Graduate 120: BT 03: Sec. 02
Introduction, Chapter 1. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being
Section 02. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being
"The question of the meaning of Being must be formulated. If it is a fundamental question, or indeed the fundamental question, it must be made transparent, and in an appropriate way." (BT 24/4) Heidegger begins by considering the nature of questions in general in preparation for exhibiting the question of being and its distinctive character.
"Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]," says Heidegger. (BT 24/5) One way to think about Heidegger's view of inquiry is to use the analogy of a gap in understanding (like a gap in a puzzle) where the goal is to fill that gap, and the way in which one goes about trying to do that is guided by the grasp that one already has of the nature of that gap and of what is likely to fill it. Even before embarking on the investigation, an inquirer must have some idea of the context in which it is to be conducted and of the parameters and conditions that will mark an acceptable (intelligible) answer. One must have some idea of what one is looking for? So, for instance, when Mother asks, "Which member of this family knocked over the vase in the dining room?" it is clear that her question is informed by a great deal of background knowledge. She already understands much about the situation and that is what allows her to ask the question that she does and to conduct her inquiry effectively. [1] Answering the question, then, simply involves "laying bare" (to use Heidegger's language) that which the question is about and ascertaining its character.
Now the inquiry has three key components: that which is asked about (what the inquiry is about; what, in theoretical investigations, is to be determined and conceptualized), that which is interrogated, and that which is to be found out by the asking. Now our intention is to formulate the question of being as clearly as possible--to make it transparent to itself--and in order to do that, we need to make each of these factors clear and transparent.
Now if an inquiry must be guided by some grasp of what is sought then since this inquiry concerns the meaning of being, it must be the case that we already have some grasp of that meaning. But we must be careful not to overreach ourselves and think that we have a better grasp of it than we actually do. That, after all, is Heidegger's whole point in reviving the question. With that in mind, consider the question, "What is "Being"?" Now the reason that we are asking the question is that we do not know what being is; that is why we are asking the question. Yet, by asking the question, we demonstrate that we do have some grasp of the concept. Just as the mother in the above analogy demonstrates that she has some grasp on who the culprit is ("Which member of this family..."), so just by our use of the word "is" in the question, "What is "Being"?" we demonstrate that we have some grasp of the meaning of being. We remain unable, at this point, to fix the meaning conceptually and we do not even know the "horizon" in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped. "But this vague average understanding of Being is still a Fact." (BT 25/6)
Our ability to use the term "is" reflects what Heidegger calls our "average understanding of Being." By this he does not mean a capacity to grasp the conceptual content or meaning of the term, but rather, an understanding that is reflected in our ability to use the term effectively and consistently. In many ways, Heidegger takes this to be a much more helpful clue to the actual meaning of being than the various philosophical speculations about its meaning that have come down through history. At the end of the investigation, when we have a full understanding of the meaning of being, that understanding should be able to account for this average understanding, as well as understand why the concept of being is so difficult to grasp clearly, and what the obstacles to understanding it are, and why and how they arise. This is the goal, even if, at the outset, our approach seems to be quite far removed from tradition approaches to the topic.
Concerning the three components of the question of (the meaning) of being. Heidegger begins by saying, "In the question which we are to work out, what is asked about is Being--that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which entities are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail." (BT 26/6) Now we must keep in mind that being is not a thing in the world like an apple is a thing in the world. In filling this gap in understanding, we are not looking for an entity (like an apple) or a cause (like a child) or a process or anything else like that. As a consequence, the kind of approach we take to answering the question will be different from other questions, particularly those concerning entities. That which is to be found out by the asking is the meaning of being. And since being is always of entities then that which is interrogated just is entities.
Now there is a question about our ability to investigate the meaning of the being of entities (so there is a question about the viability of this project) because it's not clear that we can grasp entities as they are in themselves. Under a blue light, a red apple will appear black. And its not clear, given the nature of our physical senses that we are able to interact with objects fully as they really are and not just as they appear or as they seem to me. But if we are to grasp the being of an entity, we need to be able to grasp that entity as it is in itself. Heidegger also recognizes, as a problem, the fact that we use "being" in so many different ways and to mean so many different things. He says, "Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the 'there is'." (BT 26/7-8) Our challenge, then, is to discern which (if any) is the most appropriate starting point for our investigation.
In order to make this inquiry transparent to itself, Heidegger turns to inquiry itself as his starting point. "Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it--all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore are modes of Being for those particular entities which we, the inquirers, are ourselves. Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an entity--the inquirer--transparent in his own Being. The very asking of this question is an entity's mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired about--namely, Being. This entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term "Dasein". If we are to formulate our question explicitly and transparently, we must first give a proper explication of an entity (Dasein), with regard to its Being." (BT 26-27/7) Heidegger begins by pointing to such things as looking at something, understanding, conceiving, and choosing as ways or modes of being for inquirers. Rather than ask about the being of apples or bats--the results of which investigation would be dubious at best since it's not clear that we can understand the nature of these entities in themselves--he turns his inquiry back onto the inquirer. To begin his investigation into the meaning of being, he looks at the being of the inquirer which is simultaneously exhibited and investigated in that inquiry. The entity (in this case, the inquirer, although other modes of being are possible for this entity) Heidegger denotes by the term "Dasein." Now Dasein literally means "being-there". In some other philosophical writing it simply stands for existence as when one speaks of the existence (the "being-there") of God or the existence (the "being-there") of aliens. But in certain contexts it is taken to refer specifically to the kind of being that belongs to persons and that is how Heidegger uses it.
One might ask: Well, if "Dasein" just refers to persons or human beings, why not just use those expressions? The reason is that Heidegger is trying to make a very particular point about what is distinctive about human beings. He comments in a later section about the various ideas that people associate with being human (e.g. being a rational animal or a member of the species homo sapien) but none of these, for Heidegger, succeed at getting at the heart of what it really means to be the kind of creature that we are (and, in fact, they get in the way of understanding what is at the heart of what it really means to be the kind of creature that we are). We are the kinds of creatures that "are-there" in a way different from the way that books or television sets or coffee cups "are-there" and Heidegger underscores that by using the term "Dasein".
Now one might wonder at this point whether there is not some problematic circularity in Heidegger's approach. How can it be that we must define an entity in its being before we can formulate the question of being based on that definition? Heidegger offers two responses. First he points out that accusations of circularity are vacuous where investigations into first principles are concerned. This might be read as a concession--acknowledging that there is a kind of circularity in the investigation of first principles but that it is not a problem. His second response is to point out that, as a matter of fact ("factically"), there is no such circularity in the current investigation. "One can determine the nature of entities in their Being [as when one describes "that" and "how" an apple is--reflecting the average understanding of being] without necessarily having the explicit concept of the meaning of Being at one's disposal [which is the goal of this inquiry]." (BT 27/7) Heidegger describes this average understanding of being as that "in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the essential constitution of Dasein itself." (BT 28/8) The point is that the meaning of being, which is the goal of this investigation, is not supposed to be the ground for a derivation of the average understanding of being or vice versa. Rather, the goal of this investigation is to lay bare and exhibit the grounds of this average understanding in the very meaning of being.]
Where the appearance of circularity comes is in the "remarkable 'relatedness backward and forward'" which connects being (of which inquiry is a mode) with being (which is the object of this inquiry). But the reason for this is that we have selected the being of Dasein as the starting point of our investigation just because Dasein has a unique grasp of its own being and is in a position (that it has with no other entity in the world) of being able to grasp itself in making this inquiry. In this, we have given priority to the being of Dasein in this investigation--a point that will derive further support from the considerations that follow.
--
Footnotes:
[1] It should be noted that even if the mother happens to be wrong about the vase having been knocked over by a member of her family (perhaps the culprit was one of her children's classmates or the neighbor's dog) her question still demonstrates a grasp of certain basic facts, for instance, that there was a cause. Her son could not coherently reply: "No one caused the vase to fall over. In fact, nothing caused the vase to fall over." That response is simply unintelligible, given our understanding of the nature of causation. Vases do not fall over for no reason at all. The reason might not be a child or classmate or dog or gust of wind, but it still might be the deterioration of the legs of the table on which the vase rested or some undetectable quantum event or even ghosts or magic spells. As implausible as these causal explanations might seem, they are still intelligible whereas the idea that there simply was no cause of the vase's falling over is not.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
Section 02. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being
"The question of the meaning of Being must be formulated. If it is a fundamental question, or indeed the fundamental question, it must be made transparent, and in an appropriate way." (BT 24/4) Heidegger begins by considering the nature of questions in general in preparation for exhibiting the question of being and its distinctive character.
"Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]," says Heidegger. (BT 24/5) One way to think about Heidegger's view of inquiry is to use the analogy of a gap in understanding (like a gap in a puzzle) where the goal is to fill that gap, and the way in which one goes about trying to do that is guided by the grasp that one already has of the nature of that gap and of what is likely to fill it. Even before embarking on the investigation, an inquirer must have some idea of the context in which it is to be conducted and of the parameters and conditions that will mark an acceptable (intelligible) answer. One must have some idea of what one is looking for? So, for instance, when Mother asks, "Which member of this family knocked over the vase in the dining room?" it is clear that her question is informed by a great deal of background knowledge. She already understands much about the situation and that is what allows her to ask the question that she does and to conduct her inquiry effectively. [1] Answering the question, then, simply involves "laying bare" (to use Heidegger's language) that which the question is about and ascertaining its character.
Now the inquiry has three key components: that which is asked about (what the inquiry is about; what, in theoretical investigations, is to be determined and conceptualized), that which is interrogated, and that which is to be found out by the asking. Now our intention is to formulate the question of being as clearly as possible--to make it transparent to itself--and in order to do that, we need to make each of these factors clear and transparent.
Now if an inquiry must be guided by some grasp of what is sought then since this inquiry concerns the meaning of being, it must be the case that we already have some grasp of that meaning. But we must be careful not to overreach ourselves and think that we have a better grasp of it than we actually do. That, after all, is Heidegger's whole point in reviving the question. With that in mind, consider the question, "What is "Being"?" Now the reason that we are asking the question is that we do not know what being is; that is why we are asking the question. Yet, by asking the question, we demonstrate that we do have some grasp of the concept. Just as the mother in the above analogy demonstrates that she has some grasp on who the culprit is ("Which member of this family..."), so just by our use of the word "is" in the question, "What is "Being"?" we demonstrate that we have some grasp of the meaning of being. We remain unable, at this point, to fix the meaning conceptually and we do not even know the "horizon" in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped. "But this vague average understanding of Being is still a Fact." (BT 25/6)
Our ability to use the term "is" reflects what Heidegger calls our "average understanding of Being." By this he does not mean a capacity to grasp the conceptual content or meaning of the term, but rather, an understanding that is reflected in our ability to use the term effectively and consistently. In many ways, Heidegger takes this to be a much more helpful clue to the actual meaning of being than the various philosophical speculations about its meaning that have come down through history. At the end of the investigation, when we have a full understanding of the meaning of being, that understanding should be able to account for this average understanding, as well as understand why the concept of being is so difficult to grasp clearly, and what the obstacles to understanding it are, and why and how they arise. This is the goal, even if, at the outset, our approach seems to be quite far removed from tradition approaches to the topic.
Concerning the three components of the question of (the meaning) of being. Heidegger begins by saying, "In the question which we are to work out, what is asked about is Being--that which determines entities as entities, that on the basis of which entities are already understood, however we may discuss them in detail." (BT 26/6) Now we must keep in mind that being is not a thing in the world like an apple is a thing in the world. In filling this gap in understanding, we are not looking for an entity (like an apple) or a cause (like a child) or a process or anything else like that. As a consequence, the kind of approach we take to answering the question will be different from other questions, particularly those concerning entities. That which is to be found out by the asking is the meaning of being. And since being is always of entities then that which is interrogated just is entities.
Now there is a question about our ability to investigate the meaning of the being of entities (so there is a question about the viability of this project) because it's not clear that we can grasp entities as they are in themselves. Under a blue light, a red apple will appear black. And its not clear, given the nature of our physical senses that we are able to interact with objects fully as they really are and not just as they appear or as they seem to me. But if we are to grasp the being of an entity, we need to be able to grasp that entity as it is in itself. Heidegger also recognizes, as a problem, the fact that we use "being" in so many different ways and to mean so many different things. He says, "Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. Being lies in the fact that something is, and in its Being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the 'there is'." (BT 26/7-8) Our challenge, then, is to discern which (if any) is the most appropriate starting point for our investigation.
In order to make this inquiry transparent to itself, Heidegger turns to inquiry itself as his starting point. "Looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it--all these ways of behaving are constitutive for our inquiry, and therefore are modes of Being for those particular entities which we, the inquirers, are ourselves. Thus to work out the question of Being adequately, we must make an entity--the inquirer--transparent in his own Being. The very asking of this question is an entity's mode of Being; and as such it gets its essential character from what is inquired about--namely, Being. This entity which each of us is himself and which includes inquiring as one of the possibilities of its Being, we shall denote by the term "Dasein". If we are to formulate our question explicitly and transparently, we must first give a proper explication of an entity (Dasein), with regard to its Being." (BT 26-27/7) Heidegger begins by pointing to such things as looking at something, understanding, conceiving, and choosing as ways or modes of being for inquirers. Rather than ask about the being of apples or bats--the results of which investigation would be dubious at best since it's not clear that we can understand the nature of these entities in themselves--he turns his inquiry back onto the inquirer. To begin his investigation into the meaning of being, he looks at the being of the inquirer which is simultaneously exhibited and investigated in that inquiry. The entity (in this case, the inquirer, although other modes of being are possible for this entity) Heidegger denotes by the term "Dasein." Now Dasein literally means "being-there". In some other philosophical writing it simply stands for existence as when one speaks of the existence (the "being-there") of God or the existence (the "being-there") of aliens. But in certain contexts it is taken to refer specifically to the kind of being that belongs to persons and that is how Heidegger uses it.
One might ask: Well, if "Dasein" just refers to persons or human beings, why not just use those expressions? The reason is that Heidegger is trying to make a very particular point about what is distinctive about human beings. He comments in a later section about the various ideas that people associate with being human (e.g. being a rational animal or a member of the species homo sapien) but none of these, for Heidegger, succeed at getting at the heart of what it really means to be the kind of creature that we are (and, in fact, they get in the way of understanding what is at the heart of what it really means to be the kind of creature that we are). We are the kinds of creatures that "are-there" in a way different from the way that books or television sets or coffee cups "are-there" and Heidegger underscores that by using the term "Dasein".
Now one might wonder at this point whether there is not some problematic circularity in Heidegger's approach. How can it be that we must define an entity in its being before we can formulate the question of being based on that definition? Heidegger offers two responses. First he points out that accusations of circularity are vacuous where investigations into first principles are concerned. This might be read as a concession--acknowledging that there is a kind of circularity in the investigation of first principles but that it is not a problem. His second response is to point out that, as a matter of fact ("factically"), there is no such circularity in the current investigation. "One can determine the nature of entities in their Being [as when one describes "that" and "how" an apple is--reflecting the average understanding of being] without necessarily having the explicit concept of the meaning of Being at one's disposal [which is the goal of this inquiry]." (BT 27/7) Heidegger describes this average understanding of being as that "in which we always operate and which in the end belongs to the essential constitution of Dasein itself." (BT 28/8) The point is that the meaning of being, which is the goal of this investigation, is not supposed to be the ground for a derivation of the average understanding of being or vice versa. Rather, the goal of this investigation is to lay bare and exhibit the grounds of this average understanding in the very meaning of being.]
Where the appearance of circularity comes is in the "remarkable 'relatedness backward and forward'" which connects being (of which inquiry is a mode) with being (which is the object of this inquiry). But the reason for this is that we have selected the being of Dasein as the starting point of our investigation just because Dasein has a unique grasp of its own being and is in a position (that it has with no other entity in the world) of being able to grasp itself in making this inquiry. In this, we have given priority to the being of Dasein in this investigation--a point that will derive further support from the considerations that follow.
--
Footnotes:
[1] It should be noted that even if the mother happens to be wrong about the vase having been knocked over by a member of her family (perhaps the culprit was one of her children's classmates or the neighbor's dog) her question still demonstrates a grasp of certain basic facts, for instance, that there was a cause. Her son could not coherently reply: "No one caused the vase to fall over. In fact, nothing caused the vase to fall over." That response is simply unintelligible, given our understanding of the nature of causation. Vases do not fall over for no reason at all. The reason might not be a child or classmate or dog or gust of wind, but it still might be the deterioration of the legs of the table on which the vase rested or some undetectable quantum event or even ghosts or magic spells. As implausible as these causal explanations might seem, they are still intelligible whereas the idea that there simply was no cause of the vase's falling over is not.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
posted by Metaphysician_delta | 3:07 PM
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