Graduate 124: BT 04: Sec. 03
Introduction, Chapter 1. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of Being
Section 03. The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being
We may have already pointed out that, for many, questions like, "What is being?" simply do not strike as engaging or important. Heidegger points out that this concern is aggravated by the complexity of the task of even formulating the question of that meaning of being. That question is a "peculiar one," he says. He has been motivated to ask it because of the confusion in answers that have been offered in the past--a point that he wishes to rectify--, but he does also wonder about the usefulness of the question as such.
"One may, however, ask what purpose this question is supposed to serve. Does it simply remain--or is it at all--a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete?" (BT 29/9)
Heidegger answers this question by appealing to the sciences and the structure of scientific investigation. He observes that every branch of science is defined by the range of entities that are its proper object of investigation. Each branch differs according to the kinds of entities that it investigates and the methods appropriate to those investigations. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, sociology, linguistics--each of these fields have their proper domain of inquiry. Moreover, each can be subdivided using the same principle; biology, for instance, can be broken down into still smaller categories: biochemistry, cell biology, morphology, physiology, behavioral science, ecology, and much, much more.
"The basic structures of any such area have already been worked out after a fashion in our pre-scientific ways of experiencing and interpreting that domain of Being in which the area of subject-matter is itself confined. The 'basic concepts' which thus arise remain our proximal clues for disclosing this area concretely for the first time. And although research may always lead towards this positive approach, its real progress comes not so much from collecting results and storing them away in 'manuals' as from inquiring into the ways in which each particular area is basically constituted [Grundverfassungen]--an inquiry to which we have been driven mostly by reacting against just such an increase in information." (BT 29/9)
What Heidegger says here is extremely significant and those familiar with the history of the philosophy of science may recognize concepts that they encountered in Thomas S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." (1962) Heidegger points out that the divisions of science arise originally from our pre-scientific ways of experiencing and interacting with the world. We define certain entities as "basic" and endeavor to explain the world in terms of those entities. Now, in one sense, a great deal of progress can be made as one attempts to develop a more-or-less comprehensive picture of the world, but Heidegger insists that the real progress is made, not by this gradual accumulation of information, but when those "basic concepts" are called into question. He emphasizes, also, that this calling into question is motivated just by the accumulation of information.
To make clear what Heidegger is saying, consider the history of the sciences.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan and, in that treatise, diagrammed the various divisions of the sciences. Modern readers may be surprised at his approach to the task. He divided natural philosophy (the study of the consequences that follow from the features of natural bodies) into two sub-categories. The first dealt with the consequences of the quantitative features that belong to all natural bodies; the second dealt with the consequences of the qualitative features that belong to natural bodies. Included in this second category are meteorology, music, ethics, poetry, rhetoric, logic, and justice. Now Hobbes had reasons for grouping these all together that had to do with his view about the basic entities that constituted the world and the methods appropriate to investigating those entities. In the 21st Century, we have different views about entities in the world and thus divide things differently. Many of those changes have been motivated by pressure generated within various fields of study. Take physics as an example. Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion and mechanics were and continue to be extremely successful. With his equations, he was able to unify explanations of wildly disparate phenomena--from the motion of medium-sized objects near the surface of the earth to the motion of planets around the sun--under a few simple equations. However, his equations do have limits. There were and are phenomena that the laws of Newtonian mechanics cannot explain. People did not realize this all at once, but over time experimentation revealed that there were gaps in the model. This eventually led to Einstein's discoveries and the formulation of the theory of relativity. With this fundamental shift in the physical sciences, certain fundamental entities that had been accepted under the old paradigm--for instance, absolute time and space--were abandoned. E=mc(squared) altered our view of fundamental reality by showing that energy and matter are not really two distinct kinds of entities. Heidegger describes this shift like this:
"The relativity theory of physics arises from the tendency to exhibit the interconnectedness of Nature as it is 'in itself'. As a theory of the conditions under which we have access to Nature itself, it seeks to preserve the changelessness of the laws of motion by ascertaining all relativities, and thus comes up against the question of the structure of its own given area of study--the problem of matter." (BT 30/9-10)
Heidegger offers several other illustrations of this point. [1] He concludes by saying: "Basic concepts determine the way in which we gets an understanding beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding." (BT 30/10) He goes on to equate the investigation of these basic concepts with "an interpretation of those entities with regard to their basic state of Being." This project of laying the foundation for the sciences, Heidegger refers to as a 'productive logic' that goes ahead of the science in question--"in the sense that it leaps ahead, as it were, into some area of Being, discloses it for the first time in the constitution of its Being, and, after thus arriving at the structures within it, makes these available to the positive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry." (BT 30-31/10) [2]
Heidegger associates "ontological inquiry" with the investigation of these basic concepts and "ontical inquiry" with the positive sciences. [3] We have illustrated the task of ontological inquiry above, but Heidegger insists that any such inquiry is incomplete if we do not consider the meaning of being in general. He goes on: "And the ontological task of a genealogy of the different possible ways of Being (which is not to be constructed deductively) is precisely of such a sort as to require that we first come to an understanding of 'what we really mean by this expression "Being" '." (BT 31/11)
According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of being is necessary for grounding the sciences on a solid foundation. It must come before the ontical inquiries of the positive sciences and even before the ontological inquiries that ground those sciences. "Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task." (BT 31/11) So we have demonstrated the ontological priority of the question of being from the very nature of ontological research. This is, itself, a reason for reviving the question of the meaning of being; however, it is not the only reason. Heidegger will continue in the next section.
--
Footnotes:
[1] One other example is this: "Theology is seeking a more primordial interpretation of man's Being towards God, prescribed by the meaning of faith itself and remaining within it. It is slowly beginning to understand once more Luther's insight that the 'foundation' on which its system of dogma rests has not arisen from an inquiry in which faith is primary, and that conceptually this 'foundation' not only is inadequate for the problematic of theology, but conceals and distorts it." (BT 30/10)
[2] He goes on to say, "To give an example, what is philosophically primary is neither a theory of the concept-formation of historiology nor the theory of historiological knowledge, nor yet the theory of history as the Object of historiology; what is primary is rather the Interpretation of authentically historical entities as regards their historicality." (BT 31/10)
[3] Footnote 3: "While the terms 'ontisch' ('ontical') and 'ontologisch' ('ontological') are not explicitly defined, their meanings will emerge rather clearly. Ontological inquiry is concerned primarily with Being; ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with entities and the facts about them." (p. 31)
--
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 03. The Ontological Priority of the Question of Being
We may have already pointed out that, for many, questions like, "What is being?" simply do not strike as engaging or important. Heidegger points out that this concern is aggravated by the complexity of the task of even formulating the question of that meaning of being. That question is a "peculiar one," he says. He has been motivated to ask it because of the confusion in answers that have been offered in the past--a point that he wishes to rectify--, but he does also wonder about the usefulness of the question as such.
"One may, however, ask what purpose this question is supposed to serve. Does it simply remain--or is it at all--a mere matter for soaring speculation about the most general of generalities, or is it rather, of all questions, both the most basic and the most concrete?" (BT 29/9)
Heidegger answers this question by appealing to the sciences and the structure of scientific investigation. He observes that every branch of science is defined by the range of entities that are its proper object of investigation. Each branch differs according to the kinds of entities that it investigates and the methods appropriate to those investigations. Mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, history, sociology, linguistics--each of these fields have their proper domain of inquiry. Moreover, each can be subdivided using the same principle; biology, for instance, can be broken down into still smaller categories: biochemistry, cell biology, morphology, physiology, behavioral science, ecology, and much, much more.
"The basic structures of any such area have already been worked out after a fashion in our pre-scientific ways of experiencing and interpreting that domain of Being in which the area of subject-matter is itself confined. The 'basic concepts' which thus arise remain our proximal clues for disclosing this area concretely for the first time. And although research may always lead towards this positive approach, its real progress comes not so much from collecting results and storing them away in 'manuals' as from inquiring into the ways in which each particular area is basically constituted [Grundverfassungen]--an inquiry to which we have been driven mostly by reacting against just such an increase in information." (BT 29/9)
What Heidegger says here is extremely significant and those familiar with the history of the philosophy of science may recognize concepts that they encountered in Thomas S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions." (1962) Heidegger points out that the divisions of science arise originally from our pre-scientific ways of experiencing and interacting with the world. We define certain entities as "basic" and endeavor to explain the world in terms of those entities. Now, in one sense, a great deal of progress can be made as one attempts to develop a more-or-less comprehensive picture of the world, but Heidegger insists that the real progress is made, not by this gradual accumulation of information, but when those "basic concepts" are called into question. He emphasizes, also, that this calling into question is motivated just by the accumulation of information.
To make clear what Heidegger is saying, consider the history of the sciences.
In 1651, Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan and, in that treatise, diagrammed the various divisions of the sciences. Modern readers may be surprised at his approach to the task. He divided natural philosophy (the study of the consequences that follow from the features of natural bodies) into two sub-categories. The first dealt with the consequences of the quantitative features that belong to all natural bodies; the second dealt with the consequences of the qualitative features that belong to natural bodies. Included in this second category are meteorology, music, ethics, poetry, rhetoric, logic, and justice. Now Hobbes had reasons for grouping these all together that had to do with his view about the basic entities that constituted the world and the methods appropriate to investigating those entities. In the 21st Century, we have different views about entities in the world and thus divide things differently. Many of those changes have been motivated by pressure generated within various fields of study. Take physics as an example. Sir Isaac Newton's laws of motion and mechanics were and continue to be extremely successful. With his equations, he was able to unify explanations of wildly disparate phenomena--from the motion of medium-sized objects near the surface of the earth to the motion of planets around the sun--under a few simple equations. However, his equations do have limits. There were and are phenomena that the laws of Newtonian mechanics cannot explain. People did not realize this all at once, but over time experimentation revealed that there were gaps in the model. This eventually led to Einstein's discoveries and the formulation of the theory of relativity. With this fundamental shift in the physical sciences, certain fundamental entities that had been accepted under the old paradigm--for instance, absolute time and space--were abandoned. E=mc(squared) altered our view of fundamental reality by showing that energy and matter are not really two distinct kinds of entities. Heidegger describes this shift like this:
"The relativity theory of physics arises from the tendency to exhibit the interconnectedness of Nature as it is 'in itself'. As a theory of the conditions under which we have access to Nature itself, it seeks to preserve the changelessness of the laws of motion by ascertaining all relativities, and thus comes up against the question of the structure of its own given area of study--the problem of matter." (BT 30/9-10)
Heidegger offers several other illustrations of this point. [1] He concludes by saying: "Basic concepts determine the way in which we gets an understanding beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding." (BT 30/10) He goes on to equate the investigation of these basic concepts with "an interpretation of those entities with regard to their basic state of Being." This project of laying the foundation for the sciences, Heidegger refers to as a 'productive logic' that goes ahead of the science in question--"in the sense that it leaps ahead, as it were, into some area of Being, discloses it for the first time in the constitution of its Being, and, after thus arriving at the structures within it, makes these available to the positive sciences as transparent assignments for their inquiry." (BT 30-31/10) [2]
Heidegger associates "ontological inquiry" with the investigation of these basic concepts and "ontical inquiry" with the positive sciences. [3] We have illustrated the task of ontological inquiry above, but Heidegger insists that any such inquiry is incomplete if we do not consider the meaning of being in general. He goes on: "And the ontological task of a genealogy of the different possible ways of Being (which is not to be constructed deductively) is precisely of such a sort as to require that we first come to an understanding of 'what we really mean by this expression "Being" '." (BT 31/11)
According to Heidegger, the question of the meaning of being is necessary for grounding the sciences on a solid foundation. It must come before the ontical inquiries of the positive sciences and even before the ontological inquiries that ground those sciences. "Basically, all ontology, no matter how rich and firmly compacted a system of categories it has at its disposal, remains blind and perverted from its ownmost aim, if it has not first adequately clarified the meaning of Being, and conceived this clarification as its fundamental task." (BT 31/11) So we have demonstrated the ontological priority of the question of being from the very nature of ontological research. This is, itself, a reason for reviving the question of the meaning of being; however, it is not the only reason. Heidegger will continue in the next section.
--
Footnotes:
[1] One other example is this: "Theology is seeking a more primordial interpretation of man's Being towards God, prescribed by the meaning of faith itself and remaining within it. It is slowly beginning to understand once more Luther's insight that the 'foundation' on which its system of dogma rests has not arisen from an inquiry in which faith is primary, and that conceptually this 'foundation' not only is inadequate for the problematic of theology, but conceals and distorts it." (BT 30/10)
[2] He goes on to say, "To give an example, what is philosophically primary is neither a theory of the concept-formation of historiology nor the theory of historiological knowledge, nor yet the theory of history as the Object of historiology; what is primary is rather the Interpretation of authentically historical entities as regards their historicality." (BT 31/10)
[3] Footnote 3: "While the terms 'ontisch' ('ontical') and 'ontologisch' ('ontological') are not explicitly defined, their meanings will emerge rather clearly. Ontological inquiry is concerned primarily with Being; ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with entities and the facts about them." (p. 31)
--
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.
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