The Impossibility of Powerless Dasein and a Powerful World in Fundamental Ontology1

THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF POWERLESS DASEIN AND A POWERFUL WORLD IN FUNDAMENTAL ONTOLOGY1 Alice Koubová In this article we would like to concentrate on two corresponding issues of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology presented in his work, Being and Time.2 These issues concern the interpretation of the structure of the potentiality-of-being of Dasein and of the character of the “world” and of innerworldly beings. We will come to two problem- atic points of this conception: to the theme of the so called affairs in the frame of description of the world and to the theme of the so called third mode of existence in the context of the modal transfor- mation from inauthenticity to authenticity via Angst, conscience and being-toward-death. These issues should confirm that in fundamental ontology Heidegger neglects a key and decisive characteristic of the human being—its powerlessness as well as the essential character of the world—its power. We will touch by this the inner boundary of fundamental ontology and refer to the potential transgression of this philosophy. Basic Concepts It is well known that the human being plays an exceptional part among all beings in fundamental ontology. The concept of Dasein does not simply designate the human being, but the human being as being “there”: “the term Da-sein as a pure expression of being.”3 Dasein is a human being which makes it possible for phenomena 1 This text is published thanks to the following research project of the Czech Sci- ence Foundation: “Philosophical Investigations of Body Experiences: Transdisciplinary Perspectives,” GAP 401/10/1164. 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany, 1996). All subsequent quotations are taken from this translation but we refer to the pagination of the German original, Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen, 1953), which is written in the margins of the English translation. 3 Ibid., p. 12. 282 alice koubová to reveal themselves and which is at the same time letting being be. Dasein exists in an understanding disclosedness toward being, i.e., it has always somehow understood being and it exists at the same time in such a way so as to understand this being. Dasein is to disclose what it has always somehow already disclosed. Heidegger’s strategy of the disclosure of being in a place that lets being be is based on a cyclical and essentially temporal capacity to grasp in a certain way that which has always already been somehow grasped and beheld that it is exactly this relationship to the conditions of possibility that determines the essence of that which is in this way disclosed as existing. This thinking moves in a self-related circling, in the temporal structure of care as being-in-the-world. The self-relation and the world co-constitute thus the fundamental structure of Dasein. This self-relation and being-in-the-world has a form of potentiality- of-being, being of its own possibilities. Dasein exists as that which has already actualized some possibilities in the world, which has not made use of others and which projects itself toward other possibilities which it has “before” itself (beyond itself ). It understands its existence as a project of possibilities. Moreover, Dasein does not happen in any other way than always in a certain mode (way of being). It is always somehow and never as a neutral “Da-sein itself.” Dasein is not simply what it is in itself; it exists always in this or that way. What is then the self-relationship of potentiality-of-being? Dasein is never the same, but “only” “ipse,” i.e., a factual, concrete temporal way of being-itself. The self-relationship of the human being can be only the ipseity, which includes in itself always already some internal difference and which is preserved in a temporal unity of the becoming of Dasein. However, that Dasein always already is in some way and that it is in this way always already itself is never cancelled in this structure of various modalities of being and different ways of being one’s self. “Da-sein is the being which I myself always am. Mineness belongs to existing Da-sein . .”4 The fact that Dasein exists in selfhood, or “mineness” Jemeinigkeit( ), as “always mine,” is secured according to Heidegger, by a time whose own unity is presupposed. Due to this kind of temporality, existence is always its own. This fact can be expressed by a quasi-paradoxical state- ment: Dasein is always already beyond itself and as such it is always its own Dasein. This specific structure of selfhood relates to the possibil- 4 Ibid., p. 53..

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