REVISIONING HEIDEGGER: EXISTENTIELL CRISES and the QUESTION of the MEANING of BEING Paul Rector Towson State University
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53 REVISIONING HEIDEGGER: EXISTENTIELL CRISES AND THE QUESTION OF THE MEANING OF BEING Paul Rector Towson State University "Before my highest mountain I stand and before my longest wandering; to that end I must first go down deeper than ever I descended-deeper into pain than ever I descended, down into its blackest flood." -Friedrich Nietzsche, TItUS Spoke Zarathustra The Heideggerian philosophy of Being and Time,! properly con ceived, is a pilgrimage. It is an attempt to pave a way into the uncharted territory of the fundamental ontological question of what it means to be. The question has thus far remained uncharted not only because it has been neglected and "covered over" by Western thought, but also because its pursuit requires confronting the very reality we spend our lives avoiding: Death. The fundamentalonto logical question becomes an issue, Heidegger argues, only if we are responsive to the intimation of nothingness disclosed in angst. What angst reveals is not some abstract conception of nothing ness which Dasein may objectively evaluate; rather, it confronts Dasein with its Sein-zum-tode (Being-towards-death), with its own liability to nothingness, with its own possibility of the impossibili ty of its being. Thus, the primary presumption we have about our selves-that we are-is undermined by an intimation that reveLlls that we are able not to be. Such intimations are ordinarily not embraced by Dasein, they are repressed, swallowed by our busy concern with everyday affairs. But Being and Time is profoundly under the sway of these intimations and may be read as a beckoning of the reader to overcome the desire to avoid them. The conversion Heidegger beckons us to make is one from inauthentic everyday ness, which is most distinctly characterized by its ontological Rector is asellior philosophy major lit Towson State University ill Marylrllul. IIe is a residwt a/Baltimore alld pia liS to pursuea doctorate ill phi/osoplzyat DUqllel,'W Ullivcrflily ill tire/ali. 1 I specify this because of the well-know n and controversial iSflue ofHcidcggcr' fl "turning" from the "early" Heidegger of Beillg and Time to the "late" of hifl subse quent writings. For an argument on behalf of this distinction, see Rorty, R Essl/ys (m J-Jeidegger and Others. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 1991; esp. pp. 50-66. For an argument against it, see Barrett, W. Irrational Man; pp. 206-238. Episteme • Volume V • May 1994 54 PAUL RECTOR somnambulism, to the authentic, in which we resolutely grasp ourselves as Being-towards-death. And, as Jerome Miller explains, "because Being and Time as a whole has principally in view the undoing of avoidances, it is not just about dying but an exercise in dying" (Miller, p. 207). But dying in what sense? What does it mean to die? Can, for example, the reading of a text be a death? Can the loss of a loved one or the collapse of a project to which one has devoted one's life be a death? Can any of these events prompt, as only death can, an experience of nothingness capable of awakening the fundamental ontological question in such a radical way that itreaches far beyond the mere fonning of aninterrogative to the very depths of ourbeing? William Barrett answers this question negatively whenhe writes, "man can surmount all other heartbreaks, even the death's of those he loves, but his own death puts an end to him" (Barrett, p. 225).2 Sartre, in a different manner than Barrett, argues that such events cannot be understood as deaths insofar as we never experience death, but we do experience the various "heartbreaks" described. Sartre, in direct opposi tion to Heidegger' s assertion that death is our "owrunost possibility," takes the Epicurean stance that death is "really nothing, for so long as we are, death has not come, and when it has come, we are not." Even Heidegger insists that such experi ences are merely existentiell crises and do not open us to the funda mental ontological question.3 To enforce his claim. Heidegger devel ops a complex nomenclature to distinguish between onticjontologi cal experiences and existentiellj existential self-awareness, devotes section 47 of Being and Time to arguing against the possibility of angst being spawned by the death of an other, and points out that, for 2 Barrett's statement seems to me to suffer from an inappropriately "literal" reading of Heidegger. Against stIch a reading, Jerome Miller asserts that: "a literal reading of Heidegger can mislead one into thinking that an encounter with death occurs only when one faces one's own physical demise. Being und Time is, among other things, an argument against just such literality; the encounter with death it describes occurs whenever one's world is shattered, irrespective of the event which triggers it" OW, n. 212). 3I've for some time now been grappling with why Heidegger drives such an uncompromising wedge between ontologically disclosive experiences and ontic/ existentiell experiences. In an obvious way, he is developing rigid distinctions between the ontic and the ontological because he holds that confusion between the two was precisely what led Western ontology astray. Further, Heidegger is acu tely aware of how we often allow the drama of crisis to divert us from the fundamental REVISIONING HElDEGGER 55 Kierkegaard, the focus on existentiell problems greatly impeded his understanding of fundamental ontology (BT, p. 494). Heidegger argues that the loss of loved ones, the reading of "world changing" texts and the failure of life-long projects, like any other events within the world, are ontic occurrences-sources of potential existentiell crises. Rather than advancing the pursuit of fundamental ontology, they actually hinder progress by drawing us into the world and diverting us from the "uncanniness" of angst which reveals us as not at-home within the world. Thus, the consensus among these thinkers is that existentiell crises do not and cannot raise the fundamental ontological question ofwhatitmeans to be. Instead of being ontologically disclosive, their powerful impact on our lives evidences how severely we take the question for granted. But are all existentiell crises fundamentally the same? Are they all so easily homogenized within the framework of our everyday existence? Could itbe that some of these events disrupt our lives so radically, shatter us so completely, that no aspect of our lives remains untouched and that Being itself is revealed as pro foundly foreign and, for the first time, questionable? In short, is it reasonable to affirm that while existentiell crises are generally events that happen within our world, some are so devastating that they can only be adequat~ly discussed as happening to our world? It is my claim, and the burden of this essay, that it is not only a reasonable affirmation, but a necessary one. Those who find this assertion incompatible with the Heideggerian philosophy of Being and Time, I will suggest, do not take seriously enough either Heidegger's phe nomenological analysis of what it means to be-in-the-world, or how significantly this "basic state of Dasein" grounds our everyday ontological presuppositions which, in principle, must be shaken if we are going to ask the fundamental ontological question. In his discussion of the "worldhood" of the world, Heidegger illustrates the pre-positional situation of thrown Dasein by under- ontological question. He would be the first to notice how we talk endlessly about the horrible things that happen to us. Although ordinarily, the potentially dcvastQting questions these events raise about the meaning of existence are repressed and covered over through "idle talk," "curiosity" and "ambiguity," Heidegger's distinc tion overlooks the possibility that they needn't be. Indeed, these questionsmay be intelligently addressed and allowed to rupture our deepest ontological assump tions. 56 PAUL RECTOR scoring the prepositional condition of our being-in-the-world-with others. Countering the modemcOgito, Heidegger argues that we are not isolated subjects who are aware of our existence through an awareness of the internal activity of our thinking and who must, therefore, make a leap (of faith) over an abyss to reach the external world. Rather, Daseinis "Being-there." We originally find ourselves amidst the world. Arguing against the Cartesian and Kantian con ceptions of the world, Heidegger asserts that the "world" is neither res extensa nor is it merely a collection of objects, that is to say, the sum of its parts. The "worldhood" of the world, what makes it a world as such, is that it is more than this sum. The world is an horizon of meaning in terms of which all objects encountered are interpreted (BT, pp. 91-148).4 Each given object encountered by Dasein is mean ingful only in terms of its relation to its place in the totality, and the totality itself is given coherency by this horizon of meaning. But this horizon of meaning is neither given nor arbitrary; it blossoms forth from ourinvolvement in the world. This is no minor distinction. For, as Dasein, who exists primordially as being-in-the-world-with-oth ers, and who is "fallen" amidst the world in average everydayness, we are susceptible to seduction by the "things" we encounter within the world. In fact, any given object within the world has the potential to astonish us and pull us under its sway so completely that it comes to Ittean the world to us. Falling in love, it seems to me, is an extremely accessible example of this, and its exploration may help draw our inquiry into phenomenological focus. Falling inlove is truly afallingin thatitpulls the ground outfrom under us and shatters the compass which governs the direction of our everyday routines.