Man; facing it, our radical individuation and freedom are revealed: “anxiety individualises Dasein and thus discloses it as ‘solus ipse” (BT 188/232).

These choices that Dasein is forced to make in authenticity are not bound by any values or norms: “Resoluteness ‘exists’ only as a resolution … But … on what is it to resolve?

Only the resolution itself can give the answer” (BT 298/344). Herman Philipse points out that by italicising the word ‘only’ Heidegger underscores that authentic decisions are not bound by any given standard of judgement, even though the possible course of life that

Dasein chooses in a given situation will be pre-structured by a specific cultural tradition

(Philipse 1999: 454). However, in section 74 of Being and Time, Heidegger develops a notion of authentic being-together that appears incompatible with his notion of individual authenticity.

65 Heidegger argues in section 74 that while Dasein understands itself in its own superior power in asserting the power of its finite freedom of choice, there is also a sense of powerlessness here for two reasons. Firstly, Dasein is powerless because it cannot rely on the support of das Man to make its choices, and secondly, it is powerless because it is subjected to fate:

Dasein can be reached by the blows of fate only because in the depths of its Being Dasein is fate … Existing fatefully in the resoluteness which hands itself down, Dasein has been disclosed as Being-in-the-world both for the ‘fortunate’ circumstances which ‘come its way’ and for the cruelty of accidents. (BT 384/436)

But, Heidegger goes on to argue, if fateful Dasein, as being in the world exists essentially as being with others, then its historizing is a co-historizing and is “determinative for it as a destiny” (BT 384/436). It also means that the individual’s fate is tied to that of a community:

Destiny is not something that puts itself together out of individual fates, any more than Being-with-one-another can be conceived as the occurring together of several subjects. Our fates have already been guided in advance, in our Being with one another in the same world and in our resoluteness for definite possibilities. Only in communicating and in struggling does the power of destiny become free. Dasein’s fateful destiny in and with its ‘generation’ goes to make up the full authentic historizing of Dasein. (BT384-5/436)

What this suggests is that to speak of an individual fate and of a destiny of the people is to make the claim that individual decisions do not make a difference to what happens to us. If this is the case, then how can this be reconciled with the claim that authentic Dasein is free to choose, without having these choices dictated by norms and values? Philipse

66 suggests as a possible response that it may be the case that we experience these vicissitudes or fates as something unpredictable and foreign to our individual intensions

(Philipse 1999: 460). This however, is to be expected, given that there are many different individuals, and individual decisions combined will invariably produce unintended results, such that they cancel each other out. The problem is that Heidegger explicitly rejects this pluralistic conception of the ‘destiny’ of a people. Why, then, did he reject it?

And what are the political and ethical implications of this rejection?

According to Philipse, the answer as to why Heidegger rejected this pluralistic conception of a destiny of a people can be found in the dialectics implied by Heidegger’s individualism, a dialectics that is triggered as soon as one adopts individualism as a basis of (Philipse 1999: 460). For Philipse, “it is an axiom of political philosophy that no state can be effective unless there is a robust global consensus on many norms and values” (Philipse 1999: 460). Assuming for the sake of argument that individualist decisionism is true, then a problem arises as to how such a political consensus is to be obtained. This problem cannot be resolved by a democratic system, because if we leave autonomous and individual Daseins to their own devices, it is highly unlikely, if not impossible, that a consensus will arise (Philipse 1999: 460).

In order to solve this problem, Philipse argues that we must assume that our free authentic decisions are somehow ‘guided in advance,’ as Heidegger claims, such that they are in harmony with one another. They may be guided by some law of historical development, as German Marxists claimed, or by a mythical entity such as the people

67 (Volk) and its historical destiny as the German romantics claimed. More problematically, they may be guided in advance by “a powerful dictator who allegedly expresses the will of the people and imposes this will by force upon dissidents” (Philipse 1999: 460). On

Philipse’s interpretation, Heidegger endorses the mythical solution to this problem in section 74 while he endorsed the authoritarian solution in 1933, “when he claimed that one should not guide one’s life by moral maxims and ideas because the ‘Fuhrer himself is present and future Germany and its law.’ The two solutions reinforce each other, for

Hitler claimed that he was expressing the resolute decisions of authentic Germans and that he was guided by a German Geschick” (Philipse 1999: 460).

Slavoj Zizek similarly argues that this description of the authentic belonging of a people in terms of a collective fate is not phenomenologically grounded in an adequate way.

According to Zizek, what Heidegger seems to be missing is simply that “which Hegel described as ‘objective Spirit,’ the symbolic big Other … which is not yet the

‘impersonal das Man, but also no longer the premodern immersion in a traditional way of life.”26 This tension between individualism and collective destiny is, for Zizek, at the root of Heidegger’s ‘Fascist temptation’ and it is here that the politicisation of Being and Time is at it strongest. Zizek writes: “does not the opposition between the modern anonymous dispersed society of das Man, with people busy following their everyday preoccupations, and the People authentically assuming its Destiny, resonate with the decadent modern

‘Americanised’ civilisation of frenetic false activity and the ‘conservative’ response to it?” (Zizek 1999: 17).

26 Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject: the absent centre of political ontology, London & New York: Verso, 1999, p.17.

68 This chapter has examined the tension that arises between the account of Mitsein and the individuation Heidegger endorses in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being- toward-death, and the tension between the paradoxical account of authentic individuation as being tied to the destiny or fate of the Volk. By drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular, the following chapter offers a defence of Heideggerian individuation.

69 Chapter Two Individuation, Mitsein, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s logic of the singular

In the previous chapter, I examined the way in which the problem of solipsism emerges in and some of the problems that this raises. I showed the way in which Heidegger rethinks the nature of Dasein’s relations with others by demonstrating that Dasein is fundamentally different from both the Cartesian and transcendental egos on account of the ontological fact that it is being-with.

However, the extent to which Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein succeeded in overcoming the problems posed by traditional accounts of solipsism is highly contentious. As I have pointed out, Being and Time presents the reader with the problem of how to reconcile Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is ontologically being- with, with his account of individuation as it emerges in the discussion of anxiety, authentic being-with and death. This tension between being-with and individuation has led to a plethora of interpretations, which either attempt to reconcile the tension or argue that Heidegger’s apparent contradiction or inconsistency implicates him in the tradition of subjectivity he sought to evade. Heidegger himself appears perturbed by this when, referring to the unfinished project of Being and Time, he writes: “the reason for the disruption is that the attempt and the path it chose to confront the danger of unwillingly becoming merely another entrenchment of subjectivity.”1

In this chapter, I want to offer a defence of Heideggerian individuation by suggesting that the type of individuation that emerges in Being and Time is fundamentally different to the metaphysical solipsism Heidegger sought to challenge. I further argue

1 Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans & ed. David F. Krell, New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1991 p.194. (emphasis added)

70 that the concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence or for the conduct of oneself. In the first section of this chapter, I will examine the various interpretations that have attempted to rescue Heidegger from the charge of solipsism/individualism, most notably, but not exclusively, those of Herbert Dreyfus and Frederick Olafson. Dreyfus interprets das Man as constituting the horizon of meaning within which a community interprets itself. He writes: “all significance and intelligibility is the product of the one [das Man]” and that it is “the ultimate reality” the “end of the line of explanations of intelligibility.”2 For Dreyfus, this does not however, sit comfortably with Heidegger’s conception of authenticity in terms of self- ownership or individuation, in which Dasein must transcend its immersion in das

Man. This leads Dreyfus to conclude that Heidegger’s account of das Man and self- ownership is ‘incoherent,’ ‘confused’ and ‘incomprehensible’ (Dreyfus 1991: 133). In an alternative interpretation, Olafson reads Heidegger’s account as a critique of modern life and mass society. Individuation, on this interpretation, is an attempt to overcome or transcend the totalising tendencies of mass culture. I explore the problems of both these interpretations before examining the criticisms made by

Jacques Taminiaux and Emmanuel Levinas. Both thinkers argue that rather than overcome the epistemological subject of metaphysics, Heidegger’s ontology merely reproduces metaphysical solipsism. Consequently, Heideggerian individuation forecloses a relation to the other.

The second section will examine Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of Mitsein or community in terms of the paradoxical logic of the singular. In the third section, I use Nancy’s

2 Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p.151.

71 concept of the singular to argue that while Heidegger does state that Dasein is individuated in authenticity and death, in terms of being completely alone, cut off and isolated, Dasein’s individuation is precisely what opens it up to a relation with the other. That is, individuation is only possible because it is concomitant with or indissociable from being-with.3 The value of Heidegger’s analytic, I argue, is that it demonstrates that the solipsistic ego of metaphysics is both an ontological and logical impossibility. In doing so, it opens up a space for an ethics of individual responsibility for the conduct of oneself. This chapter is thus intended to demonstrate the way in which individuation is not inconsistent with the account of being-with. In the following chapter I develop the idea of an ethics of responsibility for one’s existence by way of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger on the question of the understanding.

The ethical and political implications of this will then be examined in chapters four and five in relation to the concepts of embodiment and freedom.

i. Reconciling das Man and individuation in Being and Time: the contemporary debate.

The problem of how to reconcile Heidegger’s account of das Man and individuation is by no means a new one. The tension has been identified by an array of commentators and thinkers, who either attempt to reconcile the tension or dismiss Heidegger as irrelevant or inconsistent. The debate between Dreyfus and Olafson is but one example of the former while the criticisms made by Taminiaux and Levinas are characteristic of the latter approach to Being and Time.

3 For an excellent discussion on individuation as an opening to the other, see François Raffoul’s paper, “Otherness and Individuation in Heidegger” in Man and World, Vol. 28, 1995. Raffoul writes: “Now as ex-istent, Dasein is essentially defined by its openness to beings, thereby making it impossible to oppose the self’s individuation and its opening to other beings and to others. Here, Being-alone no longer means being closed upon oneself. The solus ipse, far from signifying the closure of the ego upon itself that occurs with the reduction-destruction of the world, in fact opens Dasein to the totality of beings.” p.354.

72 Dreyfus’ commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, argues that Heidegger’s primary objective in Being and Time is to overthrow the Cartesian model of the subject.4 Dreyfus is right in arguing that Heidegger aims to deconstruct the Cartesian model of subjectivity and the characteristics associated with it. I have demonstrated how Heidegger describes Dasein’s comportment in the world in terms of an engagement with other entities and the way in which this engagement is marked by an immediacy of understanding and familiarity that are not dependent upon detachment, reflection or disengagement with the world. I have also examined the way in which for Heidegger, the world is woven together as a significant whole for Dasein and that

4 Dreyfus identifies five main assumptions inherent in this model that, he argues, Heidegger challenges. The first is the principle of explicitness, attributed to thinkers from Socrates to Kant to Habermas. This stipulates that human activity is conducted on the basis of implicit principles that can be made explicit on reflection. For Heidegger, by contrast, this is both impossible and undesirable. On Dreyfus’ interpretation, Heidegger’s point is that the everyday skills and practices into which we are ‘thrown’ and socialised provide the conditions necessary for people to understand themselves as subjects and to make sense of their world. This understanding and these practices can only operate if they remain in implicit or in the background. While critical reflection is necessary in some situations, it is always secondary and derivative to the primary mode of ‘coping’ with the world or practical/immersed engagement. The second aspect of Cartesianism that Heidegger challenges, according to Dreyfus is mental representation – experience is not that of independent objects, but of mental objects that are representations of the object in-itself. For Heidegger experience is not always a relation between a self-contained subject with mental content and an independent object. While Heidegger does concede that we do experience ourselves at times as conscious subjects relating to objects by way of intentional states such as beliefs, desires, perceptions and intentions, these intentional states are, once again, derivative of our basic state or condition of being-in-the-world; a way of being that cannot be understood in terms of a subject/object relation. According to Dreyfus theoretical holism is the third object of Heidegger’s critique. This refers to the rules and beliefs that we tacitly acknowledge and understand in our activity. These, according to thinkers such as Plato, Descartes and Husserl, belong to a network or a system that underlies every aspect of orderly human activity. Heidegger, on the other hand, denies the theory that maintains that there must be a theory of every orderly domain or that there can be a theory of the commonsense world. Instead, he argues that we need to return to the phenomenon of everyday human activity.4 The fourth presupposition characteristic identified by Dreyfus in Heidegger’s critique is that of detachment and objectivity. This refers to the assumptions, inherited from the Greeks, that we can not only obtain theoretical knowledge of every domain, but that this theoretical and detached viewpoint is superior to the engaged and immersed viewpoint gained through practical involvement in the world. Heidegger, as we have seen, argues that we can only have knowledge of things and ourselves through our everyday engagement. Finally, Dreyfus argues that Heidegger, following , emphasises that the meaning and organisation of a culture must be taken as the basic given in the social sciences and philosophy and cannot be traced back to the activity of individual subjects. See pp. 5, 154-7 and 305 of Dreyfus’ commentary on Being and Time

73 individual entities are encountered as meaningful as a result of the implicit familiarity that Dasein has with this structure of significance.5

Dreyfus argues that this inherent sociality of Dasein seemingly challenges the individualism that is typical of Cartesianism. Heidegger’s account of das Man is central for Dreyfus as it suggests that the structures of meaning by which we make sense of the world are always already shared and that Dasein must necessarily understand itself with reference to this public interpretation of the world. Dasein’s being-in-the-world consists, for example, in a skilful coping with matters, enacted through familiarity with and participation in a variety of shared social practices. For

Dreyfus, this involves being familiar with norms of behaviour and conforming to these norms. Hence, to participate in these practices is to participate in the public world of das Man. Without this conformity that reflects the phenomenon of averageness and levelling off, the world would not hang together as a meaningful whole (Dreyfus 1991: 154-7).

In providing this interpretation of das Man, Dreyfus is setting up inauthenticity as structural or value-neutral, as if Dasein’s immersion in the world of the ‘they’ is primordially constitutive of its being-in-the-world. However, as I will argue, the problem with Dreyfus’ interpretation lies in the way it ignores the individuating aspect of authenticity as a real possibility of Dasein that is not inconsistent with its being-with.

5 see BT 67-8. This familiarity that Dasein has with the structure of significance will be further examined in the final section in relation to the concept of a shared horizon of meaning, including the meaning of Being.

74 Firstly, Dreyfus elides the role of anxiety in relation to das Man. As I examined in chapter one, anxiety individualises Dasein and discloses its Being which is otherwise covered over and concealed by its immersion in das Man. Dreyfus ignores this dimension of anxiety by arguing that “anxiety reveals that the self has no possibilities of its own” and that “Heidegger holds that (1) all the for-the-sake-of-whichs are provided by the culture and are for anyone and (2) Dasein can never take over these impersonal public possibilities in a way that would make them its own and so give it an identity” (Dreyfus 1991: 305). What is misleading about the interpretation of anxiety as that it suggests that anxiety discloses to Dasein that the mode of authenticity is impossible. As I have demonstrated in chapter one, Heidegger makes explicit that Dasein does have a possibility that is its own. This possibility is its potentiality-for-Being. Anxiety, according to Heidegger, throws Dasein back upon itself, and when it is irresolute, it flees into das Man. But when Dasein resolutely holds itself open to the disclosure of its Being, it can become authentic: “in anxiety there lies the possibility of a disclosure which is quite distinctive; for anxiety individualises. This individualisation brings Dasein back from its falling, and makes manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of its Being” (BT

190-1/235).

Second, insofar as Dreyfus accounts for anxiety, he does so by distinguishing between a structural account of das Man and a psychological inauthentic falling into the ‘they.’

As MacAvoy points out, Dreyfus argues that the fleeing that occurs in the face of anxiety is rooted in Dasein’s unsettledness with regard to the meaninglessness of the public practices in which it is immersed. By fleeing, Dasein seeks to obscure this disclosure from itself by further immersing itself in the world of the ‘they.’ Dreyfus is

75 suggesting that there is a contradiction between the structural or value neutral account of das Man and the psychologically motivated account.6

For Dreyfus, Heidegger presents two conflicting accounts of falling and immersion in das Man. The first describes the ontological structures of Dasien (what he refers to as the structural account). The second is one that repeatedly characterises these structures in negative and disparaging terms (inauthenticity in the pejorative sense). If these structures are inauthentic, then the implication is that they need to be overcome.

However, if they are part of Dasein’s fundamental structure, then the overcoming of these inauthentic structures is rendered impossible. Furthermore, if this motivational account of inauthenticity subsumes the structural account, which Dreyfus believes it does, then Heidegger’s attempt to overcome Cartesianism is threatened (Dreyfus

1991: 226-9). Having distinguished between these two accounts of falling, Dreyfus finds the resulting tension between the structural and motivational accounts of inauthenticity incoherent.

Part of the problem with this account lies in the neglect of the ontological and metaphysical aspects of Heidegger’s project. As MacAvoy argues, there is a repeated blurring of the ontic and ontological spheres in Dreyfus’ account. While it is true that we access the ontological through the level of the ontic, the ontological is not reducible to the ontic (MacAvoy 2001: 456). Rather, Heidegger’s analysis moves between these two levels on account of his interest in how we obtain philosophical understanding in the ontological sense from out of our ontic life. For Heidegger, our

6 Leslie MacAvoy, “Overturning Cartesianism and the of suspicion: rethinking Dreyfus on Heidegger” in Inquiry, Vol. 44, 2001, p.461.

76 analysis must move beyond the ontic if we are to go beyond philosophical anthropology (BT 46/71-2).

This critique of Dreyfus’ interpretation, namely, that is confuses the ontic and ontological dimensions in Heidegger’s texts is also made by Olafson. According to him, Dreyfus’ interpretation of Dasein as being defined by its embeddedness in

‘shared social practices’ and the claim that the mode of comportment he refers to as

‘coping’ is the fundamental source of our intelligibility of our world, is untenable because it fails to account for the ontological dimension of Dasein. The concept of

‘coping’ for Olafson is a purely ontic one that cannot perform the function Dreyfus assigns to it.7 As Olafson states: “although Dreyfus evidently wants ‘coping’ to be an ontological concept and not just the ontic one it sounds like, in order to function as such it would have to be brought into a much closer relation to Heidegger’s own terminology” (Olafson 1994: 50).

Using the term ‘coping’ as the key to the disclosure of entities as entities, fails to evoke an understanding of the fact that the primordial mode in which things in the world are generally given to us is the mode of the ready-to-hand. As Olafson points out, the instrumental character of the world as disclosed by the ready-to-hand is not tied to conventionally defined tasks and techniques evoked by the word ‘coping.’

Furthermore, ‘coping’ as a philosophical term fails to convey the fact that “disclosing entities as entities is at its most fundamental level no more something that we do, in

7 Frederick Olafson, “Heidegger a la Wittgenstein or ‘Coping’ with Professor Dreyfus” in Inquiry, Vol 37, 1994, p.45.

77 the way we fix a household appliance or balance a check book, than is being-in-the- world itself as our very emphatically non-optional mode of being” (Olafson 1994: 50).

Moreover, and more importantly for the concerns of this thesis, is Dreyfus’ claim that where Sartre’s position is an extreme individualism based on a concept of radical choice, Heidegger’s philosophy is anti-individualistic and portrays human beings as embedded in a network of “shared social practices” that we acquire through the traditions and cultures in which we live. As Olafson rightly contends, it is significant that Heidegger himself does not say anything of this kind in either commenting on

Sartre’s work8 or in Being and Time, where, contrary to Dreyfus’ suggestion, the theme of individuation and individual decision is marked and notable.

In a more traditional interpretation, Olafson argues that Heidegger’s negative characterisation of das Man can be explained by interpreting it as a “deformation of our social being [Mitsein], not its highest achievement as Dreyfus apparently supposed it to be” (Olafson 1994: 59). Olafson, like Dreyfus, identifies a similar confusion in Heidegger – a confusion between an innocuous type of social anonymity

(structural) and an objectionable form (pejorative). However, for Olafson, the objectionable form of social anonymity is the true referent for das Man. Heidegger uses the expression das Man for a “mode of public-ness that has got altogether out of hand and leave no room at all for individuality” (Olafson 1994: 57).

8 See for example, “The Lettter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell, London: Routledge and Kegan, 1978, where Heidegger rejects any affinity with Sartre or what Sartre calls existentialism.

78 However, as Herman Philipse points out, as a critique of Dreyfus, Olafson’s interpretation is also unconvincing because it too, confuses the ontic and ontological.

For Olafson, a distorted modality of Mitsein would qualify as a contingent ontical possibility. However, Heidegger does state that das Man is an ontological and essential structure or an existentiale. Secondly, for Olafson, this form of sociality is morally reprehensible, yet as I demonstrated in chapter one, Heidegger suggests that the negative characterisation of das Man is “purely ontological in its aims and … far removed from any moralising critique of everyday Dasein” (BT 180/224). Moreover,

Heidegger himself emphasises the value neutral and fundamental status of das Man that Dreyfus ascribes to. He says for example, of the indifference and ambivalence of everyday existing that “out of this kind of Being – and back into it again – is all existing, such as it is” (BT 43/69). This is also consistent with Heidegger’s further claim discussed in chapter one that the ontical possibility of authenticity is an ontical modification of das Man.

For Dreyfus and Olafson, it would thus seem that the tension between inauthentic immersion in the world of das Man and authentic individuation render Heidegger’s account inconsistent and confused. However, both these interpretations are problematic insofar as they do not adequately account for the distinction between the ontic and ontology as it operates in Being and Time. Moreover, as Philipse argues, these conflicts that allegedly arise in Heidegger’s text are brought about because both

Olafson and Dreyfus tacitly assume that for Heidegger, das Man cannot be both a

79 fundamental structure of our daily life in the world and a structure that has to be evaluated negatively from an ontological point of view.9 According to Philipse:

this tacit assumption fits in with present-day American , according to which our daily life in the world is fundamentally all right. However, someone like Heidegger, who was imbued with a traditional and mystical Catholic mentality of world-abnegation and was writing Sein and Zeit during the cheerless German interbellum period, may have disagreed with us on this point. In order to be textually adequate, an historical interpretation of Sein and Zeit should explain why Heidegger stresses both the fundamental and the negative nature of das Man. (Philipse 1999: 452)

The tension between das Man and individuation in Being and Time is also problematic on Jacques Taminiaux and Emmanuel Levinas’ interpretation for different reasons. The problem for both thinkers lies in the Heideggerian concept of

“mineness,” which Taminiaux argues constitutes the culmination of the modern metaphysics of subjectivity. Taminiaux writes: “We might … be justified in anticipating that the aim of the demonstration contains a sort of paroxysm of the modern metaphysics of subjectivity, a paroxysm to which, however, it is not entirely reducible.”10 For Taminiaux there appears to a contradiction at the heart of fundamental ontology: “on the one hand the project offers the most sobering and unrelenting description of finitude, and on the other hand it turns out to be the last implementation of the absolute pretensions of metaphysics” (Taminiaux 1991: xix).

9 For a fourth position on the question between Dasein and its relation to others, see Edgar C. Boedeker, “Individual and Community in Early Heidegger: Situating das Man, the Man-self, and self- ownership in Dasein’s ontological structure” in Inquiry, Vol. 44, 2001. Boedeker offers an interesting alternative to these three interpretations by arguing that Dasein’s Being can be understood to have three different ways of encountering entities, or three perspectives. Each perspective has a corresponding horizon, which is a set of possibilities by which entities are encountered. Both the perspectives and their correlating horizons are ‘existentials’, insofar as they are essential structures of Dasein’s Being. On account of this, no Dasein can ever be without these horizons for as long as it exists. Dasein must ‘enact’ each of these horizonal-perspectival pairs in one of two mutually exclusive ‘existeniell’ modes; that is, ways that are possible but are not necessary. 10 J. Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. Michael Gendra Suny: Albany, 1991, xix.

80 For him, the fact that Heidegger argues that the entire history of ontology is contained in the principle that “the ‘I’ must accompany all my representations” and that

“existence is in the care of oneself – for the Dasein that each and every time is mine”

(Taminiaux 1991: xix) suggests that Heideggerian solipsism merely inherits and perpetuates the Cartesian heritage. This is because the concepts of care and mineness, both fundamental to the text, are only concerned with the individual Dasein. The fact that Dasein is always engaged in the care of itself, and only itself, and that it wills itself exclusively leads Taminiaux to conclude that “the Dasein in Sein und Zeit is open only to make room for a circle leading back to itself. Dasein has an authentic understanding if and only if it wants to be itself” (Taminiaux 1991: xxi). This raises an important point about the extent to which Dasein is in fact, related to others, and by implication, raises doubts about the possibility of extrapolating an ethics from

Heidegger’s ontology; a possibility thinkers such as Levinas deny.

Levinas, despite recognising the temporal dimension of Dasein as ecstatic, claims that

Heidegger fails to move beyond a metaphysical conception of the subject which reduces all otherness to the same. He states:

traditional philosophy, and Bergson and Heidegger too, remained with the conception of a time either taken to be purely exterior to the subject, a time- object, or taken to be entirely contained in the subject. But the subject in question was always a solitary subject. The ego all alone, the monad, already had a time.11

That is, for Levinas, Heidegger misconceives, or gives insufficient emphasis to the concept of Mitsein, instead, reducing all the structures of Being to the structures of

11 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978 p. 94.

81 Dasein. For this reason, Levinas claims that Heidegger reaffirms the primacy of the subject over otherness or alterity. As Tina Chanter points out, for Levinas, despite what appears to the dissolution of the subject in the ecstatic structure of temporality, the ecstasy that temporality appeared to present is merely another way of the subject imposing its will, shaping and creating its world, imposing its mastery on others, forcing alterity to conform to itself, and reducing the other to the same (Chanter 2001:

153).

Levinas’ correlation between Heidegger’s individuated Dasein and the solipsism of western metaphysics can, I suggest, be challenged. In equating authentic Dasein with the solipsistic ego, Heidegger’s critics imply that the ontological structure of Dasein as open, ecstatic and being-with undergoes a metamorphosis in the experience of anxiety, authenticity and being-towards-death. In the next section of this chapter, I want to suggest, with the aid of Jean-Luc Nancy, that Heidegger’s discussion of individuation does not evoke such a conception of the ego as closed upon itself.

Rather, the fundamental structure of Dasein as open means that Dasein already has a relation to the other and by virtue of this openness, its individuation is thus inseparable from its being-with. Moreover, being-with cannot be eradicated by the experiences of authenticity and anxiety. I firstly, examine Nancy’s engagement with

Heidegger on the question of Mitsein as it arises in The Inoperative Community and

Being Singular Plural to demonstrate the way in which individuation is not only different from metaphysical solipsism, but is also reconcilable with Mitsein. My discussion of Nancy will be framed in terms of the themes of singularity, community and being-toward-death. In the final section, the discussion focuses exclusively on the

82 parallel Heideggerian themes of mineness, anxiety, authenticity and being-toward- death as these are the places where the problematic of individuation surfaces.

ii. Mitsein and the paradoxical logic of the singular

In Being Singular Plural and the Inoperative Community, Nancy attempts a revision of Being and Time, one that posits the concept of Mitsein as central. There are two reasons in particular behind this revision. The first is the sentiment, expressed in the opening pages of the text, that the recent events of world history suggest that we do not know how to live together, that our world is one lacking in sharing and thus, lacking in meaning, in particular, the meaning of what it means to be-with.

Appropriating the seemingly peripheral concept of Mitsein elaborated by Heidegger in Being and Time, Nancy argues for an ontology of being-with-one-another, one that precedes any analysis of ego or subject.12

12 Critchley argues that Being and Time needs to be re-written for Nancy, because of the political fate of the project of fundamental ontology and the Dasein-analytic; “it must be re-written without the autarchic telos and tragic-heroic pathos of the thematics of authenticity, where, in paragraph 74, Mitsein is determined in terms of ‘the people’ and its ‘destiny.’” In “With Being-With? Notes on Jean- Luc Nancy’s Rewriting of Being and Time” in Simon Critchley, Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity, London & New York: Verso, 1999, p. 240. If the tragic political pathos of the thematics of authenticity is to be avoided, then it would seem as if though Being and Time must be revised from the perspective of the inauthenticity of the Mitsein-analytic. But Critchley implies this involves abandoning the ontology of authenticity. For Critchley, “Nancy would appear to be claiming … that the genuine philosophical radicality of Being and Time lies in the existential analytic of inauthenticity. What has to be recovered from the wreckage of Heidegger’s political commitment is his phenomenology of everyday life, the sheer banality of our contact with the world and with others, what Nancy calls ‘the extremely humble layer of our everyday experience.” (p.240/27). While I concur with Critchley that this humble layer of our contact with others is what Nancy attempts to rescue, there is also a sense in which he does not abandon Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic being-with. For Nancy, there is a difference between our being-in-common in an ontological sense and community as an essence or a work. As I read Nancy, it is not so much a discarding of the analytic of authenticity, but a fleshing out of this underdeveloped trajectory in Heidegger. I return to this problem presented by section 74 of Being and Time in the third section of this chapter.

83 The second reason is the collapse of communism. Nancy is both sympathetic and critical of the communist project. While on the one hand, he concedes that there were fundamental deficiencies in the communist project, he argues that communism was powerful in two important respects. Firstly, the power of communism lay in the fact that it was able to say “we.” Secondly, it was able to engage in a making of sense or meaning based on this “we,” a sense or meaning that would potentially combat the alienation or nihilism pervading modern existence. Nancy writes: “what Marx understood by alienation … was ultimately the alienation of sense” (BSP 62). For

Nancy, communism exposes the fact that the question of being-with is the ultimate ontological question, one that requires a political settlement.13

However, while Nancy is sympathetic to the communist project of making some sort of sense on the basis of this ability to say “we,” he is critical of the attempt to construct a community or society, which, as a construction, is necessarily homogenising.14 Both communism and fascism attempted to construct a society/state that defined human beings as the producers. More specifically, it defined them as

13 For a further discussion of the relation between politics and community in Nancy’s work, see Simon Critchley, “Re-tracing the political: politics and community in the work of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy” in David Campbell and Michael Dillon (eds), The Political Subject of Violence, Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press. Here, Critchley argues there is a deeply Heideggerian analysis of the contemporary world that is informing Nancy’s work, this being the idea that the present is marked by the installation of the philosophical as the political and the absolute domination of politics. This means that the political form of contemporary societies is primarily totalitarian. is here understood as a political society “governed by a logic of identification, where all areas of social life represent incarnate power: the proletariat is identified with the people, the party with the proletariat, the politburo with the party, the leader with the politburo … totalitarianism is a modern despotism, where the social is represented as something without anything beyond it, that is to say, without any transcendence. In totalitarianism, power has no outside, it is the total immanence of the social in the political.” (p.77-8). This is also what Nancy refers to an “immanentism”. I will examine the relation between the social and the political in the final chapter in my examination of Arendt’s theory of political action in terms of Heidegger’s conception of ontological freedom. 14 For a further discussion on the construction of a community, see Dennis A. Foster, “Pleasure and Community in Cultural Criticism” in Michael Strysick, The Politics of Community, Aurora: The Davis Group Publishers, 2002, p. 37. Foster argues that for Nancy, while communism as a political reality disappears, it ironically emerges in new forms. The most threatening social forms that this attempt to construct community take are those communities that operate, or that are deliberately worked out, such as religion for example, or any other community that attempts to construct a unified, communal spirit.

84 producers of their own essence in the form of labour or work, which in turn, produces this essence as community. This type of community is totalitarian or ‘immanent.’ By immanence, Nancy means a logic in which the community aims to produce its essence as a work. It creates a work out of itself, and as Lacoue-Labarthe points out, accomplishes the subjective process par excellence in its process of self-formation and self-production. Its truth is found in the “fusion of community,” in festival or in war, or in the identification with the leader who does not represent transcendence, but is an incarnation of immanentism of a community.15

Interestingly, Nancy argues that with the exception of Heidegger’s analysis of

Mitsein, the question of community as an ontological relation between singularities that are shared is markedly absent from the conventional metaphysics of the subject, or what he refers to as the ‘absolute for-itself.’ This does not only refer to a liberal conception of the subject as detached and isolated, but also refers to the Hegelian

‘total state,’ or to the subject of metaphysics in general. The logic of the absolute, be it the subject, the state, or the work of art, is that of detachment, distinctness and closure; of being without relation (IC 4).16

Returning to the problems Nancy identifies in communism, Nancy argues that of greater concern is the way in which this type of community conceives of the individual. Not only is s/he the creator of an essence through work or labour, but can also control nature, human society and humanness itself. In a critique reminiscent to

15 Philip Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction of the Political, trans. Chris Turner, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1990, p.70. 16 Nancy appears to leave aside the type of authentic community Heidegger describes in section 74 of Being and Time, where individuals are at the mercy of the fate of a collective, and where, given Heidegger’s comments in 1933. See for example, n 1 in the Introduction. There is an identification with a leader, who represents the community as a whole and who steers its destiny. I return to this issue in the third section of this chapter and again in chapter five.

85 the one made by Heidegger in the “Age of the World Picture,” examined in chapter one, the subject in this community constructs meaning by imposing its mastery upon the world, on the basis that it exists in isolation from it and others.

For Nancy, to conceive of a subject as an absolute is a logical impossibility. This is because the logic of the absolute stipulates that “the absolute must be the absolute of its own absolutness, or not be at all. In other words: to be absolutely alone, it is not enough that I be so; I must also be alone being alone – and this of course is contradictory. The logic of the absolute violates the absolute. It implicates it in a relation that it refuses and precludes by its very essence” (IC 4). Such an interiority is impossible because in order to be alone, the subject must first have an experience of being-with, otherwise, one’s isolation is meaningless. This implies that being in relation must be prior to or must precede being alone, as the latter experience can only mean something in relation to the former. For Nancy, the logic of the absolute fails to recognise that it too, is only possible because of the prior relation we have with others: “existence is with: otherwise nothing exists” (BSP 4).

The task for Nancy becomes one of rethinking community by reconceptualising the relation we have with others, because as he writes, “neither ‘personalism’ nor Sartre ever managed to do anything more than coat the most classical individual-subject with a moral or psychological paste: they never inclined it, outside itself, over the edge that opens up its being-in-common” (IC 4). The truth of community, for Nancy, or in

Heideggerian terms, an authentic form of being-with, is one that recedes from fusion

86 or from constituting itself as an essence.17 Such a retreat is intended to open, and keep open “this strange being-the-one-with-the-other to which we are exposed” (IC xxxix).

For Nancy, we thus need an ontology of being-with one another that would form the basis of a new ethics or a type of conduct or action.18

How then, are we to re-think this “we”? Nancy’s point of departure is Heidegger’s ontology of Mitsein, which he reframes in terms of the paradoxical logic of the singular. In Being Singular Plural and the Inoperative Community, Nancy attempts to rethink community, not as an immanent and self-enclosed circle of meanings, but as a sharing of words and senses, voices, subjectivities and bodies.19 For Nancy, the structure of this community is premised on the paradoxical logic of the singular. This logic stipulates that each of us is a singular and unique being but that this singularity can only be expressed and exposed in the context of being-with-others or community.

For this reason, we are fundamentally or ontologically both singular and plural: “the

17 It should be noted that I am interested in Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular for the purposes of this chapter; namely, to defend Heidegger from the charge of solipsism. As a consequence, a critique of Nancy lies outside the scope of this thesis. However, I do concur with Robert Bernasconi’s position in “On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community with the West: The Debate between Nancy and Blanchot,” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 23, 1993 that there is a notable lack of historical engagement apparent in Nancy’s work. Bernasconi writes: Aside from Nancy’s general insistence that the West is characterised by a certain nostalgia for community from its beginnings, he fails to offer a detailed engagement with the history – thought as ‘Western’ or otherwise – of the concept of community … Elsewhere, in the context of a discussion of the of fascism and democracy, Nancy insists that ‘words and concepts have a history and can hardly understand then if we do not take that history into account’. The same must surely also be true of community. It is not hard to find evidence of the problems that await Nancy simply because he does not attend to this work of remembering. (p.15-16). 18 I will return to this relation between ontology and the ethico-political in the following chapter. 19 A critique of Nancy’s concept of community can also be found in Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins, London & New York: Verso, 1997. Here, Derrida expresses his reservations of Nancy’s concept of community in the context of fraternity. Derrida writes: “there is still perhaps some brotherhood in Bataille, Blanchot and Nancy, and I wonder, in the innermost recess of my admiring friendship, if it does not deserve a little loosening up and if it should still guide the thinking of community, be it a community without community or a brotherhood without brotherhood.” (48n15). There are references to brotherhood in several places in Nancy’s work, most notably, in The Experience of Freedom (168), The Sense of the World (115), The Inoperative Community (43-44). See also A.J.P.Thomson, “Against Community: Derrida contra Nancy” in The Politics of Community (2002) for a further comparison of Derrida and Nancy.

87 singular-plural constitutes the essence of Being, a constitution that undoes or dislocates every single, substantial essence of Being itself” (BSP 28-9). The exploration of the notion of singularity here is intended to provide a way of understanding Heidegger’s idea of individuation as intrinsically linked to being-with.

For Nancy, each Dasein is singular in the sense that we each possess a body and a face, a voice and a death. Each has a specific pattern of comportment, a silhouette, a different narrative. Nancy states:

From faces to voices, gestures, attitudes, dress and conduct, whatever the ‘typical’ traits are, everyone distinguishes himself by a sort of sudden and headlong precipitation where the strangeness of a singularity is concentrated. Without this precipitation there would be, quite simply, no ‘someone’. And there would be no more interest or hospitality, desire or disgust, no matter who or what it might be for. (BSP 8)

However, my singularity, my uniqueness as a comportment towards the world is only expressed and exposed in my being-with. For Nancy:

We can never simply be ‘the we,’ understood as a unique subject, or understood as an indistinct ‘we’ that is like a diffuse generality. ‘We’ always expresses a plurality, expresses ‘our’ being divided and entangled: ‘one’ is not ‘with’ in some general sort of way, but each time according to determined modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous … What is presented in this way, each time, is a stage on which several [people] can say ‘I,’ each on his own account, each in turn. But a ‘we’ is not the adding together or juxtaposition of these ‘I’s’. A ‘we’, even one that is not articulated, is the condition for the possibility of each ‘I’. No ‘I’ can designate itself without there being a space-time of ‘self-referentiality.’ (BSP 65)

88 Singularity refers to a subject’s uniqueness that arises through the ‘we’ but that cannot be captured, subsumed or understood in the ‘we.’20 A singularity is remarkable and unique, a point of origin which is marked as different from everything else around it.

However, this difference does not close it off from others or community; singularity does not isolate the subject in her difference because the singular being is ecstatic insofar as it only arises as exposed, open and vulnerable to the other, always affected and invaded by the other.

This openness that lies at the heart of singularity is also what propels the subject into relations with others. This is why, despite the radical difference expressed by singularity, there exists something common or universal in its dispersal. While we are all different in the sense that we have different faces and bodies, mannerisms and gestures, while we have different possibilities and will pursue different projects, there remains a commonality about our experiences. Our bodies are all capable of feeling pain when hurt, we all fall in love and desire, weep and grieve and we all share the experience of being-toward-death. What is shared here is our singularity, insofar as this arises through sharing what we have in common.21

20 Although it should be noted that Nancy rejects the notion of alterity. For an excellent discussion on Nancy’s refusal of alterity, see Bernasconi (1993). In this paper, Bernasconi draws attention to a piece by Nancy entitled “Beheaded Sun”, in order to examine the implications of effacing alterity. The implications being, firstly, a thinly veiled racism and secondly, an account of community that remains tied to the philosophy of immanence that Nancy himself critiques. See pp. 12-4. 21 It should be noted that what is shared here is singularity, rather than experiences, although, as Foster points out, part of what we share is the fact of coming together that distributes, spaces and places people such that it is not one’s individuality that emerges, but a sense of “finitude.” See p. 38 of The Politics of Community (2002). Nancy writes: “sharing comes down to this: what community reveals to me, in presenting to me my birth and my death, is my existence outside myself … a singular being appears, as finitude itself: at the end (or at the beginning), with the contact of the skin (or the heart) of another singular being, at the confines of the same singularity that is, as such, always other, always shared, always exposed.” (IC 26-8).

89 This sharing of singularities are what constitute the ‘we.’ Singularity refers to both the uniting and dividing phenomenon of being-with; uniting because it is what we all share, but also what divides us because there remains something unique and untransferable about our singularity. While we all share experiences such as being- toward-death, we experience it differently and uniquely. I cannot feel the way another experiences their being toward death, nor can I take it away from them by dying in their place, despite the fact that it is also my ontological fact. Despite this gulf that lies between myself and the other, it is only in relation to the ‘we,’ to community or to the other that I can refer to myself as an ‘I.’ It is only in the mode of being-with that my remarkability or my uniqueness can be inscribed. That is, the singular can only occur as what remarks itself from the plural. It is from within the framework of the logic of the singular that Nancy’s concept of community can be understood.

By virtue of this structure of singularity, community is something that inevitably happens to us, a gift we are given to share and cultivate rather than something we must either construct or produce: “community, far from being what society has crushed or lost, is what happens to us” (IC 11). It is important to note that Nancy makes a distinction between our being-in-common in an ontological sense and the idea of community as an essence. It is the latter idea of community conceived as an essence or as a work that has impeded our ability to think of the nature of our intersubjective relations: “the thinking of community as essence – is in effect, the closure of the political. Such a thinking constitutes closure because it assigns to community a common being, whereas community is a matter of something quite different, namely, of existence inasmuch as it is in common, but without letting itself be absorbed into a common substance” (IC xxxviii). This would be a ‘we’ constituted

90 through shared experience, rather than one based on fusion or ‘immanentism.’ It is precisely because we are singular beings that the project of fusion or communion is problematic for Nancy: “in the work, the properly ‘common’ character of community disappears, giving way to a unicity and a substantiality … the community that becomes a single thing (body, mind, fatherland, Leader …) necessarily loses the in of being-in-common. Or, it loses the with or the together that defines it” (IC xxxviii).22

It should also be noted that the type of community described by Nancy in terms of fusion resonates with both the inauthentic and authentic collective found in Being and

Time; the former in terms of das Man and the latter in terms of a Volk. Which, in turn raises the question I referred to in the previous chapter, as to what the difference between these types of community is, given that both necessitate the immersion of the individual into a collective. Nancy’s critique of community as communism (and fascism), in terms of immanence, defined as homogeneity and sameness, is not only a critique of das Man but also of Volk. In the third section, I demonstrate how mapping

Nancy’s idea of being-with as a sharing of singularity onto Heidegger’s idea of individuation as being-with, alters or transforms Heidegger’s apparent support of the idea of Volk.

Once again, appropriating Heidegger’s insight that Mitsein is ontological insofar as it is constitutive of Dasein, Nancy argues that it is only as being-with or existing in this

22 This is also why Nancy argues for an “unworking” or an interruption of community, conceived in terms of a fusion. In “Myth Interrupted” in A Finite Thinking, Simon Sparks (ed.), Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003, he writes: “there is a voice of interruption, and its schema imprints itself in the rustling of the community exposed to its own dispersion … community is itself the interruption, for it is upon this exposure of singular beings that myth is interrupted. But the interruption itself has a singular voice, a voice or a music that is taken up, held and at the same time exposed in an echo that is not a repetition … there is a voice of community articulated in the interruption and from the interruption itself.” (MI 156/62).

91 type of authentic community where singularities mingle and are shared, that we can respond to the question of the meaning of Being, or to Being as meaning. This means that the question of Being can only be accessed by way of our being-with others: “the question of what we still see as a ‘question of social being’ should in fact constitute the ontological question” (BSP 78). The nature of this relation to the other that enables us to make sense of Being is exposed in the experience of death.23

While Nancy has a different account of death to that found in Heidegger, insofar as he wants to emphasise the intersubjective dimension to death rather than the individualism Heidegger evokes, death remains central for both thinkers, but in different ways. According to Bernasconi, Nancy problematises the idea of death according to which one’s death “might be sublated in a future community for the sake of which one sacrifices oneself” (Bernasconi 1993: 8). This, for Nancy, was the demand made by Hitler on the German people. This demand is also what led

Heidegger astray. Nancy appropriates much of Heidegger’s analysis of death, especially the idea that it constitutes an interruption of subjectivity. This, in turn, enables him to argue against the idea of death as sacrifice for the purpose of communal fusion. However, he also argues that Heidegger failed to integrate the analysis of being-toward-death with the account of Mitsein because of the emphasis on individuation. This failure led Heidegger to take up the question of community in the problematic form of a discourse on the destiny of a people. Nancy sees his task as one of performing the integration that led Heidegger down this path (Bernasconi

1993: 9). In the third section I demonstrate the way in which Heidegger’s account of being-toward-death as individuating is not inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein. I

23 As I will demonstrate in the final section of this chapter, the idea that the meaning of Being is only accessed by way of our relations with others is also apparent in Heidegger’s work.

92 also suggest that reading both Heidegger’s and Nancy’s account of death together overcomes or redresses the problems presented by section 74 of Being and Time.

Death, perhaps more than the experiences of time and touch, is singled out as the one experience that demonstrates a form of intersubjectivity not based on a Hegelian model of recognition. Death is both a singular and shared experience, in the sense that finitude and mortality is something that we share, but that we also have to assume individually. The experience of death, my death, or the death of the other demonstrates to me that the only thing I can recognise in the death of the other is that there is nothing recognisable: “The similitude of the like-being is made in the encounter of ‘being toward the end’, that this end, their end, in each case ‘mine’ (or

‘yours’), assimilates and separates in the same limit, at which or on which they compare” (IC 33). We are all alike insofar as each of us is exposed to death, but this is not the same for each of us: “I do not rediscover myself, nor do I recognise myself in the other: I experience the other’s alterity, or I experience alterity in the other together with the alteration that “in me” sets my singularity outside me and infinitely delimits it” (IC 33-4). Death exposes the fact that community is not made up of egos – of subjects and substances that are immortal – but of I’s, who are others and who are vulnerable to death, and whose vulnerability and finitude is only exposed to me by being exposed to others and vise versa: “community does not weave a superior, immortal, or transmortal life between subjects … but is constitutively … calibrated on the death of those whom we call … its ‘members’ … But it does not make a work of this calibration. Community no more makes a work out of death than it is itself a work” (IC 14).

93 The death through which community arises does not operate in such a way that the dead pass into a “communal intimacy” and nor does community transfigure the dead into a substance or subject, along the lines of homeland, native soil or blood, nation or mystical body. Rather, community is calibrated on death in such a way that death renders it impossible to make a work of itself. Death discloses the impossibility of immanence: “a community is not a project of fusion, or in some general way a productive or operative project – nor is it a project at all … a community is the presentation to its members of their mortal truth … it is the presentation of the finitude and the irredeemable excess that make up finite being” (IC 15). Death is thus an interruption or an “unworking” of community such that communal fusion is resisted. A community calibrated on death is one where its subjects are faced, or

“exposed” to their finitude or mortality in the presence of others.24

Important to my purposes is the way Nancy’s approach to singularity illustrates the logical impossibility of solipsism, given that the singular can only exist in relation to the plural and the way in which singularity can only be expressed and exposed in community. This, I will argue is not a refutation of Heidegger’s account of Mitsein, but a reworking of it. In the following section, I want to transpose these arguments made by Nancy onto Heidegger’s claim that to be authentic, Dasein must sever its ties with das Man and become individuated. I do this to defend Heidegger from the charges that his analytic is confused and incoherent, or constitutes another form of metaphysical solipsism. I use the account of death as the interruption of immanence to

24 For a further discussion on the idea of interruption or fusion, see James Gilbert-Walsh, “Broken Imperatives: The ethical dimension of Nancy’s thought” in Philosophy and Social Criticism vol 26 no 2, 2000. Gilbert-Walsh examines the idea of interruption in the context of Nancy’s discussion of the voice and myth. The interruption of immanence occurs in the form of a voice of some sort, one that cannot be present or represent itself as a determinate figure. At times, Nancy seems to argue that the voice is a mythic one.

94 reconcile Heidegger’s somewhat paradoxical account of individual authenticity as tied to the fate of a people. In the following chapter, I develop this argument to show the way in which Heideggerian individuation contains an ethics of responsibility for one’s own Being.

iii. Heidegger and the ontology of Mitsein: a defence of Heideggerian individuation

Recall that Heidegger has left us with the following tension: on the one hand, he argues that we are ontologically being-with-others, and on the other, he argues that

Dasein is mine, that my being is my responsibility, that to assume it authentically, I must sever my ties with das Man and most importantly, that I die alone. The figure of an individual Dasein, standing resolute against the world and others, despite ontologically being-with others, is one that permeates Being and Time. It is this problematic that I want to untangle in this section.

I do this by way of three interrelated arguments. Using Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular, I firstly want to argue that Dasein can only stand alone in its authenticity and its death by virtue of the fact that it is being-with-others in the first place. That is,

Dasein’s mineness or its singularity is only intelligible in the context of being-with as it is only by virtue of the relation it has with the other, both authentically and inauthentically, that is can assume responsibility for its existence and its Being. While

Nancy’s concept of singularity differs from Heidegger’s concept of individuation, I will use it to rework Heidegger’s concept of individuation in such a way that it is consistent with the notion of Mitsein. Secondly, I want to suggest that while Dasein is, for the most part, inauthentic, this is but one of many possibilities that it has, rather

95 than a fundamental structure. Mineness, everydayness and falling are part of Dasein’s ontological constitution, and it is on the basis of this that Dasein has inauthentic and authentic possibilities. I suggest that the considerable attention paid to Heidegger’s now famous account of inauthenticity obscures or passes over other places in the text where he offers a more neutral or less pejorative account of our relations with others, the way in which we share the world and more importantly, the way we share meaning. Thirdly, I want to argue that whether we like it not, we die alone, irrespective of how many people are at our side, and that it is precisely in the individuation exposed by death that an ethical relation to the other can emerge.

a. The concept of mineness

In the first section of this chapter, I examined the criticism made by Taminiaux that the concept of mineness reinscribes the ‘I’ of traditional metaphysics and constitutes an ethical closure because existence is reduced to care of oneself and one’s own

Being. Dasein’s relation to itself and its responsibility for itself is described by

Taminiaux as a solipsistic closure of Dasein upon itself. Other interpretations suggest that the concept of mineness posits an autonomy and self-determination that is even greater than that of the Kantian subject.25 What these criticisms tend to overlook is aspects of the ontological dimension to mineness. In light of the previous arguments made by Nancy, I argue that mineness is not intended to evoke an isolated ‘I’ or ego, but is intended to capture the singularity and uniqueness of Dasein’s existence, its relation to its Being, and most importantly, the responsibility it has for it. What is at

25 This interpretation made by Michael Haar “The Question of Human Freedom in the later Heidegger” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989, will be examined and challenged in greater detail in the fifth chapter.

96 stake for Heidegger in the notion of mineness is the question of Being, not the question of subjectivity in terms of ego-hood.

The concept of mineness occupies a central place in the analytic of Dasein, forming the basis upon which the architectonic of Being and Time is constructed. For

Heidegger, the most fundamental aspect to Dasein is that its Being is its own and it is only on this basis that Dasein can choose and actualise possibilities. Being thus takes place at the level of the individual in the sense that to be means “to be one’s own” because the essence of Dasein lies “in the fact that in each case it has its Being to be, and has it as its own” (BT 12/32).

In what sense, then, is Dasein my own? Firstly, in the sense that my being is something that belongs exclusively to me, insofar as I own it, and must claim it as my own. It is my being insofar as I am responsible for it. Heidegger writes: “Dasein is an entity which is in each case I myself; its Being is in each case mine” (BT 114/150).

Secondly, the fact that Dasein is mine means that I cannot be indifferent or ambivalent toward it; that wittingly or unwittingly, my existence has some kind of meaning because I exist as a caring being. Thirdly, and related to the previous point, it is only on the basis of mineness that I can make choice in the first place in relation to my existence. Heidegger argues that “in each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way in which it is in each case mine” (BT 42/68).

As I pointed out in the previous chapter, this could suggest that determining the meaning of Being is an individual endeavour, a responsibility that I have to assume on

97 my own, and one that will invariably isolate me from others. However, there are two aspects to this concept of mineness that separate Heidegger from both the transcendental and Cartesian egos. The first is that while Dasein is always mine, this formulation is somewhat provisional, or even misleading, because as Heidegger goes on to argue, for the most part, Dasein is not-mine, and it is only from out of this loss of self that paradoxically, it can regain its sense of self and assume responsibility for its Being. The second difference is that Heidegger intends this to function ontologically, rather than refer to an ego as such insofar as what is at issue here is

Dasein’s Being rather than Dasein itself.

In relation to the first point, Heidegger does point out that this definition of Dasein as mine does no more than indicate an ontologically constitutive state. This suggests meaning that there is more to the phenomena of mineness than an I, a subject, or a self. While it may provisionally seem that with the concept of mineness, Heidegger has invested the human being with an autonomy and self-determination greater than that of the Kantian subject, as it turns out, the concept of mineness signifies something else entirely. The who of Dasein, as I will demonstrate, turns out to be more complicated in the sense that the who of the everyday Dasein turns out to be not the ‘I myself.’ Heidegger writes: “Dasein is in each case mine, and this is its constitution, but what if this should be the very reason why, proximally and for the most part, Dasein is not itself” (BT 115-6/151). This suggests that losing the I or

Dasein’s mineness is as structural as possessing an I or as Dasein being ‘mine’.

Again, Heidegger reiterates:

The word ‘I’ is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal indicator, indicating something which may perhaps reveal itself as its

98 ‘opposite’ in some particular phenomenal context of Being. In that case, the ‘not-I’ is by no means tantamount to an entity which essentially lacks ‘I-hood’ but is rather a definite kind of Being which the ‘I’ itself possess, such as having lost itself.” (BT 116/151-2)

The problem with this traditional account of subjectivity is that in positing the subject as the foundation, and reducing it to a particular category or essence, the human subject is conceived as a present-at-hand entity. Recall that to treat something present at hand is to perceive it from a theoretical mode of detachment. It is to perceive it as an object of speculation, while on Nancy’s analysis, it is to perceive of the subject as without relation. Given Heidegger’s analysis of being-in-the-world and the definition of Dasein in terms of existence, such a conception of Dasein as present-at-hand is no longer tenable. Why? Because we can know nothing of the subject by abstracting it from the world in which it occurs; because we can only know anything about ourselves in the very act of existing; and because there is something more to being human than an essence to which we are reduced.26

26 Also see Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism.” Heidegger rejects humanism, and indeed all “isms” on account of their failure to not only ask about the relation of Being to the essence of man, but also impede the question itself be neither recognising it or understanding it. Humanism attempts to define man’s essence by reducing him to a particular category, which is also contingent on a particular age. During the age of the Roman Republic, the essence of man lay in his rationality, during the Renaissance, it lay in his romanitatis, for Marx, it was man’s sociality, for Sartre, his existentialism and for Christianity, it lay in man’s salvation. The problem for Heidegger is that humanism fails to think or realise the proper dignity of man by making the claim that his essence can be defined or categorised. He writes: “to that extent, the thinking in Being and Time is against humanism. But this opposition does not mean that such thinking aligns itself against the humane and advocates the inhumane, that it promotes the inhumane and depreciates the dignity of man. Humanism is opposed because it does not set the humanitas of man high enough.” (p.225-6). For Heidegger, there is something more to Dasein than its rationality, than its , its sociality, its existentialism, or its salvation, to which Dasein has, at various stages of thought, been reduced. This something more is that which cannot be articulated, known or conceptually grasped, despite what appears to be Heidegger’s initial desire to do so; the something more is Dasein’s relation to its own being; a relation that is both singular and unique. To forget this relation on account of our preoccupation with reducing beings to a particular category, label or concept is to perceive of beings as instrumental, objectified and reified. However, the fact that man is something more is not intended to imply that there is an extra substance added to man, such as a spirit. What is more remains part of man’s very essence, that being, his existence.

99 For this reason, Heidegger writes: “presence-at-hand is the kind of Being which belongs to entities whose character is not that of Dasein” (BT 155/197). So when he refers to Dasein in terms of an I or in terms of mineness, Heidegger intends it to function as a “non-committal formal indicator” one that in fact reveals something that is its opposite. When Dasein refers to itself as I or uses the locative personal pronoun, it is to be understood in terms of its existential spatiality, because as we have also seen, Dasein exists as outside of itself. The “I-here does not mean a certain privileged point – that of an I-thing – but is to be understood as Being-in in terms of the ‘yonder’ of the world that is ready-to-hand – the ‘yonder’ which is the dwelling place of Dasein as concern” (BT 155/197).

On account of the fact that Dasein can only find itself from out of the world into which it is thrown, for the most part, Dasein is not itself in the context of everydayness. A paradox of sorts thus lies at the heart of mineness, insofar as the not-I is a definite kind of being which the ‘I’ possess, in the act of having lost itself. So there are two things to note here. Firstly, Dasein is mine, insofar as I am responsible for my being. However, a fundamental or structural aspect of it being mine is that it is also not mine; so I am simultaneously an I and not-I in a way that is different from

Hegelian dialectics.

Mineness therefore incorporates or includes a sense of ‘not-I’ where it flees from its

Being and loses itself in the world. This loss of itself is a very feature of mineness, such that there can be no concept of mineness without loss, and no loss of self without mineness: “as an entity which has been delivered over to its Being, it remains also delivered over to the fact that it must always have found itself, but found itself in a

100 way of finding which arises not so much from a direct seeking as rather from a fleeing” (BT 135/174). Dasein can only find itself, in the sense of taking a stand as an individual Dasein in the very act of fleeing from itself. This suggests that its sense of self is only intelligible by virtue of its Being-with-others, either authentically or inauthentically. Moreover, in the same way that Dasein can lose itself in the world, it can only ever know itself or find itself from out of the world:

Even one’s own Dasein becomes something that it can itself proximally ‘come across’ only when it looks away from ‘experiences’ and the ‘centre of its actions’ or does not as yet ‘see’ them at all. Dasein finds ‘itself’ proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids – in these things environmentally ready-to- hand with which it is proximally concerned. (BT 119/155)

These passages suggest that the idea of mineness is inseparable from being-with- others in that mineness only arises by virtue of being-in-the-world. To find oneself means that Dasein must first be lost in the world, and it is only by virtue of this immersion and lostness that its singularity arises and can find expression. Dasein’s mineness does not involve introspection, inversion or withdrawal, but can only be realised in the very act of existence and exposure in the world and through others.

The concept of mineness does not therefore, reinscribe individuation in terms of an isolated and non-relational Cartesian subject or transcendental ego because to realise one’s mineness is wholly dependent on the other with whom Dasein shares its world.

Moreover, Dasein is never entirely itself, as losing itself is as fundamental to it as finding itself. That is, Dasein can never attain self-certainty as such because it is

101 fundamentally other to itself, and will remain so, even in the experience of authenticity, as I will demonstrate.27

To the extent to which Dasein can only realise itself through the other is once again evident in a brief, but significant remark on friendship. It is also one of the few glimpses we get in Being and Time of an authentic mode of being-with. The discussion of the voice of the friend illustrates two things: firstly, that there is a form of authentic relations with others that is different to the inauthentic totalising tendencies of das Man and different to the problematic form of authentic community in section 74. Secondly, it illustrates the way in which Dasein is also a Mitsein at the level of its Being. Thirdly, it illustrates the extent to which a taking responsibility for one’s existence at the level of one’s Being is only possible on the basis of a prior and primordial relation to the other. The voice of the friend is the metaphor used by

Heidegger to illustrate these points. Realising one’s potentiality for Being is dependant on communication and discourse with the other, on hearing and listening, meaning and interpretation, all of which constitute the various ways in which Dasein is open to the other:

Hearing is constitutive for discourse. And just as linguistic utterance is based on discourse, so is acoustic perception on hearing. Listening to … is Dasein’s existential way of being-open as Being-with for Others. Indeed, hearing constitutes the primary and authentic way in which Dasein is open for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being – as in hearing the voice of a friend whom every Dasein carries with it. Dasein hears, because it understands. (BT 163/206)

27 For a different interpretation on the way mineness does not reinscribe the ego but undermines it, see Jean-Luc Marion, “L’Interloqué” in Who Comes After the Subject? Cadava, Connor & Nancy (eds.), New York & London: Routledge, 1991. Marion argues that if Being is in each case mine, it is because Dasein is incapable of attaining Being in any other way than by staging itself in the first person, exposing itself to the possibility of death: “Being is disclosed to Dasein only as a possibility reserved for the one who engages himself by naming himself as an irreplaceable first person … Being remains inaccessible to Dasein as long as it does not risk exposing itself without reserve, without appeal, and without certainty, as if to the possibility of the impossible.” See p. 237.

102 What is of particular importance here is that all these ways of interacting are contingent not only on a primordial being-with, but on a special and intimate form of being-with: that of the friend, who significantly, enables Dasein to open itself to its ownmost potentiality-for-being. Heidegger doesn’t say a great deal about friendship in

Being and Time, and this friend in particular, has no distinguishing attributes, as

Derrida points out. This friend appears to have no face, no figure, no sex, no name. It is not man or woman, nor is it an ‘I,’ a subject or a person. Rather, it is another Dasein that each Dasein carries with it, in the form of a voice it hears in itself (BT 165/208).

That Heidegger does not speak of friendship, or the essence of friendship is not something that should surprise the reader, given that there are many significant themes that he is reprimanded for not addressing.28 But he does, however, speak of a particular friend, of someone, of a Dasein in the singular sense, whose voice alone opens the hearing of Dasein to the call of Being.

The voice is peculiar in the sense that it articulates no content and is not necessarily reducible to language. That Dasein is affected by a voice not reducible to language suggests a primordial belonging with the other, an intimacy which functions to open

Dasein up to its potentiality-for-being. As Derrida writes, the inarticulable voice of the friend defines the figure of an originary or primordial belonging together with the other in a Mitsein of discourse, of address and response.29 It is a hearing and dialogue that takes place alongside the anonymous and idle chatter of das Man. Without this voice of the friend, there would be no potentiality-for-being. Therefore, Heidegger’s concept of individuation does not isolate it from the world and others, but makes it

28 Most notably, the themes of birth, embodiment, Dasein’s sex, political action. I will return to the question of Dasein’s embodiment and politics in chapters four and five. 29 “Heidegger’s Ear: Philopolemonolgy (Geschlecht IV)” in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, John Sallis (ed.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, p.174.

103 realise that it is primordially bound to it. The idea that the voice of the friend resides in Dasein is significant, as it means that despite the individuation evoked by anxiety, there remains a connection with the other.30

While Dasein is a singular being, in Nancy’s sense of the term, with a distinct body, face, narrative, Being and death, its difference can only be inscribed by virtue of the ontological fact that it is also being-with. Dasein’s Being, while its own, is something that can only be disclosed with and through the other with whom it shares its world and a referential totality of meaning and interpretation: “any answering counter- discourse arises proximally and directly from understanding what the discourse is about, which is already ‘shared’ in Being-with” (BT 164/207).

The second point that demonstrates that the concept of mineness does not reinscribe individualism in the Cartesian or transcendental sense of the world is that Heidegger intends the concept to function ontologically, meaning that what is at stake here is not

Dasein as such, but its Being. That is, mineness is not ontic individuality, but refers to the meaning of Dasein’s Being. As Françoise Raffoul argues, “taking mineness as one’s theme thus does not necessarily amount to returning to the modern metaphysics of subjectivity, but might constitute instead an attempt to grasp ontologically what the tradition had simply presupposed on the model of natural entities” (Raffoul 1998:

209).

30 Although it should be noted that Derrida’s essay goes on to address the problematic formulation of authentic Mitsein in terms of the destiny of the Volk. Derrida writes: “Struggle, (kampf) is how the power (Macht) of destiny (Geschickes) is set free. This destiny is here the … historiality of or as being- with. The historical event … that of which historiality is made, to wit, common or shared historiality under the form of community and the people (Volk)” p.177. In relation to Derrida’s critique of Nancy, he argues that Nancy cannot avoid this concept of community as the fate or a destiny of a people on account of the concept of fraternity. Community as fraternisation must be linked to some form of naturalised friendship, be it based on family, geography or culture. It is thus based on the exclusion of other communities.

104 For Heidegger, the problem is that this conventional concept of ego-hood is precisely what covers over the phenomenon of mineness insofar as mineness refers to Being and not Dasein as such. Consequently, it is this metaphysics of subjectivity that must be destroyed if any access to Dasein’s mineness/Being is to be gained. After having pointed out that the Being of the being that we are is “each time mine” (BT 9/29),

Heidegger states: “Being is that which is each time an issue for such an entity” (BT

9/29). What is at issue is not therefore, Dasein’s ego as such, but its Being. Being- mine therefore points to Being itself, insofar as it is each time at issue in the Being that I am. The whole of Heidegger’s analytic is governed by this single objective: that of the elaboration of a fundamental ontology as an existential analytic. In this sense, then, the analytic of Dasein is almost prolifera to the question of Being (Raffoul 1998:

209).

However, as Raffoul points out, the provisional or preparatory character of the existential analytic does not mean that once its function has been performed, this analytic can be discarded and succeeded by an exclusive problematic of the meaning of Being. What it means is that the existential analytic is fundamental to the questioning about the meaning of Being since existence is understood in terms of

Being: “Existentiality is a characteristic of Being. Consequently, mineness, as a fundamental trait belonging to Dasein, is a determination of Being, a character of

Being” (Raffoul 1998: 210). What should be stressed is that it is Being which is mine and not ‘I-ness’ as such. Mineness is not ontic individuality, but refers to the meaning of Dasein’s Being.

105 This self-belonging does not however, mean that Being is a predicate, or that Being is something posited, controlled or mastered by Dasein. As Nancy has shown, the possessive ‘mine’ does not suggest that Dasein is a subject in terms of a substantial presence of the ego to itself or as a form of the Kantian variety, an ‘I’ that accompanies all of Dasein’s representations. This notion of mineness as Nancy argues does not “imply … identity, or autonomy of the ‘ego’, but rather implies the withdrawal of all substance, in which is hollowed out the infinity of the relation according to which ‘mineness’ identically means the non-identity of ‘yourness’ and

‘his/her/its-ness’” (EF 67). Mineness thus attempts to capture that ineffable and unique singular experience of existence; an experience that is both individual because it is untransferable, and collective, because it is shared.

The sense in which Being as ‘mine’ is something that is shared with other Daseins also becomes apparent in Heidegger’s discussion of meaning and interpretation. This analysis, I suggest, undermines the argument that the “mineness” of Dasein impedes a relation to others and is therefore, inherently unethical. The primary way in which being-with manifests itself is through communication, interpretation and discourse, which further suggests that Being is ultimately shared. For Heidegger, to conceive of understanding and interpretation as something we impose upon an experience is a misunderstanding of the way in which understanding functions as disclosure. Recall for Heidegger understanding and interpretation are already contained in the experience of something. He writes:

In interpreting, we do not … throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation. (BT 150/191)

106 This means that interpretation is always made on the basis of something we have in advance, a “fore-having.” It is a meaning that is implied in experience: “entities within-the-world generally are projected upon the world – that is, upon a whole of significance, to whose reference-relations concern, as Being-in-the-world, has been tied up in advance” (BT 150/191). Understanding is that intuitive appreciation of the world that we possess by virtue of our thrownness, and interpretation is the articulation of this understanding.

What is of particular importance in this discussion is the way in which we can only have this intuitive understanding of the world because we share a horizon of possible meanings or a common referential totality. This suggests that meaning in general, and the meaning of Being in particular, is something that can only take place with and through the other with whom I share my world: “that which is ‘shared’ is our Being towards what has been pointed out – a Being in which we see it in common” (BT

155/197). This sharing of Being is once again made manifest in the discussion on communication: “communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences, such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co- understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes ‘explicitly’ shared” (BT 162/205).

Again, in the discussion on discourse and language, Heidegger is at pains to emphasise the fundamental structure of Dasein as being-with. He writes: “Being-with belongs to Being-in-the-world, which in every case maintains itself in some definite way of concernful Being-with-one-another” (BT 161/204) (emphasis added). This being-with-one-another can manifest itself in “assenting or refusing, as demanding or

107 warning, as pronouncing, consulting, or interceding, as ‘making assertions’” (BT

162/205). This discourse is essential in the sense that it helps to constitute the disclosedness of being-in-the-world. Given that discourse is something we share by virtue of our being-with, it is only through the other that this disclosedness can occur.

What the above discussion has illustrated is that mineness does not refer to individuation in the traditional metaphysical sense of the word. Nor does it refer to an ego that is closed in on itself. Rather, the concept of mineness demonstrates the way in which Dasein’s singularity can only find expression in its being-with-others.

b. Individuation and the problem of inauthenticity

This however, does not address the tension between inauthenticity and authentic individuation, where Heidegger argues that to be authentic, Dasein must sever its ties to the world of das Man. If, as Heidegger has shown, the phenomenon of das Man is structural, then it implies that it is inescapable. If it is inescapable, then it suggests that it can never be overcome. The consequence here is that authenticity, as Dreyfus has argued, is incoherent, unintelligible, or even impossible. The problem, I suggest, is that Dreyfus conflates the phenomenon of thrownness, falling and everydayness with inauthenticity.

In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that ‘everydayness’ and being-with are part of the fundamental structure of Dasein. Within this, Dasein has authentic and inauthentic modes of solicitude. These are described as the two extremes of being-with, and

Heidegger states that Dasein maintains itself between the two extremes. This suggests that Dasein is never one or the other insofar as it is never entirely authentic or entirely

108 inauthentic. Rather, it oscillates between the two extremes. If being-with is structural, it is therefore, inescapable, even in the experience of individuation. Heidegger’s discussion of inauthentic discourse is simply a variation, not a deformation, of the mode of being-with:

In falling, nothing other than our potentiality for being-in-the-world is the issue, even if in the mode of inauthenticity. Dasein can fall only because Being-in-the-world understandingly with a state-of-mind is an issue for it. On the other hand, authentic existence is not something which floats above falling everydayness; existentially, it is only a modified way in which such everydayness is seized on. (BT 179/224)

This suggests that while everydayness is structural, and hence, inescapable, average everydayness, characterised by the world of das Man is not. On this account, inauthenticity is a possibility of Dasein, which it has on the basis of its mineness.

While for the most part, Dasein inhabits the world of “average everydayness”, it does have an authentic possibility which it realises in taking responsibility for its own

Being as its project.

If it is the case that Being is mine, and that I am also Being-with, then it follows that the decision to be authentic or inauthentic is one I make on the basis of mineness and that I remain being-with irrespective of the choices I make:

In each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way it is in each case mine. That entity which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it ‘has’ this possibility … And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can also loose itself and never win itself. (BT 43/68)

109 Moreover, given the role that responsibility and possibility play in Heidegger’s analytic, it must be noted that if he appears critical of das Man in places, it is usually on account of das Man’s levelling or limiting of Dasein’s possibilities:

With Dasein’s lostness in the ‘they’, that factical potentiality-for-Being which is closest to it (the tasks, rules, and standards, the urgency and extent, of concernful and solicitous Being-in-the-world) has already been decided upon. The ‘they’ has always kept Dasein from taking hold of its possibilities of Being. The ‘they’ even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved Dasein of the burden of explicitly choosing these possibilities. It remains indefinite who has ‘really’ done the choosing. So Dasien makes no choices, gets carried along by nobody, and thus ensnares itself in inauthenticity. (BT 268/312)

What seems to characterise inauthenticity is a refusal on the part of Dasein to take responsibility for its existence and to open itself up to other possibilities. But this should not be taken only in an ontic sense, as allowing other’s to make decisions for

Dasein, or refusing to make a stand against something for fear of ridicule or concern for what others might say. It is not merely a question of participating in a protest because everyone else is going, watching a film because everyone else has seen it, or finding something shocking because everyone else finds it so. Inauthenticity has an ontological dimension insofar as it is about a failure to take responsibility for one’s

Being. That is, it is a failure to become what one is, or to take up one’s life as one’s own project.

To take up one’s life as one’s own project, hence becoming individuated from the they does not however, mean cutting oneself off from others:

This process can be reversed only if Dasein specifically brings itself back to itself from its lostness in the ‘they’. But this bringing-back must have that kind of Being by the neglect if which Dasein has lost itself in inauthenticity. When

110 Dasein thus brings itself back from the ‘they’, the they-self is modified in an existentiell manner so that it becomes authentic Being-one’s-Self. (BT 268/313)

Inauthenticity is necessary in this sense insofar as Dasein can only become authentic if it first lost in das Man. The language of authenticity is only intelligible on the basis of an immersion in das Man and a fleeing from oneself and the responsibility one has for one’s Being. Secondly, and more importantly, Heidegger describes this as a modification of das Man rather than a deformation, as Olafson contends. To modify our engagement and immersion in das Man does not mean that Dasein is to sever its ties to it; nor does it mean that in the experience of authenticity, we leave inauthentic relations with others behind once and for all. If authenticity and the individuation that it invokes is at all possible, which for Heidegger, it clearly is, then this mode of being- with exists concomitantly with inauthenticity. In fact, it is only possible because of it.

Authenticity is accomplished by “making up for not choosing. But ‘making up’’ for not choosing signifies choosing to make this choice – deciding for a potentiality-for-

Being, and making this decision from one’s own Self. In choosing to make this choice, Dasein makes possible, first and foremost, its authentic potentiality-for-Being”

(BT 268/313). In order to compensate for not choosing, Dasein must choose to first make a choice, to make a stand about something and take responsibility.31 It must first choose to choose. This decision to make a choice opens up Dasein to the possibility of an authentic potentiality-for-Being. To recover itself from its lostness in das Man

31 Seee Randall Havas, “The Significance of Authenticity” in Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Jeff Malpas & Mark Wrathall (eds.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. Havas argues that Heidegger’s notion of individual responsibility is analogous to that of Nietzsche. In the second essay of On the of Morals Nietzsche argues that two conditions must be satisfied for there to be meaning and understanding; firstly, our behaviour must be “calculable, regular and necessary”, or must be normative, insofar as one can get it right or wrong; secondly, the individual must take responsibility for what he or she does. Havas recommends an interpretation of Heidegger along these lines. See pp.29, 33 & 42.

111 Dasein must first find itself (for it is never itself prior to its immersion). To do so, it must heed the call of conscience. Heidegger describes the call of conscience in these terms:

If Dasein is to be able to get brought back from this lostness of failing to hear itself, and if this is to be done through itself, then it must first be able to find itself – to find itself as something which has failed to hear itself, and which fails to hear in that it listens away to the ‘they’. This listening-away must get broken off; in other words, the possibility of another kind of hearing which will interrupt it, must be given by Dasein itself. The possibility of its thus getting broken off lies in its being appealed to without mediation. Dasein fails to hear itself, and listens away to the ‘they’; and this listening away gets broken by the call if that call, in accordance with its character as such, arouses another kind of hearing … that which, by calling in this manner, gives us to understand, is the conscience. (BT 271/316)

The call of conscience, which I examine in greater detail in the following chapter, summons Dasein back from its falling and opens it up to a different way of hearing and listening. The call does not speak as such; it asserts nothing, gives no information and has nothing to tell; but nor does it put Dasein on trial, making it account for its actions. The call simply summons Dasein to its ownmost possibility or potentiality for

Being. The call breaks off, or interrupts Dasein’s immersion. It does not sever

Dasein’s connection to others or to the everyday. It does however, alter the way in which Dasein is affected by the ‘they.’ The ‘they’ self collapses for Heidegger insofar as it becomes insignificant. It still remains intact, but it has lost its appeal. The fleeting moments when Dasein experiences authenticity, and becomes individuated, it still remains being-with.32

32 Also see Being and Time pp. 297-8/343-8 where Heidegger reiterates that the world remains intact but the effect of das Man is modified: “authentic disclosedness modifies with equal primordiality both the way in which the ‘world’ is discovered … and the way in which the Dasein-with of Others is disclosed” (BT 297). In authentic existence, the world is not transformed into something else, “nor does the circle of Others get exchanged for a new one” (BT 297-8).

112 While he does offer a few brief sketches of what this authentic relation to the other looks like as a consequence of the call of conscience – most notably, the idea of

“letting the other be” and more problematically, in section 74 – the way in which authenticity is intelligible remains somewhat obscure. For example, he writes: “when the they-self is appealed to, it gets called to the self. But it does not get called to that self which can become for itself an ‘object’ on which to pass judgement, nor to that self which inertly dissects its ‘inner life’ with fussy curiosity, nor to that self which one has in mind when one gazes ‘analytically’ at psychical conditions and what lies behind them” (BT 273/318).

If all these selves are ‘bracketed,’ abstracted or become insignificant in the experience of authenticity, then what is left? What does Dasein become in isolation from these various ways of knowing itself? Heidegger is quick to add that “the appeal to the Self in the they-self does not force it inwards upon itself, so that it can close itself from the

‘external world’. The call passes over everything like this and disperses it, so as to appeal solely to that Self which, notwithstanding, is in no other way than Being-in- the-world” (BT 273/318). While this does not adequately answer the question as to what the authentic self is, the point remains that authentic existence does not dissolve

Dasein’s relations to the world or others, but interrupts it. Central to this interruption is the concept of responsibility. If it were necessary to characterise the Heideggerian authentic, and hence, individual subject by anything, it would be that as authentic, it must be assume responsibility for the conduct of oneself.

Dasein’s individuation does not therefore, alter its ontological structure as being-in- the-world and as Mitsein: “this existential ‘solipsism’ is so far from the displacement

113 of putting an isolated subject-Thing into the innocuous emptiness of worldless occurring, that in an extreme sense what it does is precisely to bring Dasein face to face with its world as world, and thus bring it face to face with its self as Being-in- the-world” (BT 188/233). Anxiety does not sever Dasein from the world, or from others such that it becomes an isolated ego, but forces Dasein to realise that its very singularity binds it to the world. According to Françoise Dastur:

Anxiety isolates Dasein in the sense that it individualises Dasein, that it accomplishes the existentiell modification by which the self as the They becomes an ‘authentic’ self. It isolates Dasein … in the sense that it tears Dasein away from its absorption in the world of concern to throw it toward its ownmost being-in-the-world; it therefore does not cut Dasein off from the world but rather makes Dasein realise that it is bound to it. In anxiety, Dasein does not break with the world, but with the familiarity that characterises everyday being-in-the-world.33

In anxiety, all things lose their significance because the practical self-understanding that have supported them have collapsed. In anxiety, I can no longer cope with the ability to be. If this is the case, then how do I become aware of myself as a self, since

I am no longer reflected back to myself from things? Rather than this individuation being a reaffirmation of metaphysical subjectivity, the experience of anxiety and the call of conscience function to displace Dasein, by forcing it out from its complacency and familiarity with the world. The feeling of no longer being at home in the world individualises Dasein insofar as it is forced to assume the ultimate responsibility to become, and to take up its life in such a way that it becomes its own project. In the experience of angst and the call of conscience, the weight or burden of Dasein’s responsibility and its existence is realised. As Dastur argues, in saying ‘I’ Dasein is able to express its own Being, and this is what Heidegger calls existence.

33 Françoise Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, trans. François Raffoul and David Pettigrew, Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1998 p.25-6.

114 Dasein’s having to be at each time mine means there is no model to be conformed to or essence to be realised.34 It means that at each time the contingency of being thrown into the world has to be taken up by one’s own self, what Heidegger refers to as “a facticity of Dasein’s being brought before itself” (BT 135/174).

This self-assumption is what constitutes the singularity and uniqueness of existence, and where an ethics of responsibility can be situated or located in Heidegger’s thinking. As Dastur argues, Heidegger’s ‘existential solipsism’ means nothing less than “I alone am responsible for opening myself to what happens to me” (Dastur,

1996: 45). To charge either nature or others with responsibility for what we are is the very condition for the possibility of ethics. This taking charge of one’s being-thrown which is demanded by the character of mineness and authenticity is correlated with a necessary and symmetrical assumption of being-toward-death: “dying is something that in each instance each Dasein must take upon itself. By its very essence death, insofar as it ‘is’ at all, is at each time mine” (Dastur 1996: 45). This experience is an untransferable one of both existing and dying.

34 See Françoise Dastur, Death: An Essay on Finitude, trans. John Llewelyn, London & Atlantic Highlands: Athlone, 1996, p.45.

115 c. Death, individuation, and the paradox of section 74 of Being and Time.

In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that death individuates Dasein, separates it from others and interrupts its relations. While he does concede that it is possible to sacrifice one’s life for the sake of another, this still does not “take the Other’s dying away from him” (BT 240/284). As I have demonstrated, this raises the question, raised by Nancy, as to whether this account of individuation in the face of being-toward-death is inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein. Using Heidegger’s own account of death, in conjunction with Nancy’s reformulation of death as that which interrupts community as fusion or as immanence, in this section, I suggest that it is precisely this individuation or solipsism that opens Dasein to others and that may correct the paradoxical formulation of authentic individuation in section 74. The experience of being-toward-death does this in several ways. Firstly, by forcing Dasein to confront its mortality, death functions to undermine Dasein’s self-hood or subjectivity.

Secondly, while being-toward-death is mine, insofar as no one can experience it for me, it is also something that I share with others. Being-toward-death, as a collective experience, is what draws me into relations with others.

In confronting its mortality or finitude, Dasein comes to the realisation that it is vulnerable to death and that its death is something that exceeds it insofar as it cannot understand or grasp it, but that it also cannot evade it. By exposing this vulnerability or fragility to human existence, being-toward-death shatters any illusions to mastery and control that Dasein may have had. As Nancy states, this experience “sets my singularity outside me and infinitely delimits it” (IC 33-4).

116 Secondly, while being-toward-death belongs exclusively to Dasein, and individuates it, is also an experience it shares and has in common with other Daseins. The experience of being alongside a dying person similarly precipitates an alteration in one’s subjectivity. The experience of being-alongside the dying person, which is the closest one can come to their experience of death, is one that opens Dasein up to the other. The experience of sharing someone else’s being toward death is one in which I experience the other’s singularity; their difference that I cannot assimilate, know or understand. This experience of the other’s singularity precipitates an alteration in me, opening me to the realisation that death is something I cannot evade or grasp.35 It thus undermines my self-hood, subjectivity or my individual resolve and forces me to confront my mortal openness.

As Derrida writes: “the relation with the other and the relation with death are one and the same opening.”36 In this way, Dasein’s individuation is indissociable with its being-with, even in the experience of death. As Raffoul points out, it is possible to isolate two trajectories in Heidegger’s notions of mineness and death:

I am never the other; I am always with others. The radical individuation of Dasein would somehow not dissolve the dimension of otherness. In fact, it appears that the interruption of all relations in death is what first constitutes the possibility of the opening of any relation to others. It is paradoxically in the ‘resolute’ anticipation of my death that the dimension of the other and of an authentic being-together first become possible.37

It is this ontological dimension to Heidegger’s thinking on the notion of mineness and individuation that tends to be overlooked in the discussion and critique of the notion

35 See also Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993. 36 Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology trans. Gayatri Spivak, Merryland: John Hopkins University Press, 1998, p.187. 37 François Raffoul, “Otherness and Individuation in Heidegger” in Man and World vol. 28, 1995, p.353.

117 of individuation. The fundamental structure of Dasein as open to the world and others remains unaltered in Heidegger’s concept of “mineness”, death and authenticity.

Dasein, it will be recalled, can never be an ego because it is fundamentally split and dislocated, even in the case of its individuation and its taking responsibility for its existence. As individuated, Dasein remains vulnerable to the other and affected by it despite the fact that it is “mine” and its death is my death.

This idea of death as disclosing Dasein’s radical individuation and thereby disrupting or interrupting its relations with others also corrects the paradoxical account of the individual as tied to the fate of a Volk in section 74. Recall that Nancy makes a distinction between two conceptions of community. The first is the idea of community as immanence, where the political, social and cultural aspects of a community are fused under an all powerful leader or dictator. The second is the idea of community as the sharing of singularities. Both Heidegger’s accounts of being-with – the inauthentic world of das Man and the authentic identification with the destiny of a Volk are problematic on Nancy’s distinction. As Heidegger has shown, the problem with the world of das Man is that it attempts to suppress anything that is different and unique, and constitutes a “leveling down” of Dasein’s possibilities. But the world of authentic being, as outlined in section 74, also suggests communal fusion insofar as the individual’s decisions do not count, but are tied to the fate of a people. While it is not entirely clear what the difference between these two conceptions of being-with are in

Being and Time, it is evident that using Nancy’s arguments on death as an interruption of relations can be used to correct the idea of community as fusion under a leader. I return to the political implications of this in the final chapter.

118 It therefore appears that Heideggerian individuation is fundamentally different to the transcendental or Cartesian ego. The fundamental difference lies in the fact that where the ego is closed in on itself, and in logical isolation from the world and others, the structure of Dasein’s individuation is premised on the concept of an irreducible tie, involvement or engagement with the world and others. It is on account of this connection with the world and to others that Dasein’s individuation or its mineness is indissociable from its ontological structure as being-with. While Nancy’s notion of singularity is not the same as Heideggerian individuation, the logic is the same insofar as individuation only makes sense, or is only expressed and exposed in the context of being-with others in the first place. In the following chapters I argue that rather than foreclose a relation to the other, this notion of individuation contains an ethical moment insofar as it is about a taking responsibility for oneself. If, as I have shown,

Dasein is also a Mitsein, despite its individuation, then its responsibility for self entails a responsibility for others as a necessary implication.

However, before turning to the project of extrapolating an ethics of responsibility on the basis of this notion of individuation, the relation between ontology and ethics needs to be addressed, as does the question of why Heidegger, and not any other philosopher who explicitly addresses the question of community or sociality is being used for this purpose. This concern – the use of Heideggerian ontology to argue for an ethics or theory of political action – is not only raised by Heidegger himself, but is also raised by thinkers such as Levinas, and echoed by Simon Critchley and Herman

Philipse.

119 According to Critchley, while Being and Time constitutes a paradigm shift in the history of philosophy analogous to that of Descartes or Kant, this is also

“accompanied by the profound need to leave the climate of Heidegger’s thinking for reasons at once metaphysical, ethical, sociological and political” (Critchley 1999:

247). The reason for this being that Heidegger’s prioritization of the ontological over the ontic, “however subtly this ontological difference is nuanced, subordinates the relation to the other to the relation to Being. In other words, although Heidegger acknowledges that Dasein is Mitsein, this question is only a moment of an existential analytic whose ambition is the elaboration of the question of the meaning of Being”

(Critchley 1999: 250-1).

In his critique of Frederick Olafson’s book Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics,

Philipse asks why Olafson chose to link his ethical views to Heidegger’s concept of

Mitsein at all. Why, for example, did he not take Aristotle’s notion of suzen as a starting point, given that this notion was what initially inspired Heidegger in developing the concept of Mitsein? Or, Philipse asks,

If a source of inspiration had to be found in the existentialist and phenomenological tradition, why does Emmanuel Levinas not figure in Olafson’s book, a philosopher who had been convinced by the Second World War that Heidegger’s philosophy has deeply moral implications, and who, like Olafson, uses Heideggerian concepts in developing a foundationalist theory of ethics that stands in sharp opposition to Heidegger’s own views? (Philipse 1999: 441)

It is these questions which the following chapter address: the question of whether ontology is as fundamental as both Heidegger and Nancy contend, the question of its ambiguous relation to ethics, given Heidegger’s assertion that ontology has little to do with ethics, and the question of the value of Heidegger’s thinking for informing an

120 ethics of theory of political action. I answer these questions in the following chapter by way of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger on the question of ontology conceived in terms of understanding and ethical or political action.

121 Chapter Three: Ontology and the question of the ethico-political

In the first and second chapters of this thesis, I argued that Heidegger’s notion of individuation is not only fundamentally different from both the Cartesian and transcendental egos, but that it is consistent with the concept of Mitsein. In the first chapter I examined the ontological structure of Heidegger’s Dasein to demonstrate the way in which Dasein is also a Mitsein. I suggested that its engagement with others cannot be reduced to empathy or a process of ‘mirroring’ or ‘pairing’ but relies on the ontological fact that Dasein is related to others at the level of its Being. I then explored the problem of individuation as it emerges in Heidegger’s discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being-toward-death. In the second chapter, I suggested that it is possible to reconcile this tension between Mitsein, authenticity and individuation, by drawing on

Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of singularity. In the following sections, I will demonstrate how the notion of individuation can support an ethics, conceived here as individual responsibility for one’s existence.

However, before demonstrating the way individuation can accommodate an ethics or politics, the relation between ontology and ethics needs to be addressed.1 By ontology, I am referring to Heidegger’s preoccupation with the question of Being. Its relation to ethics needs to be addressed for a number of reasons.

1 It should also be noted here that I am not equating ontology with individuation. While the two are connected insofar an Heidegger’s ontology is concerned with individual responsibility at the level of one’s Being, it is precisely this preoccupation with Being at the alleged expense of the other that attracts considerable criticism.

122 Firstly, Heidegger himself repeatedly claims that ontology cannot articulate or inform an ethics or praxis. Moreover, he is particularly critical of ethics insofar as it is concerned with proscriptions on how one ought to live, such as Kant’s formalistic ethics. He is equally critical of ethics in terms of a rethinking of values, such as Nietzsche’s . In the discussion in chapter one, it was noted that in Being and

Time, Heidegger places ethics in the realm of the ontic, while in the Letter on Humanism he could not be clearer that ontology precedes ethics and action. Here, he states that the thinking of Being is “neither theoretical nor practical. It comes to pass before this distinction. Such thinking is, insofar as it is, recollection of Being and nothing else … It thinks Being. Such thinking has no result. It has no effect. It satisfies its essence in that it is.”2

This has two related consequences. Firstly, it is possible to infer that the relation between

Dasein and its being takes priority over the concrete relation Dasein has with the other, thereby rendering ontology apolitical, if not ethically neutral. Secondly, and related to the first point, does Heidegger’s attempt to think a ‘pure’ Being, or the ‘truth’ of Being, particularly in his later work, unhinge his finely nuanced formulation of ontological difference, where Being is inseparable from its appearing in an ontic, factical or concrete reality?

2 Martin Heidegger, “Lettter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.) Routledge: London, 2000, p. 236.

123 Levinas certainly seems to think so, and this is precisely the criticism that he directs against privileging ontology in general and hence, Heideggerian ontology in particular.3

For Levinas, despite the novelty and uniqueness of Heideggerian ontology, and its particular anti-intellectualist manner of conceiving of understanding, Levinas argues that

Heidegger’s prioritisation of the ontological subordinates the primary relation to the other to that of Being, thereby bypassing, subsuming or effacing the alterity of the other. On account of Heidegger’s concern with understanding Being from out of Dasein’s being-in- the-world and being-with-others, Heideggerian ontology reduces Dasein’s relation to the other to comprehension.4

In this chapter, I want to argue against Levinas’ claim that for Heidegger, the relation I have with Being by virtue of the ontological difference takes priority over the relation I have to the other. On the contrary, I want to suggest that it is only by virtue of Being that

I can have an ethical relation to the other in the first place; a conclusion Levinas eventually reaches in his final engagement with Heidegger. I suggest that the ethical moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take responsibility for its Being; because Dasein is also a Mitsein, as previously argued in chapter two, its responsibility for its own Being necessarily entails a responsibility for the

3 Although it should be noted that Levinas confines his criticism to the relation between ontology and ethics, and characterises the political in the same way as ontology; that is, politics, like ontology, effaces the alterity of the other by reducing her to categories of the same. See R. Bernasconi, “The Third Party. Levinas on the Intersection of the ethical and the political” in Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 30. No.1, January, 1999, for an account of the political in Levinas as it occurs via a third person; that is, Bernasconi shows how the third party is the site of the passage of the political in Levinas’ thought, insofar as justice begins with the third party. There are however, two other thirds in Levinas’ thinking: there is the third person and the neutral observer whose standpoint corresponds to that of universal reason. 4 For an excellent and detailed discussion on the relation between Levinas and Heidegger, see Tina Chanter, 2002.

124 other. The consequence of my argument is that ontology and ethics are perhaps not as incongruent as Levinas’ contends. I am not however, making the strong claim that

Levinas is incorrect in his conflation of Heideggerian understanding with comprehension.

As the first section of this chapter demonstrates, I find Levinas’ interpretation and critique of Heidegger both nuanced and compelling. What I want to suggest is that there is a possibility that ethics can be accommodated within Heideggerian ontology, provided that ethics conceived here, by both Levinas and Heidegger is not reduced to the ontic. As

Levinas argues in his tribute to Heidegger, the problem is not so much that Heidegger is preoccupied with Being at the expense of the other, but rather, the primordial importance he attaches to one’s own Being. While I am arguing that this is not especially problematic, I will demonstrate in the final section, the preoccupation with one’s own

Being necessarily entails a preoccupation with that of the other. I do this, ironically, with the aid of Levinas.5

In the first section, I examine Levinas’ critique of Heideggerian ontology and the model of the ethical relation he wants to replace it with. I will confine my discussion of Levinas to three of his papers devoted to Heidegger: “Martin Heidegger and Ontology,” “Is

Ontology Fundamental” and “Dying for …” which reflect not only Levinas’ subtle appreciation of Heidegger’s thinking, but the various shifts in his attitude; a shift marked by Heidegger’s unforgivable entanglement in National Socialism. However, by

5 For a further discussion on Heideggerian individuation is relatively unproblematic, see Rudi Visker, The Inhuman Condition: Looking for Difference after Levinas and Heidegger, Springer, 2004. Visker claims that he has “no problem with [Heidegger’s] existential solipsism and do not think that he should have directly developed Mitsein into the starting point of a ‘co-existential analytic’ (Nancy). Indeed, if anything, it is precisely this refusal to hand over the subject to intersubjectivity that attracts me in his work.” p.15. Viski does however, find the account of anxiety problematic.

125 examining Irigaray’s reading of Levinas on the question of sexual difference, in the second section I demonstrate the way in which Levinas’ ethics risks reproducing what it critiques, (namely, effacement of difference, reduction of Other to the Same), and consequently, risks losing the specificity of the other that it endeavours to cultivate.6 In the final section, I argue, with Nancy, that ontology is both ethical and political by virtue of its very essence, and that it can adequately perform the function of constituting an ethics and politics. I do this by reading Being and Time together with the much later text,

Time and Being to demonstrate that Heidegger’s ontology entails a concession that there can be no understanding of being because of its very essence - one that conceals itself in the moment it is given. The interplay between Being’s concealment and unconcealment, its giving and withdrawing, its call and the response that it evokes, suggests that

Heideggerian ontology contains an ethics of responsibility.7

i. Levinas’ critique of ontology.

While there are several trajectories or aspects to Levinas’ interpretation and critique of

Heidegger, in this chapter/section, I will focus exclusively on the question of understanding and comprehension. I trace Levinas’ initial interpretation of Heideggerian understanding as pre-reflective and hence, anti-intellectualist to his later claim that

6 For a further discussion on the relation between Irigaray and Heidegger, especially in relation to Heidegger’s later work, see Krzysztof Ziarek, “Proximities: Irigaray and Heidegger on difference” in Review, 33, 2000. Ziarek argues that at the centre of Heidegger’s questioning of Being is not the ontic-ontological difference, but the notion of nearness, elaborated in his critique of the metaphysical logic of difference and relation. This logic or move from difference to nearness is also echoed in Irigaray’s work. 7 See also Silvia Benso, “On the way to an ontological ethics: ethical suggestions in reading Heidegger.” Research in Phenomenology, 24, 1994. Benso argues that the ethical is that through which Dasein is opened to Being. It is no longer the metaphysical ethics, a system of values or a prescription for behaviour. Rather, ethics is the place where Being can be encountered.

126 Heidegger’s ontological articulation of pre-ontological understanding does violence to existence.

Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger oscillates between admiration and ambivalence for both philosophical and political reasons. In his earlier essay “Martin Heidegger and

Ontology,” a primarily exegetical paper, Levinas writes:

For once, Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by Heidegger’s work, fail to recognise how the originality and force of his achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive, painstaking, and close working-out of the argument – with that craftsmanship of the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride.8

Levinas will later characterise his engagement with Heidegger, in his later tribute to him in terms of a “narrative of a conflict between youthful admiration, still irresistible today, inspired by a philosophical intelligence among the greatest and rarest, and the

“irreversible abomination” of National Socialism, “in which this brilliant man had in one fashion or another – this is of little import! – taken part.”9 His tribute to Heidegger is qualified by “all the horror which today has come to be associated with the name of

Heidegger – and which has never come to be dissipated” (Levinas 1998: 219).

Despite both Levinas’ admiration and reservations about Heidegger’s thinking and politics, he offers one of the most careful, forceful and compelling interpretations of his

8 Emmanuel Levinas, “Martin Heidegger and Ontology” in Diacritics 26.1, 1996, p. 11. 9 Emmanuel Levinas, “Dying For …” in Entre Nous: On thinking of the other, trans. M. Smith and B. Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 219.

127 thinking. As Tina Chanter points out, “Heidegger could not have hoped for a more careful reader than Levinas … No one … had understood and assimilated Heidegger’s critique of the traditional conception of time in the way that Levinas had already managed to do … Levinas does Heidegger more than justice” (Chanter 2001: 171).

Consequently, Levinas’ critique of Heidegger’s ontology as an impediment to our relations with others deserves serious attention.

In the 1932 essay, “Martin Heidegger and Ontology,” Levinas’ initial access to

Heidegger is by way of the traditional problem of knowledge and Heidegger’s solution to it. In this essay, Levinas demonstrates the way Heidegger challenged the Neo-Kantian assumption that philosophy’s central concern was to establish criteria for knowledge and how that knowledge can be legitimated. For Levinas, this inquiry into knowledge will invariably fail because of its reliance on a problematic conception of the subject inherited from Descartes. Recall that Descartes attributed a unique and privileged place to the subject on the basis of the cogito. The cogito had the unique ability to reflect upon itself to discover how it could represent objects to itself: “the cogito presided over the subject’s birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the subject’s connection with the rest of reality” (Levinas 1996:11). The cogito thus sets up an opposition between the immanent sphere of the mind and external reality consisting of objects and others. This, in turn, creates the problem of how this subject can take leave of itself to procure knowledge of objects.

128 Idealism makes sense of this problematic in such a way that the subject itself will constitute its own object. Here, the thinking substance will not have to reunite with extended substance, but will recover that extended substance within itself. However, for

Levinas the idea of an enclosed subject, searching “within its own interior for signs of its conformity with being” (Levinas 1996: 12) is equally problematic for in reducing the world to itself, the subject leaves no space for the other.

For Levinas, in this earlier paper, Heideggerian ontology provides a way out of the problems posed by both Descartes and Idealism for two reasons. Firstly, because of the way in which it conceives of the connection between Being and temporality, and secondly and more significant for the purposes of this chapter, because of the novel way in which it conceives of the understanding. Following Heidegger, Levinas suggests that what is missing from the modern conception of the subject is its relation to temporality.

By treating the subject as a thinking substance, marked from extended substance only by its capacity to think, and by assigning it the same temporality as objects, philosophy has placed the subject in a world of objective things. In effect, it treats the subject as if it were present-at-hand: “for the neo-Kantians, as for Leibniz, time becomes an obscure perception, alien to the profound nature of the subject; for Kant, it is a phenomenal form which conceals from the subject precisely its true subjectivity; for Hegel, it is something into which spirit is thrust, but from which spirit is originally distinct” (Levinas 1996: 13).

Following Heidegger, time for Levinas is not a characteristic of the essence of reality, it is not something like a property we might have. Rather, “it is the expression of the fact of

129 being or, rather, it is that fact of being itself. In a way it is the very dimension in which the existence of being comes about. To exist is to be ‘temporalized’” (Levinas 1996: 13).

To be and to be temporalised are thus one and the same thing, in the sense that the latter is an expression of the former. This connection between being/existence and temporality can only be articulated by way of Heidegger’s particular brand of ontology: “the ontological analysis of the subject is alone capable of yielding a solution and even a sphere of investigation to ontology in the general sense that Heidegger seeks” (Levinas

1996: 14). In what way then, does Heideggerian ontology lead us to the meaning of being? The answer lies in Heidegger’s conception of the understanding.

For Levinas, Heidegger’s thinking differs from that of his predecessors in that it is not concerned with criteria for knowledge, but with the more fundamental problem of the meaning of Being. This is meaning that we already possess by virtue of understanding:

“the understanding of being is the determining characteristic and the fundamental fact of human existence” (Levinas 1996: 15). The condition for the possibility of this entire project, its viability and coherence ultimately depends on the ontological fact that we already possess an understanding of Being. Levinas will later chastise Heidegger on the role understanding plays in his analytic, but for the moment, Levinas finds much to commend in this interpretation.

What then, does Heidegger mean by understanding? Pre-ontological understanding, that vague, indeterminate conception we have of being is Heidegger’s point of departure. It is

130 only on the basis of the understanding that Dasein’s structures of possibility, potentiality, being-in-the-world, and being-with others, are intelligible. Because Dasein understands, it is able to project itself onto possibility: “as understanding, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities. This Being-towards-possibilities which understands is itself a potentiality-for-Being, and it is so because of the way these possibilities, as disclosed, exert their counter-thrust upon Dasein” (BT 148/188). Because Dasein understands, it can enter into a referential totality of involvements and engage with the world of the ready-to- hand. This is because it already has an implicit understanding of how the world works:

“the ready-to-hand comes explicitly into the sight which understands. All preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out, are accomplished in the following way: we take part in its ‘in-order-to’ that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand, and we concern ourselves with it in accordance with what becomes visible through this process” (BT 148/188). The things we encounter in our environments are already accessible and understood in some way: “That which is disclosed in understanding – that, which is understood – is already accessible in such a way that its ‘as which’ can be made to stand out explicitly” (BT 149/189). By virtue of the understanding, Dasein is able to interpret its world and existence: “in the mere encountering of something, it is understood in terms of a totality of involvements” (BT 149/189). Understanding therefore lies before, or has already taken place before we can make an assertion about it or articulate it. For

Heidegger, we never encounter things as if for the first time, despite the fact that we can express things for the first time. The fundamental point is that understanding of the world already exists:

131 In interpreting, we do not, so to speak, throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation. (BT 150/190-1)

This is because every interpretation is already grounded in a ‘fore-having’: “when something is understood but is still veiled, it becomes unveiled by an act of appropriation

… in every case, interpretation is something we see in advance – in a fore-conception”

(BT 150/191). This understanding and interpretation is not the apprehension of the world from a disengaged view-point. The inquiry into Being does not require the subject to reflect upon itself in order to determine the meaning of Being. Rather, we know we have a pre-ontological understanding of Being through our most banal statements such as the

“sky is blue” and “I am happy.” The question of Being emerges from out of existence, as opposed to the theoretical attitude of the subject. Understanding is not therefore, a faculty, something that I acquire through reflection, but is something I am; and what I am is inseparable from my understanding. Moreover, as Heidegger points out, “if we are inquiring about the meaning of Being, our investigation does not then become a ‘deep’ one, nor does it puzzle out what stands behind Being. It asks about Being itself in so far as Being enters into the intelligibility of Dasein” (BT 152/193).

This then, is what it means to understand existence – it is to live it, and we only know

Being in so far as it manifests itself to us in the act of existence. Levinas’ interpretation draws attention to the radical difference between understanding existence Heideggerian style and the philosophical tradition’s conception of knowledge:

132 To describe this intimate relation between existence and its possibilities as an act of understanding does not amount to affirming in some indirect way that ‘to be one’s possibilities’ is to know them. For the understanding is not a cognitive faculty that is imposed on existence in order to allow it to become aware of its possibilities. The distinction between the knowing subject and the object known – an inescapable distinction in the phenomenon of knowledge – no longer has purchase here. Human existence knows itself prior to all introspective reflection, and indeed, renders the latter possible. (Levinas 1996: 23)

Levinas notes that the fact that we possess an understanding of Being does not necessarily render inquiry into it pointless because this understanding is not necessarily explicit or authentic:

For Heidegger, the understanding of being is not a purely theoretical act but, as we will see, a fundamental event where one’s entire destiny is at issue; and consequently, the difference between these modes of explicit and implicit understanding is not simply that between clear and obscure knowledge, but is a difference which reaches unto the very being of man. The passage from implicit and inauthentic understanding to explicit and authentic understanding comprises the fundamental drama of human existence. (Levinas 1996: 16)

Levinas will later come to interpret this move from an implicit, pre-ontological understanding of Being to an explicit comprehension of it in terms of mastery and domination. But for the moment, Levinas concludes that:

The originality of the Heideggerian conception of existence, in contrast to the traditional idea of self-consciousness, is that this self-knowledge, this inner illumination, this understanding not only refuses the subject/object structure, but also has nothing to do with theory. It is not a conscious awareness, a pure and simple registering of that which one is, a registration capable of measuring our power over ourselves; this understanding is the very dynamism of this existence, it is the actual power over self. (Levinas 1996: 23)

133 The shift in Levinas’ interpretation on the nature of Heideggerian understanding occurs in a later paper entitled “Is Ontology Fundamental.” Here, Levinas once again gives a nuanced interpretation of Heidegger’s ontology, this time, paying close attention to the tool of phenomenology in explicating the question of Being. However, his reading of

Heidegger’s conception of the understanding undergoes a profound change. Levinas retains his earlier position that Husserlian and Heideggerian ontology is something of a novelty on account of its rejection of introspection as a way into knowledge of Being.

Rather, contemporary ontology, or the knowledge of Being, presupposes the immersion of the subject in a material, factical world. It is only from out of this immersion, or by virtue of it, that it can have any knowledge of Being. On Husserl and Heidegger’s interpretation, ontology comes to pervade every aspect of factical life. However, for

Levinas, the ontological clarification of pre-ontological existence is no longer characterised as an attempt to describe the drama of human existence in “all its richness,” but becomes a project of mastery and domination of it.10

While Levinas maintains that the Heideggerian notion of understanding refutes intellectualism, the fact that he nevertheless bases existence on a kind of knowing by seeking to articulate our pre-ontological and affective understanding of Being implicates him in the tradition he sought to evade. Levinas argues that despite our desire to understand existence, it will invariably exceed our conceptual categories in the sense that there will always be a remainder that will evade understanding, even a pre-reflective type of understanding. Levinas writes: “our consciousness, and therefore our mastery of

10 Levinas’ concerns have also undergone a shift from a preoccupation with epistemology and the problem of mediation that it creates to the I’s relation to the other.

134 reality, do not exhaust our relation to reality, in which we are always present in all the gravity of our being” (Levinas 1989: 123). By perceiving this ambiguity that characterises our relation to reality through the lens of Being, Heidegger, according to

Levinas, reduces this element of the unknown to an understanding of it.

Levinas’ critique of ontology turns on the distinction between the verbs to describe our pre-reflective understanding and to capture it by making it explicit. To describe existence, or to do phenomenology arguably does not try to exhaust our relation to reality. It is to concede that consciousness of reality does not necessarily coincide with our engagement in the world. For Levinas, this is a major Heideggerian insight – that we are responsible beyond our intentions. Levinas demonstrates the way in which this can be both comic and tragic. The comedy lies in the fact that our simplest of movements carry with them the risk of an inevitable awkwardness – our acts leave behind traces that we did not necessarily intend. Levinas writes: “in putting out my hand to approach a chair, I have creased the sleeve of my jacket, I have scratched the floor, I have dropped the ash from my cigarette. In doing that which I wanted to do, I have done so many things that I did not want to do. The act has not been pure for I have left some traces” (Levinas 1989:

122). In this case, the consequences have been comic, but they could just as easily have been tragic. To the extent that Oedipus succeeds, he works for his downfall and his traces will be his loss.

The point, for Levinas, is that there is an element of existence that will evade us, in the sense that despite the control we think we have over our actions, they are invariably

135 accompanied by an element of the uncontrollable. This suggests that we cannot determine the outcome of the actions to which we are nevertheless responsible; that there is always an element that exceeds thought and calculation. The problem is that Heidegger wants to comprehend this fact of being involved by making explicit the structures of Being that manifest themselves by virtue of our being-in-the-world: “this fact of being involved, this event in which I find myself engaged, tied as I am to that which ought to be my object by ties not reducible to thought, this existence is interpreted as comprehension” (Levinas

1989: 122).

The verb to know becomes inexplicitly connected to the verb to exist: “we exist in a circuit of understanding with reality. Understanding is the very event that existence articulates. All non-comprehension is only a deficient mode of comprehension” (Levinas

1989: 122). Levinas thus appreciates and values the phenomenological dimension to

Heideggerian ontology where Being manifests itself or emerges in the fact of existence.

However, ontology also effaces this philosophy of existence by reducing this fact of being involved in the world to understanding of it. The analysis of existence and Dasein turns out to be nothing but the description “of the essence of truth, the condition of the very understanding of being” (Levinas 1989: 122).

If existence is reduced to the structures of understanding Being, then it means that being- with-the-other also rests on the ontological relation. To relate oneself to a being insofar as it is a being means, for Heidegger, to let the other be. That is, to comprehend it as independent of the perception which discovers and grasps it. It is by virtue of this

136 comprehension that the other is seen as an independent being and not as an object or as present-at-hand. By contrast, Levinas argues that alterity or uniqueness is expressed in or as a relation, but cannot be captured or comprehended by that relation, by either conscious or pre-reflective understanding. Therefore, a feature of the relation is responsiveness without either letting the other be, or possessing it. For Levinas, letting the other be amounts to either indifference or non relation. This, as I will go on to explain, is on account of the affective dimension to the encounter with the other.

Given that ontology is about comprehension, and that the relation with the other rests on the ontological relation, Heideggerian ontology reduces the other to comprehension:

“comprehension, as construed by Heidegger, rejoins the great tradition of Western philosophy wherein to comprehend the particular being is already to place oneself beyond the particular. It is to relate to the particular, which alone exits, by knowledge which is always knowledge of the universal” (Levinas 1989: 122). For Levinas, the moment we engage in reflection, we subordinate our relations with others to the structure of Being, to metaphysics, to ontology. As a consequence, we bypass the other in her specificity, alterity or particularity and reduce her to Being.

Levinas’ relation to the other, by contrast, differs from that of Heidegger’s in two fundamental ways: firstly, the encounter with the other is an affective one, operating at the level of sensibility and responsiveness. Secondly, the relation with the other is asymmetrical. Levinas’ ethical relation differs from the relation Heidegger describes

137 because the responsiveness he evokes is a non-volitional responsiveness, insofar as I am responsible for the other without expecting anything in return.

Levinas concedes that our relation to the other involves an element of comprehension. I can understand the other in terms of his or her history, surroundings, habits and so on.

The relation is not however, reducible to such comprehension. Levinas writes: “in our relation with the other, he or she does not affect us in terms of a concept. The other is a being and counts as such” (Levinas 1989: 124). In my relation to the other, I am not only thinking who or what the other is, but that they are, and more specifically, that they are unique: “I have spoken to the other, that is to say, I have neglected the universal being that the other incarnates in order to remain with the particular being he or she is”

(Levinas 1989: 125). In Levinas’ conception of the encounter with the other “perception is not projected towards an horizon, which as the field of my liberty, power and property presents itself as the familiar basis upon which to grasp the individual. It refers to the pure individual, to a being as such …” (Levinas 1989: 126).

The other does not affect me as a concept or a universal on account of the radical alterity expressed by the other’s face. The alterity expressed by the other’s face is precisely why I cannot understand the other. This is partly because the other affects me at the level of the sensible, rather than at the level of comprehension or understanding. As Rosalyn Diprose argues:

It is the other’s alterity that disturbs me, that difference in proximity generated by his or her own separation, his or her own sensibility. This alterity implies not only that the other cannot be possessed, but that her or his presence contests my

138 possession (not just my possession of things and ideas but my self-possession). The other’s strangeness, the feeling that he or she cannot be known, puts my autonomy into question.11

Diprose further points out that this affective relation to the other is also a teaching because it opens the I to think beyond itself and beyond what it already knows (Diprose

2002: 136). To look at the other against the horizon of being as Heidegger does is, according to Levinas, to fail to look to the other in his or her face, where my radical and infinite responsibility toward the other is invoked. In this relation, the other demands a response from me. For Levinas, ethical subjectivity “kneels” before the other by sacrificing its own freedom to the call of the other, its responsibility for the other arising prior to the responsibility it has for itself: “I can never escape the fact that the other has demanded a response from me before I affirm my freedom not to respond to his demand.”12

The responsibility that the face evokes means that the relation to the other is an asymmetrical one insofar as the non-volitional responsiveness is unconditional. This also implies a distinction between ethics and politics. Levinas writes, the other “is the richest and poorest of being: the richest, at an ethical level, in that it always comes before me, its right-to-be preceding mine; the poorest, at an ontological or political level, in that without me it can do nothing – it is utterly vulnerable and exposed” (Levinas 1985: 88). On

11 Rosalyn Diprose, Corporeal Generosity: on giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, p. 136. 12 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philip Nemo, trans. Richard Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, p. 88. Hereafter cited as EI.

139 account of this vulnerability, the relation to the other implies that I am non volitionally responsible for the other without the expectation of reciprocity.

For Levinas, the encounter with the ethical relation is thus an affective, responsive, inclination toward others. It is this non-volitional inclining in sensibility that Levinas thinks Heidegger ignores in his idea of letting the other be. The primacy of ontology for

Heidegger means that, according to Levinas, he affirms the priority of Being over existents: “it is to subordinate the relation with someone, who is an existent, (the ethical relation) to a relation with the Being of existents, which, impersonal, permits the apprehension, the domination of existents (a relationship of knowing), subordinates justice to freedom.”13 The conclusions Levinas draws from Heidegger in particular and ontology in general is that “Ontology as first philosophy is a philosophy of power” it is a

“philosophy of injustice” (Levinas 1969: 46) and “Heideggerian ontology, which subordinates the relationship with the Other to the relation with Being in general, remains under obedience to the anonymous, and leads inevitably to another power, to imperialist domination, to tyranny” (Levinas 1969: 47).

John Caputo, following Levinas, take this critique of ontology one step further and argues that not only does ontology collapse the ethical relation into itself, reducing the radical alterity of the other to that of Being, but also Heidegger’s understanding of ontology suppresses ontic plurality and multiplicity.14 In Demythologising Heidegger, Caputo

13 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1969, p.45. 14 For a critique of the concept of Being as unitary or ‘one’ see , The Oblivion of Air, trans. Mary Beth Mader, London: The Athlone Press, 1999. Begun on the day she learnt of Heidegger’s death in

140 identifies a certain logic operating throughout Heidegger’s thinking, from Being and

Time and well into the later works, “Letter on Humanism” and Time and Being. Caputo refers to this logic as one of essentialism, which is a consequence of the abandonment of facticity and the preoccupation with Being uncontaminated by beings: “from facticity,

Heidegger’s interests turned more and more toward the search for the Essential Being … the task of thought was not to cope with the contingencies of changeable, factical life but to break through to what is originary, incipient and essential.”15 Caputo’s primary concern is to locate how this logic of the essential informs Heidegger’s views of pain and suffering, and consequently, why ontology cannot inform or articulate an ethics or any kind of political action, implicitly or explicitly.

For Caputo, Heidegger’s perusal of Being occurs at the expense of factical life. Drawing from the Letter on Humanism, Caputo rightly asks, in response to Heidegger’s claim that metaphysics fails to think Being itself, what it would mean to think being in isolation from its removal or difference from any mode of being? For Caputo, would not anything we have to say about Being inevitably be entitative, ontic and based on a transference from some order of beings? How could Being not bear the traces of some ontico- historical setting? What form of language would it take? How would it ever be possible to get so far removed from beings such that Being is attained in its uncontaminated purity? Caputo asks:

Would that not be as unlikely, as impossible, as the pure epoche for which Heidegger criticised Husserl on the grounds that the purity of transcendental consciousness was always already contaminated by the facticity of Dasein? Is not

Freiburg, 1976, and published seven years later, Irigaray argues that there be a thinking of at least two, rather than one. 15 John Caputo, Demythologising Heidegger Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.p.118.

141 Heidegger here repeating, reproducing, the same Husserlian and transcendental gesture? Does not the ‘facticity’ of Dasein – which was brought to bear against transcendental phenomenology – likewise impede the purity of Being’s transcendence, of Being’s removal from beings? In general, does not the logic of facticity always already subvert the logic of purification and non-contamination? … Is it not one of Heidegger’s most famous teachings, against Husserl, that things (both Being and human being) are always already contaminated? (Caputo 1993: 121)

While Levinas argues that the thought of Being attempts to reduce an otherwise incomprehensible existence to knowledge of it, Caputo16 argues that the thought of Being drives out the philosophy of life, not only through the act of understanding, but by divesting Being of its very faciticy that renders it intelligible in the first place. This for

Caputo is a logical inconsistency, given that Heidegger has argued, at length, that Being is always already factically constituted and cannot escape the constraints of this facticity.

The point of Caputo’s criticism is that the preoccupation with Being loses the particular in terms of concrete reality in its pursuit of a universal Being. Being is perceived as universal and homogenous, which amounts to impersonal and anonymous. Both the criticisms by Levinas and Caputo imply that ontology effaces life in some way, by either attempting to understand it (Levinas) or by severing its connection to it (Caputo).17 Both also suggest that by conceiving ontology as fundamental perverts an ethical relation to the other.18

16 Critchley makes similar argument against ontology, but it is directed at Nancy. He argues that ontology constitutes a neutralising of the ethical relation. See Critchley. 1999, at 248 & 251. 17 For a further discussion of Levinas and Caputo see Seamus Carey, “Embodying Original Ethics: A response to Levinas and Caputo” in Philosophy Today, Vol. 41: 3, Fall, 1997. Carey argues that despite both Levinas and Caputo’s aversion to ontology, both rely on ontologies, including an ontology of the body, in order to make their claim that ethics is prior to ontology. See p.446. 18 See also John Llewelyn, “Ontological Responsibility and the Poetics of Nature” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 19, 1989 for a discussion of Levinas and Heidegger on the question of ethics. Llewelyn argues that Levinas is too preoccupied with doing justice to the human being that he fails to do justice to the nonhuman being, while Heidegger’s preoccupation with giving being its due allows both human and nonhuman being to be given their due. See p. 3.

142 We are thus left with two related questions in regard to the relation between ontology and facticity, or the ontic. Does Heideggerian ontology reduce all existence, and presumably the other, to comprehension, thereby doing violence to both existence and the other.

Secondly, given that Heidegger has argued that Being is only intelligible in a particular context, is the pursuit of Being a pursuit of the universal and impersonal?

Before addressing these two questions I want to suggest that the critiques Levinas and

Caputo direct against ontology can also be directed against the ethical relation Levinas describes. Levinas’ ethics risks reproducing what it critiques because in describing the ethical relation as pure transcendence and the other as absolutely other, Levinas also risks neutralises the facticity of the other. Using the paradigms of sexual and racial differences as two categories of difference, I will suggest, in the next section, that this ethical relation risks an effacement of the differences it seeks to cultivate. By showing the way in which

Levinas’ ethics may be deficient in some respects as first philosophy, I want to suggest that ontology can perform the task that Levinas wants ethics to perform. That is, the task of describing our inclination toward others (hence ethics) without basing this on knowledge or the effacement of difference. I do this in the third section by examining the interplay between concealment and unconcealment, the call of Being and the response it evokes in order to mount two claims. The first is that the type of understanding of Being

Heidegger develops is essentially a concession that there can be no understanding of

Being. The fact that understanding operates at the level of mood and affect and that it is intelligible in a particular context means that Being can never be understood once and for all, or pinned down in terms of a concept or category. This is because of the very nature

143 of Being as both given to Dasein, but as simultaneously concealed or withdrawn in the moment it is given. Secondly, I argue that the ethical moment in Heidegger occurs in the moment Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take responsibility for its own

Being. Because Dasein is also Mitsein, it must also take responsibility for the Being of the other. While this doesn’t give the other quite the same privileged status that Levinas envisages, nevertheless it does save Heidegger’s ontology from the charge of perpetuating violence against the other.

ii. Irigaray and Levinas’ effacement of (sexual/racial) difference.

In the previous section, I examined Levinas’ critique of Heidegger and demonstrated the way in which for Levinas, ontology, even Heideggerian ontology, effaces the alterity of the other by reducing her to the anonymous categories of Being. The specificity of the other, that unknowable and evasive aspect of the other expressed in her face and by her speech is something that Heidegger bypasses in his pursuit of Being. Alternatively put, the question of Dasein’s being-with-others is subordinated to the pursuit of the meaning of Being. Further, the pursuit of Being effaces ontic differences and multiplicity that exists in concrete relations between Daseins. But could the same be said of the ethical relation that Levinas describes? Does the ethical relation also depend on an effacement of ontic difference, given Levinas’ separation between radical and ontic difference?

In her “Questions to Emmanuel Levinas,” Irigaray asks repeatedly: “who is the other, the

Other … how can the other be defined? Levinas speaks of ‘the Other,’ or ‘respect for the

Other,’ of the ‘face of the Other’ etc. But how to define this Other which seems so self-

144 evident to him, and which I see as a postulate, the projection or the remnant of a system, a hermeneutic locus of crystallisation of meaning.”19 Levinas may argue in response that the Other is not some vague and unidentifiable figure; that it has a face and a determinate form. The point is that alterity or radical difference is what erupts through such expression. In Otherwise than Being, Levinas characterises the relation to alterity in terms of “the widow, the orphan, the stranger;” figures that epitomise the Other or difference/alterity. These figures are selected to characterise alterity because of the type of relation they evoke. That is, an asymmetrical obligation to the other that is not based on any kind of knowledge. The widow, the orphan, and the stranger are not our family, friends or lovers. While we care about and assume reciprocal obligations towards those we know based on various levels of intimacy, there is no such knowledge or relation with the stranger. The “widow, the orphan, the stranger” are anonymous and unidentifiable characters and it is precisely because of this strangeness and vulnerability that these figures can call my indifference into question and propel me into an ethical relation with them.

Nevertheless, Levinas does rely on some factical attributes and his reader’s knowledge of such attributes to characterise alterity. The characterisation of alterity as feminine being a case in point. If, for Levinas, alterity is defined as a radical difference expressed by the other, but not expressed by the other’s facticity, then there seems to be a separation here between alterity and facticity. What I want to suggest is that Levinas cannot maintain this distinction between facticity and alterity, because if he wants to describe an ethical

19 Luce Irigaray, “Questions to Emmanuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love” trans. Margaret Whitford, in Re-reading Levinas R. Bernasconi & S. Critchley (eds.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p. 112.

145 relation, then it has to be a relation with someone, in the strong sense of the word; that is, a real person with factical attributes. On one level, he concedes this, characterising alterity as taking the form of the widow, the orphan and the stranger which implies that alterity can take certain recognisable forms. If this is the case, then is it possible to add to this list the sexual other, the racial other, or more specifically, the Other as Woman or as

Palestinian, given that these ‘others’ have also experienced suffering of some kind? If alterity has to be characterised by a particular form, why not characterise it in terms of sex or race? Why does the figure of the feminine play a different role in Levinas’ ethical relation than the widow, the orphan or the stranger? And how might this role undermine

Levinas’ ethical relation?

In his discussion of the concept of dwelling, Levinas does explicitly state that the Other is the feminine and Woman. Dwelling, or the home for Levinas is the space of refuge, recollection, and intimacy, where the world is shut out. It is a suspension of the

“immediate reactions the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself, one’s possibilities …” (Levinas 1969: 154). This intimacy that is found in the home is an intimacy with someone – specifically the feminine, or Woman: “and the Other whose presence is discreetly an absence, with which is accomplished the primary hospitable welcome which describes the field of intimacy, is the Woman. The woman is the condition for recollection, the interiority of the Home, and inhabitation” (Levinas 1969:

155).

146 Woman or the feminine (for they seem to be used interchangeably – a point I will return to) represents/is a level of intimacy and familiarity that transcends language or the spoken word. But the feminine is not the other of the ethical relation, meaning that she is not the same as the widow, orphan and stranger: “the Other who welcomes in intimacy is not the you [vous] of the face that reveals itself in a dimension of height, but precisely the thou

[tu] of familiarity, a language without teaching, an understanding without words, an expression in secret. The I-Thou … is the relation not with the interlocutor but with feminine alterity” (Levians 1969: 155). The woman is the figure who opens up the dimension of interiority, the dimension of dwelling where the subject (man) can come to recollect himself, a place where he can seek refuge, where he finds hospitality and a human welcome. While woman is the precondition of subjectivity, she is not the other/alterity of the ethical relation to whom this subject is obligated.

The point here is that recollection (subjectivity) presupposes a relation to alterity that does not question/challenge egoism, whereas the ethical relation by definition, is an interruption of subjectivity/egoism. But there is no obligation toward the feminine in the same way there is for the aforementioned others. Despite this, the feminine is the condition for the possibility for the ethical relation in the first place, by virtue of the fact that she performs the interruption of subjectivity that enables the ethical relation. This is problematic, as Irigaray contends, because woman is rendered instrumental in the sense that the feminine face merely ‘furnishes’ the face to face encounter such that the masculine can become ethical (Irigaray 1991: 133).

147 There is the related problem of a reliance on facticity in characterising the other and a simultaneous denial of this reliance. Levinas does claim that the feminine does not equate with real, empirical women: “need one add that there is no question here of defying ridicule by maintaining the empirical truth or counter truth that every home in fact presupposes a woman? … The empirical absence of the human being of the ‘feminine sex’ in a dwelling nowise affects the dimension of femininity which remains open there, as the very welcome of the dwelling” (Levinas 1969: 158). The feminine does not appear to signify real women, but is a mode of being or a tendency, which presumably means that the feminine could be signified by any actual factical entity be it man, woman, child or animal. But the way in which the feminine operates in Levinas’ work suggests otherwise. It suggests that no figure can replace that of the feminine precisely because of what the feminine represents. Or as Claire Katz puts it, “it is not clear that the feminine is simply a named placeholder, which can be removed and replaced by a term that is less provocative. The ‘feminine’ satisfies this role precisely because of the meaning that it has for us.”20

More problematically is that the meaning of the feminine that Levinas relies on is a meaning constructed and perpetuated by patriarchal culture. It is a meaning that has been used to justify the oppression of women. Levinas, I suggest, cannot escape the political implications of this meaning by claiming to operate in a metaphysical rather than a political register. As Tina Chanter elaborates, it is not possible to simply suspend the political questions that impose themselves as secondary to the ontological function that

20 Claire E. Katz, Levinas, Judaism, and the feminine: the silent footsteps of Rebecca, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003, p. 40.

148 terms such as ‘the feminine’ play in Levinas’ philosophy. The reason for this is that politics and ontology cannot be so easily distinguished. (Chanter 2001: 52). What this suggests is that the ethical relation Levinas describes depends on ontic differences in ways that may be problematic.

Irigaray’s claim that “the feminine appears as the underside or reverse side of man’s aspiration toward the light, as its negative” such that the “feminine is apprehended not in relation to itself, but from the point of view of man” (Irigaray 1991: 109) not only applies to his account of dwelling, but also apparent in Levinas’ account of paternity. Once again, despite the claim that alterity is not reducible to ontic differences, which I am equating here with facticity, he nevertheless relies on ontic differences or factical differences in presenting the ethical relation. While I am suggesting that the realm of the ontic is precisely where the ethical relation should take place, given that this is the only realm that counts, Levinas’ reliance on figures such as the feminine to characterise the relation serve to undermine its relevance.

Kelly Oliver suggests that in some sense, Levinas offers an alternative to traditional accounts of paternity, but also continues them. On one level, his account departs from the

Freudian notion of the father-son relationship as a “virile struggle for recognition in which the son must kill the father in order to inherit his recognition, designation and power.”21 According to Oliver, for Levinas “the father chooses the son after he has had no choice. His love elects this particular child in his uniqueness as the loved one, the one meant to be. In this regard, Levinas suggests that all love for another person must

21 Kelly Oliver, Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture, New York: Routledge, 1997 p.211.

149 approach paternal love insofar as that love elects the loved one from among all others”

(Oliver 1997: 211). This suggests that paternity is no longer based on the law, filiality and the guilt of patricide, but on a relation of love and reciprocity. However, it is continuous with the tradition insofar as it is “founded in the masculine identity passed down from father to son” (Oliver 1997: 212). This identity is one that excludes the body, which is given to the feminine.

Moreover, as Derrida points out, why the equivalence of the ‘child’ and the ‘son’? Does this imply that the daughter cannot play an analogous role? For Derrida, “if there were no differences from this point of view, why should ‘son’ better represent, in advance, this indifference?”22 Once again, Levinas responds by arguing that the account of paternity does not correlate with biology. However, this does not change the fact that the ethical relations he describes are all based in a masculine realm – the realms of the father, the father-son and the man-God relation, where the feminine is notably absent. More problematically, as Irigaray points out, it is only in these realms that the ethical relation occurs, thereby implying that the feminine cannot be ethical.

The ethical relation to which paternity gives rise depends on the exclusion of the feminine. While Levinas argues that firstly, he is not concerned with real, empirical women, and secondly, that he is writing in an ethical, rather than political or philosophical register, it is not entirely possible to discard the meanings and connotations of the language he employs to characterise the feminine and its function in his work. As

22 Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, London: Routledge, 1990, p.39.

150 Chanter argues: “by usurping the generosity of the feminine, appropriating it for paternity, and suggesting that it be a universal model, Levinas never has to confront the necessity to which his own philosophy has recourse for its very intelligibility” (Chanter

2001: 57). Chanter further writes: “were Levinas to think through the relation that the feminine has to the political in his work, he would be forced to acknowledge that the one excludes the other, reciprocally, necessarily, and inevitably” (Chanter 2001: 57). That is,

Levinas disavows responsibility for the fact that the infinite ethical obligation his thinking calls for, serving as a reminder rather than an ethical program, is one “which a history of oppression has repeatedly demanded of women” (Chanter 2001: 57). We are thus left with the following dilemma, according to Chanter: we can either take Levinas at his word when he suggests that the feminine includes all the possibilities of the transcendent relation with the other, “in which case we can identify with the ethical relation of the face-to-face as the mainstay of Levinas’ philosophy, which is nevertheless figured as masculine by Levinas himself, and in doing so we erase the very significance of the feminine as alterity” (Chanter 2001: 57). Alternatively, we can identify with the feminine as the mysterious, ineffable other who brings man to ethics, before withdrawing from the world of light, knowledge, philosophy,

in which case we repeat the gestures of generosity that have been women’s lot since time immemorial, and we rejoin a tradition that excludes women from the serious public realm of politics, which has always been a masculine affair, and confines us to the private, corporeal, domestic realm, to watch over the children, to take care of men’s needs, to provide solace and love and sustenance, to give a break, interrupt monotony, create a delightful lapse in being. (Chanter 2001: 58)23

23 Chanter does go on to argue that there is a way out of this dilemma, which she locates in Levinas’ account of temporality. She argues that the feminine remains the privileged unthought in Levinas’ thinking, organising his philosophy in such a way that challenges the adequacy of transcendental modes of thinking what constitutes conditionality. See p. 58.

151 The ethical relation described by Levinas is thus made possible by the exclusion of the feminine. If we grant to Levinas that the feminine can be represented by any entity, then we are left with the question that has baffled Irigaray – that is, who, exactly, is the other, and what is the point of the ethical relation if it is not tied to the ontic layer of existence, or to life as we live it, in some way? It would seem that when it comes to the question of lived differences, differences such as sexual and racial differences, 24 to the places where ethics should take place and where it is needed most, Levinas’ conception of ethics perhaps lets us down a little.25 It would thus appear that on the question of sexual and racial difference, Levinas’ ethics falls short of ethics, understood as unconditional giving to and responsibility for the other uncontaminated by ontical or ontological and political considerations. The reason for this, I suggest, is that it loses its specificity to particular, concrete situations, to the here and now, to where it matters most.

24 In the same way that the other cannot be signified by woman, it also cannot be represented by the raced other. See for example, Robert Bernasconi, “One-Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. In the same way that the other cannot be signified by woman, it also cannot be represented by the raced other. See for example, Robert Bernasconi, “One-Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. In tracing Levinas’ engagement with Merleau-Ponty, Bernasconi suggests that Levinas’ reading exposes a tension between his ethics and the idea of history that he hastily dismisses. On the one hand, Levinas recognises a thinking that acknowledges the “abstract man in man;” on the other, he fails to recognise the cultural specificity of this generosity. Bernasconi asks: “Is not Levinas clearly attributing to the “West” a certain superiority? The superiority would seem to lie in its capacity to understand … Levinas seems to be suggesting that it would lie in its ability to understand other cultures better than they understood themselves. Could the “end of eurocentrism” be the “ultimate wisdom of Europe”? The ‘generosity’ of Western thought, which at first sight seems to be an illustration of the one-way direction of ethics in favour of the Other, ends up turning into a judgment on the relative intellectual powers of different cultures.” See pp 78-9. 25 See also Critchley’s recent critical response to Levinas’ view of politics in the wake of the war in Iraq. Critchley remarks that there is a risk that the non-place of the ethical relation to the other becomes the place of Israel’s borders. For Critchley, Israel appears to have a double function in Levinas’ work, in the sense that it is both ideal and real – as an ideal, it is the place where ethical responsibility would be incarnated in social justice, and as a real existing state, it is the place where justice is perennially compromised by violence. Critchley asks: “might this double function, … with regard to Israel, explain why, in 1982, Levinas did not feel able to condemn the murder of Palestinians in the camps of Sabra and Shatila? Is that why Levinas said that in alterity I also find an enemy?” in “Five Problems in Levinas’ View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to them ” in Political Theory, Vol. 32; 2, April, 2004, p. 175.

152 iii. The question of ontology as understanding.

The above discussion has left us with a series of questions: does Heideggerian ontology, as Levinas claims, reduce the relation I have with the other to comprehension, thereby losing the particular expressed by the other in its pursuit of a universal Being? And if so, does this mean that ontology is superfluous when it comes to the question of ethical responsibility and action? In this section, I want to argue that ethics can be accommodated within Heideggerian ontology by way of three interrelated arguments.

Firstly, by examining the phenomenon of Being, from Being and Time to Time and Being

I suggest that Being is not so much about comprehension as it is about experience. I show the way in which Heidegger’s account of understanding is essentially a concession that there can be no comprehension or understanding of existence; only a vigilant and perennial raising of the question of Being. As Heidegger comes to realise and accept, particularly in his later work, is the answer, if there is one at all, will invariably evade and elude us on account of the very nature of Being. Secondly, the fact that Being is only intelligible in a particular context, experience, or mood, suggests that it cannot be universal, homogenous, or anonymous. These related claims are intended to foreshadow the special or peculiar relation between Dasein and its Being; a relation Heidegger comes to characterise by the term Appropriation. The relation is such that Dasein is passive in the face of Being, that Being shows itself to Dasein and summons it to take responsibility for its existence. This responsibility, as I will show with Nancy, is also a taking action. It is also, I suggest, where an ethics can be located in Heideggerian ontology.

Consequently, I submit, Heideggerian ontology more adequately describes our

153 inclinations toward others, hence ethics, without basing this on a kind of knowledge or comprehension.26

As demonstrated in the first section of this chapter, Heidegger is unequivocal that his project is one of understanding and conceptually grasping Being as it manifests itself or appears in the structures of existence. However, Heidegger nowhere gives us an account of exactly what Being is, other than the fact that we know it is by virtue of the ability to ask the question in the first place. He does however, tell us what it is not: Being is not an entity or a concept; it is not a substance or spirit; it is not a person, insofar as it cannot be reduced to beings, but it is that with which all beings are marked. But we don’t find, in

Heidegger’s oeuvre, an explicit definition as to what Being precisely is. There is no definition precisely because Being is not a concept or entity that can be defined or comprehended. Could it be that Being denotes that excess or remainder that evades comprehension of which Levinas speaks? And could this mean, as Irigaray concludes in her engagement with Levinas, that Heidegger’s ontology is more ethical than it explicitly states, because to perceive the other from within Being is to respect the other insofar as the ineffable expressed by the other is preserved?

26 In this chapter, I focus on the ethical dimension in Heidegger’s thinking primarily using Being and Time and Time and Being. For other accounts of the ethical possibilities in Heidegger’s later thinking, and its relation to Levinas, see Silvia Benso, “Of things face-to-face with Levinas face-to-face with Heidegger: Prolegomena to a metaphysical ethics of things” in Philosophy Today, Spring 1996, Vol. 40, Iss. 1. Benso argues that there are no things as such for Levinas, or we cannot have an ethical relation to them. Things are encountered within the economy of the same, within the movement of labour or of enjoyment that takes its bearings for the same and returns to the same. Or he encounters things as gifts, as the offer that the same makes to the other to welcome him or her, to cover his/her nakedness, and to enact the ethical relationship. It is the other however, and not things, who constitutes the principle of donation. For Levinas, things are the same, or for the other, but not for themselves. For Heidegger, on the other hand, there is a place for things; things are the place where the Fourfold gather – the mortals, the gods, the earth and the sky. However, significantly, the intimacy of things and the Fourfold is not fusion, but difference. Benso argues that in the face of their relation with things, human beings determine the authenticity of their mortality, or of their being human. See p.132.

154 We have seen the way in which understanding functions in Heidegger, and we have also seen the way in which Levinas finds much to commend in this account. Recall that understanding is not something Dasein possesses as a faculty, but is something that it is.

But what is at stake in Heidegger’s attempt to articulate this pre-ontological, affective understanding of existence/Being? Is it, as Levinas suggests, an attempt to reduce this existence, and by implication, the other, to comprehension? And given Levinas’ reservations about comprehension insofar as comprehension and knowledge constitute domination, is Heidegger’s project one of mastery and violence? In this section I want to suggest otherwise by arguing that the very nature of Being precludes or impedes the type of comprehension Levinas finds problematic. The idea of mastery and domination is one that goes against both the spirit and letter of Heidegger’s thinking.

So what then, is the nature of Being, such that it defies comprehension? This can be answered in part by examining what Heidegger means by phenomenology. As early as

Being and Time, Heidegger was of the belief that Being has not only been forgotten because it is the most universal, the most indefinable, or the most self-evident question, but because the very nature of Being is such that it hides itself from us, or conceals itself.

Heidegger was of the opinion that his was a phenomenology of the unapparent, where the true Being of the phenomena is that which does not show itself. As Jean-Luc Marion points out, Heidegger did not accomplish what he nevertheless attempted because the

“phenomena of Being,” even in the already attenuated form of the ontological difference,

155 never shows itself. Secondly, because the phenomenology of the unapparent fails to get beyond its programmatic status or its contradictory formulation.27

Unlike Husserl, who maintained that ontology is not phenomenology, and in itself, phenomenology is not and could not be ontology, Heidegger argues that the only way to ontology is via phenomenology. In section 7 of Being and Time, a reciprocal relation between ontology and phenomenology is established such that “the task of ontology is to explain Being itself and to make the Being of entities stand out in full relief …with the question of the meaning of Being, our investigation comes up against the fundamental question of philosophy. This is one that must be treated phenomenologically” (BT 27/49-

50). Again, in Basic Problems, Heidegger writes: “The basic components of a priori knowledge constitute what we call phenomenology. Phenomenology is the name for the method of ontology, that is, of scientific philosophy. Rightly conceived, phenomenology is the concept of a method” (BBP 20). The relation between philosophy, ontology and phenomenology is such that ontology only becomes intelligible or accessible to philosophy if ontology has the method to reach it. The method that opens ontology to philosophy is phenomenology. Heidegger writes:

Phenomenological research is the interpretation of beings with regard to their Being. For such an interpretation, what is put into prepossession is what it has in advance as its thematic matter: a being or a particular region of Being. This being is interrogated with regard to its Being, that is, with regard to that with a view to which what is put into prepossession is interrogated – the very-consideration-of- the-relation; that with regard to which it is and must be seen is Being. Being is to

27 Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology, Thomas A. Carlson (trans.), Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998, p.46.

156 be read upon (the face of) being; that is to say, what phenomenological interpretation puts into pre-view is Being.28

The “thing itself” to which phenomenology returns is not an essence, a category, a noema, but rather, beings with a view to Being. In Being and Time Heidegger writes:

“But if we understand ‘phenomenology’ as: to allow the most proper ‘question’ of thought to express itself, then the title would have to be ‘a path through phenomenology into the thought of Being.’ This genitive then says that Being as such shows itself at the same time as what is to be thought, what is in need of thinking that answers to it” (BT

7/26 & 37/61). However, if Being is not immediately intelligible because it is not present as such, then Heidegger’s phenomenology is somewhat paradoxical. The paradox here is that unlike Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian phenomenology is not concerned with phenomena that have appeared or are apparent. Rather, it is concerned with the

“mode of exposition” of those phenomena; that is, not of the phenomena, but the manner in which the phenomena appears to Dasein (Marion 1998: 46). If phenomena here conceived is not defined in terms of permanent presence under the gaze of consciousness, then how are we to think it and what are the implications of a phenomenology of the unapparent, where the true Being of the phenomena is that which does not show itself?

While initially, in Being and Time, Heidegger appears to have repeated the Husserlain determination of Being on the basis of presence insofar as he writes: “the expression

‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest” (BT 7/27) he departs from Husserl in two fundamental ways: firstly, the issue here is not one of

28 Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 306.

157 presence but rather, it is a question of the phenomena showing itself on the basis of its own initiative. Secondly, and by implication, this means that Heideggerian phenomenology is primarily concerned with that which does not show itself – that which is unapparent.

In relation to the first point, with respect to the concern about comprehension or understanding, the phenomena of Being gives itself by itself and on the basis of its own visibility and is not reduced to presence for a consciousness or a Dasein. As Marion argues, “Heidegger does not here mention anything like consciousness: not because nothing is required in order to see that which rises to its proper visibility, but because in a sense that visibility – whatever its modes may be – is decided beyond any evidence and therefore and consciousness; visibility is not represented, it presents itself” (Marion 1998:

57).

The fact that Dasein is passive in the face of being, that it is incapable of summoning

Being, but must wait until it is summoned, the fact that Being is given to Dasein suggests that not only is Dasein divested of any mastery with regard to its own Being, but that

Being is only intelligible insofar as it shows itself to Dasein. The fact that Being withdraws or conceals itself in the moment it shows itself or is given suggests that there can be no comprehension of it as such. Being is enigmatic insofar as it will invariably elude us on account of its very nature. Heidegger writes:

What is it that phenomenology is to “let us see”? What is it that must be called a “phenomena” in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is

158 something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and ground. (BT 35/59)

What this suggests is that phenomena does not designate a certain object as such but designates the play of the apparent as it makes itself manifest. That is, it designates the play of the concealing and unconcealing of the phenomena of Being: “behind the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else; on the other hand, what is to become a phenomenon can be hidden. And just because the phenomena are proximally and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology. Covered-up-ness is the counter-concept to ‘phenomenon’” (BT 36/60).

Which leaves us with a paradox of sorts. Heidegger, it would appear, needs to decide between phenomenology, and therefore, the apparent, or the unapparent, in which case, he has to concede to the impossibility of phenomenology. I am not however, as concerned with the paradoxical formulation of phenomenology as I am interested in what it signifies. Phenomenology must direct itself at that which does not show itself because

Being does not appear, is not perceivable and hence, not immediately intelligible. Marion writes: “Being is never perceived within the horizon of presence as a perfectly obedient and lawful phenomenon” (Marion 1998: 60). According to Heidegger, “this being itself is nothing of a being. Likewise what belongs to the Being of a being remains in obscurity”

(BBP 58). Being is thus a phenomena which is not exhausted in presence, since by its very definition, it only is insofar as it refuses such a presence.

159 The implication of this is firstly, that there will never be a full or complete disclosure of

Being, thereby impeding any definitive understanding of it. While Being will manifest itself in the various structures of existence outlined in Being and Time, this does not mean that we can pin it down once and for all. Being, by its very nature, is elusive, withdrawing from presence in the moment it manifests itself as present. While Heidegger does harbour aspirations of discerning the meaning of Being as such in Being and Time, the later text, Time and Being concedes that any meaning or understanding of Being is impossible. Rather, Being is something that must be experienced as a relation.

Moreover, as conceded in Being and Time, an ontological failure is inscribed in the very structure of Dasein on account of this idea of pre-ontological understanding. The difficulty with this idea of pre-understanding lies in the fact that it is not a full understanding. It is not conscious or theorised knowledge, nor is it cognitive or reflective knowledge. Rather, it is ingrained, practical, often unconscious interpretation of the world around Dasein. This has an important consequence. Since we tend to understand our Being from the perspective of a particular horizon, within the immanence of a certain world, we tend to interpret ourselves in world terms: “in understanding its own being,

Dasein tends to understand its own Being in terms of that being to which it is essentially, continually, and most closely related – the ‘world’” (BT 13/32). We thus tend to forget that we ex-sist, that we can choose what we make of our Being. Therefore, the very reason why Dasein is the prior being (because it interprets itself on the background of its world) is also the reason why it cannot fully understand the structures of its Being. This

160 theoretical and ontological failure is inscribed in the very structure of Dasein.29 The consequence of this is that we are ontically closest to ourselves and ontologically farthest.

Hence, contrary to Levinas’ criticism, Heidegger’s emphasis on understanding Being is not about definitive comprehension and possession of Being.

However, as Françoise Dastur points out, it is possible to chastise Heidegger for having placed too much emphasis on self-affection up until 1929 and of thus defining Being as the self-projection of Dasein.30 But this emphasis shifts after 1929, where the focus is no longer the projection of Dasein. Heidegger speaks of the failure of Being and Time in his

1946 “Letter on Humanism” in relation to the non-publication of the third division.

However, this failure was not entirely negative, because the issue was not to abandon the attempt to think the relation between Being and time, but to think this relation on a different basis than that of Dasein’s projection. This is precisely what is attempted in

Time and Being insofar as the primary focus here is not on Dasein as the site or place where Being is going to manifest itself. Dasein is no longer the clearing but becomes a determination of Being itself. The play of concealment and unconcealment, already in place in Being and Time is elaborated in the later text Time and Being in terms of

Ereignis, which is a new conception of Being, considered no longer as the ground of beings but as the unfolding of the clearing from an abyssal withdrawal and

29 Also see Visker, 2004. Visker claims that we are perhaps too familiar with Heidegger’s famous statement that “the essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (BT 42/67), and thus forget that what is implied here is not only that the privileged of Dasein is to exist ontologically, but it also means that if Dasein in its factical existence ‘covers over’ this privileged, this covering up should be understood out of the very structure of that existence itself: “and, the source of this self-alienation which makes Dasein opaque to itself lies, not outside of Dasein, but in its very heart.” pp.53-4. 30 Françoise Dastur, “The Call of Conscience: The Most Intimate Alterity” in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, F. Raffoul & D. Pettigrew (eds.), Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, p.90.

161 concealment.31 Man is no longer the thrown basis of this clearing, but stands in it, is subjected to it and is indebted to it for its own Being. Dasein is now written as Da-sein in order to indicate that the ‘there’ of Being can no longer be understood as the Being that

Dasein projects through self-projection and as self-affection, but as the call of Being itself to man, a call to which man corresponds through thought (Dastur 1998: 34). According to

Dastur, “It is this non-coincidence of the Being of man and of Being as such which explains that the forgetting of Being is not so much the fault of metaphysical thinking as what constitutes the very ‘ownness’ of Being, which withdraws, that is to say, forgets itself by making the clearing possible” (Dastur 1998: 64).

The relation between Dasein and Being is a reciprocal one, characterised as ereignis.

Dastur draws attention the fact that ereignis in Germans literally means to eye, and in the context in which it used by Heidegger, it signifies bringing to ownness by making visible

(Dastur 1998:64). Ereignis does not have the structure of a self-hood but can only be thought as a sending, or a giving, where in the very moment of giving it holds itself back and withdraws. Heidegger wriites: “a giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving holds itself back and withdraws, such a giving we call sending. According to the meaning of giving which is to be thought in this way, Being – that which It gives – is what is sent”

(TB 8) Because Being is not extant or simply temporal, and because time is neither temporal not extant we can say of them not they are but that there is Being and that there is time – in German, “is gibt” – “it gives.” Dastur writes:

31 Francoise Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, F. Raffoul & D. Pettigrew (eds.) New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1998, p. 64.

162 This unconcealment of beings is itself made possible by a second ‘letting,’ which is the gift of the unfolding of presence, that is, of Being itself. Being, when no longer thought of as the ground of beings, that is, when thought of in what is proper to it, is the gift of the unfolding of presence. This gift remains unthought in the … “there is indeed Being’ of Parmenides. But this unthought does not achieve conceptual clarity in Heidegger’s thought, since this givenness is a sending, that is, a gift without a ‘subject’ who gives. (Dastur 1998: 66)

The implications of this in terms of the criticisms Levinas directs against Heidegger’s conception of understanding is that there can be no understanding of Being on account of its very nature. The closest we come to Being is in terms of an experience of it. Above and beyond that, there appears to be very little that is intelligible in the sense that it cannot be articulated as such. The point, it would seem for Heidegger, is that the raising of the question is of more importance than the answer.

iv. Heidegger and an ethics of responsibility.

In what way then, can an ethics be accommodated within ontology, given that Heidegger has explicitly argued that ontology has nothing to do with ethics? By tracing the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time to the later text, Time and Being,

I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to man/Dasein contains an ethical moment, or opens to an ethics. By ethics I do not mean a series of proscriptions or blueprint for praxis. Nor is it an ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and responsibility for another, although this is arguably (and as I will argue in the following chapter), a consequence; but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. No one can decide for us how to exist, and no one can assume the responsibility of my being on my behalf. I have to decide to be, and to be open to the sense/being. The ethical moment in Heidegger is not one as ambitious as

163 changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of changing yourself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in response to the call of Being, which has already claimed us in some way.32 Being has claimed us insofar as it summons us to take responsibility for it.

In Being and Time, Heidegger describes the call as an “appeal to Dasein” one that calls it to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self. It does this by “summoning it to its ownmost Being-guilty” (BT 271/316). The call of conscience is described as a voice, coming from both beyond Dasein and from within it, and summons it to take responsibility from its immersion and lostness in the world of das Man. The “voice is taken rather as a giving-to-understand. In the tendency to disclosure which belongs to the call, lies the momentum of a push – of an abrupt arousal. The call is from afar unto afar.

It reaches him who wants to be brought back” (BT 271/316). The call “forces the Dasein which has been appealed to and summoned, into the reticence of itself” (BT 273/317).

Recall from the previous chapter, I suggested that if Heidegger at times, describes the world of das Man in disparaging terms, it is on account of its ability to divest Dasein of its responsibility and answerability for its actions. I have demonstrated the way in which das Man can disburden Dasein of its responsibility for its existence and its actions. No one has to own up to anything or claim anything as one’s own, because it is possible to pass it off onto an unidentifiable and anonymous mass of people. It is always someone else who is responsible. But as we have seen, as a collective, this someone/the they, is in

32 I am indebted to the 29th session of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum, 2004 for helping me develop this idea.

164 fact no one, insofar as it is not an identifiable and distinguished someone: “In Dasein’s everydayness the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must say that ‘it was no one’” (BT 127/165). As lost in das Man, Dasein inhabits a world that is familiar and comfortable and for which it has no responsibility, given that das Man have articulated the referential context of significance. Dasein is immersed and fascinated by this world; it is complacent and unquestioning; average and unremarkable. From out of this world, it has a particular interpretation of its self, but it is a limited understanding:

“this very state of Being, in its everyday kind of Being, is what proximally misses itself and covers itself up” (BT 130/168).

The call of conscience functions to bring Dasein back from its falling and lostness in the world of das Man: “Conscience summons Dasein’s self from its lostness in the ‘they.’

The Self to which the appeal is made remains definite” (BT 274/318). The call does not arise by virtue of our volition, but comes from outside us, against our will: “the call is precisely something which we ourselves have neither planned nor prepared for nor voluntary performed, nor have we ever done so. ‘It’ calls, against our expectations and even against our will. One the other hand, the call undoubtedly does not come from someone else who is with me in the world. The call comes from me and yet from beyond me” (BT 275/320). The call is what summons Dasein from its lostness in the world of the they, the call of conscience address Dasein as “guilty” insofar as it has failed to take responsibility for itself and its Being. Being-guilty discloses to Dasein that it is responsible for its Being. But this responsibility is not to be conceived in terms of accountability or freedom of the will. Rather, responsibility constitutes the essence of

165 Dasein and defines man’s relation to Being. The very concept of Dasein means to be a responsibility of and for oneself.33

The idea of responsibility is one that occurs again and again throughout Heidegger’s work. In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology he writes: “only in responsibility does the self first reveal itself” (BBP 194); in The Essence of Human Freedom: “responsibility for oneself then designates the fundamental modality for being which determines all comportment of the human being, the specific and distinctive human action, ethical praxis” (EHF 263). This suggests that Being is given in such a way that I have to take it over and be responsible for it. Heidegger describes this as the “ultimate demand that

[man] takes upon itself again, explicitly and expressly, its own Dasein and be responsible for it” (FCM 254). On account of this, there is no agency in the response and no free will.

The moment Dasein is summoned by the call it is compelled to responsibility. As

François Raffoul argues: “In this ‘having to be’, I am called to be, and to make this being my own. Dasein can only be as called. Indeed, I do not posit myself as a transcendental subject but am called to be the being that I am” (Raffoul 2002: 208). The call thus summons Dasein to be responsible. What is it that Dasein is responsible for? As Raffoul has shown, it is the very finitude implied in Dasein’s birth, its thrownness that it is responsible for: “what Dasein has to be, and what it has to be responsible for, is then precisely its very facticity, its being thrown as such. What I have to make my own is this what can never belong to me, what evades me, what will always have escaped me”

(Raffoul 2002: 208).

33 See François Raffoul, “Heidegger and the Origins of Responsibility” in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, François Raffoul & David Pettigrew, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, p. 208.

166 This taking responsibility for one’s own Being is also a taking action insofar as Dasein has to act or conduct itself. As Nancy points out, in Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” the question of humanism is the question of what man is, insofar as he has to act or conduct himself. But what man is insofar as he has to act is not a specific aspect of his being; rather, it is his very Being itself. “If Dasein – according to the opening formulations of Being and Time – is the being for which ‘in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it’ (BT 12/32), it is because this ‘is at issue’ does not bring into play an interest that is merely theoretical or speculative. Rather, it destroys the supposed autonomy of such an interest.”34 The ethical moment here is a making of sense, or meaning. In the case of Dasein, it is a matter of giving sense to the fact of Being. This making of sense is not theoretical or practical because the understanding of Being as sense is identical to the action of sense, or action as sense: to be is to make sense. Making is not producing – it is acting or conducting oneself.

While in the “Letter,” Heidegger appears to confine action to thinking, to an activity that we would be inclined to call abstract or speculative, in reality, thinking is the name for action, because sense is at issue in action: “thinking (and/or poetry) is not an exceptional form of action, it is not the ‘intellectual conduct’ to be preferred to others, but it is what, in all action, brings into play the sense (of Being) without which there would be no action” (Nancy 2002: 67). Thinking is not an exceptional form of action. Nor is it intellectual conduct to be preferred to all others, but is what, in all action, brings into play the sense of Being without which there would be no action in the first place: “if action is

34 Jean-Luc Nancy, “Heidegger’s Originary Ethics” in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (above, n.36) p. 67.

167 an ‘accomplishing,’ it is because Being itself accomplishes itself in it as the sense which it is. But Being is itself nothing other than the gift of the desire of/for sense. So making sense is not of sense’s making; it is making Being be, or letting it be ” (Nancy 2002: 69).

Letting be is not however, passivity in the sense of leaving something alone, not caring, or apathy, but is action itself. It is the essence of action insofar as action is the essence of

Being. For this reason, “ontology is from the outset, within or beyond itself, Being’s conduct of sense, or the conduct of the sense of Being, according to the strongest value of the expression” (Nancy 2002: 69). The very fact of Being thus has the structure of a making sense.

This then, can partially answer Caputo’s concern that Heideggerian ontology elides the question of ethical and political considerations on account of its abandonment of facticity. Recall that for Caputo, Heidegger’s perusal of Being occurs at the expense of factical life. But if ontology, as I have been arguing with Nancy is about making sense and conducting oneself, and a taking responsibility for one’s Being, then it follows that it cannot be a responsibility that is removed from factical life, or the concrete everyday.

The point of the later work, as I have suggested, is not to think Being in isolation from beings, but to think it in terms of the relation Dasein has to Being rather than in terms of

Dasein itself. By Heidegger’s own admission, to think Being in isolation from Beings is impossible.

The second point that supports this argument is that ontology is only possible or even intelligible on the basis of a factical immersion in existence, or the concrete everyday.

168 There are places in Being and Time where Heidegger appears to demarcate the ontic from ontology, claiming that ethics, politics, anthropology and so forth are ontic sciences which therefore lie outside the scope of his enquiry into the question of Being: “the possibility of ontology, of philosophy as a science, stands and falls with the possibility of a sufficiently clear accomplishment of this differentiation between being and beings and accordingly with the possibility of negotiating the passage from the ontical consideration of beings to the ontological thematization of being” (BPP 227). In Being and Time he describes his ontological inquiry as being “more primordial, as over against the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences” (BT 11/31) and again in Metaphysical Foundations of

Logic, he writes: “Being is earlier than, is that which is essentially ‘earlier,’ it belongs to what is prior, in the language of later ontology: a priori. All ontological questioning is inquiry into and definition of the ‘a priori’” (MLF 146).

If close attention is paid to Heidegger’s terminology here – differentiation between the ontic and ontology, a passage between beings (ontic) and being (ontological), ontology as primordial and a priori – it is possible to conclude that ontology is prioritised, and that the level of the ontic is useful in so far as it gives us access to ontology. Because ethics and politics have been relegated, (or demoted) to the ontic, then Heidegger’s ontology, as allegedly removed from the everyday as it is, could offer little in the way of an ethics or politics. There are however, other passages where he argues that ontology is not possible without a prior immersion in facticity or the ontic – the concrete, everyday where Dasein exists.

169 As Robert Bernasconi argues, Heidegger is unable to maintain the purity of his distinction between the ontic and ontological upon which the project of fundamental ontology seems to depend because an understanding of Being presupposes the factical existence of Dasein to which this understanding belongs.35 In section 63 of Being and

Time, Heidegger concedes that philosophy falls victim to its own facticity as the existential interpretation is guided by an idea of existence, which has been presupposed.

He asks: “where does this interpretation gets its clue, if not from an idea of existence in general which has been ‘pre-supposed’? How have the steps in the analysis in authentic everydayness been regulated, if not by the concept of existence which we have posited?

(BT 315/363).

In other places, it is clear that there can be no demarcation between the ontic and ontological. Heidegger writes: “In the question of the meaning of Being there is no

‘circular reasoning’ but rather a remarkable ‘relatedness backward or forward’ which what we are asking about (Being) bears to the inquiry itself as a mode of Being of an entity” (BT 8/28). This ‘backward and forward’ relation is the relation between the beings (ontic) and being (ontology). Each informs the other, such that there can be no ontology without a prior ontic immersion in the world, and the ontic, particularly the sciences, can only make sense and can only be grounded if they are ontologically interrogated. Heidegger is particularly critical of the tendency to dissolve one into the other:

35 Robert Bernasconi, “The Double Concept of Philosophy and the Place of Ethics in Being and Time” in Research in Phenomenology; 18, 1985, p.49.

170 Philosophical inquiry remains exposed to a double danger, to which it has succumbed over and over again in its history until now. Either everything ontical is dissolved into the ontological (Hegel), without insight into the ground of possibility of ontology itself; or else the ontological is denied altogether and explained away ontically, without any understanding of the ontological presuppositions which every ontical explanation already harbours as such within itself. (BPP 327)

Again, in Basic Problems, Heidegger writes: “there exists no comportment to beings that would not understand being” (BPP 327). That is, Dasein has the potential to understand ontological Being only by virtue of its factical existence as being-in-the-world. In fact, its very understanding of Being can only occur against the background of this factical existence: “no understanding of being is possible that would not root in a comportment toward beings” (BPP 327). The ontic and ontological are not superimposed layers, but simultaneously co-exist and relate in the manner of a “backwards and forwards”:

“understanding of being and comportment to beings do not come together only afterward and by chance; always already latently present in the Dasein’s existence, they unfold as summoned from the ecstatic-horizonal constitution of temporality and as made possible by it in their belonging together” (BPP 327).36

Ontology is not therefore a priori in the sense that our knowledge or understanding of it somehow precedes beings or existence; rather, ontology is always already bound up and implicated with our factical life: “in the order of conceptualisation, then, being is not the earlier but the last of all … nor does its priority mean being is something existing on hand earlier, as a being in a certain sense, before other beings. What is prior thus belongs

36 For a discussion on the relation between the ontic and ontology in relation to Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, see Andrew Feenberg, “The ontic and ontological in Heidegger’s philosophy of technology: response to Thomas” in Inquiry, 43, 2000.

171 neither to the order of conceptualisation nor to the order of being on hand; it is neither logically nor ontically earlier, neither of the two” (MFL 146). While the term ‘Being’ is undoubtedly an elusive term, given that Heidegger has stated it is neither a concept nor an entity, it cannot be seen, touched, or conceptualised, he is quite clear in Being and Time that “Being is always the Being of an entity” (BT 9/29). Being is always tied to an individual Dasein and thus always has a relation to the factical, without which it would not be. If the ontic and ontological are intertwined in this way, then ethics and politics are not confined to ontic considerations. But if this is the case, then the shape of ethics and politics would necessarily be altered by Heidegger’s approach to ontology.

The ethics that announces itself here is not one of values or ideals floating above concrete, everyday existence. Rather, it is an ethics that refers to existence, where existence is a making of sense. Such an ethics “engages itself according to the theme of a total and joint responsibility toward sense and toward existence … discreetly explicit, like that of ethics itself, this motif tends toward nothing less than ‘Being’s Being- responsible towards itself, proper Being-its-self’ (Nancy 2002: 71). Further, this Being- responsible for oneself implies a responsibility for others: “the latter, in principle, has nothing solipsistic or egoistic about it but on the contrary contains the possibility and the necessity of Being responsible toward others” (Nancy 2002: 71).

This responsibility for others as a necessary implication of the responsibility for self is identified by Levinas in his late essay “Dying For …”.37 Here, Levinas now

37 Emmanuel Levinas, “Dying for …” in Entre Nous: On thinking of the other, trans. M. Smith and B. Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

172 acknowledges that there is a place for the other in ontology, and a genuine account of being-with, but this he claims, is lost sight of in Heidegger’s analysis of death. The problem for Levinas in this later essay is no longer Heidegger’s preoccupation with

Being, but the primordial importance he attaches to one’s own Being. For Levinas,

Heidegger’s meditation on Being in the guise of the human being-there did not leave us without ambiguities. The point, it would seem, is that Heideggerian ontology could have gone in at least one of two possible directions. Levinas argues that Heidegger’s adventure of Being went in the direction of “an inalienable belonging to self, a being proper.” It constituted an “authenticity altered by nothing – neither support nor help nor influence – conquering but disdaining the exchange in which a will awaits the consent of a stranger – the virility of a free ability-to- be, like a will of race or sword?” But this is not the necessary consequence of ontology. Ontology and ethics, alternatively, need not be incongruent because the preoccupation with Being could signify otherwise. Levinas asks if being-there could signify “non-indifference, obsession by the other, a search and a vow of peace? Of a peace that would be, not the silence of non-interference in which the freedom of the artistic act takes pleasure, and in which the beautiful creates silence, maintains silence, and protects it, but rather a peace in which the eyes of the other are sought, in which his look awakens responsibility?” (Levinas 1998: 207-8).

This is a genuine possibility in Heidegger on account of the dimension of Mitsein. As

Levinas concedes, the concern -for-being of the human being-there also bears “the concern for the other man, the care of one for the other. It is not added onto being-there, but is a constitutive articulation of that Dasein” (Levinas 1998: 212). This concern

173 articulates itself as a concern for the “other man, a care for his food, drink, clothing, health and shelter” (Levinas 1998: 212). Interestingly, Levinas argues that this care for the other is not lost sight of or belied in the experience of solitude, or deficient modes of being-with; indifference or idleness, for example: “Thus, being-there, in which being is always at stake, would appear to be, in its very authenticity, being-for-the-other. The there of being-there is world, which is not the point of geometrical space, but the concreteness of a populated place in which people are with one another and for one another. The existential of Miteinandersein is a being-together with others in a reciprocity of relationship” (Levinas 1998: 212-3). The problem for Levinas is not that ontology is unethical, but lies in where Heidegger takes it; namely, the dissolution of all relations in the face of being-toward-death.

To Heidegger’s analysis of being-toward-death, Levinas adds “dying for another” and

“dying together.” As an alternative to death undoing all of Dasein’s relations to another,

Levinas interprets death as exposing the humanity in being-there; a humanity that would

“awaken” the guise of responsibility for the other man; the human in which the

“for the other” goes beyond the simple Fursorge exercising itself in a world where others, gathered round about things, are what they do; the human in which worry over death of the other comes before care for self. The humanness of dying for the other would be the very meaning of love in its responsibility for one’s fellowman and, perhaps, the primordial inflection of the affective as such. (Levinas 1998: 216)

There is not an outright rejection of Heidegger here, but a series of confessions that the ontological difference is not in fact, empty, that the “ethics of sacrifice does not succeed in shaking the rigour of being and the ontology of the authentic,” that a dying for another

174 does not challenge the ultimate fact that “everyone dies for himself” and that Heidegger’s thinking makes possible a beyond ontology. Interestingly, in this final engagement with

Heidegger, Levinas concedes that ontology does not necessarily preclude the other. As

Chanter points out, “To philosophise, Levinas has taught us, is to reduce the other to the same, to being,” but in this paper, Levinas has “also shown us that it is to discover, in being, the other” (Chanter 2001: 188).

In this chapter, I have argued that Heideggerian ontology and ethics are not as incongruent as thinkers such as Levinas and Caputo claim. Levinas has claimed that

Heideggerian ontology, despite its anti-intellectualist manner of conceiving of the understanding, reduces existence to comprehension, while Caputo has argued that the preoccupation with Being leaves real beings by the wayside. I have argued in response that ontology is both ethical and political by virtue of its very essence and can perform the function of articulating an ethics in terms of an ethics of responsibility for one’s own

Being. By reading Being and Time together with the later text Time and Being, I demonstrated the way in which Heidegger’s ontology entails a concession that there can be no understanding of Being by virtue of its very essence; one that conceals itself in the moment it is given. The interplay between being’s concealment and unconcealment, its giving and withdrawal, its call and the response it evokes, suggests that Heideggerain ontology contains an ethics of responsibility, primarily for one’s own Being, and for that of the other as a necessary implication. The responsibility arises from Heidegger’s concept of individuation. I suggest therefore, that the notion of individuation is not an impediment to the ethical relation, but the condition for its possibility.

175 In the following section of this thesis, I argue that the notion of individuation can form the basis of an account of ethics, conceived in terms of embodiment, and a politics, conceived from out of Heidegger’s conception of freedom. This is intended to show the way in which the idea of an ethics in terms of a responsibility for one’s own existence is firstly, not empty because it offers no account of collective morality or moral proscriptions and secondly, does not impede or preclude relations with others.

176 Chapter Four

Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the question of Dasein’s embodiment: an ethics of touch and spacing.

How can one get hold of the body? I am already speechless.1

This thesis has thus far argued that Heidegger’s notion of individuation fundamentally differs from both the Cartesian and transcendental account of the subject as a solipsistic ego. I have shown the way in which Heidegger’s project is to demonstrate that the conception of the subject elaborated by metaphysics not only severs the subject from the world but also constitutes a disavowal of Dasein’s relationality and dependence on the other. For Heidegger, Dasein is here [being-there], it is being-in- the-world in terms of fallenness and thrownness. It is characterised by motion and projection, anticipation and ek-staticity. It is ontologically being-with others and endowed with the possibility of care.

I have argued that this notion of individuation is not inconsistent with the account of

Mitsein, despite this being an underdeveloped trajectory in Heidegger’s thinking. The implication here is that Dasein’s concern and responsibility for its Being necessarily entails a responsibility for the other. By re-reading Heidegger through the lenses of

Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular, I came to the conclusion that while for Heidegger Dasein is individuated in authenticity and being-toward-death, in terms of Being, this individuation is precisely what opens it up to relations with others. That is, individuation is only possible or intelligible because it is concomitant with or indissociable from being-with.

1 Jean-Luc Nancy, “Corpus” in The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes et al, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, p.190. Cited as Corpus throughout.

177 The previous chapter explored the relation between ontology and ethics by way of

Levinas’ encounter with Heidegger. This was necessary on account of both

Heidegger’s comments that ethics is superfluous to ontology and Levinas’ arguments that privileging ontology forecloses the ethical relation to the other. I argued, with

Nancy, that ontology grounds both the ethical and political. I did this by reading

Being and Time together with the much later text, Time and Being to demonstrate that

Heidegger’s ontology entails a concession that there can be no understanding of Being because of its very essence, one that conceals itself in the moment it is given. In this chapter, I develop an account of ethics in terms of the concepts of touch and spacing, by examining the underdeveloped account of embodiment in Heidegger’s thinking. In the following chapter I develop an account of political action from Heidegger’s revisionary notion of freedom.

Despite Heidegger’s radical reconfiguration of the metaphysical subject in terms of a

Mitsein, there remains something missing from his description of Dasein. This partially arises as a consequence of the lack of sustained engagement with or silence on the question of Dasein’s embodiment. While Being and Time claims to be an existential analytic of the human subject, in which Dasein is ontologically being-in- the-world, it is difficult to find ourselves within it. Given Heidegger’s stated aims, we would not be too demanding in expecting an account of lived experience and materiality, of grief and sorrow, of love and desire.2 But as John Caputo points out,

“curiously, everybody in Being and Time is healthy, hale and whole; they are either resolute, or irresolute, self-possessed or dissipated, and they even die, but their bodies, if they have bodies, seem never to grow ill or lame, diseased or disabled, and when

2 John Caputo, “The Absence of Monica: Heidegger, Derrida, and Augustine’s Confessions” in Nancy J. Holland and Patricia Huntington (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, 151-2; 159, 161.

178 some Stimmung or other becomes too much for them, if it does, they never break out in tears” (Caputo 2001: 154).

Moreover, Heidegger’s comments made in Metaphysical Foundations of Logic further obscure his position on the question of Dasein’s embodiment. In giving his reasons for using the term ‘Dasein’ instead of man he writes: “the peculiar neutrality of the term Dasein is essential, because the interpretation of this must be carried out prior to every factual concretion. This neutrality also indicates that Dasein is neither of the two sexes” (MFL 136). Heidegger goes on to argue that Dasein has the possibility for being factially dispersed into a body and hence, a sexuality, the implication here being that Dasein can exist prior to its corporeality and sexuality. As Derrida points out,

“the consequence could be drawn that sexual difference is not an essential trait, that it does not belong to the existential structure of Dasein. Being-there, being there, the there of being as such, bears no sexual mark.”3 It would thus seem that embodiment, or at least embodied differences and corporeal desires are not ontological and therefore, lie outside the ambit of Heidegger’s concerns.4 Derrida further writes: “was not the existential analytic of Dasein near enough to a fundamental anthropology to have given rise to so many misunderstandings and mistakes regarding its pretended

‘realite-humaine’ … yet even in the analysis of being-in-the-world and being-with-

3 Jacques Derrida, “Geschlect: sexual difference, ontological difference” in Research in Phenomenology vol.13, 1983, p .67. 4 For another interpretation of sexual difference as ontological difference, see David Farrell Krell’s commentary on Irigaray’s engagement with Heidegger in the Forgetting of Air. Krell points out that the task for Irigaray is to not merely draw a parallel between ontological and sexual difference; rather, the task would be to think sexuality and being, or sexuality and the granting, in one and the same breath. He writes: “if the sexed body is the site of both the granting and the oblivion of air, it is also the portal of the il y a, the Es gibt, the “There is/It gives” of clearing and propriation. The sexed body is … precisely what stirs in Ereignis, bestirring itself as the incursion of an irreducible otherness into presence and propriation.” In Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy, Indiana University Press, 1992.

179 others, or of care either in its self or as Fursorge, it would be vain, it seems, to search even for an outline of a discourse on desire and sexuality” (Derrida 1983: 67).

As a consequence, it is possible to wonder, with Caputo, whether in the progression of

Being and Time, Heidegger “reads the life out of Dasein.”5 Similarly, thinkers as diverse as Sartre6 and Levinas,7 Tina Chanter8 and Patricia Huntington9 also argue that

Heidegger’s analytic of the human subject misses its mark because of its failure to account for the multifarious effects of the human body.10 The fact of the matter is that we cannot leave our bodies behind in our pursuit of the meaning of Being, particularly when the pursuit engages phenomenology as a tool in the explication of Being.

Moreover, not only are embodied beings marked by race and sex, but these contingent features matter insofar as they are noticed and taken into account in our everyday life.

For Caputo and Levinas in particular, this omission renders Heidegger’s thinking explicitly and overtly unethical. If the body, and more specifically, the body in pain, or the body marked by sex and racial differences is what moves us to act ethically on

Levinas’ and Caputo’s accounts, then Heidegger’s neglect of embodiment constitutes an ethical closure.11

5 John Caputo, Demythologising Heidegger, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, p.125. See also Caputo, “Thinking, Poetry and Pain” in Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989 for an account of Heidegger, the human body and pain, pp. 158, 161. 6 See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology, Hazel E. Barnes (trans), London: Methuen, 1957, 323. 7 See Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978, p.97. 8 See Tina Chanter, Time, Death and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger, Stanford (Great Britain): Stanford University Press, 2001, for a critique of Heidegger’s alleged disavowal of the body and its implications for feminist theory, 83-5. 9 See Patricia Huntington, Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger and Irigaray, Albany New York: State University of New York Press, 1998, p.74-5. 10 See Caputo 1993, p.129. Also see John Protevi, “The ‘Sense’ of ‘sight’: Heidegger and Merleau- Ponty on the meaning of bodily and existential sight” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 28, 1998 for a critique of Heidegger’s conception of sight as having nothing to do with seeing in the corporeal sense of the term. 11 For a detailed account of the way in which a body in pain creates the space for obligation see Caputo’s insightful appropriation of Levinas, in Caputo, 1993.

180 Or does it? In this chapter, I want to again raise the question anew of Heidegger’s position on embodiment and the possibility of ethics, by suggesting that these criticisms, which maintain that Heidegger is guilty of reproducing the metaphysical subject because of his refusal to address the question of Dasein’s embodiment, stem from a particularly limited conception of the body or what constitutes a discourse on it.12 The fact that the body is not directly addressed in Heidegger’s work does not mean that it is not consistently invoked in other ways (Levin 1999: 125). My argument suggests that rather than abandon the body in Being and Time, Heidegger inadvertently creates a space for it; a space that opens, rather than closes ethical obligation.13

Jean-Luc Nancy is helpful for the purposes of extrapolating an ethics of embodiment from Heidegger’s thinking.14 In this chapter, I want to pursue two arguments in particular that Nancy makes. The first is the inadequacy of language/discourse when it comes to the question of embodiment. For Nancy, generating a discourse on the body falls into the dynamic it seeks to evade because it ends up reproducing the body as an object of knowledge, rather than as an expression of meaning. Nancy conversely conceives of the body as meaning rather than as having meaning. The second is his

12 For a detailed account of the inadequacies of what constitutes a “discourse on the body” see David Michael Levin, “The ontological dimension of embodiment: Heidegger’s thinking of Being” in Welton Donn (ed), The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1999, p.125. 13 For other interpretations of Heidegger’s alleged neglect of Dasein’s embodiment see Seamus Carey, “Cultivating Ethos through the Body” in Human Studies 23, 2000, pp.29-33, and “Embodying Original Ethics: A Response to the Levinasian Critique of Heidegger” in Philosophy Today 41 (3). pp.449-451. Carey develops Heidegger’s account of embodiment through the work of Merleau-Ponty. Also see Richard R. Askay, “Heidegger, the body, and the French philosophers” in Continental Philosophy Review 32, 1999, pp.32-3.

14 See Rosalyn Diprose, “The Hand that Writes Community in Blood” in Cultural Studies Review Volume 9, no.1 May, 2003, for a further discussion on the question of embodiment and community in Jean-Luc Nancy’s work, in particular, her account of community in relation to the Australian government’s treatment of the refugee body. pp.44-8.

181 reconceptualisation of the body in terms of the concepts of touch, spacing and

‘corpus.’

The interplay between the sensibility of touch and spacing, where the sensibility of touch is what opens up a spacing between bodies or between Daseins as individuals, is, I will argue, also discernable in Heidegger’s texts. By examining Heidegger’s radical, albeit sparse analysis of space/place, I suggest that the phenomenology of lived space found in Being and Time and of practical activities involving the human body - activities of the hands such as touching and grasping, handling and holding, writing and caressing - all presuppose the body, or, as Levin points out, are not intelligible without a presupposition of the body.15 Given Heidegger’s dissatisfaction with the way in which the body has been conceptualised in philosophy, expressed in

Being and Time,16 his Nietzsche lectures,17 and the “Letter on Humanism,”18 and in light of Nancy’s arguments, I want to explore whether Heidegger’s silence on the question of embodiment can be read as an attempt to allow the body to emerge from its objectification in more subtle and implicit ways; ways that share close affinities with Nancy’s development of a notion of corpus.

i. Philosophy and the body.

In his essay “Corpus,” Nancy argues that “there has never been any body in philosophy,” (Corpus 193) only an objectified body caught in the structure of sign and signification, meaning that the body is merely a sign, a thing or an object, to which

15 See both Levin 1999 and David Farrell Krell, Archeticture: ecstasies of space, time, and the human body, Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1997. 16 See BT 23/46. 17 Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. 1, The as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell, New York: Harper and Row, 1997, p.209. 18 Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed), London: Routledge, 2000, p.228.

182 meaning is then attached. While we have seen a proliferation of the possible meanings that have been attached to this sign we call the body, we have failed to understand the body as an expression of meaning, or the body as the site of singularity, uniqueness and alterity. Instead, we have attempted to understand it through a series of ever changing, though equally problematic metaphors. The body has been conceptualised as a cave where images and representations are formed and projected, or as a machine controlled and directed to move by the mind or consciousness. In religious discourse, it is a prison cell to which we are condemned, a body plagued by desires, which must be overcome. Occasionally in art, it is a beautiful body or a glorified body.19 All of this suggests that the structure or framework of sign/signification born of Plato’s cave, in which the body functions as a sign or an object to which meaning or signification is ascribed has merely been perpetuated by philosophical discourse/Western culture.

Nancy writes:

from the body-cave to the glorious body, signs have become inverted, just as they have been turned around and displaced over and over again, in hylemorphism, in the sinner-body, in the body-machine or in the “body proper” of phenomenology. But the philosophico-theological corpus of bodies is still supported by the spine of mimesis, of representation, and of the sign. (Corpus 192)

Heidegger expresses a similar dissatisfaction with the way in which the body has been conceptualised in Western philosophy. In the Zollikon Seminars, he states: “the

French psychologists also misinterpret everything as an expression of something interior instead of seeing the phenomenon of the body in the context by which men are in relationship to each other”20 and “as to the French authors, I am always still

19 See Krell, 1997, p.4. 20 Martin Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars: protocols, conversations, letters, Medard Boss (ed), Evanston, lll: Northwestern University Press, 2001, p.117.

183 disturbed by the misinterpretation of being-in-the-world where it is either conceived as being present-at-hand or else as intentionality of subjective consciousness.”21 In his

Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger writes: “Most of what we know from the natural sciences about the body and the way it embodies are specifications based on the established misinterpretation of the body as a mere natural body.”22 He further contends that “bodily being does not mean that the soul is burdened by a hulk we call the body … we do not ‘have’ a body; rather, we ‘are’ bodily.” and “every feeling … is an embodiment attuned in this or that way, a mood that embodies in this or that way.”23 Like Nancy, Heidegger appears uneasy about the way in which we think the body as an appendage to the mind. Our bodies are not something we may or may not have, but are something that we are. Similarly the meaning that our body expresses is not something we have, in the sense of attaching or ascribing meaning to the body, but bodies are meaningful in and of themselves. Interestingly, Heidegger argues that the body is the context for our relations with others. A point I return to in the final section of this chapter.

The point, it would seem, for Nancy and perhaps implicitly for Heidegger, is that irrespective of the perspective used, “dualism of body and soul, monism of the flesh, symbolic deciphering of bodies” (Corpus 192), the body, as conceived in philosophy, remains an instrument, mechanism or object that we ascribe meaning to rather than an expression of its own meaning. That is, the body is not conceived of as meaning, but meaning is something that “rushes” into the body, presents itself to it, makes itself known to it, or wants to articulate itself there. Consequently, in philosophy: “the body

21 Zollikon Seminars, p.339. 22 Nietzsche Volume I, pp.98-9. 23 Nietzsche Volume I, p.100.

184 remains the dark reserve of sense, and the dark sign of this reserve. But in this way, the body is absolutely trapped by the sign and by sense” (Corpus 193). But what does it mean to conceive of a body as meaning rather than as having meaning? In what way does a body express meaning? And why, for Nancy, is philosophy’s conceptualisation of the body ethically problematic? ii. The triadic relation between the body, community and meaning: an ethics of touch and spacing.

In his essay “Corpus” and Being Singular Plural,24 Nancy develops the relation between embodiment, meaning and ethical obligation in terms of the concepts of touch and spacing. Nancy posits the uniqueness of the body at the origin of meaning and at the origin of ethics by not only conceiving the body as meaning as opposed to having meaning, but by thinking it in terms of community or being-with. For Nancy, the body is able to express meaning because of its singularity, uniqueness or radical alterity it. However, this singularity is only expressed and exposed in its being-with or in the context of community.

The body as meaning then, is at the centre of being-with. As we have seen in chapter two, Nancy develops Heidegger’s idea of being-with as constitutive of Dasein’s ontological structure into the paradoxical logic of “being singular plural.” He states:

“the singular-plural constitutes the essence of Being, a constitution that undoes or dislocates every single, substantial essence of Being itself” (BSP 28-9). Each Dasein is singular in the sense that we each possess a body and face, a voice and a death.

24 Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, Robert D. Richardson & Anne E. O’Byrne (trans), Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000.

185 Each of us has a specific pattern of comportment, a silhouette, and a different narrative:

from faces to voices, gestures, attitudes, dress and conduct, whatever the ‘typical’ traits are, everyone distinguishes himself by a sort of sudden and headlong precipitation where the strangeness of a singularity is concentrated. Without this precipitation there would be, quite simply, no ‘someone.’ And there would be no more interest or hospitality, desire or disgust, no matter who or what it might be for. (BSP 8)

However, my singularity and my uniqueness as a comportment towards the world is only expressed and exposed in my being-with. For Nancy:

We can never simply be ‘the we,’ understood as a unique subject, or understood as an indistinct ‘we’ that is like a diffuse generality. ‘We’ always expresses a plurality, expresses ‘our’ being divided and entangled: ‘one’ is not ‘with’ in some general sort of way, but each time according to determined modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous. (BSP 65)

Singularity, as we have seen, refers to a subject’s uniqueness, her difference that cannot be captured, subsumed or understood. A singularity is remarkable and unique, a point of origin which is marked as different in itself rather than in relation to everything else around it. However, this difference does not close it off from others or community. Singularity does not isolate the subject in her difference because the singular being is ecstatic – it is exposed, open and vulnerable to the other, always affected, touched and invaded by the other. This openness that lies at the heart of singularity is one that propels the subject into relations with others and entangles it with others. This is why, as Georges van den Abbeele argues, despite the radical difference of singularity, there exists something common or universal in its dispersal insofar as singularities are shared. 25 Singularities for Nancy are outside themselves, insofar as there is always an excess; this excess is what is exposed to others and

25 Georges van den Abbeele, “Singular Remarks” in Paragraph, Volume 16:2, 1993, p.184.

186 shared with them. Reciprocally, it is only in the mode of being-with that my remarkableness or my uniqueness can be inscribed. That is, the singular can only arise on account of its exposure to others.

However, this community of which Nancy writes is not an immanent self-enclosed circle of meanings, in which subjects are fused into a collective. Rather, it is a community that remains porous and malleable, where singularities touch and are touched. Singularity, conceived of as open and in terms of an excess on account of existing outside itself, or as ecstatic, is communal insofar as it only exists as shared.

What is shared here is the excess that singularities express:

there is nothing behind singularity – but there is, outside it and in it, the immaterial and material space that distributes it and shares it out as singularity, distributes and shares the confines of other singularities, or even more exactly distributes and shares the confines of singularity – which it to say of alterity – between it and itself.” (IC 27)

The body, as an expression of meaning by virtue of its singularity or alterity, is the site where both ethics and community take place. Paramount to this is the sensibility of touch:

A singular being does not emerge or rise up against the background of a chaotic, undifferentiated identity of beings or against the background of their unitary assumption, or that of a becoming, or that of a will. A singular being appears, as finitude itself: at the end (or at the beginning), with the contact of the skin (or the heart) of another singular being, at the confines of the same singularity that is, always other, always shared, always exposed. (IC 28)

As open or ecstatic, my body expresses meaning, a meaning that touches the other, in the same way that the other’s body expresses a meaning that touches me. Nancy writes: “The absoluteness [l’absoluite] of [the body’s] sense, and the absoluteness of

187 sense … is not kept ‘within’ it, since it is itself nothing but the being-exposed, the being-touched of this ‘inside’” (Corpus 204). This meaning/signification that a body expresses by virtue of its uniqueness is what creates a network of connections between one body and another, or it is the thread that connects one body to another. I am able to respond to the body of the other and be affected by that body because of the meaning it expresses, or because it is meaning. The other’s body expresses meaning by virtue of its unique face and voice, its familiar pattern of gestures, mannerisms and traits, or its particular relation to me. It should be noted that the body is an expression of meaning by virtue of it being a body; that is, the body is meaning.

Nancy singles out the sensibility of touch as the way in which bodies/singularities express their meaning to suggest that the power of the body to mean subtends language. He states: “at the body, there is the sense of touch, the touch of the thing, which touches ‘itself’ without an ‘itself’ where it can get at itself, and which is touched and moved in this unbound sense of touch, and so separated from itself, shared out of itself” (Corpus 203).

However, as Derrida points out, the figure of touch in Nancy’s work is also a slippery concept because Nancy blurs or confuses the line between the thematic meaning of touch and its operative function. That is, the line between the proper or literal sense of touch and all its “tropic turns of phrase.”26 That is, there are times when he uses the figure of touch in a literal sense, and other times he means touching metaphorically, such as when he suggests that there is in fact, no such thing as touching. What then, are we to make of this figure of touch discernable not only in “Corpus,” but as a

26 Jacques Derrida, “Le toucher Touch/to touch him” in Paragraph, Volume 16:2, 1993, p.132.

188 recurrent figure in Nancy’s oeuvre? How does Nancy use this concept as an alternative to thinking the body by generating a discourse on it? What does it mean to reconceptualise reading and writing as matters of tact? How does this create a space for an ethics that respects the singularity of the other? What is the relation between touch and spacing, touch and distance? Derrida asks, in relation to Nancy’s writing:

Is it touching upon something or is it touching upon touching itself, there where, having more or less surreptitiously drawn our attention to the irreducible figure of touching, this writing makes us put our finger on language, touching itself by touching us and making us notice what is going on with touching, to be sure in a manner that is as obscure as it is aporetic, but above all, in a touching manner to the point where all affect, all desire, all fascination, all experience of the other seems to be involved? (Derrida 1993: 123)

For Derrida, the figure of touch takes on an aporetic structure in Nancy’s texts in accordance with the law of tact: a law that dictates or commands us to touch without touching. To not touch the other is to lack tact, but to touch her, and touch her too much, is also tactless. We are thus divided by this contradictory injunction: “to touch without touching, to press without pressing, always more, always too much, never enough” (Derrida 1993: 124). This implies that the figure of touch is not necessarily reducible to physical contact. Rather, there is something intangible about ‘tacticity’.

Derrida uses the metaphor/trope of eyes touching or kissing to illustrate the intangibility of touch. He asks: can it ever happen that eyes can press against each other, touch each other in the same way lips can given that there are similarities in their surfaces? What does it mean to touch eyes? To touch another’s eyes in a physical and tangible sense is certainly possible. I can touch the other’s eyes with my fingers, my lips, or even with my lashes and eyelids by coming near to the other. But this, while not impossible, rarely happens. Eyes can however, touch/meet by looking at each other, a meeting that enables me to see “both your look and your eyes, love in

189 fascination, and your eyes are not only seeing, but visible” (Derrida 1993: 122). This enables me to touch the eyes of the other with my own eyes in such a way that I can see while losing my sight. That is, I see the other without fixing her, reducing her to an object status as vision has a tendency to do.

Derrida’s trope of eyes touching through sight collapses the distinction between vision and touch. It captures the tension between the need to intangibly touch the other and maintain a respectful distance from her. The intangible touch is not one that does violence to the other by violating her corporeal boundaries. Rather, it is a reciprocal touch that gives me access to the other’s limit, the borders of her body. This access is at once transgressive, one that exceeds the border because “it breaks with immediacy, with the immediate given associated with touch” (Derrida 1993: 141), while remaining at the limit of the border. To touch the other is to interrupt a logic that attempts to know the other by subsuming her into categories of the same, a logic that attempts to fix the other, confer an identity on her, an identity that renders her body either meaningful or worthless. To touch the other, in both a tangible and intangible sense, is to be exposed to the other’s singularity, to be affected by it and to respond to it, but not to subsume it or annihilate it. As Nancy states, the touch opens up an irreducible and inassimilable strangeness of the other (BSP 29). In this way, the figure of the touch, because it opens me up to the strangeness of the other, her uniqueness or singularity, also creates a space for ethical obligation.

The touch creates a space for ethical obligation by virtue of the spacing it opens up.

The tension between the figures of touch and spacing suggests that the uniqueness that can only be expressed in community is also one that presents a limit to community. It

190 is a limit in the sense that while my singular being is intertwined with that of the other such that uniqueness is always bound up with multiplicity, there is a sense in which this closeness to the other opens up a space or a distance between my body and the body of the other. Nancy writes: “from one singular to the other, there is contiguity but not continuity. There is proximity, but only to the extent that extreme closeness emphasises the distancing it opens up. All of being is in touch with all of being, but the law of touch is separation” (BSP 5). This distance is insurmountable because irrespective of how close I am to the other, her body signifies a limit that I cannot cross. The other’s body signifies her singularity or uniqueness that I cannot access, a meaning I cannot capture. Nancy writes: “it is a matter of one or the other, one and the other, one with the other, but by no means the one in the other, which would be something other than one or the other (another essence, another diffuse or infuse generality)” (BSP 6). While I can touch this origin (the other’s singularity), be exposed to it, stand before it, it will evade my grasp, vanish the moment I touch it and conceal itself from me:

‘Strangeness’ refers to the fact that each singularity is another access to the world. At the point where we would expect ‘something’, a substance or a procedure, a principle or an end, a signification, there is nothing but the manner, the turn of the other access, which conceals itself in the very gesture wherein it offers itself to us … In the singularity that he exposes, each child that is born has already concealed the access that he is ‘for himself’ and in which he will conceal himself ‘within himself.’ (BSP 14)

Ethical obligation on this model of touch and spacing implies that the unethical is the attempt to appropriate the other and therefore, close down distance and the exposure and expression of singularity. The attempt to appropriate the other’s origin by traversing the space that the touch opens up transforms the curiosity we have of the other’s strangeness into a “destructive rage” in which the other’s singularity is either

191 adopted or rejected. This constitutes an ethical closure because in abolishing the limit that the other’s body represents, we transform the ‘other’ into an ‘Other’, and fix the other as either divine, worthy of glorification, or as evil, an Other that must be excluded or exterminated. The desire to fix the other is a “desire for murder …for an increase of cruelty and horror … it is mutilation, carving up, relentlessness, meticulous execution, the joy of agony” (BSP 21). We are able to inflict cruelty on the

Other because it no longer constitutes a point of origin, or a uniqueness.

This suggests that the law of an ethical touch is separation, space and distance because the moment I physically touch the body of the other, I am made aware of its separateness, its uniqueness, and the limit it presents to what I can know. The attempt to conquer this space that the touch creates is also the attempt to conquer the alterity of the other:

Bodies run the risk of resisting one another in an impenetrable fashion, but they also run the risk of meeting and dissolving into one another. This double risk comes down to the same thing: abolishing the limit, the touch, the absolute, becoming substance, becoming God, becoming the Subject of speculative subjectivity. This is no longer the ab-solute, but saturated totality. But as long as there is something, there is also something else, other bodies whose limits expose them to each other’s touch, between repulsion and dissolution. (Corpus 206)

The other’s body thus represents a limit to what I can know because of the way in which it opens up a space or distance that needs to be maintained rather than traversed, irrespective of how close I am to the other. This space means that “two bodies cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. Not you at the same time in the space where I speak, in the place where you listen” (Corpus 189). My body is an expression of my singularity, my finitude and my specific being-in-the-world. I cannot speak for the other, nor listen for or on behalf of the other.

192 For this reason, language fails us when it comes to the question of embodiment. The body of the other is not something that we can capture by language, nor is it something that can be made to conform to our conceptual categories. If I were to generate a discourse on the body, I would become the condition for the possibility of this discourse, or its point of utterance. Whom I am talking about becomes the object of my discourse. This is why “I will never be able to speak from where you listen, nor will you be able to listen from where I speak” (Corpus 189). The insurmountable distance between myself and the other means that I will never be able to understand the other’s embodied existence. To speak on her behalf would constitute an ethical closure or would be an injustice to the other because I would have to subsume the other into my own categories in an attempt to understand her.

This raises the problem, for Nancy, and implicitly for Heidegger, of how to think the body or our embodiment without reducing the body to an object of discourse/knowledge, given that any attempt to think/speak/write the body falls into the same dynamic it seeks to evade. That is, it reduces the body to an object of knowledge. As Nancy states, we are caught in a double bind, or a failure, because

“when one puts the body on the program, on whatever program, one has already set it aside” (Corpus 190). Could this problematic Nancy identifies in discourses on the body also have plagued Heidegger, rendering him silent or speechless on the question of Dasein’s embodiment? Could this be a possible explanation as to why Heidegger deflects, avoids and evades the question of embodiment at the moments where his thinking inevitably begins to touch on this contentious issue?27 For Nancy, given this

27 For example, in Being and Time, he says: “This ‘bodily nature’ hides a whole problematic of its own, though we shall not treat it here.” BT 143. Thirty-seven years later in a reply to Eugen Fink, he once again claims that the body cannot be thought through ontologically and remarks that the “body

193 difficulty in thinking the body, and given the centrality of the body for ethics, it becomes all the more pressing to find alternative ways of conceptualising the body in such a way that does not reduce it to an object of discourse.

For Nancy, it is not a question of producing more discourse on the body, but to stop discoursing altogether, to “cut into discourse” and learn how to touch instead. We need to stop talking because there is essentially nothing to say about the body. The body is not an object of knowledge, but an experience in and of itself. For Nancy, bodies are there – given – as weight, resistance and extension. These attributes are first and foremost experiences that come prior to any knowledge we may procure on the subject of embodiment. Bodies resist both knowledge and ignorance. They are simply given, to be touched and to touch. The body offers itself as a weighty mass, a mass “without anything to articulate, without anything to discourse about, without anything to add to them” (Corpus 197). The body is simply there, “given, abandoned

… simply posited, weighed, weighty … existence does not presuppose itself and does not presuppose anything: it is posited, imposed, weighed, laid down, exposed”

(Corpus 200). The body is weight and mass, density and substance; a substance that touches on other substances, a mass that weighs against other bodies, one that touches other bodies.

To further this project of finding alternative ways of conceptualising the body, Nancy introduces the idea of a “corpus.” This is a way of cataloguing the different modes of the body and its ways of being in the world, such that the body implicitly emerges. A corpus is a reconceptualisation of reading and writing as matters of tact, as different phenomenon is the most difficult problem” in Heidegger, Heraclitus Seminar, trans. Charles H. Seibert Northwestern University press, 1992 p.146.

194 ways of touching and being touched. A corpus is a “catalog, the recitation of an empirical logos that, without transcendental reason, would be a gleaned list, random in its order or in its degree of completion” (Corpus 189). It is an attempt to capture “a body touched, touching, and the tract of this tact” (Corpus 189). In this way, Nancy negotiates the tension between the need to recreate the body in discourse and the problems associated with representing something that is otherwise unrepresentable.28

This discussion of Nancy reveals the following: firstly, the ethical and ontological problem of discoursing on the body, given that this reproduces the body as an object of knowledge, and fails to examine the body in its ontological condition as being- with. Secondly, it fleshes out an understanding of the relation between the body, meaning and ethical obligation. As we saw, Nancy puts the uniqueness of the body at the origin of meaning and at the origin of ethics. However, the body as an expression of meaning can only emerge in the context of being-with-others or community. This relation between the body and community gives rise to an ethical obligation based on the tension between touch and spacing. The relation developed between embodiment, meaning and ethical obligation based on touch and spacing is intended to frame my discussion of Heidegger, ethics and embodiment. Nancy’s arguments provide a way of understanding Heidegger’s apparent silence on the body as such. If Heidegger’s ontology opens a place for the body and ethics, this cannot be achieved through an account of the body as an empirical object. Rather, I argue that through his account of temporality spatiality and being-with-others, a place for the body is created, insofar as the body subtlety emerges from its objectification.

28 See Shapiro “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Corpus of Philosophy” in Thinking Bodies, Edited by Juliet Flower MacCannell and Laura Zakarin, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994 p.61 for a detailed discussion of corpus as a way of representing the unrepresentable, and see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak “Response to Jean-Luc Nancy” in Thinking Bodies, for a critique of the paradoxical nature of a corpus. pp.33, 35, 36.

195 iii. Retrieving Dasein’s body

In the previous section, Heidegger’s dissatisfaction with the way in which the body has been conceptualised in philosophy was briefly noted. For Heidegger, the problem lies in the fact that the body is treated as an object, thing or substance, or in his terminology as something “present-at-hand.” By conceiving of Dasein as if it were an entity amongst other entities in the world, the ontological dimension of Dasein becomes obscured. That is, the way in which the world matters to Dasein, and the way in which it cares about not only its own existence, but also the world and the others it encounters is obscured. It is this relation between meaning, Dasein and being-in-the-world as being-with that I want to reconstruct in this section. I do this through an account of Heidegger’s analysis of the relation between temporality and spatiality, Dasein’s relation to equipment, and its being-with.

A fundamental aspect of Heidegger’s ‘destruction’ of the metaphysical tradition is the consistent preoccupation with demonstrating that Dasein is not an object, a thing or a substance that is “present-at-hand;” nor is it an self-given ‘I’ or ego, that must mediate a relation to the world and others. Rather, the fundamental or ontological structure of

Dasein is being-in-the-world and being-with-others. Dasein’s interaction in the world is characterised by touching and handling, grasping and holding. Its engagement begins at the level of the corporeal, without which, the ontology of Being and Time would make little sense.29

29 See Levin 1999.

196 The disavowal of the body by traditional metaphysics, epitomised in the thought of

Descartes, is particularly contentious for Heidegger, because it distorts the way in which Dasein engages in the world or the way in which “one feels one’s way by touch” (BT 97/130). For Heidegger, the only way we can know anything about the world is through the sensibility of touch. He writes, “the kind of dealing which is closest to us is … not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of

‘knowledge’” (BT 67/95). To illustrate, Heidegger draws on examples from the world of equipment. In Being and Time, he argues that “the less we just stare at the hammer-

Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become” (BT 69/98). Dasein does not procure knowledge by standing back from the object in question and apprehending it theoretically or speculatively. Rather, it can only come to have knowledge of its world by an engaged and active immersion in it. Such an engaged immersion presupposes Dasein’s embodiment.

This is reiterated, perhaps more emphatically, in Heidegger’s later lecture course

“What is Called Thinking?”30 Here, Heidegger explores what it means to think and how we learn to think by using the metaphor of building. What thinking and building share, according to Heidegger, is that they both are crafts or handicrafts, which literally means “the strength and skill in our hands” (WCT 16). To learn how to build a cabinet, the apprentice does not merely gather knowledge about the things he or she will build. Rather, the apprentice will only learn by answering and responding to

30 Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray, New York: Harper and Row, 1968. Hereafter cited as WCT.

197 different types of wood, to shapes and textures. It is only possible to learn by touching and handling, by using and manipulating. Such learning presupposes embodiment and indicates that our way of learning is in terms of an embodied comportment toward the world.

Similarly, we do not learn to think by abstracting or disengaging from our bodies or the world. Thinking, like building, also requires the strength of our hands, insofar as our gestures are threaded through our language, thought and expression. In relation to the hands, Heidegger writes:

The hand is a peculiar thing. In the common view, the hand is part of our bodily organism. But the hand’s essence can never be determined, or explained, by its being an organ which can grasp … But the craft of the hand is richer than we commonly imagine. The hand does not only grasp and catch, or push and pull. The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes – and not just things: the hand extends itself and receives its own welcome in the hand of others. The hand holds. The hand carries. The hand designs and signs, presumably because man is a sign … The hands gestures run everywhere through language, in their most perfect purity precisely when man speaks by keeping silent. And only when man speaks does he think – not the other way around, as metaphysics still believes. (WCT 16)

The hand exemplifies not only the way we are connected to others and the way in which we express our thoughts, but the way in which it is an extending toward another, an expression of welcoming in the form of being-touched. If we can only think by speaking, and the gestures of our hands are interwoven in our speech, then it follows that thinking is intimately connected to our embodiment:

Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. All the work of the hand iss rooted in thinking. Therefore, thinking itself is man’s simplest, and for that reason hardest, handiwork, if it would be accomplished at its proper time. (WCT 16-17)

198 For traditional metaphysics, thinking takes place in the mind, which is distinct from the body. By implication, this suggests that the body cannot think. As Levin points out, we have a tendency to think the body in such a way that discussions about seeing and hearing, posture and gesture, standing and falling do not constitute a discussion of the body. This, however, for Levin is a serious mistake on the part of philosophy because it implies that what Heidegger says about ‘thinking’ is somehow separate or unconnected from our experience as embodied beings. Without what Heidegger means by ‘thinking,’ Levin argues: “thinking remains imprisoned in the metaphysical dualisms of philosophy and life, mind and body, thought and action, theory and praxis, thinking and experiencing, reason and feeling, the intelligible and the sensuous” (Levin 1999: 127).

By contrast, Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s engagement with equipment suggests that the space of human experience is not the space of objects ‘outside’ the subject, or objects intuited by our outer sense. Rather, human being is the outside in the sense that it is always being in the world (Krell 1997: 53). As Krell points out, Dasein does not exist in terms of an “inner sense,” trapped in a body which functions as a window to the outside. Its relation to the world is one of use, of getting in hand, of touch, of approach and withdrawal, of nearing and passing away, distancing and un-distancing

(Krell 1997: 53). Its relation to the world is thus one of a meaningful spacing. This becomes apparent in Heidegger’s discussion of the relation between temporality and spatiality. The following analysis will introduce the concept of embodiment in the relation between spatiality and temporality and spacing and meaning.

199 iv. Temporality and spatiality.

My point of departure in this section is the claim, made by some philosophers working in the area of sexual difference, that any reconfiguration of our ethical relations to others, and the sexual other in particular, must begin with a reconfiguration of the relation between space and time. In An Ethics of Sexual

Difference, Luce Irigaray calls for a revolution in thought and ethics, a revolution that would create a space for the marginalised other. For this to succeed she argues that we need to reinterpret “everything concerning the relations between the subject and discourse, the subject and the world.”31 Fundamental to this is a reconsideration of the problematic of space and time. This relation is problematic and its reconfiguration necessary because in traditional metaphysics, time has been the domain of internal consciousness, and is associated with the mind, while space, which is traditionally subordinated to time, is associated with the body. As Irigaray points out, “time becomes the interiority of the subject itself, and space, its exteriority … the subject, the master of time, becomes the axis of the world’s ordering” (Irigaray 1993: 9). The problem this poses is that the master of time/world is traditionally associated with the masculine, while the feminine is experienced as space. So if we want to create a space for the body in general, and the sexed body in particular, the categories of space and time, or the alleged hierarchy between them, needs to be dismantled.

This reconfiguration of space and time opens onto an ethics insofar as part of what constitutes ethics is a concern with one’s body, with how that body is constituted in a spatio-temporal location and of how these locations can be reconfigured, recreated or

31 Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke & Gillian C. Gill, Ithica, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1993, p.6.

200 opened up to include excluded bodies. As Rosalyn Diprose argues, “taking up a position, presenting oneself, therefore requires a non-thematic awareness of temporality and location. And the intrinsic reference point for temporality, spatial orientation and, therefore, difference is one’s own body. That location and position are concepts easily interchangeable, illustrates the co-incidence of embodiment and ethics which necessarily come together by virtue of our spatio-temporal being-in-the- world.”32 In this section, I want to suggest that Heidegger’s seemingly underdeveloped account of embodiment is only possible on account of his inadvertent formulation of temporality on the basis of spatiality. The consequence of this, I suggest, is that Dasein can only be conceived as outside. For it to be conceived as such depends on a subtle and at times unacknowledged place of Dasein’s embodiment. This inversion of the traditional priority of time over space takes place in Heidegger’s engagement with Kant.

The central question of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is to explore how synthetic a priori judgments are possible. For Kant, such knowledge is possible on the basis of the original synthetic unity of the pure productive power of the imagination, which has its basis in temporality. On Heidegger’s interpretation, temporality is the basic constitution of Dasein and an understanding of Being in general is only possible on the basis of Dasein’s temporality.33 Space and time constitute the two elements of the

Transcendental Aesthetic and are the principles to which all objects of experience must conform. That is, space and time are the horizon within which we encounter things. Time is, however, accorded priority over space.

32 Rosalyn Diprose, The Bodies of Women: ethics, embodiment and sexual difference, London & New York: Routledge, 1994, p.65. 33 Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997 p.424-5. Hereafter cited as KPM.

201 In order to encounter beings other than ourselves, we must have outer intuition, or an experience of the outside. Space is the pure form of outer intuition. In order to experience the outside, we must first be able to experience ourselves, or to be self- aware. This for Kant, is not spatial, but occurs as a sequence of states, representations, volitions and moods, all of which contain a temporal dimension. This suggests that time is crucial and is both the formal condition of the physical and the pure form of inner intuition. Kant writes: “time is the formal a priori condition of all appearances whatsoever.” It follows from this, Heidegger argues, that “time has a pre-eminence over space” (KPM 48-9). However, it is not immediately apparent for Heidegger why this should be the case: “already in the Transcendental Aesthetic there comes to light a peculiar priority of time over space. And in subsequent and more decisive sections of the Critique time emerges again and again at the centre piece of the transcendental, viz. ontological, problematic” (KPM 111-2). On account of the fact that both the external world and the internal world are dependent on the temporality of the perceiver, time is the formal condition of outer, spatial appearances, and therefore has priority over space (KPM 148). Heidegger reproduces this priority of time over space to some extent. However, this prioritisation is one that he later comes to refute because of the way in which it conceives of space as extension. In Kant and the

Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger notes that “space as pure intuition is squeezed out of a possibly central ontological function”(KPM 47).

Does this suggest that Heidegger recognises the central ontological function of space in his own work, or does he merely reproduce this Kantian ambiguity and like Kant, subordinate space to time? By interpreting being in terms of temporality, it could be inferred that he does - that space is reduced to time or that it is secondary to it. Given

202 the somewhat underdeveloped account of spatiality, compared to the rigorous analysis of temporality, and some references that allude to the primacy of time, it is possible to arrive at such a conclusion. Heidegger does state, “temporality is the meaning of the

Being of care. Dasein’s constitution and its ways to be are possible ontologically only on the basis of temporality, regardless of whether this entity occurs ‘in time’ or not.

Hence Dasein’s specific spatiality must be grounded in temporality” (BT 367/418). A few paragraphs later, he reiterates: “because Dasein as temporality is ecstatico- horizonal in its Being, it can take along with it a space for which it has made room”

(BT 369/421).

These comments seem to affirm the priority of time over space. While Heidegger is careful to avoid using spatial metaphors to describe temporality in order to avoid describing Being in terms of presence, his critique of Kant suggests that it is not apparent for him why temporality is given priority over space. Moreover, the spatial metaphors used by Heidegger to describe temporality - despite his initial desire to steer clear of them - and the radical account of spatiality in the first division of Being and Time suggests Heidegger has departed from the traditional account of time taking priority over space.34

34 For a further discussion on Heidegger’s inversion of the priority of time over space, and its relation to other thinkers such as Kant and Foucault, see Steven Crocker, “The fission of time: on the distinction between intratemporality and the event of time in Kant, Heidegger and Foucault” in International Studies in Philosophy 29: 2. Crocker argues that Foucault repeats the central insights of Heidegger’s reading of Kant in the 1929 text, and support the Heideggerian thesis that subjective time is a “recoil” from the radical possibilities opened by the Copernican Revolution. This brought Kant to the brink of an ecstatic experience of finitude that he failed to take, and instead, led him to ground metaphysics in one of the extant faculties of the subject. Kant, according to Foucault’s appropriation of Heidegger both presupposed and evaded the question of the unity, synthesis and event of finitude. In his reading of Kant, Crocker shows how Heidegger attempts to ‘retreive’ this lost, ecstatic experience of finitude on which Kant’s revolution rests. See pp.8-9. For a discussion of Foucault, see pp. 6-8.

203 In this radical and perhaps inadvertent departure from traditional metaphysics,

Heidegger offers a very different way of discoursing on the body; one, I argue, that potentially avoids the pitfalls of objectifying the body by making it the object of discourse, even phenomenological discourse. Heidegger’s analysis of the relation between space, time and meaning in our being-with-others and being-in-the-world allows the body to emerge from its objectification in more subtle ways; ways that share close affinities with Nancy’s concept of a corpus.

Heidegger’s problem with the traditional Aristotelian conception of time - which conceives time as the measure of change or motion in the world of entities and in terms of a series of “nows” - is that time was treated as an object in the world rather than as co-complicit with Being. He states: “Thus entities within-the-world become accessible as ‘being in time.’ We call the temporal attribute of entities within-the- world ‘within-time-ness.’ The kind of time which is first found ontically in within- time-ness, becomes the basis upon which the ordinary traditional conception of time takes form” (BT 333/382). The problem for Heidegger is that this conception of time treats Dasein as if it were an entity among others in the world. It posits Dasein “in time” in the same way as it posits other objects. This conceals the ontological dimension of Dasein and misconstrues the nature of time. It not only conceives of time as infinite, but in assuming that the human being is an object amongst others, it fails to account for the phenomenal dimension of time. Moreover, in conceiving of time as a series of “nows” it circumscribes the subject’s possibilities of Being. The fact that Dasein is neither a thing, a substance, nor an object means that its temporality must be different to that of objects. Dasein cannot simply be posited “in time” in the

204 same way other entities can. For Dasein to be included in this structure of time means that it can have no possibilities. As he states:

It is held that time presents itself proximally as an uninterrupted sequence of “nows”. Every “now”, moreover, is already either a “just-now” or a “forthwith”. If in characterising time we stick primarily and exclusively to such a sequence, then in principle neither beginning nor end can be found in it … in this way of thinking time through to the end, one must always think more time; from this one infers that time is infinite. (BT 424/476)

To think in terms of “nows,” is to conceive of Dasein as a set of actualities, which implies that Dasein can have no possibilities because it cannot project itself into a future.

As I have demonstrated in chapter three, Heidegger wants to move away from the traditional conception of being as presence. To do this, he chooses Dasein’s everydayness as the access to Dasien, which allows it to show itself in the way it is.

The second section repeats the existential analytic in order to reveal the sense of

Dasein’s Being as temporality. As John Protevi argues, “Heidegger’s task is to explain time as the horizon of the understanding of being from temporality as the sense of the being of the entity that has understanding of being as part of its being.”35

To do this, Heidegger believes it necessary to delimit temporality from the vulgar understanding of time: “this task as a whole requires that the conception of time thus obtained shall be distinguished from the way in which it is ordinarily understood” (BT

17/39). The vulgar conception of time is one which interprets time on the basis of the implicit “worldly” sense of Being as presence. Protevi argues that “vulgar time lends itself to interpretation via the image of the unrolling of an infinite series of nows

35 John Protevi, Time and Exteriority: Aristotle, Heidegger, Derrida, London and Toronto: Bucknell University Press, 1994, p.113.

205 analogous to the spatial unfolding of the infinite points of a line. The vulgarity of vulgar time consists in its readiness to adopt such a spatial image, which lies ready for use in a language, which thanks to Dasein’s fallenness, is dominated by ‘spatial representations’” (Protevi 1994: 369). Dasein’s temporality must be protected from such “vulgarity; original time must not be interpreted in spatial terms” (Protevi 1994:

113). Heidegger’s initial project, it would seem, is to provide an account of temporality devoid of ‘spatial representations’ in order to frame the question of Being.

The extent to which Heidegger succeeds in doing so is questionable. The discussion of equipmentality is a case in point.

In section 69 of Being and Time, the way in which significance holds together, or the referential context of the in-order-to and for-the-sake-of structures that Heidegger has earlier explicated in the discussion of being-in-the-world, are grounded in temporality.

In the first division of Being and Time, Heidegger began his analysis of being-in-the- world through an examination of the world of equipmentality. A certain series of structures was disclosed from out of the world of equipment. The first structure was that of the “in-order-to,” or the world of usability. This refers to the world of reference insofar as things always refer or relate to other things, in a web of relations or an interconnected whole. As Heidegger demonstrates, the ink-stand, pen, ink, paper, blotting pad, lamp, furniture, windows, and room never show themselves for what they are in themselves, so as to add up a sum of objects that fill up a room. Before any item stands out as such, Dasein has discovered the room in terms of an intelligible totality (BT 83/114). The way this discloses itself to us is not as an objective ordering; rather, it shows itself to us in an unobtrusive and unthought way.

206 This unity of significance is grounded in temporality in the second division of Being and Time and characterised by the metaphor of horizon: “the existential-temporal condition for the possibility of the world lies in the fact that temporality, as an ecstatical unity, has something like a horizon” (BT 365/416). Horizon is that which provides the direction for Dasein’s ecstatic unfolding: “ecstases are not simply raptures in which one gets carried away. Rather, there belongs to each ecstasies a

‘whither’ to which one is carried away. This ‘whither’ of the ecstasies we call the horizonal schema” (BT 365/416). The structure of sense or intelligibility that is inherent in the world and which unveils itself to us in our being-in-the-world is temporal insofar as “the horizon of temporality as a whole determines that upon- which factically existing entities are essentially disclosed” (BT 365/416). That is,

Dasein’s projections are to be understood as being in ecstatic movement, unfolding against a horizon of temporality: “factical Dasien, understanding itself and its world ecstatically in the unity of the ‘there’ comes back from these horizons to the entities encountered within them. Coming back to these entities understandingly is the existential sense of letting them be encountered by making them present” (BT

366/417).

Of particular interest here are the seemingly inevitable spatial metaphors used to characterise temporality. As Protevi argues, there is an exteriority that inhabits or haunts the account of temporality, despite Heidegger’s initial desire to avoid spatial representations of it. The idea of a rebounding vectoral sense, the “coming back” used to describe Dasein’s temporality, was previously used to describe its spatiality in terms of its ‘here’ and its ‘there.’ In section 23, Heidegger writes: “Dasein, in accordance with its spatiality, is proximally not here, but there, from which ‘there’ it

207 comes back to its ‘here’” (BT 107/141). Comparing this passage with the previous one characterising temporality, we can, Protevi suggests, “clearly see the spatial/temporal undecidable economy of ‘coming-back,’ its irreducible possibility of iteration in both spatial and temporal contexts. The ‘coming-back’ corresponds to one of the features of Dasein’s spatiality … the ‘whither’ and ‘upon-which’ we noticed in the descriptions of the temporal schemata install a directionality, and hence exteriority and difference, at the heart of temporality” (Protevi; 1994: 142).

If close attention is paid to the spatial metaphors used to describe time, we could, tentatively, argue that the meaning of time is in fact space. Heidegger writes that

Dasein is “stretched” between birth and death: “the motility of existence is not the motion of something present-at-hand … the specific motility in which Dasein is stretched along and stretches itself along we call its historizing” (BT 427375). As

“outside itself,” Dasein’s temporality is a spacing.

To describe Dasein as “stretched out” and projected is to imply that space is as important to it as time, or perhaps the condition for the possibility of time. Dasein must first have space if it is to project onto its possibilities; that is, in ecstatic temporality, Dasein stands out in the spaces of the world. It also suggests that unlike

Kant, temporality is not specific to internal consciousness, but is already and always outside. As Krell argues, “it is impossible to say whether time or space commands the scene. There is every indication that when the fundamental life-and-death possibilities of human existence come into play the presumed priority of time over space no longer makes any sense, if indeed it ever did” (Krell 1997: 54).

208 Dasein is interpreted on the basis of temporality because this structure renders its existence meaningful. Does this suggest that temporality assumes primary importance, given that Dasein is time? If this is the case, then where does this leave its spatiality or its relation to space? While time assumes primary importance in the second division of Being and Time, Heidegger does offer an account of spatiality in the first division, an analysis that as Krell points out, constitutes the most radial rethinking of space since Galileo and Newton (Krell 1997: 52). For Heidegger, existential spatiality, the space of human experience, is not pure extensio; that is, it is not the space of objects

‘outside’ the subject, or objects intuited by our outer sense. Rather, human being is the outside in the sense that it is always being in the world. Dasein does not exist in terms of an “inner sense,” trapped in a body that functions as a window to the outside. Its relation to the world is one of use, of getting in hand, of touch, of approach and withdrawal, of nearing and passing away, distancing and un-distancing.

v. Spatiality and meaning.

In exploring the manner in which entities subsist in space and Dasein’s relation to them, Heidegger begins his analysis in the world of equipment, or the function of the ready-to-hand. His discussion here indicates that Dasein’s relation to space/place is not only one of meaning, but one of touching and manipulating, handling and holding, all of which presuppose Dasein’s embodiment. Heidegger’s discussion of the world of equipment in terms of the ready-to-hand demonstrates that these entities do not exist randomly in space, but have a place; they are “essentially fitted up and installed, set- up and put to rights” (BT 102/136). Equipment is thus ordered and always exists in a particular context: “such a place and such a multiplicity of places are not to be interpreted as the ‘where’ of some random Being-present-at-hand of Things. In each

209 case the place is the definite ‘there’ or ‘yonder’ of an item of equipment which belongs somewhere” (BT 102/136). The distance of things is not measured in terms of what is farthest or closest to us, but measured in terms of proximity, which refers to the level of use of the equipment to Dasein. Things are arranged on my desk in a particular order, pen, notepad, and computer. Each has its place on the space that is the desk; each, while equidistant from the other objects and myself, has a different proximity depending on its relation to me:

What is available in our everyday dealings has the character of nearness. To be exact, this nearness of equipment has already been intimated in the term “availableness” which expresses the being of equipment. Every entity that is “to hand” has a different nearness, which is not to be ascertained by measuring distances. This nearness regulates itself in terms of circumspective “calculative” manipulating and using. (BT 102/135)

‘Nearness’ and ‘proximity’ are not distances that can be calculated. Rather, the meaning each object has in relation to Dasein is what determines its proximity.

Dasein’s relation to place is not only one of meaning, but one of touching and manipulating, handling and holding. Such a relation to space/place presupposes

Dasein’s embodiment.

Dasein’s ontological structure as being-in means that it deals with other entities

“concernfully” and with “familiarity.” Dasein’s spatiality is one where it is actively engaged in the world/space in which it is thrown. In the above description, Heidegger captures the tension between Dasein’s active and passive relation to the world. As

Edward Casey argues, Heidegger captures the tension of being-in a world that Dasein

210 has not created - a public shared world - in which it nevertheless has to make a difference in the way in which its being-in-the-world is shaped.36

Heidegger refers to this concernful interaction in/with space as “de-severance” and

“directionality,” not unlike Nancy’s account of spacing and touch. This is important, as it not only illustrates Dasein’s relation to meaning, but also makes apparent the importance of embodiment in Dasein’s relation to space. De-severance does not refer to the manner in which an object may be remote or close to Dasein in a physical, tangible sense. Rather, the phenomena of “de-severance” refers to a mode of Being

(an existentiale) in which distance or remoteness is eradicated, such that entities and the world itself are brought closer to Dasein:

Proximally and for the most part, de-severing is a circumspective bringing- close – bringing something close in the sense of procuring it, putting it in readiness, having it to hand. But certain ways in which entities are discovered in a purely cognitive manner also have the character of bringing them close. In Dasein there lies an essential tendency towards closeness. All the ways in which we speed things up, as we are more or less compelled to do today, push us on towards the conquest of remoteness. (BT 105/139)

The radio, television, and internet are illustrative of this attempt to conquer space by bringing the world to Dasein. I can watch, read, and listen to events as they unfold in a different place, on the other side of the world. These places and events are brought closer to me, in the sense that they inhabit my world/space/place in a tangible sense.

De-severance thus opens up a nearness or remoteness, accessibility or inaccessibility of equipment, objects and the world. De-severance is a paradoxical phenomenon because it renders space as at once extended and brought close, in the sense that remote places and spaces are brought close to Dasein. The concept of spacing that

36 Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, p.249.

211 emerges in the phenomenon of de-severance is premised on the fact that Dasein cares about its world; that is, its relation is one of meaning, care, and hence ethics.

De-severance thus refers to Dasein’s relation to space, a relation that makes apparent the existential dimension inherent to space. For Heidegger, the manner in which

Dasein talks of space illustrates that Dasein has its own language that is intelligible to it and others. We do not always measure space in precise terms, but use expressions such as “over yonder” a “good walk,” “a stone’s throw” or “as long as it takes to smoke a pipe” to express spatial distance (BT 106/140). This metaphorical way in which we engage with space illustrates the manner in which Dasein makes the world meaningful, and the way in which the world matters to it: “these measure express not only that they are not intended to ‘measure’ anything but also that remoteness here estimated belongs to some entity to which one goes with concernful circumspection”

(BT 106/140). Dasein’s relation to the world and to space is always one of meaning because the world matters to Dasein: “as Dasein goes along its ways, it does not measure off a stretch of space as a Corporeal Thing which is present-at-hand; it does not ‘devour in kilometres;’ bringing-close or de-severance is always a kind of concernful Being towards what is brought close and de-severed” (BT 106/140).

In defining Dasein’s relation to space in terms of de-severance, Heidegger begins to gesture toward a subtle and implicit account of corporeality. To have things close to us, we need to reach out for the object, touch, grasp, or look at it. An object or entity can only be close if an embodied Dasein renders it so or engages with it. While this embodied engagement is not made explicit, it is presupposed because if Dasein is to procure something, or make something meaningful, it needs to touch it, see it, or

212 listen to it. Bringing something close through a process of de-severance is thus intimately bound to Dasein’s lived body. In his analysis of the hand in What is Called

Thinking? this account of touch is elaborated, as I have shown, in terms of the other.

The hand is what reaches and extends, not only toward objects, but also toward other people. The hand, and more specifically, the hand shake, is the gesture of welcome and invitation.

Heidegger isolates seeing and hearing as the two senses that demonstrate the corporeal dimension to de-severance. For Heidegger, seeing and hearing are

“distance-senses not because they are far-reaching, but because it is in them that

Dasein as de-severant mainly dwells” (BT 107/141). They are the two senses that enable Dasein to conquer distance, to bring something close within its specific environment in such a way that renders it meaningful. For example, the spectacles resting on my nose that are close to me “distantially” are environmentally more remote from me than the painting on the other side of the room. The spectacles, while close, are only instrumental in rendering the painting meaningful by bringing it close in terms of de-severance. Similarly, a telephone, while close to my ear is more distant to me than the voice from another place that it brings close to me. The street upon which I walk seems as if though “it is the closest and Realist of all that is ready-to- hand, and it slides itself, as it were, along certain positions of one’s body – the soles of one’s feet” (BT 107/141). But the street is more remote than the friend whom I encounter on the street; that is, the friend is closer than the street because she is more meaningful to me than the street with which I have primary contact. In this way, spatiality is always bound up with meaning and corporeality: “circumspective concern decides as to the closeness and farness of what is potentially ready-to-hand

213 environmentally” (BT 107/141). The body, it would appear, is presupposed in this de- severance; for Dasein to meet a friend, to listen to a voice, to immerse itself in a painting means it has to have a body.

Heidegger’s account of equipment, being-with and spatiality suggests, as Levin argues, that the ontology of Being and Time is not possible except for embodied beings. That is, beings that are endowed with eyes and ears, arms and hands, throat and lips (Levin 1999: 129). As Heidegger states: “bringing-close is not oriented towards the I-Thing encumbered with a body, but towards concernful Being-in-the- world – that is, towards whatever is proximally encountered in such Being. It follows, moreover, that Dasein’s spatiality is not to be defined by citing the position at which some corporeal Thing is present-at-hand” (BT 107/142). This suggests that being-in- the-world is not to exist as a mind encumbered with a body. The body is not an appendage or an object that has meaning imposed upon it. Rather, to be in the world is to have a bodily comportment towards the world, it is to be affected by the world at the level of the corporeal, which is first and foremost an expression of meaning.

Heidegger, like Nancy, it would appear, is critiquing the conception of the body as an object that has meaning rather than as an expression of meaning in and of itself.37

This presupposition of embodiment is also apparent in Heidegger’s discussion of being-with. We have seen the way in which Dasein is ontologically being-with for

Heidegger and how this has been appropriated and radicalised by Nancy into the logic of being-singular plural. That is, our singularity and uniqueness is only expressed and exposed in the context of community or being-with. By implication, it suggests that

37 For a discussion on Heidegger and the question of human desire, see Ben Vedder, “Heidegger on desire” in Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 31, 1998.

214 meaning is something that emerges in our interactions with others. A similar triadic relation between meaning, embodiment and community emerges in Heidegger’s discussion of being-with and spatiality. In his account of being-with, Heidegger is at pains to emphasise the way in which people or other Daseins are not encountered as present-at-hand in the same way the world of equipment is; rather, we encounter others as lived bodies in situation, or ‘environmentally.’

These bodies express a particular meaning by virtue of this situation. The people we encounter matter to us because their bodies express a certain meaning – they are the bookshop owners from whom Dasein buys its books, the person who owns the boat anchored by the shore, the person who owns the field upon which Dasein walks, or they are people closer to Dasein – its colleagues and family, friends and lovers (BT

118/154). However, this is not to say that these bodies are instrumental in the sense that they are only meaningful to Dasein in so far as they provide a particular service to it. As Heidegger makes quite explicit, others are “neither present-at-hand nor ready- to-hand; on the contrary, they are like the very Dasein which frees them, in that they are there too, and there with it” (BT 118/154). We meet others “at work” or in their being-in-the-world, we see others “standing around,” but do not apprehend them as a present-at-hand, but always apprehend them in their existential mode of Being (BT

118/154).

So while the world is mine, it is also one that is shared by other Daseins, and the equipment that is there for me to use is also there for others in the same way. To say that others are not encountered in the same way as other objects suggests that the others one encounters are expressions of meaning by virtue of their singularity; a

215 singularity expressed by their embodiment. This meaning however, can only be expressed to others with whom Dasein shares its world. It therefore becomes apparent that in Heidegger’s analysis of being-with the body is always presupposed. When we encounter people, we encounter them as embodied beings, beings with a body that expresses a particular meaning in the context of community. As I earlier pointed out,

Heidegger argues that the body is the point of contact between one person and another. Drawing from the earlier discussion of Nancy, we can extrapolate that this meaning that the body of the other expresses is one that extends towards me, as in

Heidegger’s figure of the hand extending and touching another in a gesture of welcome, and imposes an obligation on me to respond to the other. However,

Heidegger, like Nancy, is at pains to emphasise that the space that the touch creates is one that needs to be maintained for the ethical relation.

In his brief account of authentic being-with, he states that we should not “leap in” for the other, but “leap ahead,” not in such a way that appropriates the other’s ability to

‘care’ or her potentiality-for-being, but in such a way that “helps the Other to become transparent to [her] self in [her] care and to become free for it” (BT 122/159). Leaping in for the other eradicates the spacing/distantiality between my body and that of the other. It would mean subsuming the other into my categories, or conferring an identity upon her. Leaping ahead however, maintains a spacing in which the other is left free

“to be” to pursue her projects. This “letting be” is not, however, a form of apathy or indifference toward the other. It is not a “letting be” of the other in the face of her oppression; rather, it is assisting the other to become free to pursue her projects.

216 If we recall, Nancy argues that producing more discourse on the body merely perpetuates a logic that conceives of the body as an empirical object of discourse rather than an expression of meaning, and that the meaning expressed by the body is one that touches the other in both a tangible and intangible sense. Transposing these arguments onto Heidegger, it is possible to claim that implicit in Heidegger’s account of spatiality is a body that is inscribed with meaning, a meaning that comes before or prior to an articulation or a discourse on the body; a meaning that is tactilely created and reproduced in Dasein’s relation to spatiality and spacing, and its engagement with objects and others in that space. As Casey points out, while it appears that Heidegger neglected the role of the body in his analysis of space, it is precisely this deliberate refusal to invoke the body, along with consciousness, that led to Heidegger’s radical account of spatiality, and inadvertently, created a space for the body. For Casey, both mind and body are suspended in order to explore what happens in the space between them. (Casey 1997: 244). While the body is suspended in this analysis, it remains the condition for the possibility of Heidegger’s existential analytic. That is, the body, while apparently absent, is always presupposed.

The criticisms of Heidegger with which this chapter began claimed that Heidegger’s silence on the question of Dasein’s embodiment not only reproduces the allegedly disembodied subject of metaphysics, but also constitutes an ethical closure. By tracing the way in which the body implicitly emerges from its objectification in Heidegger’s work, I argued that the fact that the body is not directly addressed by Heidegger does not mean that it is not consistently invoked in other ways. Using the arguments presented by Nancy, this chapter challenges the view that the solution to the traditional disavowal of the body in metaphysics is to generate and proliferate

217 discourses on it. The ethical relation that Nancy develops is not one based on language, but is one based on the concepts of touch and the spacing that this creates.

These concepts are also discernable in Heidegger’s thinking, and provide a way of understanding Heidegger’s apparent silence on the body. In the opening section of his essay “Corpus” Nancy writes: “How can one get hold of the body?” then, “I am already speechless” (Corpus 190). Perhaps what we need in cultivating an ethical relation to the other is to stop discoursing on the body, to concede that we cannot capture it by language because of its ineffable and elusive nature, and to grant a place for this silence; a space where the body, in its singularity, alterity, even its strangeness, is left free “to be.”

Taking Heidegger’s concept of individuation as my point of departure, the first section of this thesis has submitted three related arguments: firstly that the notion of individuation as described by Heidegger, where Dasein is seemingly isolated from the world of das Man and forced to confront its finitude on its own, fundamentally differs from both the Cartesian and transcendental egos as described by Descartes and

Husserl respectively; secondly, I have argued that this individuation, rather than being incongruent with the account of Mitsein, is in fact only possible on the basis of

Mitsein; thirdly, that this notion of individuation contains an ethical moment insofar as it summons Dasein to take responsibility for its own Being. As I pointed out in chapter three, the ethics that announces itself in Heidegger’s work is not an ethics that requires Dasein to assume responsibility for and obligations to others; nor is it a question of changing the world. The point I made was that the value of Heidegger’s analytic in terms of ethics is the imperative to take responsibility for oneself; the

218 question here is one of changing oneself. This compulsion to take responsibility for oneself occurs at the level of ontology insofar as to be means to take responsibility.

In the second section of this thesis, I have argued that this preoccupation with one’s own Being does not necessarily preclude a responsibility for the other with whom

Dasien shares its world. While this is underdeveloped in Heidegger, in the second section, I want to explore how this concept of individuation plays itself out in terms of ethical obligations in relation to others and political action.

219 Chapter Five Freedom and collective responsibility: Heidegger, Arendt and political action.

This thesis has thus made three interrelated arguments: firstly, that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute solipsism in the Cartesian or transcendental sense of the word. Secondly, that this notion of individuation is not inconsistent with his account of

Mitsein. Thirdly, that the concept of individuation contains an ethical moment, insofar as this means a taking responsibility for one’s own existence. To be, as I have argued in chapter three, is to be responsible. I suggested that what we are ultimately responsible for is the making sense of our existence. This entails an element of action on our part, as to be is also to conduct oneself and to be responsible for this conduct. I concluded from this that Heidegger’s ontology can lend itself to ethical and political considerations.

By reading Heidegger through Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular, the previous chapter has demonstrated the ethical implications of Heidegger’s thinking through an account of embodiment and the concepts of touch and spacing. In this chapter,

I explore the political implications through the concept of freedom. I argue that

Heidegger’s divorce of freedom from the ontology of self-presence provides us with a way of thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set of rights that are conferred by virtue of certain characteristics - rights that enable some people to speak, and rights whose absence condemns others to silence. Rather, freedom becomes the very essence of existence, and by implication, community.

220 However, in the same way that Heidegger does not directly address the issue of Dasein’s embodiment, his work also lacks a discussion of the existential dimension of the political.

Arguably, the political world is made apparent in the phenomenon of publicness.

However, by assigning this phenomenon to the existential mode of inauthenticity,

Heidegger fails to do it justice. As Klaus Herd argues, Being and Time fails to explain how a public world is conceivable as the shared living space of authentic intersubjective existence.1 Herd asks: in Heidegger’s terminology, what would the authenticity of being- with consist in, if the world of this being-with is a public, political world? (Herd 1996:

38). I have examined the way in which Heideggerian ontology is primarily about individual responsibility, which is inherently ethical, in the sense that while we may not be able to change the world, we can take responsibility for ourselves at the ontological level of our Being. While an account of collective responsibility appears to be absent from his thinking, I want to suggest in this final chapter that the intersubjective dimension of freedom and collective responsibility is offered as a sketch in Heidegger, and that this can be further fleshed out in terms of Hannah Arendt’s thinking on freedom, intersubjectivity and political action.

My point of departure in this chapter is Jean-Luc Nancy’s observation, made in the

Experience of Freedom, on the paradoxical nature of the liberal conception of freedom.

He argues that while this agency and self-determination with which we have been endowed has led to the unfolding of human emancipation, it has also been responsible for

1 Klaus Held, “Authentic Existence and the Political World” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 26, 1996 p.38.

221 countless atrocities, many of which have been committed in freedom’s name.2 He writes:

“all liberations (national, social, moral, sexual, aesthetic) are ambiguous, and also arise from manipulations … Freedom Manipulated (by powers of capital): this could be the title of our half-century” (EF 164). For Nancy, the entanglement of freedom in wars, totalitarian regimes, colonialism and various forms of imperialism is partially a consequence of a separation that has occurred between individual rights and community and between the practice of morality, politics, ethics and the ontological question of human freedom:

A divorce has taken place between, on the one hand, a set of determinations that are relatively precise in their pragmatic definitions and that are freedoms – a collection of rights and exemptions; … and on the other hand, an ‘Idea’ of freedom, called for or promised – yet we hardly know what this idea represents or presents of the ‘essence’ of ‘human beings,’ and we request that it not be examined, specified, questioned, or above all implemented, so certain are we that this would result in Chaos or Terror. (EF 2)

In this chapter, I want to suggest that Heidegger’s conception of freedom, elaborated in piecemeal fashion in Being and Time, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology,

Metaphysical Foundations of Logic and culminating in The Essence of Human Freedom provides a way of rethinking our conception of freedom, not as a set of specific determinations and rights, but as the very condition for the possibility of both existence and community.

2 See Peter Fenves, “From Empiricism to the experience of freedom” in Paragraph, Vol. 16:2, 1993 for a discussion on Nancy’s conception of freedom as removed from subjection to necessity, determinacy and inevitability. Fenves argues that Heidegger’s analysis of existence leaves room for such a conception of freedom. Nancy fills this out in EF. See pp. 159, 160 & 165.

222 In this elaboration, it is possible to trace the way Heidegger distances his thinking of freedom from the ontology of self-presence. However this development, according to some commentators, is problematic. Instead of interpreting Heidegger’s elaboration of freedom in the 1930 lectures on Kant, entitled the Essence of Human Freedom, as a deepening of the trajectories he created in Being and Time, Heidegger’s formulation of freedom in these lectures constitutes, for some, a radical shift in Heidegger’s thinking.

For Michel Haar,3 Kathleen Wright,4 and Emmanuel Levinas,5 in particular, freedom ceases to be an attribute of Dasein in this work and instead, becomes empty rhetoric, devoid of any real content. Haar and Wright respectively argue that the shift or turn in

Heidegger’s later thinking on freedom reflects an absence of the notions of “mineness” and “Mitsein” that were central to Dasein’s ontological structure in Being and Time. Haar argues that in displacing the subject from the centre, Heidegger separates the concept of freedom from its traditional relation to responsibility and autonomy, agency and self- determination, while Wright and Levinas argue that Heidegger’s later conception of freedom reflects an absence of consideration of human solidarity, friendship and love.

Moreover, these criticisms suggest that Heidegger’s conception of freedom leaves unanswered the question of whether human liberty is possible, and if so, how that liberty is to be defined.

3 Michael Haar, “The Question of Human Freedom in the later Heidegger” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989. 4 Kathleen Wright, “Comments on Michael Haar’s paper ‘The Question of Human Freedom in the Later Heidegger’” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989. 5 Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania: Duquesne University Press, 1969.

223 The first section of this chapter will examine Heidegger’s later formulation of freedom as expressed in The Essence of Human Freedom and examine why it remains of value for an ontological interrogation of freedom. It will then argue against the first of the aforementioned claims that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the the subject unravels Dasein’s ontological structure as explicated in Being and Time. By reading the later formulation of freedom against the earlier, the second section traces the parallels and similarities between the two conceptions of freedom in order to show the way in which

Heidegger’s thinking on freedom remains consistent. The final section fills out the contours of Heidegger’s somewhat indeterminate conception of freedom, by drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt. In this section, I return to the problem I raised in the first chapter, of how to reconcile Heidegger’s account of individuation with section 74 of

Being and Time, where he argues that authenticity is tied to the fate or destiny of a people or nation. I use Arendt to argue for an account of both individual and collective responsibility and political action that emerges from Heidegger’s conception of freedom.

i. Freedom in the Essence of Human Freedom

The Essence of Human Freedom is an extension of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant in particular, and a continuation of his deconstruction of the metaphysical tradition in general. It remains consistent with the trajectories Heidegger created in the earlier work,

Being and Time. It is consistent in the sense that Heidegger remains concerned with the ontological/ontic distinction and continues to argue for the priority of the latter over the former as a way into the question of Being. In the Essence of Human Freedom, he argues that freedom is that which potentially returns philosophy to Dasein’s worldly

224 comportment. He states: “if we really inquire into the essence of freedom, we stand within this question concerning beings as such. Accordingly, the question concerning the essence of human freedom is necessarily built into the question of what beings as such properly are” (EHF 23).

For Heidegger, Kant is a central figure in the history of the problem of freedom because

“Kant brings the problem of freedom for the first time explicitly into a radical connection with the fundamental problems of metaphysics” (EHF 134). While there are several problems that Heidegger identifies in Kant’s account of freedom, in this chapter, I want to focus specifically on the relation between freedom and causality or the connection between freedom and the will (EHF 134). The central problem for Heidegger in this text is that Kant conceives of freedom from the perspective of causality or will rather than possibility. In doing so, Kant treats the human subject (Dasein) as something present-at- hand and consequently, fails to treat the concept of freedom “primordially and in its own terms” (EHF 134). Heidegger argues that “Kant’s orientation of causation to being- present, which he equates with actuality and existence as such, means that he sees freedom and being-free within the horizon of being-present. Since he fails to pose the question concerning the particular way of beings which are free, he does not unfold the metaphysical problem of freedom in a primordial way” (EHF 134).

To understand the problem Heidegger has with Kant’s formulation of freedom in terms of causality, a brief digression into Kant is necessary.6 The relation between freedom and the will initially finds expression in Kant’s third antinomy in the Critique of Pure

6 The following exposition of Kant follows Heidegger’s interpretation, as found in the Kant lectures/EHF.

225 Reason.7 Here, Kant formulates a solution of sorts to the problem of free will and determinism: that is, the claim that there is no such thing as free will, and hence no freedom, because everything in the world takes place in accordance with the laws of nature. Against this, Kant argues that causality in accordance with the laws of nature is not the only causality from which the appearance of the world derives. Rather, there is another causality: that of freedom.

In arguing for this position of a causality of freedom in terms of the will, Kant begins by assuming - for the sake of argument - that there is no other causality than that found in

7 For a discussion on the history of the concept of the will see Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind: Willing, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Here, Arendt points out that the problem of the will and its connection to freedom lies in the fact that the faculty of the will was unknown to the Greeks and was only later discovered in the first century of the Christian era. The difficulty arose out of the following dilemma: how to reconcile faith in an all powerful and omniscient God with the claims of free will, with which humans are endowed. This problematic survives into the modern age, where it meets with the same argumentation as before. Either free will is found to clash with the law of causality or, later, it clashed with the laws of history, whose meaningfulness depends on progress or a necessary development of the World spirit. The first question facing thinkers, according to Arendt, was whether the will did in fact exist. John Stuart Mill for example writes: “our internal consciousness tells us that we have a power, which the whole outward experience of the human race tells us that we never use.” Or, as Nietzsche points out, “the entire doctrine of the Will the most fateful falsification in psychology hitherto … essentially invented for the sake of punishment.” According to Arendt, what aroused the philosopher’s mistrust of this faculty was its inevitable connection to freedom. An act is free insofar as we are aware that we could have left undone what we actually did; something that is not true of desire or of appetites, where bodily needs and the necessities of the life process, or the sheer force of wanting something close at hand may, supersede any consideration of either will or reason. Which leads Arendt to suggest that “willing, it appears, has an infinitely greater freedom than thinking, which even in its freest, most speculative form cannot escape the law of non-contradiction. This undeniable fact has never been felt to be an unmixed blessing. By men of thought, more often than not, it has been felt to be a curse,” p.5. Throughout the medieval era the suspicion persisted as to whether the willing faculty in fact existed or was contrived. Part of this lay in the reluctance to grant human beings, unprotected by a divinity, complete power over their own destinies, hence burdening them with an enormous responsibility for things whose very existence would exclusively depend on them. So great, in Kant’s words, was the embarrassment of “speculative reason in dealing with the question of the freedom of the will … a power of spontaneously beginning a series of successive things or states.” This is to be distinguished from the faculty of choice between two or more given objects or possibilities. According to Arendt, it was not until the final stage of the modern age that the will was substituted for reason as man’s highest mental faculty. “This coincided with the last era of authentic metaphysical thought; at the turn of the nineteenth century, still in the vain of the metaphysics that had started with Parmenides’ equation of Being and Thinking, suddenly, right after Kant, it became fashionable to equate Willing and Being,” p.20.

226 the laws of nature. If this is the case, then everything that takes place does so on the presupposition that it follows from a preceding state in accordance with the law of nature.

But the preceding state must itself be something, which has taken place, because if it had always existed, its consequence would also have always existed, and would not have only just arisen. The conclusion to be drawn here is that “if therefore, everything takes place solely in accordance with laws of nature, there will always be only a relative and never a first beginning, and consequently, no completeness of the series on the side of the causes that arise the one from the other.”8 This however, is precisely the law of nature; that nothing takes place without a cause determining it a priori. This, for Kant, is self- contradictory, because if freedom were determined in accordance with the laws of nature, then it would not be freedom, but would be nature under another name. It cannot therefore be regarded as the sole kind of causality.

For this reason, we must assume a causality through which something takes place that is not itself determined in accordance with necessary laws, that is, by another cause. We must assume a cause which begins a series of appearances itself: “this is transcendental freedom, without which, even in the [ordinary] course of nature, the series of appearances on the side of the causes can never be complete” (CPR A446/B474).

This concept of freedom in its practical, rather than transcendental form emerges once again in the In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.9 Kant argues that the will

8 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London: MacMillan, 1929, A446/B474. Hereafter cited as CPR. 9 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hereafter cited as GMM.

227 is a kind of causality of rational beings and freedom is one of the properties of the will. It enables the will to be efficient independently of alien causes determining it. This is in contrast to natural necessity, which is the property of causality of all non-rational beings.

Kant thus distinguishes between two types of freedom: negative freedom, which is an independence from both nature and God, and positive freedom, which is the ability to determine one’s own action, or to give oneself the law for one’s action: “natural necessity was a heteronomy of efficient causes, since every effect was possible only in accordance with the law that something else determines the efficient cause to causality; what, then, can freedom of the will be other than autonomy, that is, the will’s property of being a law to itself?” (GMM 52). Positive freedom is further broken down into two categories: the cosmological or transcendental and the practical. The transcendental conception of positive freedom is “absolute self-activity” and the practical is the “power of self determination” (GMM 52).

As I have pointed out, Kant describes the transcendental conception of positive freedom as “the power of beginning a state spontaneously. Such causality will not, therefore, itself stand under another cause determining it in time, as required by the law of nature.

Freedom in this sense is a pure transcendental idea” (CPR A 533/B 561). Freedom is thus the power of the self-origination of a state – to give or offer freely, spontaneously, and to originate from the self. By contrast, practical freedom is defined as “the will’s independence of coercion through sensuous impulses” (CPR A534/B 562). While this sounds like the negative conception of freedom in the sense that it refers to an independence from sensibility, Kant defines the practical conception of freedom in terms of self-determination. He writes: “the human will is free because sensibility does not

228 necessitate its action. There is in man a power of self-determination, independent of any coercion through sensuous impulses” (CPR A 534/B 562). Will in this sense does not refer to arbitrariness and lack of discipline, but to self-determination, which suggests that in the negative formulation of freedom, a positive conception is implied. Kant grounds these two conceptions of freedom in causality, such that freedom becomes a property of causality. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant writes: “As will is a kind of causality of living beings so far as they are rational, freedom would be that property of this causality by which it can be effective independently of external causes determining it, just as natural necessity is the property of the causality of all non-rational beings by which they are determined in their activity by the influence of external causes”

(GMM 17). Freedom of the will is referred to as autonomy, the “property of the will to be a law to itself” (GMM 102).

There are then, two conceptions of freedom: freedom in terms of absolute spontaneity and freedom as autonomy or self-determination. These two conceptions of freedom are related in the sense that autonomy is a kind of absolute spontaneity, or it is only on the basis of absolute spontaneity that autonomy possible. That is, absolute spontaneity is the condition for the possibility of autonomy. As Kant states in the Critique, “it should especially be noted that the practical concept of freedom is based on this transcendental idea, and that the latter harbours the real source of difficulty which has always beset the question of the possibility of freedom” (CPR A 533/B 561). This however, raises a problem for Heidegger. If absolute spontaneity means to originate “from itself,” or to initiate a series of events “from itself,” then it follows that absolute spontaneity is

229 interwoven with causality in the sense that it is the “causality of a cause.” This raises the question of the causation of a cause, or the that and how a cause is a cause.

For Kant, all experience or all theoretical knowledge of what is presented to us as nature is subject to the law of causality. Kant describes this as follows: “everything that happens, that is, begins to be, presupposes something upon which it follows according to a rule” (CPR A 189). Moreover, “the causality of the cause of that which happens or comes into being, and … in accordance with the principle of the understanding it must in its turn require a cause” (CPR A 532/B 560). This means that every causation of a cause follows on from some prior cause; alternatively, it suggests that nothing in nature is the cause of itself.

On the other hand, the self-origination of a state or a series of events is a radically different causation than the causality of nature. For Kant, absolute spontaneity is the causality of freedom. However, the causality of absolute spontaneity is something we do not encounter in experience because freedom as absolute spontaneity is transcendental. If, as Kant argues, practical freedom is grounded in transcendental freedom as a distinctive kind of causality, then positive or practical freedom, as grounded in absolute spontaneity

(transcendental freedom) also contains the problem of causality.10

10 See Henry E. Allison, Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 for a discussion on Kant’s theory of freedom and its relation to his transcendental idealism and practical philosophy.

230 It is this idea of freedom as grounded in causation, and the conception of the human subject this implies that Heidegger wants to problematise in his engagement with Kant.

The agency with which the Kantian self is endowed suggests that Kant understands the self as a self-determining end. To be a self-determining end is to have the capacity to choose one’s ends. As Kant writes: “rational nature is distinguished from others in that it proposes an end to itself … Now this end can never be other than the subject of all possible ends themselves, because this is at the same time the subject of a possible will which is absolutely good; for the latter cannot be made secondary to any other object without contradiction” (GMM 56). While Heidegger concurs with Kant that the self has the capacity to choose, the Kantian idea that the self is an end in itself that comes prior to the choices it makes will fall under criticism.

For Heidegger, there is an element of causality in freedom, but not in the way Kant proposes. This is because for Heidegger, “freedom is not some particular thing among and alongside other things, but is superordinate and governing in relation to the whole”

(EHF 93). Heidegger, it would seem, inverts the order of priority: freedom is not grounded in causality, but causality itself is grounded in freedom because for him, freedom, in its essence, is more primordial than Dasein.11 The human subject does not control her freedom in the sense that acts originate primarily from her, but only administers this freedom in the sense that she can only let-be the freedom that is accorded

11 Also see Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh, Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985. Heidegger reiterates: “for freedom is here, not the property of man, but the other way around: Man is at best the property of freedom. Freedom is the encompassing and penetrating nature, in which man becomes man only when he is anchored there. That means the nature of man is grounded in freedom. But freedom itself is a determination of true Being in general which transcends all human beings. Insofar as man is as man, he must participate in this determination of Being, and man is, insofar as he brings about this participation in freedom” (Heidegger 1985: 9).

231 to her. Dasein’s freedom is not, then, an attribute of an autonomous will; rather it is the basis or the ground of Dasien’s capacity to choose its being-in-the-world. Unlike the

Kantian self, Dasein’s freedom is only realised in its transcendence (being-for) rather than its immanence (being-in-itself).

Heidegger describes his reformulation of freedom in this way:

Human freedom now no longer means freedom as a property of man, but man as a possibility of freedom: Human freedom is the freedom that breaks through in man and takes him up unto itself, thus making man possible. If freedom is the ground of the possibility of existence, the root of being and time and thus the ground of the possibility of understanding being in its whole breadth and fullness, then man, as grounded in his existence upon and in this freedom is the site where beings in the whole become revealed, i.e. he is that particular being through which beings as such announce themselves. (EHF 93-4)

Freedom is no longer something Dasein ‘possesses’ or has. It is no longer attributable to a subject and no longer something promised or refused to a Dasein on the basis of some consideration or by virtue of its possession of the faculty of reason (EF 20). Rather, freedom is something that Dasein is, or is constitutive of its very Being. It is, as Nancy writes, a fundamental modality of Being, one that does not “proceed existence, or succeed it, but is at stake in it” (EF 20). Freedom becomes the condition for the possibility of existence, and Dasein’s existence is grounded on and in this freedom.

Dasein becomes the manager of freedom or its distributor, rather than its master. In this conceptualisation of freedom, Heidegger’s Dasein is decentered and displaced as an agent of moral choice. Dasein exists in a relationship to freedom, or alternatively, Dasein is given freedom as a gift to cultivate. There is, it would seem, an implicit sense of guardianship assigned to Dasein in its relation to freedom (Schalow 2002: 33).

232 This conception of freedom constitutes a marked or distinctive shift from the modern, voluntaristic sense of the will.12 However, it also raises several problems. What is politically and ethically at stake in this removal of freedom from the idea of a self- determining subject? Is it to suggest that Dasein is passive in the face of this freedom, or that its agency to exercise moral choice and to engage in decision-making is taken from it? And if so, does this mean that it is no longer responsible for the choices it makes?

Haar identifies and distinguishes between two conceptions of freedom that emerge in

Heidegger’s later work: one is what he deems the essence of human freedom, part of which is freedom of choice, self-determination and autonomy, and the other is the freedom of Being, the latter being the condition for the possibility of the former (Haar

1989: 2). Haar argues that the essence of human freedom, if it is legitimate to speak of such a freedom, is inconsistent with the essence of the freedom of Being (Haar 1989: 2).

For Haar, in rendering the freedom of Being the condition for the possibility for human freedom, and in arguing that the former works through the latter, Heidegger, by implication, renders human beings ‘morally’ and ‘intellectually’ irresponsible for what they receive from Being; that is, we become mere puppets or playthings of Being, and our liberty becomes a subjective illusion. Haar asks: “does this mean that [Dasein] is wholly determined in [its] world by the destiny of Being, and merely passive when [it] accomplishes and brings to speech what is dictated to [it] within the framework of [its]

12 For a discussion on how this conception of freedom is related to the concepts of violence and power, see Fred Dallmayr, ‘Heidegger on Macht and Machenschaft” in Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 34, 2001. Dallmayr points out that this conception of freedom is intended to be beyond both power and violence. For Heidegger, power relies on violence as its chief method and instrument. When violence and brutality become predominant, everything becomes geared toward the “unconditional annihilation of opposing forces” such that nothing can grow, especially the care of Being. See p.257.

233 age? Is [Dasein] ‘enacted’? Is [it] ‘prethought’? Are these two the same thing? Does the transposing of freedom into the register of the Lichtung and of epochal truth have as its consequence the possibly abusive identification of freedom in thinking and liberty in action?” (Haar 1989: 2).

On Haar’s interpretation, if freedom is thought in terms of the freedom of Being then human freedom as such is diminished. Human freedom becomes merely the freedom “to let” the freedom of Being “be.” Dasein becomes the site or the occasion that is necessary for and required by the freedom of Being (Sein). The consequence of this is that human individuation and together with it, human freedom vanish in this “free sacrifice of the ego” (Haar 1989: 2). Haar refers to this as a “non-human” freedom, which in using human freedom, shrinks its power markedly. With this ‘turn’ in Heidegger’s work, an inversion occurs; an inversion of the subjectivism, anthropomorphism and of the quest – undertaken in Being and Time – for absolute self-possibilisation. According to Haar, “in opposition to existentialism the new Heideggerian thesis states: man is not the possibility of freedom; it is rather the freedom of Being that makes man possible” (Haar 1989 p.2).

This according to Haar, is in marked contrast to Heidegger’s conception of freedom in

Being and Time. Haar argues that in Being and Time, liberty was nothing other than the free disposition of the “own-most” possibility, which is the anticipation of possibility.

Liberty was found in the movement of self-appropriation and the hierarchical organisation of Dasein’s possibilities, beginning with the fundamental possible of being- towards-death. Haar argues: “Heidegger still thought of possibilities that Dasein gives itself, in terms of transcendental ‘conditions of possibility” (Haar 1989: 3). As Heidegger

234 states in Being and Time: “In Being ahead-of itself as Being for the own most being-able- to-be rests the condition of the ontological-existential possibility of Being-free-for authentic possibilities” (BT 193/237). “Freedom towards death” is a conquest of authenticity, or a taking over of Dasein of its own possibilities. Haar concludes that the freedom found in Being and Time, was “the positing of an absolute autonomy even greater than the autonomy of the moral subject in Kant” (Haar 1989: 2). For Haar, with the eradication of this idea of freedom in the later work, Heidegger eradicates the concept of Jemeinigkeit or “mineness” that was central to Dasein’s ontological structure in Being and Time.

For Wright, the problem with Heidegger’s thinking on human freedom after Being and

Time is not so much due to obliterating the element of “mineness,” but more due to the eradication of the notion of Mitsein, or being-with, and with it, human solidarity, friendship and love. According to Wright, Heidegger’s later conception of freedom does not admit the possibility of the “conversation that we [that is, we humans together] are”

(Wright 1989: 18). Similarly, Levinas argues that Heidegger subordinates the relation we have with others to the relation Dasein has to Being, thus separating freedom from ethics.

For Levinas, “in subordinating every relation with existents to the relation with Being the

Heideggerain ontology affirms the primacy of freedom over ethics … the freedom involved in the essence of truth is not for Heidegger a principle of free will. Freedom comes from an obedience to Being: it is not man that possess freedom; it is freedom that possess man” (Levinas 1969: 45).

235 What these criticisms suggest is that Dasein’s ontological structure as mine, being-in-the- world and being-with is undermined in Heidegger’s later work, rendering his notion of freedom politically and ethically dubious, if not completely devoid of any content. What I want to suggest is that firstly, these objections are based on a misunderstanding of the type of subject and its relation to freedom explicated in Being and Time, and that secondly, Heidegger’s later elaboration on freedom remains consistent with that found in

Being and Time. Moreover, with Nancy, I argue that the displacement of the subject in both Being and Time and the Essence of Human Freedom, which allows Heidegger to think of freedom removed from the ontology of traditional subjectivity, opens up a space from which we can think freedom in terms of community and human solidarity.

ii. Freedom in Being and Time.

Haar is right to argue that freedom in Being and Time remained inextricably bound to the concepts of ‘mineness,’ possibility and choice. It will be recalled that for Heidegger in

Being and Time, all determinations of Being are inscribed in the fundamental determination of being “mine”: “the Being of any such entity is in each case mine … because Dasein has in each case mineness, one must always use a personal pronoun when one addresses it” (BT 42/67). This suggests that it is Being itself that is mine and reciprocally, I am only myself through Being. As ‘mine,’ I am able, to some extent, to exercise choice in how I am to comport myself towards my being as possibility; as ‘mine’

I can also choose to live authentically or inauthentically. Freedom, as intrinsic to the structure of ‘mineness,’ thus provides Heidegger with a powerful resource for expressing the comportment of Dasein to its own possibilities. In Being and Time, Dasein is

236 characterised as “being-free for its ownmost potentiality-for-being” (BT 191/236).

Dasein’s “being toward a potentiality-for-being is itself determined by freedom” (BT

193/237).

Anticipation as authentic being-towards-death is described as a matter of “becoming free for one’s own death as sheer possibility” (BT 264/308). Further, “anxiety reveals in

Dasein its being toward its ownmost potentiality-for-being, that is, its being free for the freedom of choosing and grasping itself” (BT 264/308). Dasein is also free not to choose; it can let its choices/possibilities be determined or made by das Man. Heidegger states:

In Being-ahead-of oneself as Being towards one’s ownmost potentiality-for- Being, lies the existential-ontological condition for the possibility of Being-free for authentic existentiell possibilities. For the sake of its potentiality-for-Being, any Dasein is as it factically is. But to the extent that this Being towards its potentiality-for-Being is itself characterised by freedom, Dasein can comport itself towards its possibilities, even unwillingly; it can be inauthentically; and factically it is inauthentically, proximally and for the most part. (BT 193/237)

Freedom as ‘mine’ is thus also tied to the concepts of possibility and choice. It will also be recalled that for Heidegger, as being-in-the-world, Dasein’s existence/essence is characterised by projection or transcendence, anticipation and openness, because Dasein exists in terms of its possibilities. Dasein is already thrown into the midst of possibilities which it has either realised or is about to realise: “as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call ‘projecting’ … as long as it is … it is projecting” (BT

145/185). These possibilities are modes of Dasein’s existence because to exist is to seize one’s possibilities. For Heidegger, Dasein is always projected or moving towards a

237 particular possibility, is always being-after-something which it does not yet have, striving to become something it has not yet realised.

But this is not to suggest that in realising its possibilities, Dasein is complete, as notions of freedom as self-possession imply, or as Kant’s notion of the self as an end in itself suggests. For Heidegger, Dasein is conceived in terms of a constitutive lack, which means that no matter how many possibilities it actualises, it remains incomplete. For

Dasein to be complete is to cease to be; to become “no-longer-being-there” (BT

236/280). This suggests that the projection of possibilities, rather than their actualisation is what is of fundamental importance to Heidegger. Dasein’s movement or projection is not one of self-constitution or the unfolding of an essence but rather an experimentation with the possible modes of Being open to Dasein. This being-towards a possibility of existence constitutes Dasein’s freedom, in the sense that this transcendence or “self- surpassing” is freedom. It also indicates the way in which freedom for Heidegger is conceived in terms of possibility rather than causality.

This connection between transcendence, as possibility and freedom is made explicit in

The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, which can be read as a fleshing out of the concepts developed in Being and Time. Here, Heidegger argues that Dasein’s transcendence - its comportment toward the possibilities that present themselves to it - and freedom are one and the same thing: “insofar as transcendence, being-in-the-world, constitutes the basic structure of Dasein, being-in-the-world must also be primordially bound up with or derived from the basic feature of Dasein’s existence, namely freedom

238 … Dasein’s transcendence and freedom are identical! Freedom provides itself with intrinsic possibility; a being is, as free, necessarily in itself transcending” (MFL 185). If transcendence is constitutive of Dasein’s very being, and transcendence and freedom are identical, then it follows that freedom is something that Dasein is rather than something it possesses as an attribute or a property. The positing of freedom at the very heart of existence, and thereby conceiving of it in terms of possibility rather than causality, has further implications for the model of subjectivity (Dasein) Heidegger elucidates.

In contrast to Kant, the self for Heidegger in Being and Time does not exist prior to its ends; rather, it is given or revealed only in choosing an end that is not itself. As

Heidegger argues: “insofar as transcendence, being-in-the-world, constitutes the basic constitution of Dasein, being-in-the-world must also be primordially bound up with or derived from the basic feature of Dasein’s existence, namely, freedom. Only where there is freedom is there a purposive for-the-sake-of, and only here is there world” (MFL 185).

Freedom is thus the condition for the possibility of Dasein’s existence because it is by virtue of this freedom that Dasein can purposively pursue its projects and actualise its possibilities. However, just as in the Essence of Human Freedom, Dasein does not possess this freedom as a property, attribute or will. It does not wield freedom as a power of the autonomous will, because as we will see, the Dasein of Being and Time is never in control of its freedom and is never autonomous. It would seem therefore the later idea of freedom is already in place in Being and Time.

239 This freedom that Dasein is, is ultimately realised in its authentic being-towards-death, where Dasein projects itself onto nothingness, and in doing so, comes to the realisation that death is something it cannot evade, grasp or understand. This realisation subverts or displaces Dasein’s self-hood or its subjectivity. As Frank Schalow points out, to be free toward death is to accept the inevitability of one’s end and to also delimit the range of possibilities in which one can experience life. Resolute being-toward-death distinguishes a vacillation between the finality of an end and the novelty of a beginning; “the resignation before a closure and the renewal within an openness” (Schalow 2002: 33).

Again, this is not to suggest that Dasein is the master of this freedom that it is, or that it belongs to Dasein as a property or power that it wields in determining its possibilities.

Dasein remains powerless in the face of its freedom, merely participating in the process of concealment and unconceament. This power can be distributed and localised within the possibilities the self experiences, but will always exceed the exercise of will that

Dasein displays (Schalow 2002: 33). As a consequence, Dasein always remains powerless before its thrown potentiality to be.

This therefore suggests that authentic Dasein receives freedom only in so far as it exercises its power to choose within the larger expanse of unconcealment. In Being and

Time, as in the later work, The Essence of Human Freedom, there is an implicit sense of guardianship assigned to Dasein as the benefactor of freedom. Freedom in both

Heidegger’s earlier and later work is not an attribute that Dasein possesses. Rather, it is something that it is, in the sense that it is the ground of Dasein’s existence. In the same way that Dasein is never in control of its existence, and always exists as fragmented and

240 dispersed in both its temporality and its possibilities, its existence as freedom is also uncontrolled and dispersed. At best, Dasein can manage this freedom, cultivate it, but never control it.

Moreover, it is necessary to make explicit that these possibilities are not something that the Dasein of Being and Time gives itself, in the way Haar suggests. While it would seem that Dasein has an element of self-determination, in that it has the freedom to choose itself in authentic existence, or lose itself in the world of the ‘they,’ it is necessary to point out that this freedom is not infinite and boundless; rather Heideggerian freedom is always qualified by contingency. As Slavoj Zizek points out, Heidegger is acutely aware of how our everyday life is grounded on fragile decisions, of how we are perpetually thrown into a contingent situation. But this does not mean that we become determined by the situation, “caught in it like an animal” (Zizek 1999: 16). Heideggerian freedom is freedom wherein the subject makes sense of, or co-ordinates the situation in which she finds herself thrown. Therefore, while freedom lies at the heart of projection, in that very projection, there lies a counter freedom. Dasein’s freedom is not boundless and infinite; nor is Dasein an autonomous, self-determining subject as Haar contends. The decisions that it makes are always contingent upon Dasein’s specific historical/social/cultural matrix. Dasein is always bound by the corresponding referential totality in which it finds itself thrown. As Heidegger states: “from the world, Dasein takes its possibilities, and does so, to a large extent, in accordance with the way things have been interpreted by the

‘they.’” This interpretation has already restricted the possible options of choice to what lies within the range of possibilities” (BT 195/239). Hence contrary to Heidegger’s critics

241 and to Kant’s idea of freedom, Dasein’s freedom is implicated in its ontological structure as Mitsein.

Unlike Kant, being-with for Heidegger is not a mediating moment in which Dasein’s self is given. For Kant, the proof of the Categorical Imperative starts with the assumption that every rational being exists as an end in itself. However, because every other rational being thinks of its existence in this way, the same rational grounds that hold for me hold for every other rational being as well. As a consequence, the direct experience of the self as an end in possession of dignity is then transposed onto the other.13 For Heidegger, this transfer of the experience of self onto the other by way of analogy is unnecessary. The basic constitution of Dasein is being-with others, which means that the choices Dasein makes in the realm of freedom are also made simultaneously in relation to the other. As

Peg Birmingham argues, “rather than marking the self as an autonomous end-in-itself,

Dasein’s purposiveness marks its heteronomy, its responsibility to the other as end. In other words, Dasein’s capacity to choose, its ‘I am able,’ marks the moment of obligation” (Birmingham1992: 114).

In Being and Time, the concept of freedom is thus tied to the structures of ‘mineness,’ possibility, choice and Mitsein but without compromising Heidegger’s elaboration in the

Essence of Human Freedom. In the latter conception of freedom, Heidegger removes freedom from the Kantian realm of causality, where freedom is an attribute of a self that exists as an end in itself. Instead, he argues that freedom is no longer a property or

13 see Peg Birmingham, “Ever Respectfully Mine: Heidegger on Agency and Responsibility” in A.B. Dallery & C.E. Scott, (eds) Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 114.

242 attribute of Dasein, but the ground of its existence in the sense that its existence is founded in and upon this freedom; a freedom it does not control, but which works through Dasein, or takes possession of it. Both accounts of human freedom remove freedom from the ontology of a self-present subject by removing it from its subjection to necessity, determinacy, and inevitability.

However, this does not mean that freedom becomes indeterminate, indifferent or arbitrary. It does not render Dasein completely powerless and at its mercy, its puppet or plaything, and consequently, irresponsible for the decisions that it makes. Instead, it indicates the way in which Heidegger’s conception of freedom is both passive and active.

It is passive in the sense that Dasein receives freedom or freedom works through it, but active in the sense that Dasein is responsible for the way in which it distributes this freedom. As Heidegger, states, responsibility represents the very essence of the human being: “responsibility for oneself then designates the fundamental modality of being which determines all comportment of the human being, the specific and distinctive human action, ethical praxis” (EHF 263).

What then, are the ethical implications of Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the ontology of the subject as self-present? What is at stake in conceptualising freedom as the ground or condition for the possibility of existence? What does it mean for Dasein to exist in relation to the freedom of Being, or to be the site or occasion where this freedom manifests itself? And how can Dasein’s relation to Being be reconciled to its relations with others? The final section will fill out the indeterminate contours of this description

243 of freedom by drawing on Hannah Arendt’s account of freedom, political action and collective responsibility. By showing the way in which this conception of freedom reconciles the rift between freedom and fraternity, a rift that Nancy posits at the heart of freedom’s entanglement in both wars and liberations, I argue against the contention that

Heidegger’s conception of freedom constitutes a disavowal of community, or that the account of individuation is at odds with the account of community in section 74 of Being and Time.

iii. Freedom, collective responsibility and political action

In the economy of freedom Heidegger develops from Being and Time to the Essence of

Human Freedom, Heidegger not only displaces the subject as an agent of moral choice, but allows for a plurality of participants. If freedom belongs to no one as a right, the implication is that it becomes something that is shared by a political community.14

In the Experience of Freedom, Jean-Luc Nancy, drawing on Heidegger’s conception of being-with, argues that the concept of an autonomous subject as an end in itself that then mediates a relation to the other is both a logical and ontological impossibility. For both

Heidegger and Nancy, Dasein is already in relation by virtue of its very constitution as being-in-the-world and being-with. Nancy, drawing on Heidegger, argues that Dasein is not a subject in possession of freedom which must be circumscribed if it is to enter into relations with others. Nor is this to suggest that Dasein is thrown into relations first, then

14 Frank Schalow puts the point this way: “because freedom arises in conjunction with being, the discharge of the power to be free occurs through the nexus of relationships, including Dasein’s being-with Others which comprises its worldly existence. Dasein receives the power of freedom through its readiness to reciprocate for this gift of being – the openness I already am – through the self’s willingness to safeguard freedom for the benefit of others” (Schalow 2002: 33).

244 endowed with freedom; rather, being-with (existence) and being free occur simultaneously. As he states: “the linking or interlacing of relations doubtless does not precede freedom, but is contemporaneous and co-extensive with it, in the same way that being-in-common is contemporaneous with singular existence and co-extensive with its own spatiality” (EF 66).

There are three interrelated and overlapping trajectories Nancy pursues in his elaboration of Heideggerian freedom. Firstly, freedom is the site or space upon which community is founded; secondly, it is what gives the relation, or it is that which connects one Dasein to another; thirdly, it forms the basis of political community. For Nancy, Heidegger’s gesture of denying that freedom belongs exclusively to the subject is simultaneously a gesture of giving freedom back to community. If we recall, Heidegger argues that freedom is more primordial than Dasein, it is “superordinate” and governs in “relation to the whole.” This means, for Nancy, that freedom becomes the site or the space where community takes place or where singularities/Daseins mingle and are shared. Freedom, on this interpretation, becomes the “play of the interval,” offering or constituting the space of play where each singularity or Dasein takes place as shared (EF 66). As Nancy writes, freedom is the “possibility of an irreducible singularity occurring. One that is not free in the sense of being endowed with a power of autonomy … but that is already free in the sense that it occurs in the free space and spacing of time, where only the singular one time is possible” (EF 68).

245 Freedom, as the condition for the possibility of community, is what gives the relation one singularity has with another. As Nancy states: “freedom is relation, or at least, in the relation, or like the relation” (EF 69). Freedom gives relations in the sense that rather than conceive of the other as circumscribing my freedom, it is by virtue of the other that I am free in the first place. Nancy describes this relation as one where the other discretely inhabits my existence because the other is “originary for my existence” (EF 69). At the same time, it is also the existence of the other “insisting” on my identity and constituting or de-constituting it as this identity (EF 69). In this sense, I am only free by virtue of the relation that freedom makes possible, or alternatively, it is only by virtue of the my relation with the other that I am free. Nancy writes: “Freedom is what throws the subject into the space of the sharing of being. Freedom is the specific logic of the access to the self outside of itself in a spacing, each time singular, of being” (EF 69).

There is however, one final problem that I want to raise here in relation to section 74 and the problem of freedom and community that emerges there. In chapter one, when examining the points where the conflict between the concept of individuation and intersubjectivity arise, I pointed out that there appears to be a conflict between the account of authenticity in terms of individuation and section 74, where Heidegger attempts to reconcile individuation and Mitsein. Related to this is the account of freedom, individuation and moral norms.

This problem is identified by Karl Lowith and Herman Philipse, who argue that the authentic mode of existence consists in deciding to be free and in ‘choosing to choose’

246 oneself. The Self that is summoned by the call of conscience is one characterised by this freedom of choice. Authentic Dasein, as I have demonstrated, does not flee from freedom and responsibility into the inauthenticity of das Man, but actualises freedom by projecting its individual course of life by resolute decisions. In this section on resoluteness, as in the conclusion to inauthenticity, Heidegger stresses again that authentic Dasein in its resolute choices is not bound by values or norms. He writes:

“resoluteness ‘exists’ only as a resolution … But … on what is it to resolve? Only the resolution itself can give the answer” (BT 60/ 298). The conclusion to be reached here is that this choice that we are called to make is not subject to any standard of judgement and is therefore, according to Lowith, empty because it is “a pure resolve whose aim is undefined.15 Authentic Dasein resolves itself, but on nothing in particular. The indeterminacy of Heideggerian resolve leads to ethical “decisionism” – a type of political thought formulated by in the 1920’s and taken up by Germany’s neoconservatives during that period. Decisionism refers to the idea that there is no predetermined, objective criterion for making moral judgements on actions. In the absence of such a criteria, an action is evaluated not by its content, but by the force of will with which the decision to act was made. As such, human actions are not subject to moral judgment but wilfully and arbitrarily legitimate themselves. Moreover, human agents are neither good nor evil but precede this distinction, as their actions effectively create their own arbitrary norms.16 For Philipse, this decisionist ontology of authentic

Dasein as freedom to choose explains why Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein cannot

15 Karl Lowith, My Life in Germany before and after 1933, trans. Elizabeth King, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994 p. 30. 16 See Mark Tanzer, “Heidegger on Freedom and Practical Judgement” in Journal of Philosophical Research, Vol. XXVI, 2001. pp. 344-5.

247 contain, even implicitly, moral norms or values. If authentic Dasein accepts moral norms,

“allegedly it accepts them because it freely decides to do so, and not because its ontological constitution somehow contains or implies them” (Philipse 1999: 455).

There are two problems that thus emerge from the doctrine of decisionism: firstly, if each individual is free to choose which moral norms to accept, then how are individuals to accept the same moral values? Secondly, how is this individualism, characterised by the freedom to choose, connected to the collectivist conception of the “full authentic happening” of Dasein as stated in section 74 of Being and Time? An outline of

Heidegger’s argument in this section is necessary to clarify this point and the problem that it potentially presents.

Heidegger begins his argument by reiterating his conception of individuation, and hence authenticity as having chosen to make a choice: “Dasein understands itself in its own superior power” (BT 384/436) if it asserts “the power of its finite freedom … which ‘is’ only in its having to make a choice” (BT 384/436). This power, however, is also a form of powerlessness because individual and authentic Dasein cannot rely on the support of das Man to make these choices (BT 385/436). The second stage of this argument is that

“Dasein, as being-in-the-world, exists essentially in Being-with-Others” (BT 384/436).

Hence, “Dasein’s historising is a co-historising and is determinative for it as a destiny; it is the historising of the community, of a people.” Destiny is not however, the confluence of the fates of several individuals, “any more than Being-with-one-another can be conceived as the occurring together of several subjects” (BT 384/436). The conclusion

248 Heidegger reaches is this: “hence, our individual fates have already been guided in advance in our Being with one another in the same world and in our resoluteness for definite possibilities. Only in communication and in struggling does the power of destiny become free. Dasein’s fateful destiny in and with its ‘generation’ goes to make up the full authentic historizing of Dasein” (BT 384/436).

There are two related problems here that require attention. The first is the idea that the freedom to choose is an arbitrary one, given that authentic Dasein cannot be bound by the norms and morals of the community or society to which it belongs. The second is the paradoxical account of individual authenticity as being tied to the fate of a people. How is it possible for one to take responsibility for one’s existence if in the end, it makes no difference what one chooses because the individual’s existence is bound by the destiny of a Volk? How is section 74 consistent with the notion of individual choice and responsibility?

In relation to the first point, I want to suggest that the freedom to choose does not imply moral decisionism on Heidegger’s account. Dasein is characterised as the freedom to choose, but this does not mean the individual can make arbitrary, if not immoral or unethical decisions or choices. 17 As Heidegger asserts, his notion of freedom is different

17 See also Tanzer, 2001 for an discussion of decisionism. Tanzer argues that Heidegger’s critics come to the conclusion that Heidegger’s notion of human action is reduced to pure, radical decision without moral constraints on account of a misunderstanding of his conception of freedom. Tanzer argues that a proper understanding of Dasein’s freedom, or the freedom that Dasein is, allows for an indeterminate yet violable criterion for assessing human actions. See pp. 344-345.

249 from the existentialist notion of freedom as arbitrary.18 As he states: “it is misguided to think that one understands freedom most purely in its essence if one isolates it as a free- floating arbitrariness” (MFL 196). Freedom for Heidegger does not mean that one does whatever one wants. It means that one must act in accordance with certain restrictions.

These restrictions are to be found in the central notion of responsibility. As I explained in the second section, the freedom to choose is a freedom to choose responsibly. This concept of responsibility entails a practical criterion that, though indeterminate, is able to pass judgment on actions.19

Secondly, as I suggested in the second section, Heideggerian freedom is not arbitrary because it is always contingent on, and limited by, a particular cultural, social and political situation. More importantly, and as Heidegger seeks to demonstrate in section

74, the decisions that an individual makes will be limited by the particular history that he or she has inherited and this is what Heidegger means by fate: “this is how we designate

Dasein’s primordial historizing, which lies in authentic resoluteness and in which Dasein hands itself down to itself, free for death, in a possibility which it has inherited and yet has chosen” (BT 384/435). Because Dasein is also a Mitsein, it necessarily belongs to a

18 Although the claim that the existentialist notion of freedom is arbitrary is also somewhat misleading, given that Sartre does claim, in the spirit of the Kantian categorical imperative, that whatever the subject wills is only legitimate if he or she could will it for everyone. Sartre writes: “when we say that man is responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is responsible for all men … when we say that man chooses himself … we also mean that in choosing for himself he chooses for all men.” In Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. P. Raireb, Rethuen, 1948. 19 Interestingly, Tanzer points out that although the moral law can never be satisfied, it does not disappear; rather, it constantly imposes the demand, always unsatisfied, that we attempt to live up to its indeterminate proscriptions: “we are always guilty before the law, but this does not mean that it can be ignored. Instead, we are enjoined to always hold ourselves to a standard that is beyond our powers … the indeterminacy of the law does not destroy practical judgment, but instead ensures that it is always possible to do better, and demands that we always attempt to do so” (Tanzer 2001: 354).

250 political community and has a shared social and political history. Insofar as this history is the same for all Daseins, their possibilities are fated to be limited in the same way. Fate, in this context, does not mean that the individual is powerless in actualising his or her freedom. Nor does it mean that a leader or a dictator must choose for an individual.

Dasein remains responsible for taking over that fate, or its historical inheritance – its

“having-been” – and transforming it into something for “its time.” Heidegger writes:

Only an entity which, in its Being, is essentially futural so that it is free for its death and can let itself be thrown back upon its factical ‘there’ by shattering itself against death – that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordially in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its own thrownness and be in the moment of vision for ‘its time’. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite, makes possible something like a fate – that is to say, authentic historicality. (BT 385/437)

This seemingly paradoxical attempt to integrate the discussion of individuation and individual responsibility for existence with an account of authentic being-with needs to be read against both the notion that Dasein is also Mitsein and Heidegger’s reservations regarding liberalism. Given, as I have argued throughout, that Dasein is also Mitsein, it follows that the responsibility it must assume for itself is also a responsibility for others.

Transposed in a political context, it means that Dasein’s responsibility for its having- been, which it must integrate with its vision for the future, is a collective effort, rather than an individual one. While Heidegger strongly endorses individualism, this is, at a philosophical level, different from the individualism of the Cartesian, Kantian or

Husserlian egos. At a political level, it fundamentally differs from liberal individualism.

251 As Heidegger notes, ‘liberalism,’ despite the diversity and variety is seems to endorse, is composed of isolated individuals, each pursuing his or her own interests and desires.

Nowhere in this ideology, Heidegger notes in Beiträge, is there any room for ek-stasis or self-transcendence, for a “reaching out into an uncharted domain under whose auspices the fixed human entity would become questionable.” Human self assurance or self certainty constitutes the “innermost character of ‘liberalism.”20

This suggests that Heideggerian individuation in a political context does not mean submitting to all powerful leader who decides on one’s behalf. Instead, it means assuming responsibility for a shared vision of a future based on a nation’s collective past.

It means acting, not in the interests of oneself, but for the interests of others with whom one shares one’s world. While Heidegger does not express his political sentiments in this way, they are, I suggest in the following and final section, an implication of his ontology of freedom.

iv. Freedom, Individuation and political community: Heidegger and Arendt.

In this final section, I demonstrate the way in which this notion of individuation and the account of freedom can form the basis of political community. A freedom that gives both existence and a relation to others can be likened to what Hannah Arendt tried to represent as the anteriority of public freedom to private or interior freedom. Freedom, before it was

20 Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrman Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65; Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1989, p.53.

252 conceived of as attribute or quality of the will, was the free status of man and that allowed him to move and to meet other people.

Hannah Arendt’s work repeatedly draws attention to the difficulty we have in thinking of freedom as a worldly, concrete reality, one that manifests itself in collective action. The problem, according to Arendt, is that our philosophical tradition remains imbued with early Greek philosophical and early Christain prejudices against such a freedom, conceived in terms of collective action. Early Greek philosophy rejected the freedom found in the political sphere in favour of the contemplative life, while early Christianity located freedom in the overcoming of the interior struggle one had with oneself:

Our philosophical tradition is almost unanimous in holding that freedom begins where men have left the realm of political life inhabited by the many, and that it is not experienced in association with others but in intercourse with oneself – whether in the form of an inner dialogue which, since Socrates, we call thinking, or in a conflict with myself, the inner strife between what I would and what I do, whose murderous dialectics disclosed first to Paul and then to Augustine the equivocalities and impotence of the human heart.21

Arendt claims that these two conceptions of freedom, as essentially an inner phenomenon or as a freedom of the will, replace the idea of freedom as it was originally experienced, as a “worldly, tangible, reality” (BPF 148). She claims this is a development that has

“fatal consequences” for political theory (BPF 162). This motivates Arendt to think of freedom in Heideggerian terms as a mode of being in the world rather than in terms of the capacity of the subject. As I have demonstrated, Heidegger affects a break with the idea of freedom as the ground of the will, and as I will demonstrate in this final section,

21 Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, New York: Penguin, 1993 p.157 hereafter cited as BPF.

253 provides a way of thinking of freedom as a mode of being-in-the-world and as the basis for collective political action. While Heidegger did not flesh out what the political conceptions of this account of freedom as a mode of being rather than as a property of the subject, it is possible to read Arendt as appropriating his ontological approach in the attempt to elaborate the phenomena of political freedom, action and judgement. How then, are the notions of individuation, responsibility, and freedom transposed into the realm of the political, and more specifically, to a theory of political action?

According to Arendt, in spite of the great influence that the concept of an inner, non- political freedom has exerted on a tradition of philosophical thought, we would not know of this alleged inner freedom if man had not first experienced freedom as a worldly and tangible reality. We first become aware of the concept of freedom in our interactions with others, and not with the interactions we have with ourselves. Arendt writes: “before it became an attribute of thought or a quality of the will, freedom was understood to be the free man’s status, which enabled him to move, to get away from home, to go out into the world and meet other people in deed and word” (BPF 148). While such a freedom had to follow from a prior liberation from the necessities of life, political freedom did not automatically follow the liberation from natural desires. In addition to mere liberation, freedom needed the company of others who lived together in the same state, it needed a common public space in which to meet, a politically organised world “into which each of the free men could insert himself by word and deed” (BPF 148). In thinking of freedom in terms of political action, Arendt challenges liberal assumptions about the nature of politics, political institutions and the subjects of liberal democracies.

254 Arendt argues that the essence of politics is action rather than laws and institutions. The latter belong to the sphere of administration and merely supply the framework for action.

The activities of debate, deliberation and participation in decision making are the fundamental tenants of political action. Further, if politics is about action as opposed to the effective and efficient functioning of institutions, then the liberal conception of citizenship must also change. To be a citizen is to participate in political life and dialogue. One’s responsibilities as a citizen do not end with the cast of a vote, and in the case where they do, such an individual cease to be a genuine member of that community.22

At the centre of this political theory is the concept of freedom. Not freedom in terms of a will or causality, but in terms of a mode of being, or in terms of a concrete, tangible political reality. In “What is Freedom,” she writes:

The field where freedom has always been known, not as a problem, to be sure, but as a fact of everyday life, is the political realm … for action and politics, among all the capabilities and potentialities of human life, are the only things we could not even conceive without at least assuming freedom exists … Freedom, moreover, is not only one among the many problems and phenomena of the political realm properly speaking, such as justice, or power, or equality; freedom … is actually the reason that men live in political organization at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’etre of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action. (BPF 147)

Freedom is thus out there in the world, as a concrete and tangible reality. Freedom is something that we are insofar as we are born free, and in this way, it is constitutive of our

22 See chapter two of Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Second Edition, Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Hereafter cited as HC.

255 facticity. Freedom for Arendt is not a property of the will, but a mode of being in the world. And because we are free, we need to live in political organization, where we can deliberate, argue, share perspectives and together, construct a shared social reality where our freedom, reciprocally, finds expression. In this way, freedom and politics are two sides to the same coin, and together find expression in action.

Action, insofar as it is free, is not under the command of the intellect or the will. While it needs both for the execution of a goal, its source is entirely different. The source is referred to as a principle. These, for Arendt, do not operate in the person in the same way motives do, but inspire from the outside in the sense that the principle is only realised, and by implication, the goal, once the act is being performed: “for unlike the judgment of the intellect which precedes action, and unlike the command of the will which initiates it, the inspiring principle becomes fully manifest only in the performing act itself” (BPF

152).

Further, a principle differs from both judgment and will because the validity of a principle is universal. Unlike judgment, which can lose its validity, and the will, which can exhaust itself, a principle that inspires action, and is reciprocally realised in the performance of the action itself, loses nothing in strength or validity in its execution: “in distinction from its goal, the principle of an action can be repeated time and again, it is inexhaustible, and in distinction from its motive, the validity of a principle is universal, it is not bound to any particular person to any particular group” (BPF 152). These principles manifest themselves through action and exist for as long as the action lasts.

256 The principles Arendt is referring to are honour, glory or love of equality. To illustrate with an example, the principle of love of equality can inspire us to fight against instances of inequality, but without action of some sort, this principle is empty political rhetoric. It is not until we perform some action, such as taking to the streets in protest, lobbying politicians, writing to papers, and generally making ourselves heard, that this principle manifests itself in a concrete and tangible way. While our goal may never be achieved, in the sense that the inequality persists despite our efforts, the point is that we acted on a principle, and in doing so, realised this principle momentarily in our political lives. What enables us to act is the fact that we are free, and in acting, we reciprocally realise our freedom:

Freedom appears in the world whenever such principles are actualised; the appearance of freedom, like the manifestation of principles, coincides with the performing act. Men are free – as distinguished from their possessing the gift for freedom – as long as they act, neither before or after; for to be free and to act are the same. (BPF 152-3)

To act is to therefore realise a principle, and in realising a principle through action, freedom appears in the world. But to act in this way requires the presence of others; to act is to do so in concert. Action, for it to be recognised as such, requires an audience. Arendt uses the metaphor of virtuosity or the performing arts to explain her theory of action/freedom as acting together:

The performing arts … have a strong affinity with politics. Performing artists – dancers, play-actors, musicians and the like – need an audience to show their virtuosity, just as acting men need the presence of others before whom they can appear; both need a publicly organised space for their ‘work,’ and both depend upon others for the performance itself. (BPF 154)

257 The idea of politics as a performance, requiring both a theatre or political space and an audience, is realised in the Greek polis. The rational underlying the concept of a polis was to establish, and keep in existence, a space where freedom as performance could appear. In the realm of the polis, freedom is experienced as a mode of being, as a worldly, tangible reality. It is realised in “words which can be heard, in deeds which can be seen, and in events which are talked about … whatever occurs in this space of appearances is political by definition” (BPF 155). It should be noted however that freedom only appears in the realm of the political, rather than in the private sphere of the home or in the form of an administrative or representative government.

In The Human Condition, Arendt argues in favour of a distinction between the private, social and public spheres; while she concedes that political freedom is meaningless where humanity remains enslaved to nature, she argues that as long as biological necessity forms an irreducible dimension to the human condition, freedom is only possible through the separation of activities relating to the life process and those relating to politics. The attempt to redress the “social question,” as Marxists, following the French Revolution attempted to do, through political means, merely serves to place all aspects of human existence under necessity. For Arendt, this goal – of liberating humanity from biological necessity once and for all, makes natural need the sole content of revolutionary politics, and it leads not from necessity to freedom, but from necessity to violence. According to her, the attempt to liberate humanity from biological need and social inequality is responsible for returning men to the “state of nature” (Villa 1996: 30).

258 Similarly, administration does not qualify as political action on account of it being framed in terms of a means and ends. The bureaucrat or administrator is only concerned with finding the most efficient means to reach an already determined end. Free or plural action is impossible in this conception of politics because politics is reduced to the management of the “national household.” Representative government, which characterises liberal democracies are also merely concerned with administration and does not allow for the articulation of popular, plural opinion or for the performance of “noble actions.” In the cases where the representative government does not function effectively, it becomes oligarchy: “what we today call democracy is a form of government where the few rule, at least supposedly, in the interest of the many” 23

For Arendt, genuine political action is never a means to life, but the embodiment or expression of a meaningful life. However, as Villa points out, given all the various exclusions, what form can such action take? In what sense can political action be said to transcend necessity and instrumentality? (Villa 1996: 30). Arendt’s answer to this question is that the general mode of human activity that is able to break free of the life of process is speech. Genuine political action is nothing other than a certain kind of talk; it is a conversation or argument about public matters.

Speech and action are what distinguish us from other forms of life. It renders man a political animal because it enables him to transcend biological life and instrumental work

Through speech and action, the distinct uniqueness of man is manifested: “speech and

23 Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, Lond: Faber, 1963, p.269.

259 action reveal this unique distinctness. Through them, men distinguish themselves instead of being merely distinct; they are the modes in which humans appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men. This appearance as distinguished from mere bodily existence, rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can refrain and still be human” (HC 176). A life without speech and action is one that has ceased to be human as it is no longer lived among men.

The reason for this is linked to the interrelated themes of freedom and natality.24 Speech is fundamental in realising and acting upon our freedom as “with word and deed we insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance”

(HC 176-7). But this manner of inserting ourselves into the world is not enforced upon us by necessity, like labour; nor is it prompted by utility, like work. Rather, speech is

“stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative” (HC 177). This is ultimately what it means to act; to take an initiative, to begin something new, to set something into motion, to be creative and spontaneous: “with the creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world itself, … which is another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when man was created, but not before” (HC 177). That is, natality and freedom are not merely characteristics of the human condition, but constitute its very essence, insofar as we are beings “whose essence

24 It should be noted that the themes Arendt pursues share close affinities with those of Nancy’s.

260 is beginning.” Man is able to act spontaneously and freely on account of his uniqueness and distinctness as a person. With each birth, something new comes into the world, and the public space is where this finds expression: “if action as beginning corresponds to the human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualisation of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals” (HC 178).

It is only in action and speech that this uniqueness can manifest itself: “in acting and speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and the sound of the voice” (HC 179). This is because speech and action give men/women a means of distinguishing themselves, rather than merely being distinct. They are the modes in which we appear to each other as subjects, rather than as objects, and it is speech and action that render our life a human life, one with meaning: “a life without speech and without action

… is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men” (HC 176). It is through speech and action that we make our presence felt in the world, or that we “insert” ourselves into it. This insertion into the world through speech and action is likened to a second birth because the impulse to act “springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own initiative” (HC 177). To act is to therefore begin, to initiate, to set something into motion, and the reason for this is ontological insofar as to be for man is to act. This is related to the facticity of freedom, or

261 the Heideggerian idea that freedom is something that we are rather than something we possess, because we can only act in such a way because we are ontologically free: “with the creation of man, the principle of creation came into the world itself, which, of course, is only another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when man was created and not before” (HC 177). There, is therefore, a relation between freedom - our ability to act in the world or to begin something new - and our paradoxical constitution as beings that are singular and plural.

Speech and action are only possible on the basis that man is unique, or for my purposes in this thesis, individual, ontologically free, and also sharing the world with others. Arendt writes:

… with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. With respect to this somebody who is unique it can be truly said that nobody was there before. If action as beginning corresponds to the fact of birth, if it is the actualisation of the human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the actualisation of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique being among equals. (HC 178)

Action thus corresponds to natality and speech corresponds to the fact that we are unique individuals who live among others, because to speak, is to speak to or address someone else. It refers to dialogue and exchange with others and forms the basis of collaborative political action.

For Arendt, speech and action are related insofar as the human act must at the same time, contain an answer to the question “who are you?” Each act must be accompanied by an actor, by a person who must be identifiable as the one responsible for that act: “without

262 the accompaniment of speech … action would not only lose its revelatory character, but, and by the same token, it would lose its subject” (HC 178). For this reason, speech and action are central to each other, as without speech, action would not be action because there would no longer be an actor; simultaneously, the actor is only possible if he is at the same time the speaker of the words: “the action he begins is humanely disclosed by the world, and though his deed can be perceived in its brute physical appearance without verbal accompaniment, it becomes relevant only through the spoken word in which he identifies himself as the actor, announcing what he does, has done, and intends to do”

(HC 179). This does not however, mean that the actor can do whatever he or she likes; the fact that the actor is identified as such through speech means that one must also be responsible for the way in which one acts or conducts oneself.

Speech and action only find expression in the context of intersubjectivity. We only use speech and action in the context of human togetherness. However, the act here is not lost in a collectivity – there has to be a disclosure of the agent in the act, otherwise, action loses its specific character and becomes one form of achievement among others. Action must be able to disclose the “who” – the unique and distinct identity of the agent: “action without a name, a ‘who’ attached to it, is meaningless” (HC 179). To be free for Arendt is to not only participate in political life, but to also be responsible for one’s participation and conduct. One cannot disavow responsibility for the act because the agent, as identifiable, must claim it. The freedom that she is referring to is not the freedom as conceived by liberal political theory, where the subject is free by virtue of certain rights that are conferred on it by virtue of attributes such as rationality or citizenship. Rather it

263 is freedom that human subjects are by virtue of their ability to speak and act, or to conduct themselves.

This conception of political action is consistent with and elaborates the basis of the ontological conception of human freedom as outlined by Heidegger. Freedom here is not something we have like a property, but is something we are. As I have demonstrated throughout this thesis, what we are is existence. In this way, freedom is existence. It is something tangible, concrete, something that appears to us. As Arendt has shown, the place where it appears is the space of political action. Which is to suggest that Arendt’s motivation is partly ontological insofar as she wants to recover a particular way of being in the world.

In this chapter, I have demonstrated the way in which Heidegger’s thinking can lend itself to political considerations. Freedom conceived as something that we are rather than as something we possess means that it is an inescapable aspect of humanity. This does not however, render it meaningless or render us passive in the face of it.25 Rather, this freedom, as Arendt has shown, only appears in the context of action, and more

25 See for example, Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre on the question of human freedom as ontological. Merleau-Ponty argues in response that such a conception of freedom rules it out altogether. If it is the case that our freedom is the same in all our actions, our passions, and if it is not to be measured in terms of our conduct, then it follows that that the slave is as free living in fear and servitude as by escaping from it. If this is the case, then we cannot argue that there is such a thing as free action, because freedom lies before all actions. Freedom cannot appear as such, from out of the action, which implies that it is everywhere, insofar as it is something that we are, as part of our ontological constitution, but it is also nowhere because it cannot find expression or a place in our concrete lives. The second consequence of this is that the idea of action disappears, and with it, the idea of choice. To choose is to choose something, to act in the concrete world. But a freedom which has no need to be exercised because it is already given, or already acquired could not commit itself in such a way that it had to act or choose. It doesn’t have to commit itself because it knows that the following instant will find it, come what may, just as free and indeterminate.

264 specifically, political action. It is here that the themes I have been pursuing come together: individuation, responsibility, intersubjectivity, ethics and political action.

265 Conclusion

This thesis has argued that Heidegger’s concept of individuation is not another form of metaphysical solipsism, is not inconsistent with his notion of Mitsein and is not inherently unethical. Rather than downplay the notion of individuation in Heidegger’s work, I have argued throughout that this notion of individuation contains an ethical moment insofar as it is about taking responsibility for one’s existence. As I have argued, to be for Heidegger, is to be responsible for the conduct of oneself.

The first chapter demonstrated the way in which Heidegger’s notion of individuation substantially differs from the form of individuation or metaphysical solipsism found in

Descartes, Kant and even Husserl. I did this by drawing attention to the way the concept of individuation is only intelligible in relation to the concept of Mitsein. My point of departure in this chapter was the way in which the problem of individuation arises in philosophy, primarily by way of Descartes and Husserl, and Heidegger’s critique of it.

However, as I pointed out, Heidegger’s rethinking of this notion is not without its problems. While Heidegger does point out that he does not intend the account of individuation to exclude our ontological relations with others, it nevertheless does not address the tension that arises between the concept of Mitsein and the individuation that emerges in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being-toward-death and the tension between the paradoxical account of authentic individuation as being tied to the destiny or fate of the Volk.

266 This tension between being-with and individuation, as I pointed out in the second chapter, has led to a plethora of interpretations, which either attempt to reconcile the tension or argue that Heidegger’s inconsistency implicates him in the tradition of subjectivity he sought to evade. In this chapter, I examined the various interpretations that have attempted to rescue Heidegger from the charge of solipsism/individualism, most notably, those of Herbert Dreyfus and Frederick Olafson. I then explored some of the problems with both these interpretations before examining the criticisms made by

Jacques Taminiaux and Emmanuel Levinas. Both thinkers argue that rather than overcome the epistemological subject of metaphysics, Heidegger’s ontology merely reproduces metaphysical solipsism. Consequently, Heideggerian individuation forecloses a relation to the other.

I then examined Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of Mitsein or community in terms of the paradoxical logic of the singular. I used Nancy’s concept of the singular to argue that while Heidegger does state that Dasein is individuated in authenticity and death, in terms of being completely alone, cut off and isolated, Dasein’s individuation is precisely what opens it up to a relation with the other. That is, individuation is only possible because it is concomitant with being-with. The value of Heidegger’s analytic, I argued, is that it demonstrates that the solipsistic ego of metaphysics is both an ontological and logical impossibility. In doing so, it opens up a space for an ethics of individual responsibility for the conduct of oneself. This chapter concluded that individuation is not inconsistent with the account of being-with.

267 Before turning to an examination of the way in which Heidegger’s thinking can inform ethical and political action, it was necessary to explore the relation between ontology and ethics and politics. This was necessary for primarily two reasons. Firstly, on account of

Heidegger’s claims that ontology cannot articulate or inform an ethics or praxis and secondly, on account of Levinas’ claims that Heidegger’s prioritisation of the ontological subordinates the primary relation to the other to that of Being, thereby bypassing, subsuming or effacing the alterity of the other. On account of Heidegger’s concern with understanding Being from out of Dasein’s being-in-the-world and being-with-others,

Heideggerian ontology reduces Dasein’s relation to the other to comprehension.

In this chapter, I argued against Levinas’ claim that for Heidegger, the relation I have with Being by virtue of the ontological difference takes priority over the relation I have to the other. On the contrary, I suggested that it is only by virtue of Being that I can have an ethical relation to the other in the first place; a conclusion Levinas eventually reaches in his final engagement with Heidegger. I demonstrated the way in which the ethical moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take responsibility for its Being; because Dasein is also a Mitsein, as previously argued in chapter two, its responsibility for its own being necessarily entails a responsibility for the other. The consequence of this argument is that ontology and ethics are perhaps not as incongruent as Levinas’ contends.

Having established that individuation is consistent with the notion of Mitsein and that ontology does not efface ethical and political considerations, the second half of this thesis

268 attempted to put Heidegger to work in an ethical and political sense. I demonstrated the possible ethical implications to his thinking through an account of embodiment and the political implications through Heidegger’s account of freedom. In chapter four, I argued against criticisms which maintain that Heidegger is guilty of reproducing the metaphysical subject because of his refusal to address the question of Dasein’s embodiment. I suggested that the fact that the body is not directly addressed in

Heidegger’s work does not mean that it is not consistently invoked in other ways. My argument suggests that rather than abandon the body in Being and Time, Heidegger inadvertently creates a space for it; a space that opens, rather than closes ethical obligation.

To do this, I used two specific arguments made by Jean-Luc Nancy: the first is the inadequacy of language/discourse when it comes to the question of embodiment. For

Nancy, to generate a discourse on the body falls into the dynamic it seeks to evade because it ends up reproducing the body as an object of knowledge, rather than as an expression of meaning. Nancy conversely conceives of the body as meaning rather than as having meaning. The second is his reconceptualisation of the body in terms of the concepts of touch, spacing and ‘corpus.’

The interplay between the sensibility of touch and spacing, where the sensibility of touch is what opens up a spacing between bodies or between Dasein’s as individuals, is, I argued, also discernable in Heidegger’s texts. By examining Heidegger’s radical, albeit sparse analysis of space/place, I suggested that the phenomenology of lived space found

269 in Being and Time and of practical activities involving the human body, activities of the hands such as touching and grasping, handling and holding, writing and caressing, all presuppose the body. Given Heidegger’s dissatisfaction with the way in which the body has been conceptualised in philosophy, I suggested that Heidegger’s silence on the question of embodiment can be read as an attempt to allow the body to emerge from its objectification in more subtle and implicit ways; ways that share close affinities with

Nancy’s development of a notion of corpus.

In chapter five, I argued that Heidegger’s ontology of freedom potentially opens to a theory of political action. Here, I argued that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the ontology of self-presence and his alternative conception of it provides us with a way of thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set or determinations or rights that are conferred by virtue of certain characteristics. Rather, freedom becomes the very essence of existence, and by implication, community. While I conceded that this intersubjective dimension to freedom is only offered as a sketch in Heidegger, I demonstrated the way in which this can be fleshed out in terms of Hannah Arendt’s thinking on freedom, intersubjectivity and political action. It is in Heidegger’s theory of freedom, I suggested, that the concepts of individuation as singularity, Mitsein, and responsibility come together to inform a theory of political and ethical action.

Our individuality, as I have showed, is only intelligible in the context of our relations to others with whom we share a world, and a vision for how we want this world to be. As individuals, we are responsible for not only contributing to this vision, primarily by means of political action, conceived in terms of deliberation, speech, dialogue, and

270 fighting for the principles we choose to live by, but we must also assume responsibility for this action. As I have argued throughout, the ethical moment I want to capture in

Heidegger is not one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming obligations on behalf of others. Rather, it is an ethics of responsibility for one’s own existence; because this existence is lived among others, it entails a responsibility for others. This collective responsibility manifests itself in the world of ethical and political action.

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