Lectures on Heidegger's Being and Time_13_Resolutness

Division II Chapter 2

Review

The 2nd Division begins its further grounding of the Care Structure by completing two requirements left unfulfilled by the 1st division viz., (a) the necessity for grasping Dasein as a whole (b) the necessity for gaining a deeper understanding of Dasein's authenticity.

The first chapter, through its discussion of Death, has shown the manner in which Dasein can come into our fore-having as a whole viz., as Being-towards-death. It has also indicated an authentic attitude towards this phenomenon when Dasein realizes that Death is its ownmost, non-relational and unsurpassed, certain yet indefinite possibility. In such a relationship to its death, Dasein stands in anticipation. Such a realization, on the part of Dasein, of it ownmost possibility, is the ontological basis for authenticity.

Chapter 2 seeks an 'existentiell' demonstration of such authenticity (as we shall see, the phenomenon of anticipating resoluteness will provide such a demonstration).

Division II Chapter 2

Heidegger will choose a description of conscience as the phenomenal basis from which the possibility of Dasein's authentic existence will be 'attested'. [Note on the term conscience (Gewissens): footnotes 3, 6: Marburg lectures July 1924, further reference works cited. The term is used very broadly and with certain specific references that are not available to this reader]

Section 55 Certain formal structures of 'conscience'

(1) The phenomenon of conscience gives us something to understand: as such, conscience has the form of a disclosure.

(2) The structure of the disclosure is immediate ie., there is nothing 'between' conscience and the hearer. This, then, precludes something like the they-world standing between conscience and the hearer.

(3) The mode of conscience, as involving a 'hearer', is discourse.

Thus, we could say conscience (in general) has the form of disclosedness, the structure of immediacy and the mode of discourse.

The next 2 sections look more closely at this general form of conscience -- and, most specifically, the mode of discourse, which has the character of a call (Ruf).

Section 56, 57

Here Heidegger articulates the dialectic that is involved in the structure of conscience as a call. It is a kind of 'dialogue' between the self and itself, a kind of reciprocity between self and self -- a refexivity of the self with itself. The formal structure would then be a relation of the self to itself. But the actual structure here is not one of identity (A=A), for there is a movement involved here, a difference involved here. Let's look more closely at the structural moments: in any discourse, there is (a) that which is talked about (b) that which is said in the talk.

To the former, it is manifestly Dasein itself that is talked about (conscience is a dialogue 'of the self with the self, ie., Dasein). So, it is Dasein's self that is talked about. Now, this has a significant consequence viz., that what is 'addressed' in the 'call of conscience' is solely the self: it is one's own self that is 'called' -- and, as a consequence of this, conscience (as Heidegger uses its) passes over the they-self and 'speaks' only to the self as one's own self ("the self gets brought to itself by the call" 273/317).

Thus that which is talked about is Dasein's self apart from the they-self, that which is talked about is Dasein's own self.

What gets said in this call?

Heidegger answers, strictly speaking, nothing (Das Nichts). The call does not have the 'content' of giving direction or information. Rather, Heidegger says, the call of conscience 'breaks through' the chatter and concealment of the they-world. The call has the character of the self silently speaking to the self involved in the they-self and in such a way as to bring this self back to itself

GRAPH

Heidegger continues (section 57) to investigate this dialectical structure: (a) who is called by the call (b) who does the calling.

It is the self, in its dispersion into the they-world (concealment), that is called by the call of conscience. "Conscience summons Dasein's self from its lostness in the they" 274/319. But if is the self that is called, who does the calling? Again, it will be the self -- for in conscience Dasein call itself: the call comes from me...But that which does the calling nevertheless has the aspect of coming over me...

Now we have seen the phenomenon's before ie., of Dasein 'coming over itself'. For in the mood of anxiety Dasein's self is dislodged from its lostness in the world. Dasein, stripped down to the very essential moments of its Being ie., Dasein in its structure of Care (which is essentially hidden by its everyday interpretations of itself) becomes that which is silently 'called' to itself.

GRAPH

But what does this call of conscience give us to understand? Heidegger answers that the formal response to the 'voice' of conscience is traditionally given in terms of 'guilt' (Schuld). Within this manner of speaking, Heidegger will re-describe the Care-structure and in such a way that it yields to the present interpretation which speaks of Dasein in terms of conscience and guilt.

It is important to note the entirely formal sense of "guilt" that Heidegger takes as the essential sense of guilt. Heidegger speaks of the various everyday connotation of Schuld and then points our that these everyday descriptions will drop out in the formalized sense which will center upon two moments. In the formal sense of Guilt Heidegger sees it as (Being responsible for) Being the basis for a lack of something. And from this he says that in the idea of guilt there lies the character of a not (Nicht). To this 'not' there also goes the sense of Being responsible for ie., Being-the-basis-of. Putting the two together Heidegger gives the formal, existential definition of Guilt as Being the basis for a nullity (a 'notness'). This is a new terminology for the Being of Dasein. How does it apply to our former understanding?

(1) Thrownness

The facticity of Dasein's existenz consists of the fact that Dasein has been thrown into a world and into a historical/societal matrix which it itself did not, and in principle could not, choose. This "not" of Dasein's facticity shows that Dasein never has the 'power' over its own Being from the ground up -- that in a sense, Dasein is not the radical ground for its own Being. This expresses the sense of Dasein's finitude. The not of throwness is the finitude of Dasein.

(2) Understanding

Dasein understands itself in terms of possibilities. The possible constitutes an essential structure of Dasein's Existenz. As thrown, Dasein confronts its facticity through the projection of the understanding. But it is essential to the existentiell-ontic projection of the understanding that in making one choice (ie., in developing one possibility) one has simultaneously not made other choices. This is the negativity inherent in the freedom of Dasein (which is to say, the Transcendence of Dasein).

Thus, in the structures of throwness and projection there lies an essential negativity. Thus the structure of Care, in its very essence, is permeated by a nullity, a negativity -- das Nichts.

[This indicates the ontological problematic of Nothingness -- for, as we have seen, it is bound up with the very Being of Dasein. Heidegger in his essay Was ist Metaphysik? confronts this problem and shows the utter inadequacy of the scientific approach to the phenomenon of Human Being -- which is not only blind to the notion of Being, but since it only deals with 'things,' cannot 'come across' no-thing' (das Nicht).

Going back to our original problem. We have said that in conscience Dasein calls itself back to itself. It does so by proclaiming Dasein as essentially 'guilty': this means -- the call of conscience is in fact the call of Care which is now seen in terms of a double nullity inherent in Dasein as finite transcendence. Now, since Care is the being of Dasein, and since Being-guilty constitutes the Being of Care (286/332), the call of conscience is actually the call of Dasein to return to its ownmost Being (to that which it 'really is' ie., a finite transcendence)

This returning to one's own Being is what Nietzsche meant by a homecoming -- it is the command: "Become who you are." And, as Nietzsche so well understood, such a' homecoming' involved a certain kind of 'overcoming', a certain kind of choice on the part of the individual.

So too with Heidegger, to 'hear' the appeal of conscience is to choose to understand oneself in one's ownmost potentiality for Being. ("Understanding the call is a choosing"). [Thus there is an act, a praxis a the very core of Being and Time] It is a choice of oneself as finite transcendence -- with all the pregnant possibilities that such a choice entails.

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Section 60

We have spoken of conscience as a kind of disclosedness. How are the moments of disclosedness present here?

(1) Vershehen

In the understanding one finds Dasein's primary mode of Being in terms of the potentiality for Being -- conscience demands that Dasein live in an ontic-existentiel manner in accord with this potential.

(2) Befindlichkeit

Such a willingness to live as such means that Dasein be prepared for the anxiety involved in such an open awareness of one's self.

(3) Rede

Dasein 'hears' this silent call of conscience and takes it up in the mode of being quiet (reticence).

Now, all three moments which constitute the disclosedness (Erschlossekeit) of conscience are gathered into an attitude of Dasein which Heidegger call resoluteness (Entschlossekeit) And in resoluteness we have arrived at the possibility of an authentic existentiell attitude of the self to itself.

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Sections 61, 62

These sections show how such an authentic attitude is fulfilled through a 'joining' of resoluteness with anticipation. Here, when resoluteness 'thinks through' to its whole consequence it sees that the Being of Dasein is essentially a Being towards death -- as such, resoluteness anticipates its possibilities as its ownmost possibilities. This is the relationship between guilt and death in the Heideggerian analysis (cf 307/354-356).

Resoluteness is authentically and wholly what it is, only as anticipatory resoluteness. And only as such do we have the full attitude appropriate for an authentic relationship of the self to its existence.

Section 64

The 'I' (the self) is essentially the self of the Care-structure 'retrieved' from its lostness in 'Das Mas Selbst'. It is the authentic individual. 'Self-constancy' is the resolute 'taking up' of this self and remaining 'faithful' to it.

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Result: Anticipation (wholeness) when 'joined' to resoluteness (authenticity) yields to the primodial unity of anticipatory resoluteness in which Dasein 'takes over' its own true self. And this structure of the self as Care is what is to be first analyzed in terms of Temporality.

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Copyright: Robert Cavalier
Department of Philosophy / Carnegie Mellon University