Loyola University Chicago Loyola eCommons Dissertations Theses and Dissertations 2010 Joy as Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson Justin Albert Harrison Loyola University Chicago Follow this and additional works at: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Harrison, Justin Albert, "Joy as Attunement and End in the Philosophies of Martin Heidegger and Henri Bergson" (2010). Dissertations. 203. https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/203 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses and Dissertations at Loyola eCommons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Loyola eCommons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. Copyright © 2010 Justin Albert Harrison LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO JOY AS ATTUNEMENT AND END IN THE PHILOSOPHIES OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER AND HENRI BERGSON A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY PROGRAM IN PHILOSOPHY BY JUSTIN ALBERT HARRISON CHICAGO, IL MAY 2010 Copyright by Justin A. Harrison, 2009 All rights reserved. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank all of the people who made this dissertation possible, starting with my professors in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University Chicago. Dr. Andrew Cutrofello was an amazing dissertation committee chair. I am forever indebted to his critiques, analysis, support, and aid. I would also like to thank Loyola University Chicago for providing the funds with which I was able to complete my research and writing. An assistantship from the fall of 2005 to the spring of 2008, as well as a Fourth Year Fellowship during the 2008-2009 school year provided the funding and experience that I needed to complete this work. I am grateful to those who have contributed to Loyola and for Loyola’s generosity in providing this funding. Throughout this process I have had excellent teachers at Taylor University, the University of Toledo, and Loyola University. They are too numerous to name, but each has a special place in my heart and I am thankful to them all for their inspiration, care, and guidance. In addition to these professors, I am also thankful to my fellow students with whom I have developed deep bonds that I hope will last for life. I would also like to thank my parents Drs. Albert and Pamela Harrison. Their unfailing love and support throughout my life has made me who I am. Not only have they given me insight into the process of dissertating, but their care for one another has taught me much more about the beauty of a life lived well. iii Finally, I must thank my wife Carla Alegre. One can only write on something like joy if one has access to it. The name Alegre means joy. You have been my access to joy. You brought me back to life, and you opened the door to hidden joy. My heart is ever in your service. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii ABSTRACT vi CHAPTER I: ATTUNEMENT IN THE THOUGHT OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER 1 Introduction 1 Heidegger’s conception of attunement 4 CHAPTER II: BERGSON’S CRITIQUE OF THE INTELLECT 35 Development and attributes of the intellect 42 The outcomes of the intellect: Bergson’s critique 63 The intellect and science 69 The intellect and desire 77 Conclusions 86 CHAPTER III: JOY AND BERGSONIAN PHILOSOPHY 92 Intuition 94 The foundations of reality and the goal of philosophical thought 112 The nothing 113 Change, movement, and creation 120 Life 134 Joy as the end of Bergsonian philosophy 139 CHAPTER IV: JOY AS FUNDAMENTAL ATTUNEMENT 164 Heideggerean joy 164 Conclusions about Heideggerean joy 190 The nothing and its place in the ontologies of Heidegger and Bergson 198 Creation and joy 221 The relationship between anxiety and joy 261 BIBLIOGRAPHY 291 VITA 298 v ABSTRACT Martin Heidegger claims that attunement is one of the primordial ways in which Dasein understands its world. He focuses on anxiety as the fundamental attunement in which Dasein can more authentically uncover its Being. However, it is necessary to ask if anxiety is the only attunement out of which one can most authentically appropriate Being. Heidegger seems to have an unexamined bias in favor of “negative” attunements (anxiety, boredom) and never undertakes an extended analysis of “positive” moods such as joy or happiness. This dissertation is an examination of joy as a fundamental attunement through the works of Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger. We will focus attention on the common theme of “the nothing” and its place in the ontologies of both philosophers. We will argue that Heidegger’s focus on anxiety is the result of the place of the nothing in his ontology. In contrast, we will see that Bergson’s rejection of the nothing leads to his focus on what he calls the Life of the real. This focus leads to his constant return to joy and its relationship to philosophy and harmony with the real. Heidegger claims that authentic attunement in anxiety is the space in which Dasein can come into nearness with Being. Dasein is able to more authentically experience Being in two modes: meditative thinking and waiting. In order to attain joy, Dasein must first traverse through anxiety and the horror of confronting the abyss of Being. In contrast, Bergson’s account of joy does not make joy a derivative experience of humanity, but the vi grounding attunement out of which humans act creatively and find themselves at home in the world. For Bergson, creation is the mode of being that allows humanity to coincide with that which pushes life forward against the natural forces of degradation and death on earth. Using Nietzsche’s ideas about joy, return, and creativity, we link Bergson’s ideas about creation and Heidegger’s ideas about waiting to the emergence of joy. We show that it is not necessary that one await the emergence of joy after traversing through anxiety. Instead, we ultimately argue that in authentic, creative activity, humans experience a joy that is the foundation from which they have the desire for happiness and the ability to experience happiness. vii CHAPTER I ATTUNEMENT IN THE THOUGHT OF MARTIN HEIDEGGER INTRODUCTION This dissertation is an examination of joy as attunement in the philosophy of Henri Bergson. The use of the word attunement points directly towards Martin Heidegger’s analysis of attunement [Befindlichkeit] in Being and Time. I believe that Bergson is implicitly committed to a thesis about joy as fundamental attunement in Heidegger's understanding of this aspect of human existence. In order to analyze joy in Bergson’s thought it is necessary that I first analyze Heidegger’s conception of attunement and its relationship to the manner in which humans1 find themselves in the world. Among the various primordial attunements, Heidegger lists anxiety, love, boredom, and joy. However, Heidegger dedicates his time to analyzing anxiety (Being and Time, Introduction to Metaphysics, and “What is Metaphysics?”) and boredom (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics). In Heidegger’s thought, attunement is one of the structures of disclosure of the world that is part of the fundamental constitution of the existence of Dasein. It is therefore necessary that we examine attunement and how attunement provides the view of the world through which Dasein comes to find itself 1 Heidegger makes sure to distance himself from the idea of human being early in Being and Time. Rather than refer to humans as humans, he instead uses the term Dasein (literally being there) to refer to those beings that in their being are concerned about their being. We will explicate Heidegger’s conception of Dasein at the beginning of the next section. 1 2 located in the world. After explicating the role of attunement in Heidegger’s philosophy of existence, we will then focus on the ontic/ontological distinction that Heidegger elucidates in relation to fear and anxiety [Angst].1 Ultimately, Heidegger concludes that anxiety is the primordial attunement that founds the ability of humans to experience fear, and also founds the manner in which humans find themselves in a world as such. “Being anxious discloses, primordially and directly, the world as world.”2 Paying special attention to this distinction is important because Bergson proposes a similar distinction in relation to the manner in which humans perceive the world. Heidegger’s distinction between the ontic and the ontological provides a foundation from which we can adequately explicate Bergson’s distinction between the mode of the intellect and the mode of intuition. This Bergsonian distinction is parallel to that of Heidegger as humans are given primarily in an ontic world environment. That is, they find themselves in relation to an actual world that can be observed and verified using various techniques. However, at the same time, humans seek the ontological foundations of the ontic reality. That means that humans seek the underlying structures that are not immediately present in order to explain the ontic reality. Similarly with Bergson, humans begin from a state of immediate perception that involves examining the world through the intellect. The intellect presents a picture of the world in its actual existence and the intellect also carves out objects in the world. Intuition is different from intellect for Bergson in that he believes that it reveals a more adequate picture of the actual structure of the reality 1 Some such as Magda King (see note 12 below) have translated Angst as dread rather than anxiety. 2 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambuagh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 187/175.