The
account of being-in-the-world is
significant in the part it played in the Heideggerian break from the project of
Edmund Husserl and the development of phenomenology thereafter. The break
itself is also a vital underpinning of existentialism, as Terry Eagleton notes
“To move from Husserl to Heidegger is to move from the terrain of pure
intellect to a philosophy which meditates on what it feels like to be alive.” This
particular form of phenomenology might be referred to as hermeneutical in
contrast to the transcendental phenomenology which Husserl promulgated.[1] In
fact it has been said that Heidegger seized on the conception of phenomenology
for his own ends, to the extent that the definition of “phenomenology” came to
mean almost the exact opposite of the Husserlian proposal. Rather than emptying
out the intentional contents of our belief system, to uncover datum, we let the
things which are shared but cannot be articulated to reveal themselves.[2]
If
we accept the notion of intentionality put forth by Husserl then we take
consciousness as always consciousness of something.[3] So
there is an internal relation between the act of thinking and the object of thought,
a mutual dependence. Thought points towards some object. The mind does not passively
acknowledge the world, it actively ‘intends’ the world. This is where the
idealism of Husserl is quite overt, he thought it was absurd to see the world
as external to thought and experience.[4] Husserl
goes on to claim that the way to establish certainty is to do away with – to ‘bracket’ – everything which is beyond our
consciousness. All realities must be treated as appearances in our minds, pure
phenomena and this is the universal data from which we can proceed. It is
universal in the sense that it has universal implications, so that the
examination of what we perceive, through the phenomenological reduction, is a
way to get at the universal essence of the things we perceive as well as the
act of perceiving.[5]
Martin
Heidegger breaks with Husserlian phenomenology with the ‘transcendent subject’
as its beginning. This is rejected as a suitable beginning by Heidegger and
with it he rejected the ‘bracketing’ method. For Heidegger the subject-object
distinction is an unwelcome bi-product of Cartesianism, for it is not only
artificial but unsustainable.[6] We
can refer to the relation between the self and the world, insofar as we must
refer to that relation as a distinction in order to move beyond it. Being-in-the-world captures the involved
nature of the human subject, it is not dominant as the Enlightenment thinkers
had thought, but is engaged in dialogue with the world. The point is to return
to a pre-Socratic position, before the dualist distinction and wherein both of
which can plausibly be encompassed by Being. We inhabit a reality which we are
incapable of subjecting to objectification, for we are as much constituted by reality
as we constitute it.[7] So
we should listen rather than speak in this dialogue. Whether or not we can
charge Heidegger with idealism over this is complicated.
We
could run with the view that Heidegger is an extreme idealist going by what he
tells us about Reality, which is composite of: the Being of beings and Being as
the pure presence-at-hand of Things. Robert Solomon argues that the dichotomy
of idealism versus realism is insufficient for the bold moves Heidegger made.
The problem is with the labels themselves as Heidegger should not be seen as a
philosophical opponent of realism.[8] By
realism here we designate the view that there is a reality which can be known,
which Heidegger does not deny, whereas idealism is the view that we can only
know the products of our own minds. This is the reason that it has often been
said that Edmund Husserl is an idealist.
There
is a sense in which the world refers to being-in-the-world
for Heidegger, at the same time being-in-the-world
refers to Dasein and care is its primordial
structural foundation.[9] For
Heidegger it is not that the concept being-in-the-world
can be simply sliced into easily digestible components. Heidegger goes as far
as to claim that care encapsulates Dasein
in its’ entirety. It is not meant in the usual sense of caring for something,
even indifference to something counts as a part of care.[10] Dasein must deal with the world as it is
being-in-the-world, without the world
there is no subject and without the subject there is no world. Sartre would say
Dasein is “condemned to be free”, but
it is important to add that it is ‘condemned’ as it is ‘thrown’ into a world
which has already set the ready-at-hand equipment and the paths we can take. For
this reason Heidegger is closer to Nietzsche than Sartre on the question of
free-will. We are not totally free individuals in a leveled world from which
we are only floating through, but we are embedded and engaged without a choice
in the matter. When we talk about being-in-the-world
we are talking about a future-directed agent in its aware of possibilities in
the situations it is involved in. It can encounter objects when lost in
activities and this may be the way that we ‘flee from being’ which we might
think of as ‘bad faith’ since Sartre.
At
this point we should go back to the Heideggerian break, as it is important to
stress, as Hubert Dreyfus does, that the break with transcendental
phenomenology to establish hermeneutical phenomenology is not simply
attributing a primary status to practical activity. Rather it is Heidegger’s
position that the relation between a self-sufficient mind and an external world
cannot be understood as detached contemplation or practical activity – as we
have already seen, the separation itself is a problematic assertion. Nor should
we take practical activity or contemplation to be specific to such a relation. The
Heideggerian strategy is a reversal of priorities, now it’s doing over knowing
and not knowing over doing. The point of this is to clear the ground for the
question of the way of being of intentionality. It is not a dichotomy between
practical and theoretical forms of intentionality. Heidegger wanted to burst
out of the tradition. He aimed to overcome the subject-object distinction in all
domains and move on from the old account of intentionality altogether.[14]
Heidegger
accepted that there is an intentional directedness to human activity, but
rejected the Husserlian view that the mind is directed towards an object which
mirrors an object in the external world. Practical engagement is important,
though we have to go above and beyond practical activity to raise the question
of Being. The problem is the gap which is allowed to open up between the
subject and object, the directedness which Husserl puts forth is meant to
resolve this problem. But it just exacerbates the problem as it maintains
intentionality as a feature of mental states. Intentionality is not mental, as
it is for Husserl, it should not be attributed to consciousness but Dasein – which is being-in-the-world – and in that sense refers to human activity at
a more general level in that the practical intention goes through the thing we
use towards the purpose of the activity.[15] The
directedness is in the embedded nature of being-in-the-world,
it is a part of the human existence and undoubtedly an aspect of the dialogue
between the human subject and the world (if we must refer back to that
troublesome distinction).
In
the attempt to overcome the old notion of intentionality Heidegger opens up a
new kind of intentionality. Similarly with Heidegger’s ‘confrontation’ with
Friedrich Nietzsche – who he deemed responsible for the ‘end of metaphysics’ –
could only be conducted within the framework of another metaphysical system
just as Nietzsche had opened up a metaphysics of becoming in the attempt to
overcome metaphysics.[16]
Even the conscious attempt to overcome a philosophical tradition fails to do so
insofar as it may succeed, but in doing so reconstitute the system that was
meant to be overcome. It may even be that the move Heidegger made to critique
Cartesianism and ultimately transcend the subject-object distinction might have
only perpetuating, or more accurately, recreated the old distinction in the act
of trying to sweep it away. The account Heidegger provided of being-in-the-world is important as it is
part of the philosophical project through which he attempted to radically
reorder philosophy as it has been since Socrates. This is the greater
importance to which the significance the concept has in relation to
existentialism and phenomenology is just an addition.
[2] Dreyfus,
Hubert: Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1 (MIT Press, 1991) pg.30-39
[3] Becker, Oskar: The Philosophy of Edmund Husserl, Elveton, RO: The Phenomenology of Husserl (Chicago Quadrangle Books, 1970)
pg.60-71
[4] Ludwig
Wittgenstein (who had a great deal in common with Heidegger in his later
philosophy) was perplexed by the very notion of an external world and what it
is supposed to be external to specifically. Heidegger had this in common with
Wittgenstein as he conceived of being-in-the-world
to signify the human existence as bound up with reality, both as constitutive
and constituted by it. So the suggestion that there is a world ‘out there’
which can be analysed is quite strange from this perspective. Whereas Husserl
concedes that there is a world external to thought and experience insofar as
objects can transcend our consciousness.
[5] We might
be drawn to Hume’s sceptical view that there could be more than just the
experiential, but we cannot know if there is. The difference is that for
Husserl it is not that these things are beyond our knowledge; rather we should
exclude them in order to get back to the things themselves. But it should be
noted that this kind of phenomenology is not another form of empiricism.
[6] In
a way Descartes held that we can step outside of being-in-the-world where an object can be placed before a subject.
For Heidegger it is important to reject the Cartesian tradition because it
seemed utterly hopeless to him. This might explain why he avoided talk of
subjectivity as well as consciousness and the mind without the use of his own
meta-language. Note that Heidegger saw our basic experiences as a holistic and
unified experience of our being-in-the-world. Descartes propagated dualism,
which posited a mind-body separation which can both be encompassed by Being for
Heidegger. Cartesianism is a road with a dead-end for Heidegger, the separation
between being-in-the-world and
something else (e.g. consciousness and the external world) leads us to
paradoxical ways of thinking. To understand Dasein
is to understand the world and it works both ways, Dasein and the world are a unified phenomenon according to
Heidegger. So the self cannot exist independently of the physical world, there
can be no Dasein without the world
and no world without Dasein.
Solomon, Robert: Lecture Fifteen; Husserl, Heidegger
and Phenomenology.
[7] Eagleton,
Terry: Literary Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1983 |
Second Edition, 1983) pg.47-78
[8] Solomon,
Robert: Lecture Fifteen; Husserl, Heidegger and Phenomenology.
[9] Dreyfus,
Hubert: Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time,
Division 1 (MIT Press, 1991) pg.238-246
[10] In
Goethe’s Faust the role of care is
important as it refers to the burdens of worry and the world explicitly.
Heidegger uses care in a much more radical way, it is not only about ends and
purposes but about the world as equipment where we engage in tasks. The world
is not a field of objects and subjects which might interact. To see the hammer and
the plank as ‘things’ means that we would have to stop hammering, the hammer is
no longer just something used for a purpose along with the nail and the plank
serves as a material to work with.
Incidentally, for Nietzsche Goethe was an example of
the Übermensch and the Will to Power who exercised all of his talents,
‘created’ himself as a unified being through his art and he experimented in
life – taking jobs as a civil servant and a lawyer, as well as a playwright and
a poet. As a writer he flirted with many styles and his works are voluminous.
In Nietzsche’s terms the passion for life is the greatest of passions and
Goethe was passionate at a creative and spiritual level. Nietzsche describes
Goethe as “not a German event but a European one: a grand attempt to overcome
the eighteenth century through a return to nature, through a going-up to the
naturalness of the Renaissance, a kind of self-overcoming on the part of that
century.”
Nietzsche, Friedrich; Twilight of the Idols and The
Anti-Christ (Hollingdale, RJ; Introduction and commentary | Penguin Books,
1968) pg.102-104
Solomon, Robert: Lecture Sixteen; Heidegger on the
World and the Self.
[11] Heidegger
seems to take a very similar response to the question of free-will as that of
Karl Marx (someone he no doubt detested for political as well as philosophical
reasons). We might think in particular of Marx’s words “Men make their own
history, but not of their own free will; not under circumstances they
themselves have chosen but under the given and inherited circumstances with
which they are directly confronted.” This is where Heidegger is actually closer
to Marx than he is to Sartre.
Marx, Karl: The
Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, Surveys from Exile: Political
Writings vol.2 (Edited and introduced by David Fernbach, Verso, 2010)
pg.143-150
[12] Solomon,
Robert: Lecture Sixteen; Heidegger on the World and the Self.
[13] Wartenberg,
Thomas: Existentialism (Oneworld Publications, 2008) pg.125-145
[14] Dreyfus,
Hubert: Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division
1 (MIT Press, 1991) pg.40-54
[15] As
Harrison Hall points out, using the most famous example, the hammer has
perceivable properties which go unrecognised when the hammer is being skilfully
employed and only arise when we take a timeout from the task to think about the
hammer. The attention is aimed at the work and the ultimate end, but not the
equipment which enables us to do so. The function of the hammer is in the
practical activity to which it is used and that is definitive of their being.
We can spot this network of relations essential to their instrumental nature
whenever the task breaks down. We find that the ready-to-hand tools are always
pointing towards an end, which we assign in the task.
The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger: Hall, Harrison:
Intentionality and World pg.123-139
[16] Sluga,
Hans: Heidegger’s Nietzsche pg.110-113
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