Graduate 144: BT 16: Sec. 10
Part 1, Division 1, Chapter 1. Exposition of the Task of a Preparatory Analysis of Dasein.
Section 10. How the Analytic of Dasein is to be Distinguished from Anthropology, Psychology, and Biology
In this section, Heidegger expands on the point he made at the end of the previous section about the importance of distinguishing the analytic of Dasein from other types of investigations into the nature of human beings. "We must show that those investigations and formulations of the question which have been aimed at Dasein heretofore, have missed the real philosophical problem (notwithstanding their objective fertility), and that as long as they persist in missing it, they have no right to claim that they can accomplish that for which they are basically striving. ... Our distinctions will necessarily be inadequate from the standpoint of 'scientific theory' simply because the scientific structure of the above-mentioned disciplines (not, indeed, the 'scientific attitude' of those who work to advance them) is today thoroughly questionable and needs to be attacked in new ways which must have their source in ontological problematics." (BT 71/45) It is important to keep in mind Heidegger's critique of science. The interpretation of human beings that is offered by science arises from certain presuppositions. As Heidegger is trying to get, in a sense, behind those assumptions, those interpretations that science does offer must prove to be inadequate.
In an effort to capture what is distinctive about this investigation, Heidegger appeals, again, to the case of Descartes and to the key way in which his investigation fell short of its goal. "He investigates the "cogitare" of the "ego", at least within certain limits. On the other hand, he leaves the "sum'" completely undiscussed, even though it is regarded as no less primordial than the cogito. Our analytic raises the ontological question of the Being of the "sum"." (BT 71-72/46) [1] The idea is that Descartes, in his famous formulation--"I think, therefore, I am"--he focused on the meaning of "I think," but took for granted what is meant by "I am." This is exactly what is constantly being unreflectively taken for granted and this is exactly where Heidegger wants to focus.
Heidegger is concerned that there is too much content already presupposed in our ideas of the "I" or the subject. "Ontologically, every idea of a 'subject'--unless refined by a previous ontological determination of its basic character--still posits the subjectum (HUPOKEIMENON) along with it, no matter how vigorous one's ontical protestations against the 'soul substance' or the 'reification of consciousness'." (BT 72/46) The same concern holds when speaking of the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person, the life, or the man. We need to get at the "Thinghood" that is presupposed in all these ways of speaking about the "self". The ontological origin of this Thinghood must be demonstrated if we are to be in a position to ask what we are to understand positively when we think of the unreified being that stands behind each of these conceptualizations.
Heidegger is concerned that there is too much content already presupposed in our ideas of the "I" or the subject. "Ontologically, every idea of a 'subject'--unless refined by a previous ontological determination of its basic character--still posits the subjectum (HUPOKEIMENON) along with it, no matter how vigorous one's ontical protestations against the 'soul substance' or the 'reification of consciousness'." (BT 72/46) The same concern holds when speaking of the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person, the life, or the man. We need to get at the "Thinghood" that is presupposed in all these ways of speaking about the "self". The ontological origin of this Thinghood must be demonstrated "if we are to be in a position to ask what we are to understand positively when we think of the unreified Being that stands behind each of these conceptualizations." (BT 72/47)
This is why even such basic terms as 'life' and 'man' have been set aside for now. And if we were to describe our investigation as 'the philosophy of life', that would presuppose a certain stable conception of 'life,' just as a stable concept of 'plant' is presupposed when speaking of 'the botany of plants'. The whole point of Heidegger's investigation is to call 'life' into question--to make it a philosophical problem.
Heidegger makes reference to the researches of Wilhelm Dilthey which were stimulated by the "perennial question of 'life'." (BT 72/47) In Dilthey, we find an example of someone who sought, not only to understand the various aspects of life (psychical, material, etc.) but who sought to grasp life as a whole. He was, of course, limited in both his goals and in the available concepts he had to work with, but Heidegger denies that this problem is unique to Dilthey. He goes on, "The phenomenological Interpretation of personality is in principle more radical and more transparent; but the question of the Being of Dasein has a dimension which this too fails to enter." (BT 73/47) In speaking of the "phenomenological Interpretation," Heidegger does not mean to refer to his own philosophical method but rather to the pioneering work in phenomenology that came from Husserl and Scheler. Even it, Heidegger says, falls short. "The question of 'personal Being' itself is one which they no longer raise." (BT 73/47)
Here I shall quote a large section of what Heidegger says. He is expounding on the ideas of Scheler and Husserl in ways that, I think, he will expand on throughout the rest of his work: "We have chosen Scheler's Interpretation as an example, not only because it is accessible in print, but because he emphasizes personal Being explicitly as such, and tries to determine its character by defining the specific Being of acts as contrasted with anything 'psychical'. For Scheler, the person is never to be thought of as a Thing or a substance; the person 'is rather the unity of living-through [Er-lebens] which is immediately experienced in and with our Experiences--not a Thing merely thought of behind and outside what is immediately Experienced'. The person is no Thinglike and substantial Being. Nor can the Being of a person be entirely absorbed in being a subject of rational acts which follow certain laws. / The person is not a Thing, not a substance, not an object. Here Scheler is emphasizing what Husserl suggests when he insists that the unity of the person must have a Constitution essentially different from that required for the unity of Things in Nature. What Scheler says of the person, he applies to acts as well: 'But an act is never also an object; for it is essential to the Being of acts that they are Experienced only in their performance itself and given in reflection.' Acts are something non-psychical. Essentially the person aexists only in the performance of intentional acts, and is therefore essentially not an object. Any psychical Objectification of acts, and hence any way of taking them as something psychical, is tantamount to depersonalization." (BT 73/47-48)
Heidegger goes on to say more but what is essential is the kind of contrast that Heidegger wants to appropriate from Scheler. The kind of understanding of Dasein that he is interested in pursuing cannot must be understood as distinct from previous investigations that have purported to have this aim. The pursuit neither of philosophies of life nor of personalism has yielded an understanding of the human being as a whole. He says that even if we could come to an understanding of the different parts of the person--for instance, of the "body," "soul," and "spirit"--in their respective phenomenal domains, understanding the whole human being would involve more than just adding up one's understanding of the different parts. Any attempt to grasp the whole human being must involve presupposing some idea of the being of the whole. Heidegger claims that such an understanding has been cut off because of the acceptance of an inadequate ontological foundation deriving from the anthropology of Christianity and of the ancient world which has gone largely unquestioned. He says that there are two main elements in this traditional anthropology.
The first element: "'Man' is here defined as a ZOON LOGON ECHON, and this is Interpreted to mean an animal rationale, something living which has reason." (BT 74/48) Heidegger says that the kind of being that belongs to ZOON is understood in the sense of occurrring and being-present-at-hand. It is combined with LOGOS, without any clarification of what kind of being belongs to LOGOS or how the two are related to one another.
The second element is the Christian claim that human beings bear the 'image of God'. But what exactly is involved in this idea? It involves something more than just being a thing endowed with intelligence, but it's exact character has received different formulations throughout history. He points to Calvin and Zwingli as speaking of the way in which man seeks to reach beyond himself toward the transcendent. But despite these statements that are full of richness and depth, it has remained the case that the essence of man has been treated as self-evident and consistently not called into question. Moreover, it has commonly been construed as a thing present-at-hand. The two strands from Greek and Christian thought are intertwined in the res cogitans but still remain unquestioned and so the "decisive ontological foundations of anthropological problematics remain undetermined." (BT 75/49)
Heidegger is aware of trends toward defining the traditionally anthropological and psychological aspects of man in biological terms and he rejects this. Such an account would not compensate for the lack of a solid ontological foundation. Heidegger says that biology, as a 'science of life' is founded on the ontology of Dasein, not the other way around. He writes: "The ontology of life is accomplished by way of a privative Interpretation; it determines what must be the case if there can be anything like mere-aliveness [Nur-noch-leben]. Life is not a mere Being-present-at-hand, nor is it Dasein." (BT 75/50) In this quotation, Heidegger uses "life" to refer to what is understood by biology. "Life" in that sense is a much less robust concept than may be found by a consideration of the kind of life that Dasein possesses; it is 'mere-aliveness'. There is a big difference between biological life and the kind of life that belongs to Dasein, and Heidegger thinks that it would be a grave mistake to substitute the former for the latter.
In all of this, Heidegger does not intend to undermine anthropology, psychology, or biology. He simply wishes to highlight their limitations and point out that each discipline actually presupposes some basic grasp of the entities that are its objects. What they cannot give us is an understanding of the "kind of Being which belongs to those entities which we ourselves are" and they cannot account for the ontological foundations that ground their own discipline. (BT 75/50)
--
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Before and after his comments about Descartes, Heidegger says the following: "Historiologically, the aim of th eexistential analytic can be made plainer by considering Descartes, who is credited with providing the point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry by his discovery of the "cogito sum". ... At the same time it is of course misleading to exemplify the aim of our analytic historiologically in this way." I will not take the time to recall what is involved in this historiological point and exactly what Heidegger is saying here. He uses Descartes' case as a contrast but recognizes that this method of contrast is not, itself, sufficient to capture the point that he wants to make. I quote it here in case future reference is needed to places where Heidegger cites the "historiological" method.
--
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 10. How the Analytic of Dasein is to be Distinguished from Anthropology, Psychology, and Biology
In this section, Heidegger expands on the point he made at the end of the previous section about the importance of distinguishing the analytic of Dasein from other types of investigations into the nature of human beings. "We must show that those investigations and formulations of the question which have been aimed at Dasein heretofore, have missed the real philosophical problem (notwithstanding their objective fertility), and that as long as they persist in missing it, they have no right to claim that they can accomplish that for which they are basically striving. ... Our distinctions will necessarily be inadequate from the standpoint of 'scientific theory' simply because the scientific structure of the above-mentioned disciplines (not, indeed, the 'scientific attitude' of those who work to advance them) is today thoroughly questionable and needs to be attacked in new ways which must have their source in ontological problematics." (BT 71/45) It is important to keep in mind Heidegger's critique of science. The interpretation of human beings that is offered by science arises from certain presuppositions. As Heidegger is trying to get, in a sense, behind those assumptions, those interpretations that science does offer must prove to be inadequate.
In an effort to capture what is distinctive about this investigation, Heidegger appeals, again, to the case of Descartes and to the key way in which his investigation fell short of its goal. "He investigates the "cogitare" of the "ego", at least within certain limits. On the other hand, he leaves the "sum'" completely undiscussed, even though it is regarded as no less primordial than the cogito. Our analytic raises the ontological question of the Being of the "sum"." (BT 71-72/46) [1] The idea is that Descartes, in his famous formulation--"I think, therefore, I am"--he focused on the meaning of "I think," but took for granted what is meant by "I am." This is exactly what is constantly being unreflectively taken for granted and this is exactly where Heidegger wants to focus.
Heidegger is concerned that there is too much content already presupposed in our ideas of the "I" or the subject. "Ontologically, every idea of a 'subject'--unless refined by a previous ontological determination of its basic character--still posits the subjectum (HUPOKEIMENON) along with it, no matter how vigorous one's ontical protestations against the 'soul substance' or the 'reification of consciousness'." (BT 72/46) The same concern holds when speaking of the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person, the life, or the man. We need to get at the "Thinghood" that is presupposed in all these ways of speaking about the "self". The ontological origin of this Thinghood must be demonstrated if we are to be in a position to ask what we are to understand positively when we think of the unreified being that stands behind each of these conceptualizations.
Heidegger is concerned that there is too much content already presupposed in our ideas of the "I" or the subject. "Ontologically, every idea of a 'subject'--unless refined by a previous ontological determination of its basic character--still posits the subjectum (HUPOKEIMENON) along with it, no matter how vigorous one's ontical protestations against the 'soul substance' or the 'reification of consciousness'." (BT 72/46) The same concern holds when speaking of the soul, the consciousness, the spirit, the person, the life, or the man. We need to get at the "Thinghood" that is presupposed in all these ways of speaking about the "self". The ontological origin of this Thinghood must be demonstrated "if we are to be in a position to ask what we are to understand positively when we think of the unreified Being that stands behind each of these conceptualizations." (BT 72/47)
This is why even such basic terms as 'life' and 'man' have been set aside for now. And if we were to describe our investigation as 'the philosophy of life', that would presuppose a certain stable conception of 'life,' just as a stable concept of 'plant' is presupposed when speaking of 'the botany of plants'. The whole point of Heidegger's investigation is to call 'life' into question--to make it a philosophical problem.
Heidegger makes reference to the researches of Wilhelm Dilthey which were stimulated by the "perennial question of 'life'." (BT 72/47) In Dilthey, we find an example of someone who sought, not only to understand the various aspects of life (psychical, material, etc.) but who sought to grasp life as a whole. He was, of course, limited in both his goals and in the available concepts he had to work with, but Heidegger denies that this problem is unique to Dilthey. He goes on, "The phenomenological Interpretation of personality is in principle more radical and more transparent; but the question of the Being of Dasein has a dimension which this too fails to enter." (BT 73/47) In speaking of the "phenomenological Interpretation," Heidegger does not mean to refer to his own philosophical method but rather to the pioneering work in phenomenology that came from Husserl and Scheler. Even it, Heidegger says, falls short. "The question of 'personal Being' itself is one which they no longer raise." (BT 73/47)
Here I shall quote a large section of what Heidegger says. He is expounding on the ideas of Scheler and Husserl in ways that, I think, he will expand on throughout the rest of his work: "We have chosen Scheler's Interpretation as an example, not only because it is accessible in print, but because he emphasizes personal Being explicitly as such, and tries to determine its character by defining the specific Being of acts as contrasted with anything 'psychical'. For Scheler, the person is never to be thought of as a Thing or a substance; the person 'is rather the unity of living-through [Er-lebens] which is immediately experienced in and with our Experiences--not a Thing merely thought of behind and outside what is immediately Experienced'. The person is no Thinglike and substantial Being. Nor can the Being of a person be entirely absorbed in being a subject of rational acts which follow certain laws. / The person is not a Thing, not a substance, not an object. Here Scheler is emphasizing what Husserl suggests when he insists that the unity of the person must have a Constitution essentially different from that required for the unity of Things in Nature. What Scheler says of the person, he applies to acts as well: 'But an act is never also an object; for it is essential to the Being of acts that they are Experienced only in their performance itself and given in reflection.' Acts are something non-psychical. Essentially the person aexists only in the performance of intentional acts, and is therefore essentially not an object. Any psychical Objectification of acts, and hence any way of taking them as something psychical, is tantamount to depersonalization." (BT 73/47-48)
Heidegger goes on to say more but what is essential is the kind of contrast that Heidegger wants to appropriate from Scheler. The kind of understanding of Dasein that he is interested in pursuing cannot must be understood as distinct from previous investigations that have purported to have this aim. The pursuit neither of philosophies of life nor of personalism has yielded an understanding of the human being as a whole. He says that even if we could come to an understanding of the different parts of the person--for instance, of the "body," "soul," and "spirit"--in their respective phenomenal domains, understanding the whole human being would involve more than just adding up one's understanding of the different parts. Any attempt to grasp the whole human being must involve presupposing some idea of the being of the whole. Heidegger claims that such an understanding has been cut off because of the acceptance of an inadequate ontological foundation deriving from the anthropology of Christianity and of the ancient world which has gone largely unquestioned. He says that there are two main elements in this traditional anthropology.
The first element: "'Man' is here defined as a ZOON LOGON ECHON, and this is Interpreted to mean an animal rationale, something living which has reason." (BT 74/48) Heidegger says that the kind of being that belongs to ZOON is understood in the sense of occurrring and being-present-at-hand. It is combined with LOGOS, without any clarification of what kind of being belongs to LOGOS or how the two are related to one another.
The second element is the Christian claim that human beings bear the 'image of God'. But what exactly is involved in this idea? It involves something more than just being a thing endowed with intelligence, but it's exact character has received different formulations throughout history. He points to Calvin and Zwingli as speaking of the way in which man seeks to reach beyond himself toward the transcendent. But despite these statements that are full of richness and depth, it has remained the case that the essence of man has been treated as self-evident and consistently not called into question. Moreover, it has commonly been construed as a thing present-at-hand. The two strands from Greek and Christian thought are intertwined in the res cogitans but still remain unquestioned and so the "decisive ontological foundations of anthropological problematics remain undetermined." (BT 75/49)
Heidegger is aware of trends toward defining the traditionally anthropological and psychological aspects of man in biological terms and he rejects this. Such an account would not compensate for the lack of a solid ontological foundation. Heidegger says that biology, as a 'science of life' is founded on the ontology of Dasein, not the other way around. He writes: "The ontology of life is accomplished by way of a privative Interpretation; it determines what must be the case if there can be anything like mere-aliveness [Nur-noch-leben]. Life is not a mere Being-present-at-hand, nor is it Dasein." (BT 75/50) In this quotation, Heidegger uses "life" to refer to what is understood by biology. "Life" in that sense is a much less robust concept than may be found by a consideration of the kind of life that Dasein possesses; it is 'mere-aliveness'. There is a big difference between biological life and the kind of life that belongs to Dasein, and Heidegger thinks that it would be a grave mistake to substitute the former for the latter.
In all of this, Heidegger does not intend to undermine anthropology, psychology, or biology. He simply wishes to highlight their limitations and point out that each discipline actually presupposes some basic grasp of the entities that are its objects. What they cannot give us is an understanding of the "kind of Being which belongs to those entities which we ourselves are" and they cannot account for the ontological foundations that ground their own discipline. (BT 75/50)
--
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Before and after his comments about Descartes, Heidegger says the following: "Historiologically, the aim of th eexistential analytic can be made plainer by considering Descartes, who is credited with providing the point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry by his discovery of the "cogito sum". ... At the same time it is of course misleading to exemplify the aim of our analytic historiologically in this way." I will not take the time to recall what is involved in this historiological point and exactly what Heidegger is saying here. He uses Descartes' case as a contrast but recognizes that this method of contrast is not, itself, sufficient to capture the point that he wants to make. I quote it here in case future reference is needed to places where Heidegger cites the "historiological" method.
--
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 | 2:26 PM
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