Heidegger, Plato,

Philosophy, Death
 Heidegger, Plato,
Philosophy, Death
An Atmosphere of Mortality

Richard Rojcewicz

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Title: Heidegger, Plato, philosophy, death : an atmosphere of mortality / Richard
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Description: Lanham : Lexington Books, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references
and index. | Summary: “Richard Rojcewicz argues that Heidegger and Plato see
the same connection between philosophy and death: philosophizing is dying in the
sense of separating oneself from the prison constituted by superficiality and hearsay.
Rojcewicz relates this understanding of philosophy to signs, anxiety, conscience,
music, and the COVID-19 pandemic”— Provided by publisher.
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Gloucester: O! let me kiss that hand!
Lear: Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.
King Lear, IV, vi, 136-37
 Contents

Introduction ix

1 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 1

2 Signs and Mortality 31
3 Anxiety and Mortality 53
4 Conscience and Mortality 83
5 Music of Mortality 117
6 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 137

Conclusion: Platonic-Heideggerian Intimations of Mortality 157

Notes 167
Bibliography 175
Index 179
About the Author 187

vii
 Introduction

Weaving its way through this book in the manner of a thread of Ariadne is the
connection between philosophy and death. That connection is a theme com-
mon to Plato and Martin Heidegger. They both see an intimate bond between
philosophizing and dying, but the perspective is different in each case. For
Plato, authentic philosophizing is a matter of dying; for Heidegger, authentic
dying is a matter of philosophizing. In other words, for Plato, to philosophize
authentically is to approach death, whereas, for Heidegger, to approach death
authentically is to philosophize. Plato sees dying in authentic philosophy;
Heidegger sees philosophy in authentic dying.
Since Heidegger calls authentic comportment toward death “anticipatory
resoluteness,” as it is usually translated in English, it might seem he is speaking
of facing up courageously to death, serenely meeting one’s end and in that sense
being “philosophical”—that is, unperturbed, resigned—over the inevitable. The
authentic person is not afraid of death and has no anxiety about it. The epitome
of such authentic dying would be found in the conduct and demeanor of Socrates:
having been legally condemned, he steadfastly refuses to break the laws of
Athens by escaping from jail, and then he placidly takes his bitter medicine.
From a Heideggerian point of view, Socrates does indeed exemplify
authentic dying—but not by being intrepid in the face of death. Such resolute-
ness is not what Heidegger proposes as authentic dying. It is not simply at his
last moments that Socrates approaches death authentically; on the contrary,
he does so all the other waking moments of his life—that is, inasmuch as he
is constantly philosophizing. It is then, even when death is not about to befall
him, that Socrates most demonstrates the attitude that is translated in English
as “resoluteness.”
Heidegger’s German term is Entschlossenheit. It does indeed ordinarily
mean “determination,” “fortitude,” “gumption.” Yet all this is foreign to

ix
x Introduction

Heidegger’s use, and he makes it clear, provided the reader reads closely
enough, that he is taking the term in the etymological sense: Ent-schlossenheit,
“dis-closedness.” What Heidegger advocates as authentic dying is a matter of
understanding death. More specifically, it is a matter of understanding the role
of death in the life of the beings who are able to comport themselves toward
their own death. It is not a matter of preoccupation with death as something
outstanding in the future, calculating about this possibility, acting so as to
postpone it or perhaps hasten it, reconciling with it in one way or another.
Authentic dying is not preoccupation with one’s future death at all; it is preoc-
cupation with disclosing the Being of the beings whose death is not completely
outstanding, the beings who already live in an atmosphere of mortality, the
beings whose death is not only constantly imminent but is also to some extent
immanent and not entirely in the future, the beings we ourselves are.
The attempt at disclosing the Being of such beings is philosophizing. It is
the practice Socrates is constantly engaged in, a striving for self-knowledge.
His entire life of self-examination, more than the way he finally passes from
this world into Hades, is what marks Socrates’ comportment as a prime
example of authentic dying in Heidegger’s sense. Socrates is philosophical
about death—not by maintaining his composure in the face of it, but precisely
by seeking to know himself, to know his own Being.
Socrates is constantly practicing the “Socratic method.” In his conver-
sations, the matter at issue may ostensibly be some question of ethics or
politics, but the intention of the method is always to raise the interlocutor’s
eyes from examples, beings, up toward the Being of those beings, the heaven
of the Ideas. That movement of attending to Being, as differentiated from
beings, is the constant concern of Socrates, and it constitutes the “first philo-
sophical step.”
Heidegger’s magnum opus Being and Time attempts the same first step into
philosophy. The intention of the treatise is to grasp a being (one that is privi-
leged in relation to the disclosure of what it means to be in general, namely,
the being that in each case one of us can call “mine”) and to “read off” from
this being the meaning of Being in general. This task is intimately tied to an
understanding of death.
In order to grasp the privileged being in a way adequate to the task of
reading off the meaning of Being, this being must be grasped as a whole.
The difficulty is that anyone of us is not a whole until death, when we will
cease to be the being we are. Therefore, central to Being and Time is the
problem of death: How can we grasp ourselves as a whole, in view of the
circumstance that we will not be whole until death arrives, at which point we
will be unable to grasp anything? How is it that something missing, the end
of our life, does not preclude a grasp of wholeness while we live? As for the
Platonic dialogues, they portray what philosophy is by way of portraying who
 Introduction xi

Socrates is. And death looms over this portrayal. Many of the dialogues are
tied to Socrates’ trial and execution. Furthermore, philosophizing is explicitly
called the practice of dying, the separating of the soul to its own autonomous
existence. Therefore, Being and Time and all the Platonic dialogues could be
subtitled: “On philosophy and death.” That is what I work out in chapter 1.
Heidegger’s magnum opus is not morbid in the sense of maintaining
that the prime experience is one of death, negativity, disintegration. On the
contrary, Heidegger sees death against a background constituted by a previ-
ous experience of integration. This previous experience has to be attested
“phenomenally.” In other words, what the reflecting philosopher sees as the
primary experience has to be attested in ordinary, pre-reflective experience.
The basic experience is that of an integrated world, and the primary pre-
reflective attestation resides in the experience of signs, any sort of common
sign (chapter 2). More than the everyday experience of a breakdown in some
item of equipment, and even more than the experience of an item of equip-
ment as missing, signs are disclosive of the world in Heidegger’s sense,
namely, a cosmos, a “well-arranged” whole. Yet a sign, especially a sign such
as a barcode, a sign, which approaches perfection and discloses a near-perfect
cosmos, is also a memento mori.
Socrates does not fear death, but that simply means he is not preoccupied
with death as a possibility outstanding in the future. Yet, Socrates is not free
of anxiety in Heidegger’s sense. Anxiety toward death has nothing to do
with fear or with outstanding possibilities. According to Heidegger, authentic
comportment toward death is essentially anxiety. Inasmuch as this comport-
ment is a matter of understanding, so is anxiety; anxiety has disclosive power.
Anxiety (chapter 3) is preoccupation with the Being of the being whose
death is not an entirely future possibility. Anxiety motivates the disclosure of
the peculiar relation this being has toward possibilities, ones Heidegger calls
“most proper” possibilities, possibilities in the most proper sense. The Being
of the beings we ourselves are can be differentiated from the Being of things
precisely with respect to possibilities. For us, future possibilities are not
entirely outstanding but are in a sense already actual, and past actualities are
not entirely actual, over and done, but in a sense remain possibilities. Versus
things, we are not what we already are and we are already what we are not
yet. According to Nietzsche, we are not too old for our victories. That means
what we have acquired in the past still remains open for us to appropriate in
the way we choose. It could be added that neither are we too young for our
defeats: death is already to some extent present.
For Heidegger, the “meaning” of something is that upon which it must be
projected in order to be comprehensible. What is the meaning of the Being of
the beings we ourselves are? What must be projected in order that our pecu-
liar relation to possibilities could be comprehensible? The answer is time.
xii Introduction

Our temporality is a peculiar one inasmuch as past, present, and future are
thoroughly intermixed. Our past is not entirely over and done but still remains
a future possibility, open in the present for us to appropriate in our own
chosen way. And our future is not entirely outstanding; instead, it already
colors our present. Accordingly, temporality is the “meaning” of the beings
we ourselves are; temporality is what makes comprehensible our peculiar
relation to possibilities.
Our complex temporality is especially in play in regard to the one pre-
eminent possibility in our lives, the one possibility we will all someday
make actual, the one possibility we are all already making actual to some
extent, namely, death. Death is a negativity at the very heart of our Being.
For Heidegger, conscience (chapter 4) is the experience of this negativity.
Conscience, as bad conscience, consciousness of guilt, is disclosive of the
Being of the beings we ourselves are. Versus anxiety, however, conscience
also discloses positive practical possibilities. Conscience, for Heidegger,
is the Entschlossenheit mentioned above. Conscience discloses the proper
action to take in the given circumstances and is thereby equivalent to
phrόnesis, practical wisdom.
Music (chapter 5) is a prime example of the experience of our peculiar tem-
porality. In order to hear a melody, the notes need to be synthesized with one
another in a peculiar way, the complex way characteristic of our temporality.
Music then is also disclosive of the meaning of the Being of the beings we
ourselves are. In order to hear a melody, the present note must be heard in the
context of the past ones and of the ones to come. To a certain extent, the last
note is not simply outstanding; it already sounds in our anticipation. Music
is then connected to our peculiar comportment toward death; music, at least
marginally, is an experience of mortality.
We live in an atmosphere of mortality inasmuch as death is in the air in the
figurative sense. But the atmosphere today is also mortal in the literal sense:
contaminated with carcinogens and deadly viruses (chapter 6). What would
a Heideggerian approach to philosophy and death have to say about the cur-
rent corona-virus-disease-2019 pandemic? Are there distinct possibilities in
our current plight for philosophizing, that is, for disclosing the Being of the
beings we ourselves are?
Finally (Conclusion), after many chapters of what might seem morbid
preoccupation with mortality, can we find any intimations of immortality in
Plato and Heidegger? Or not?

All of the above is, admittedly, abstract and no more than programmatic.
Any outline is bound to be so in a book with philosophical aspirations. The
reason is that philosophical results make sense only when seen as actually
worked out in the course of the investigation. Prior to that, a summary of
 Introduction xiii

results is unintelligible and could even be misleading. Hegel expresses this

circumstance by maintaining that a philosophical work cannot legitimately
begin with a preface, Vorrede. Philosophy, for Hegel, strives to disclose the
concrete universal, that is, the universal as actually ruling over the particu-
lars, or the particulars as actually gathering themselves up into the universal.
A summarizing preface, however, could at most provide only an abstract
universal (a universal by itself and not in relation to the particulars) and so
would be partial and consequently false. Nevertheless, Hegel places these
derogatory remarks about prefaces in the preface to his main philosophical
work, The Phenomenology of Spirit. Accordingly, an outline of the course of
thought, a summary of results, may indeed be useful as a general orientation,
provided the reader knows to wait for the pages that follow to bring the sum-
mary to life.

Except for chapter 6, the reflection directed to the COVID-19 pandemic, this
book is based on graduate lecture courses I presented at Duquesne University
in recent years. The courses intentionally consisted in a close reading of
primary texts and made only slight reference to the secondary literature. A
search through the records of the Library of Congress shows that in the entire
history of philosophy, no figure has generated more secondary literature than
Plato. In the last 100 years, however, that distinction belongs to Heidegger.
Philosophy used to consist in a series of footnotes to Plato; it is becoming
a series of footnotes to Heidegger. Accordingly, this book is occupied with
themes that have been touched on by many commentators. Yet I claim a
certain originality and wish to open up new perspectives on these themes
instead of adding another voice to extant debates. In this way, however, I do
place myself within the general intention of anyone attracted to the writings
of Plato and Heidegger: to take a fresh look with one’s own eyes and advance
some small measure closer to the matters themselves genuinely at issue in
those great philosophies.

All translations in the following pages are my own. The endnotes and bibli-
ography refer to published translations only for the convenience of readers
who might wish to place the quoted passage in context or to compare my
translation with the published one.
 Chapter 1

Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue

(On Philosophy and Death)

PROSE VERSUS POETRY

No one with even the least acquaintance with Being and Time would doubt
that if a comparison is called for at all the book should be likened not to a
Platonic dialogue but much rather to an Aristotelian treatise. Heidegger’s
magnum opus is not in dialogue form; it is a straightforward treatise. The
author himself expressly refers to it as a treatise (Abhandlung).1 Versus the
dialogues, Being and Time is prose—and not even graceful prose.
Plato was said to have “combed and curled” the dialogues and “neatly
braided all the strands.”2 Being and Time reads exactly the way the circum-
stances of its composition would suggest: a text written under the pressure of
the need to have a book published in support of an academic appointment. Its
diction is in the convoluted style of Aristotle and has nothing of the elegance
of Plato. Being and Time is unfinished: that is, not only literally incomplete
but also unpolished.
Furthermore, the dialogues are dramas, plays; they need to be interpreted
in terms of what is enacted in them. They have plots and carry out deeds, and
they often put on plays within the plays, such as little comedies and tragedies.
The interpretation of the dialogue must also take into account the occasion,
historical or imagined, serving as a background to the discussion. Nor are the
many mythological references mere decoration. The dialogues are indirect;
it is possible to understand all the words and arguments placed in the mouth
of the various characters and yet be oblivious to what Plato is saying. Being
and Time, quite to the contrary, says on the surface all that it is trying to say.
The preceding distinctions between Plato and Heidegger are not in dispute.
Yet I wish to show how Being and Time is comparable to a Platonic dialogue
in the way of beginning, in the central themes, and in the way of ending.

1
2 Chapter 1

Furthermore, they both feature a hero. So Heidegger’s treatise is comparable

to a Platonic dialogue in beginning, middle, and end and in revolving around
a hero. Accordingly, despite the arduous prose, the book is carefully con-
structed and thoroughly comparable to the dialogues of Plato.

BEGINNING

After Plato’s death, a wax tablet in his writing was found inscribed with the
opening words of the Republic in many subtle variations. This anecdote is
among the best-attested ones regarding Plato. Dionysius of Halicarnassus
refers to it as if it were common knowledge, familiar “to all who love words,”
πᾶσι τοῖς φιλολόγοις.3 Diogenes Laertius also reports the anecdote and
appeals to the testimony of two well-known literary figures.4
We can therefore assume that Plato wanted the beginning of the Republic
to read just so. Indeed he is meticulous about the beginning of all the dia-
logues. The beginning does not merely set the scene extrinsically or provide
ornamentation. The beginning almost always is appropriate. If heeded with
the same care that went into the writing of it, the beginning can be seen as
prefiguring the matter which will be taken up in the discussion. Specifically,
the beginning often enacts a certain movement, one which expresses in nuce
the central theme of the dialogue.
The beginning of the Republic is a prime example. The first words con-
sist of Socrates saying he “came down yesterday to the Piraeus” (Republic,
327A). I propose here only one of many possible interpretations of this
descent.5 Socrates is descending from Athens, the mother city. The path to the
Piraeus is south, by way of the “long walls.” These formed a sheltered pas-
sageway and were considered part of Athens. A traveler was still in Athens
on the journey down. The Piraeus is the port city; it opens out to the wider
world. There one left the comfortable confines of Athens and encountered
all sorts of odd beings and strange sights. So Socrates’ descent is from the
mother city, through a narrow sheltered passageway, out to the external
world. Accordingly, the Republic begins with Socrates’ birth. The mystery of
birth, that is, the mystery of our presence to the world, is then exactly what
will be discussed in the dialogue. The ostensible topics of the conversation
may be justice and the founding of cities, but the underlying theme, philo-
sophically expressed, is the relation between Being and beings. How do we
descend from the mother (Being) so as to recognize the beings of the world
as beings? What does the mother provide us so that we can make our way in
the world, confronting beings disclosed precisely as beings?
The Phaedrus is another prime example. This dialogue begins with
Socrates asking a beautiful youth: “O dear Phaedrus, whither now and
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 3

whence?” (Phaedrus, 227A). The youth replies that he is going from the city
to the land beyond the city, from inside the walls to an amble outside the
walls. His name Phaidrós means “shining,” and it will turn out that to shine
is exactly what is characteristic of beauty. Socrates’ question then is not so
much about the individual Phaedrus but about that which shines in a special
way, about beauty itself, about Being and the role of Being in allowing us
to encounter what lies beyond our natal place in the outer world. So the
Phaedrus is also about birth, our mysterious coming into the presence of the
world, or, more properly expressed, it is about the mysterious presence of the
world to us, its unconcealment to us.
In philosophical terms, the Platonic dialogues are aimed at opening up the
difference between Being and beings. The Socratic method is a refusal to
accept a being as a substitute for Being: a courageous instance is not courage
itself. The dialogues open up the ontological difference and ask how we move
between Being and beings. In other words, how does a prior acquaintance
with Being allow beings to be unconcealed to us, and how does empirical
acquaintance with beings allow us to gain closer knowledge of Being?
To turn now to Being and Time, it begins with these two words, placed
in capital letters on a line by themselves exactly in the middle of the page:
EDMUND HUSSERL. The next line says the book is dedicated to him as
a “revered friend” (in Verehrung und Freundschaft). The third and last line
on the page provides the date and place: Todtnauberg i. Bad. Schwarzwald
zum 8. April 1926 (“Todtnauberg in Baden, Black Forest, on the 8th of April,
1926”). This is not an indifferent time and place, as if Heidegger just hap-
pened to finish writing the book then and there. On the contrary, it refers
to the occasion on which Heidegger presented the book to the dedicatee: a
gathering in the Black Forest to celebrate Husserl’s 67th birthday. Heidegger
presented the text in manuscript form to Husserl during the festivities, and
the book was published the following year, originally in Husserl’s own
Jahrbuch,6 and thus bears the publication date of 1927. All in all, the book
begins by giving prominence of place to Husserl; he comes first in capital
letters. He could not have been made more prominent.
What follows the dedicatory page is the table of contents. There is no half-
title or preliminary remark. Instead, what follows immediately in the original
German is an untitled page devoted to an epigraph, a quotation from Plato’s
Sophist. The page is not numbered, but the next page is 2, so this quotation
constitutes the first page. The words are spoken by the Stranger, the unnamed
visitor to Athens who plays a major role in the dialogue. Heidegger himself
later said that the quotation was not placed there merely to be decorative.7
Accordingly, significance is attached to it and to its placement.
In the passage quoted, the Stranger raises perplexity about what it means
to be. In accord with Heidegger’s way of rendering Greek philosophy, the
4 Chapter 1

passage says: “For evidently you have already for a long time been well-
acquainted with what you properly mean when you say that something ‘is,’
but we who once believed we understood have now come into perplex-
ity” (Sophist, 244A). The Stranger is speaking to his partner in dialogue,
Theaetetus. But the “you” in the quotation is not Theaetetus. It is the plural
form of you (ὑμεῖς, rendered in German by Heidegger as ihr, second person
plural familiar), and the ones addressed are individuals not actually present.
They are others, the idealists and realists, who wrangled about Being. They
seemed to know what “is” means, what it means for something to be, but we
(the Stranger and Theaetetus) are now in perplexity. The Stranger never calls
the others “philosophers.” On the contrary, they are “story tellers” and are
divided into the “muses of Ionia and Sicily” (idealists) and the “more severe
muses” (realists) (Sophist, 242C-E). The Stranger is using the name “muses”
ironically or sarcastically, implying that perplexity over what it means to be is
a proper characteristic of the genuine philosopher. The philosopher deserving
of the name is someone who finds it necessary to raise the question of Being;
such questioning is the first step into philosophy. One who does not question
what it means to be is at most a “muse.”
Thus Being and Time begins as follows: Husserl, contents, Stranger, phi-
losophy. A kind of movement is thereby enacted from Husserl to the issue
raised by the Stranger or, in other words, from phenomenology to the ques-
tion of Being, in order to take the first philosophical step. We learn soon in
Being and Time that the expression “phenomenology” primarily signifies “a
methodological concept” (SZ, p. 27). And we learn already from the title of
Chapter I of the Introduction that the matter of the book is die Seinsfrage, the
question of Being (SZ, p. 2). That is precisely the issue raised by the Stranger
in the passage from the Sophist. Thus, the book as a whole will be an appli-
cation of the method of phenomenology to the question of Being or, in other
words, a movement from Husserl to the Stranger.
Therefore, Being and Time begins in the manner of a Platonic dialogue; it
brings two items together, in this case method and content, such as to prefig-
ure the central theme. The book will attempt to apply phenomenology to the
question of Being and so will amount to a phenomenological ontology. That
is exactly what the close pairing of Husserl and the Stranger would lead us
to expect.

THE HERO

The Platonic dialogues feature a hero. That hero is Socrates. Not only is he
the prominent character, the protagonist, the hero in the literary sense, but
the dialogues often liken him to an actual hero, Heracles. For example, in the
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 5

Republic, Socrates personifies Heracles by founding cities and undertaking

labors such as descending to the underworld in order to wrestle with and tame
a wild dog (Heracles against Cerberus, Socrates against Thrasymachus).8
Being and Time also has a hero, and that hero, already suggested by promi-
nence of place, is Husserl. This statement holds, provided “hero” is under-
stood in the sense worked out in the book.
Heidegger takes up the theme of the hero in the context of a discussion of
historicality. Specifically, the issue is the relation between authenticity and
the past. Authenticity would seem to involve a break with history and tradi-
tion. Yet we are historical beings through and through. So how is authenticity
related to the past?
To be authentic (αὐτο-έντης, “self-effectuating”) means to be a product of
one’s own making. Authenticity means not yielding to peer pressure and sig-
nifies the exact opposite, namely, autonomy, self-reliance, marching to one’s
own beat. Authenticity means choosing for oneself and not simply drifting
along with the crowd, the “they.”
All choices refer to the future and involve a projection upon possibilities.
To choose is to commit oneself to some possibilities or other. Which pos-
sibilities are seized upon in authenticity? In the strictest sense of authentic-
ity, these are utterly new possibilities, ones not even seen in the past. The
authentic person uncovers and chooses possibilities that were concealed to
other people. The authentic person thereby opens up a new way of thinking
or of art or of practice.
If authenticity involves such a radical break with the past, it would seem to
be out of reach for most people. Our imaginations are sluggish, and we can-
not envision new ways of thinking and acting. We are tied to the past and are
unable to break free of tradition. Nevertheless, Heidegger recognizes a way
of authenticity open to anyone. It is accomplished by following a past exem-
plary authentic existence, that is, by following in the footsteps of a chosen
hero (SZ, p. 385).
Heidegger intends this “following in the footsteps” in a specific sense. He
explains it as an emulation (Nachfolge), a repetition (Wiederholung), and a
rejoinder (Erwiderung). With each of these terms, the nuance is the same.
Following in the footsteps is at least to some extent a break with the past
and is not pure and simple imitation, copycatting. Heidegger is attempting to
characterize an authentic following, one that adds something new, that does
see a new possibility, even if only a variation on the radically new possibility
seen by the hero.
Let us take up Heidegger’s explanatory terms in order. First, to emulate is
not to model oneself after in the sense of mimicking; it is to do in one’s own
way what the hero did in his or her own way. As to repetition, Heidegger
means it in distinction to a simple bringing-back (Wiederbringen) in the
6 Chapter 1

sense of replicating, reiterating. He later clarified it as follows: “The term

‘repetition’ in Being and Time is highly nuanced. It does not mean to roll out
again the same old thing just as it was. On the contrary, repetition signifies
a seizing, retrieving, gathering up, of what was concealed in the old. . . . It
is an originary reacquisition of the past.”9 Lastly, Heidegger’s word “rejoin-
der” could mean “reciprocation,” the way feelings might be reciprocated.
Yet, Heidegger plays on the etymology (Er-wider-ung) and emphasizes the
“counter.” To offer a rejoinder is to run counter to some extent; Heidegger
even says it is to “disavow” (Widerruf, “counter-call”), to respond by reject-
ing something and adding something new, making one’s own contribution.
Thus, in each case, the nuance is the same: to choose and follow a hero as
a way to authenticity is not to follow blindly but is instead to vary the direc-
tion at least to some extent. It is indeed to remain tethered to the past and not
break completely free of it, but it is not to be utterly fettered to the past either.
The sense of following the hero would be very well expressed by bor-
rowing Hegel’s term Aufhebung. It is what Hegel calls a dialectical10 term,
for it has opposed meanings: to preserve and to cancel. Aufheben could be
translated as “co-opt”: to appropriate (and thus to preserve) some possibility
already opened up but to do so for one’s own purposes (and thus to cancel).
Let us consider two examples: the philosopher and the tyrant. Suppose
one’s hero is a tyrant. What would following that hero mean in Heidegger’s
sense? It would at any rate most definitely not mean blindly obeying the
tyrant. Authenticity is never supine. On the contrary, it would mean striving
to be a tyrant oneself, emulating the tyrant, doing in one’s own way what the
tyrant did in his or her own way. Accordingly, the last thing an actual tyrant
would want is to be a hero in Heidegger’s sense. An authentic populace
would be impossible to tyrannize. If everyone took the tyrant for a hero, if
everyone sought to follow authentically in the footsteps of the tyrant, then
everyone would try to tyrannize everyone else, including the first tyrant. The
result would be a society of all chiefs and no squaws or braves. No one could
tyrannize under those conditions, for tyranny demands blind obedience, hero-
worship, the exact opposite of authenticity.
Suppose one’s hero is a philosopher as a thinker who opens up a new
path of thought. Specifically, suppose one’s hero is the founder of the new
philosophical movement known as phenomenology. According to Heidegger,
phenomenology is epitomized in its maxim: To the things themselves! (SZ,
p. 27). The things themselves are things exactly as they show themselves to
the one experiencing them, versus what an outside observer such as a sci-
entist might say about experience. Accordingly, the things themselves are
phenomena, whence the name “phenomenology.” Therefore, to follow in
Husserl’s footsteps is to practice phenomenology. But to follow authentically
is not simply to repeat Husserl or extend his investigations straightforwardly
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 7

into new domains. For Heidegger, the way to follow Husserl is to be more
phenomenological than Husserl, to be more loyal to the maxim, to ask just
what does show itself, to search further into exactly what are phenomena.
Heidegger might hold Husserl in reverence and friendship, but he reveres the
phenomena more.
Any self-showing of something is a phenomenon, but Heidegger distin-
guishes various senses in which something may show itself (SZ, p. 31). Thus,
he distinguishes phenomena in the “merely formal” sense, namely, any beings
or any properties of any beings, and phenomena in the “ordinary” sense, any
beings. But a phenomenon in the preeminent sense is not a being or a property
of a being. The directing of the gaze onto this phenomenon is what marks
Heidegger’s following of Husserl as an authentic one. Within the general
framework of Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger takes phenomenology
in a new direction, one that indeed runs counter to the founder’s intention.
What then is a phenomenon in the preeminent sense? At first, Heidegger
offers only an analogy: this phenomenon is comparable to space and time
for Kant (SZ, p. 31). Space and time are what Kant calls “pure apriori forms
of intuition.” They are not empirical intuitions (appearances) but are prior to
empirical intuitions and make possible all empirical intuitions by providing
the form or order anything needs in order to appear to us. Space and time can
be made to show themselves, although we usually overlook them in favor
of the beings in space and time. So space and time are prior to appearances,
make appearances possible, are always somehow in view in any appearance,
are ordinarily overlooked in favor of appearances, and yet can be made to
show themselves explicitly.
Heidegger draws out the analogy a few pages later. What shows itself in
the preeminent sense, the strict phenomenological sense, is Being. Heidegger
asks what it is that phenomenology should “let be seen”? What must be
called a “phenomenon” in the preeminent sense? What by its very essence is
necessarily in view in any self-showing of anything? His answer is that this
is something that initially and predominantly does not show itself, something
that is instead concealed over and against the things that initially and pre-
dominantly show themselves, namely, beings. Yet for Heidegger it is some-
thing that essentially belongs to beings, belongs in such a way as to constitute
their meaning and ground. A phenomenon in the preeminent sense is not any
being but is the Being of beings: accordingly, what demands to be made “the
explicit theme of phenomenology is Being” (SZ, p. 35).
In the strict phenomenological sense, there is only one phenomenon, Being.
Like space and time for Kant, Being is always in view although always over-
looked; Being is a prior condition of the possibility of grasping any being,
inasmuch as it has to be understood to some extent in order for any empirical
grasp of beings to take place, and yet is not any being; Being has no empirical
8 Chapter 1

content but makes possible a grasp of beings with such content; Being consti-
tutes the meaning and ground of beings but is concealed in its meaning and has
no ground; and, finally, Being is difficult to bring to explicit thematic aware-
ness and yet can be wrested out into the open. That bringing into the open is
the task of phenomenology. Being is precisely what phenomenology is to “let
be seen.” Thereby phenomenology becomes ontology, a raising of the question
of Being. Being and Time is thus the application of Husserl to the Stranger.
This application is a complete Aufhebung of the hero, Husserl. For the
founder of phenomenology, Being is exactly what phenomenology prescinds
from. Phenomenology is precisely not ontology. For Husserl, the first, indis-
pensable step of phenomenology is the transcendental reduction. That means
to carry out an epoché (abstention) with regard to all questions of Being, nei-
ther affirming or denying that anything is. In Husserl’s other terms, it means
to put Being in brackets, the way a mathematician prescinds from the positive
or negative sign of a number and considers it only as an absolute quantity by
placing the number in brackets: [7] (in American notation, an absolute value
is placed in slashes /7/ rather than brackets).11 Or, it is to carry out a “neutral-
ity modification” on questions of Being, to put Being in neutral just as an
automobile in neutral gear is not in forward (positive) or reverse (negative).
Or, lastly, it is to be a “disinterested spectator,” an onlooker with no stake in
whether the thing observed exists or not.
Thus, Heidegger’s explicit focus on Being is a co-opting of Husserl. And
it is not something carried out at the beginning of Being and Time and then
set aside in order to take up new themes. On the contrary, Husserl is the hero
of the whole treatise. The entire book is phenomenological ontology, devoted
to letting Being be seen.
This co-opting can be understood in terms of the distinction between the
letter and the spirit. Heidegger attempts to remain faithful to what he claims
is higher, the spirit of phenomenology, to its maxim of returning to the things
themselves, letting show itself what does show itself, rather than remain-
ing faithful merely to the letter, to the way Husserl actually carried out the
program. So the co-opting, the following in the footsteps of the hero, is a
distinction between what phenomenology makes possible and the way it has
been actualized. Heidegger credits Husserl, beginning with the breakthrough
to phenomenology in the Logische Untersuchungen, with providing the
foundation on which Being and Time is built (SZ, p. 38). Yet Heidegger does
not believe that what is essential to phenomenology resides in the way it has
been actualized as a philosophical movement. On the contrary, higher than
actuality stands possibility, and phenomenology can be appreciated “only by
seizing upon it in terms of possibility” (SZ, p. 38).
The Platonic dialogues can all be understood as asking, “What is phi-
losophy?” in the guise of the question, “Who is Socrates?” Being and Time
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 9

is always asking, “What is Being?” This question takes the guise of asking
about Husserl’s method as applied to the issue raised by the Stranger. The
treatise is always asking the question of Being, die Seinsfrage, and is pursu-
ing it phenomenologically. Husserl in Being and Time and Socrates in the
dialogues might remain in the background, and indeed besides the dedication
and a handful of adulatory comments, Husserl is not mentioned in the treatise.
Nevertheless, the entire treatise is a co-opting of Husserl, which is exactly
what it means to choose and follow a hero.
As for Socrates, he remains the hero of the dialogues although at times he
does no more than listen. I will now blend play and seriousness and attempt to
show that there are dialogues in which Socrates is present but does not even
listen. Instead, he snores right through the discussion carried out by others.
Nevertheless, Socrates makes his presence felt.
Consider the Timaeus. It occurs the day after Socrates recalls the events
recorded in the Republic, and those events occurred the day before the rec-
ollection. So the three days are: first day, the events of the Republic, taking
place in the Piraeus; second day, recollection of those events, Socrates having
come up from the Piraeus; third day, the events of the Timaeus in Athens.12
The events recorded in the Republic begin on the evening of Socrates’ visit
to the Piraeus. He is promised a banquet and the treat of watching a torch race
of young men on horseback. Instead, however, he becomes involved in a long
discussion, so protracted that it goes on all night. In the morning, Socrates
ascends to Athens, presumably by himself (since he speaks of the others in
the third person), leaving his companions in discussion to get their sleep. On
this day he will recollect the entire dialogue. But before he can enter Athens
and return home to food and sleep, he encounters a beautiful young man,
Phaedrus, at the city gate. This encounter must take place the day after the
events of the Republic, for in no other way can it be explained what Socrates
is doing beyond the gate, since, excepting his visit to the Piraeus, he never
leaves Athens.13 The two friends remain in the countryside and spend the
entire afternoon in intimate talk, as recorded in the dialogue Phaedrus. In
the evening, Socrates says he is going to another of his favorites, Isocrates.
It must be in the presence of this Isocrates that Socrates recollects the events
of the previous day. Presumably, the recollection takes as much time as the
original events, and so Socrates again stays awake all night and again goes
without food.
On the following morning, Socrates visits three friends, ones who appar-
ently were present at the house of Isocrates to hear the recollection of the
Republic. The Timaeus begins this way: “One, two, three—but where, O
dear Timaeus, is the fourth of those I regaled yesterday and who are sup-
posed to return the favor today?” (Timaeus, 17A). Although not mentioned
by name, and the source of much speculation, the missing fourth must have
10 Chapter 1

been Isocrates. The missing person is said to be suffering from asthéneia,

“lethargy” (Timaeus, 17A). As the one who is closest to Socrates, Isocrates
would have learned from the philosopher that it is a comedy to pretend to be
pure spirit; the body must be attended to. So Isocrates stays home after being
regaled all night by Socrates’ recollection and goes to bed.
Socrates himself, however, having been invited to the home of Timaeus,
denies himself the comfort of sleep and accepts the invitation. He goes
home merely to change his clothes.14 It is now the third day since Socrates
has eaten or slept. In the discussion recorded in the Timaeus, Socrates
speaks only at the outset. He asks the others if they remember his recollec-
tion of the previous day and reviews it for them. But the lacunary review
shows that Socrates’ mental powers are flagging. Socrates is suffering from
his own asthéneia. Finally, he gives up altogether and sits back to listen.
Timaeus then launches a long-winded and far-fetched disquisition about
the creation of the world out of geometrical figures. Socrates’ eloquent
commentary is to sleep through it all. The commentary amounts to this:
it is ridiculous to believe the mystery of the presence of the world can be
dispelled by rational thought, not even by that apex of rational thinking,
geometry.
The preceding is a perfect example of Plato’s artistry: his indirectness
and his combing and curling the dialogues and interweaving all the strands,
even the apparently insignificant ones. Such a cosmetic character (κόσμησις:
“beautiful arrangement of the tresses”) is admittedly missing from Being and
Time, except perhaps for the way of beginning. Nevertheless, Heidegger was
indeed capable of Platonic artistry, as I hope to show in chapter 5 by offering
a musical interpretation of the book Gelassenheit.

MIDDLE

Let us return to the “muses” spoken of derisively by the Stranger. He says

they talk to us “as if we were children” (Sophist, 242C) by telling us stories.
The story is this: beings are ultimately derived from other beings, such as
water or air. Thereby these muses are not philosophers; they do not take
what Heidegger calls “the first philosophical step” (der erste philosophische
Schritt) (SZ, p. 6). That step consists in recognizing the ontological differ-
ence, the fact that at the origination of beings is not some other being but
Being itself.
How is Being the origin? Answer: precisely as the phenomenon in the
preeminent sense. Just as, for Kant, no objects would be present to us
without a prior “pure” (contentless) intuition of space and time, so for
Heidegger no beings would be disclosed unless they stepped into the light
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 11

supplied by a previous self-showing of Being in general. Without a previous

understanding of what it means to be, we could not recognize any being as
a being.
The recognition could not arise discursively; that is the point of saying that
beings cannot be derived from other beings. We cannot run around (“dis-
curs”) from one being to another in order to discover what it means to be in
general. We cannot make a collection of beings and derive from them—by
abstraction to what they have in common—the meaning of Being in general.
Being must come first: unless we already knew what it means to be, how
would we know what to place in the collection? Any collecting must be
guided by some sense of what is to be collected.
That which guides our recognition of any being as a being is Being. It is
something we always glimpse but ordinarily overlook. Yet it can be wrested
to show itself. There is a method to let it be seen. The method is phenomenol-
ogy, and what—for Heidegger although not for Husserl—is to be made the-
matic in the method is Being. So Being and Time as a treatise in philosophy
is phenomenological ontology. For Heidegger, ontology and phenomenology
are not two distinct disciplines within philosophy. On the contrary, these
terms characterize philosophy itself: “the first names the object of philosophy
and the second the way of dealing with that object” (SZ, p. 38).
Socrates is not a storyteller (in the Stranger’s sense). Socrates recognizes
the ontological difference. He is constantly seeking the Being of beings, but
his interlocutors can only offer him examples, beings, which he rejects as not
measuring up to Being itself, to what must be seen in order to recognize any
being as a being, the Idea (ἰδέα, “that which is seen in a preeminent way”).
Generals can indeed recognize a brave act, but when Socrates asks what
makes the acts brave, what bravery itself is, what is the Being of bravery,
the Idea of bravery, those generals can offer only instances. The generals are
storytellers.
What Socrates is constantly attempting to open up is the ontological differ-
ence. That is the content, the middle, of all the dialogues. It is also the entire
content of Being and Time. That content amounts to the first philosophical
step. Accordingly, all the dialogues as well as Being and Time could be sub-
titled: On philosophy. We are about to see that they could also be subtitled:
On death.
For Plato, how do we let Being show itself? How do we come to know
what it means to be, if not discursively? That question is what lies behind the
“doctrine of recollection.” The hero of the Platonic dialogues thereby does
become a storyteller, a mythmaker. It is not a story such as those told by the
“muses,” a story about the derivation of beings from other beings. It is story
about Being as the origin. Being shows itself by way of our recollection; to
say so is to invoke a myth.
12 Chapter 1

There is a mystery attached to our knowledge of Being, the presence of the

light by which we recognize any being as a being. Socrates expresses—and
indeed enhances—the mystery by resorting to myth. We gained the knowl-
edge of Being in a previous existence, when the soul in heaven journeyed
in procession with all the gods and banqueted by gazing out at the hyper-
heavenly place where the Ideas reside (Phaedrus, 247C). Upon falling to
earth and becoming incarnated, the soul retains a faint recollection of what it
once saw, and that recollection provides the light. The light is usually over-
looked; the philosopher is the one who attends to it and attempts to make the
recollection explicit.
The doctrine of recollection needs to be demythologized, that is to say,
taken precisely as a myth and not a literal explanation. The intent of the doc-
trine is not to provide a rational explanation of how we come to understand
what it means to be; the intent of using mythological language is to focus
attention on the inexplicability of the presence of the world to us. The myth
aims to make us wonder, not to remove the sense of wonder through a sci-
entific account.
Socrates maintains that there is a privileged being in the process of recol-
lection. Any being at all could serve to remind us of the Idea which is the
Being of that being, but most beings on earth lack luster. They do not shine
brightly enough to allow Being to show through. Otherwise put, not all the
Ideas are equally lustrous; most do not possess enough radiance to make for
easy recollection. Yet, there is one privileged Idea and one class of most
lustrous beings. The privileged Idea is beauty, and the privileged beings are
beautiful ones, beautiful human bodies in particular. That is why the philoso-
pher is “a lover of beauty and of the arts and is erotic” (Phaedrus, 248D).
Let us now turn to Heidegger. For him as well, there is a privileged being
in regard to the question of what it means to be in general, a privileged being
in regard to gaining access to Being, letting the phenomenon be seen, allow-
ing Being to show itself. That being does not provoke recollection, and so
Heidegger does not resort to the myth of the heavenly banquet. Instead, the
mode of access is phenomenology; the privileged being is to be investigated
phenomenologically. That means to attend first to the way this being shows
itself to itself and then secondly to “read off” (ablesen) from that self-show-
ing the meaning of Being in general (SZ, p. 7).
For Heidegger, the privileged being in the question of Being is the being
that actually asks this question, namely, the being we ourselves are. Being
and Time thematizes this being in a limited respect, only with regard to the
question of Being. So Heidegger does not call this being in the traditional
way “man” or “human being” but Dasein (“existence,” literally “thereness”).
This being is thematized only as a place, a “there,” where a disclosedness of
Being resides.
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 13

Heidegger emphasizes something apparently obvious, namely: in order

to let this being serve as the exemplary being, a condition is actually expe-
riencing it. The problem is that Dasein would seem to elude every grasp,
for this being, whether existing authentically (making oneself a product of
one’s own hand) or inauthentically (sheepishly going along with the crowd,
the “they”), is always projecting upon future possibilities. The future is
essential to Dasein in the present, but the future is now outstanding. Dasein,
at every moment of life until the very end, is futural and so is never whole.
Consequently, Dasein cannot be experienced as a determinate being at all.
Only death will bring wholeness and determination. But death also brings
an end to Dasein as a place of disclosedness. Mortality would then seem to
forestall any attempt by someone living to read off from his or her Being
the meaning of Being in general. Accordingly, a central theme of Being and
Time is death: How is death, apparently making impossible an experience of
Dasein as a determinate whole, nevertheless not an obstacle in the way of
phenomenological ontology?
Close to the middle of both Being and Time and a Platonic dialogue is the
theme of death. The question of Being and the question of death are closely
joined; the central question, the question of Being, involves questioning our
comportment to death.
Not only is each of the dialogues braided up, but so are these works
among themselves.15 For example, many of the dialogues, if the indications
provided by Plato are heeded closely enough, have ties to the trial and death
of Socrates. The Sophist, the dialogue Heidegger invokes in the epigraph to
Being and Time, is a case in point.
The Sophist begins with Theodorus saying: “According to what was agreed
yesterday, O Socrates, we [the partners in dialogue with Socrates on the
previous day, namely, Theodorus and Theaetetus] have come ourselves . . .”
(Sophist, 216A). What was agreed yesterday? Theodorus is apparently refer-
ring to the dialogue Theaetetus. That conversation breaks off, and Socrates
calls for the partners in the dialogue to meet again the next day. His reason
for discontinuing the talk is his going to trial. Socrates abruptly brings the
dialogue to a close by saying: “But now I must betake myself to the stoa of
the King against the indictment Meletus has drawn up and directed toward
me. Yet in the morning, O Theodorus, let us betake ourselves here again”
(Theaetetus, 210D).
A stoa is a roofed colonnade serving as a public meeting place. In this case,
it is a court of law. The “King” is the archon (magistrate) who presided over
capital cases, and the stoa assigned to him is a large one, capacious enough
to accommodate at least 501 dikasts. So Socrates is breaking off the conver-
sation to go to court in order to disclaim the capital offenses he is charged
with, and he makes plans to meet Theodorus and Theaetetus in the morning
14 Chapter 1

at the place where they are now speaking. Yet, what intervenes between the
Theaetetus and the Sophist is Socrates’ trial. Socrates is found guilty and con-
demned to death. He is remanded to prison until the execution can be carried
out. Therefore, the first words of the Sophist take on a particular sense: what
was “agreed yesterday,” the agreement entered into by a majority of the 501
dikasts, was that Socrates is guilty and is to die. So the meeting of Socrates
and his friends the day after is not at the same place as their earlier dialogue
but in prison.
The beginning of the Sophist thereby prefigures a central theme of the
dialogue, namely, the possibility of nonbeing: it is Socrates’ own nonbeing
that hangs over the dialogue. Socrates’ death, his possible nonbeing, is what
is announced in the beginning, namely, the agreement of yesterday, and thus
what is prefigured is the relation between Being and nonbeing which will be
put at issue in the discussion.
If the Sophist takes place on the morning of Socrates’ first day in prison,
the prominent role played by the Stranger becomes intelligible. Why is the
Stranger the leader of the discussion rather than Socrates? A hint is provided
by Socrates’ exceedingly curious response when introduced to the Stranger.
Theodorus says at the beginning: “we have come ourselves and are bringing
this man, a stranger from Elea.” Socrates responds: “Perhaps this is no man
but a god” (Sophist, 216A). Socrates specifies the god as one coming to look
into human deeds and judge them (216B).
The dialogue thus reminds us of something Socrates says at the end of his
defense speech. Just before his farewell, Socrates announces he will soon
be facing “those who are truly dikasts,” τoὺς ἀληθῶς δικαστάς (Socrates’
Apology, 41A), that is, divine judges who will see the truth about him.
Socrates may have been referring to his entry into Hades, but he was correct
to say “soon,” for the very next morning, in prison, the first significant per-
son Socrates encounters is the Eleatic Stranger, and Socrates recognizes him
as a god come to judge him. Presumably, this god-like alien from Elea, the
land of Parmenides, who is the philosopher of Being, will judge him truly, in
accord with his Being. Socrates listens throughout the dialogue because the
Stranger is looking into his deeds: Is Socrates a charlatan? In other words,
the Stranger is determining who truly is a sophist. The dialogue is portraying
a sophist in truth and prefiguring how Socrates will fare when he faces judg-
ment in Hades.
Accordingly, the beginning of the Sophist is appropriate to the matter of
the discussion, the determination of who is the sophist. As usual, the dia-
logue begins by enacting a certain movement, a certain deed: in this case, the
bringing together of Socrates and the god-like Stranger. The beginning thus
prefigures what will be carried out in the course of the dialogue, namely, a
determination of the sophist in truth and thus an examination of Socrates’
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 15

claim that he is not a sophist. And the Sophist is also appropriate to the mat-
ter of Being and Time. The quotation placed on the first page of the treatise
announces the question of Being and also, simply by appealing to the dia-
logue occurring on the morning after Socrates’ condemnation, invokes an
atmosphere of death.
Let us then turn to Being and Time on the theme of death. As mentioned,
death threatens to strangle the project by preventing a grasp of Dasein as a
determinate whole. The phenomenological philosopher attempting to disclose
the meaning of Being in general by reading it off from his or her own Being
will not be a whole until death, and then he or she will no longer be Dasein
and so will be unable disclose anything. Accordingly, the project of reading
off the meaning of Being by taking Dasein as a privileged being is doomed
from the very start. While death is still outstanding, Dasein is not a whole.
And when death arrives, Dasein is no longer Dasein.
Heidegger suggests the solution to this problem when he wonders whether
this way of thinking about what is outstanding to Dasein does not fall into
the error of conceiving Dasein as present-at-hand or ready-to-hand rather than
as existence (SZ, p. 245). Let us be clear about the distinction between the
ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand and then distinguish them both from
existence.
The first distinction concerns the degree of closeness of a practical thing
to the hand which uses it. Heidegger recognizes three degrees of closeness,
expressed by means of prepositions: a thing may be vor, zu, or unter the hand,
“on hand,” “at hand,” or “in hand.” If an item of equipment is merely “on
hand,” then it is extant somewhere in the world but not easily accessible. An
example would be an electric drill still in its case and stored away someplace
or other. If the equipment is “at hand,” then it is ready to be used and within
reach. An example would be an electric drill with the battery charged and
a bit already inserted, hanging from the workman’s tool belt. A thing “in
hand” would be a tool actually being wielded by the workman: the drill in
the grasp of the carpenter drilling with it. In the customary way of translating
Heidegger, the term “present-at-hand” is meant to capture the sense of the
merely “on hand.” It refers to presence, extantness, somewhere or other. The
“ready-to-hand” expresses the sense of the “at hand” and the “in hand.” It
refers to the practicality of an item of equipment.
The present-at-hand differs from the ready-to-hand corresponding to
the distinction between primary and secondary properties, as traditionally
understood, and between theory and practice. Primary properties are physi-
cal ones such as shape, material, and mass; they are revealed by studying the
equipment, taking up a theoretical attitude toward it. Secondary properties
are those of usefulness, functionality, revealed by wielding the equipment
in some practical pursuit. For Heidegger, the traditional order of priority is
16 Chapter 1

actually a hysteron proteron; the practical properties should be called the

primary ones, since they are first in the order of experience. Only some subse-
quent breakdown in usefulness motivates us to focus on physical properties.
According to Heidegger, it would be an error to think of Dasein (under-
stood precisely, not the human being as such, but the “there” of a disclosed-
ness of the meaning of Being) as possessing any of the properties of things.
So the death of Dasein has to be understood in radically different terms, in the
way appropriate to a being that exists. For Heidegger, “existence” (Existenz)
as a name of the Being of Dasein always has reference to possibilities.
“Existence” names Dasein’s peculiar relation to possibilities.
Versus things, whether ready-to-hand or present-at-hand, Dasein has a dis-
tinctive relation to possibilities. Only Dasein’s possibilities are what Heidegger
calls “most proper” (eigenst, SZ, p. 42) ones, possibilities in the most proper
sense. They are so because, for Dasein, possibilities, even when actualized,
remain possibilities. And possibilities still outstanding are already actualized.
Dasein is not yet what he or she16 already is and is already what he or she is
not yet. That expresses a radical difference between Dasein and things.
According to Heidegger, Dasein always is a possibility and also has this
possibility, but not in the manner of a “property belonging to a thing” (SZ,
p. 42). So Dasein actualizes some possibility, and yet the possibility remains
a possibility for that Dasein; as existent Dasein, I eat my cake and yet still
have it to eat. I possess possibilities in the most proper sense; things do not.
A white door possesses the possibility of being painted red. The red is now
utterly absent, and when it becomes present, the door will be utterly red. The
redness was at first entirely potential and when actualized will be entirely
actual. Accordingly, a thing has properties, pure and simple. But Dasein has
no such properties. For Dasein, past actualities remain possible, and future
possibilities are already actual. This is so especially with regard to death, but
it applies to any of Dasein’s possibilities.
Consider the possibility of attaining old age. For someone who has
actualized that possibility, oldness is not a property the way redness is a
property of a door. An aged person is not purely and simply old, such that
that is all there is to it. There are many ways to be old, but there are not
many ways for a door to be red. It remains open to the elderly person to
take old age as a burden and complain about it, or to fight against age and
ridiculously try to recapture one’s youth, or to “act one’s age” and accept
old age gracefully. In other words, old age is still a possibility to someone
who has already actualized it. The aged person is that possibility, but old
age remains a possibility he or she has. Every old person is old in his or
her own way. As Nietzsche says, cited by Heidegger, “We are not too old
for our victories” (SZ, p. 264).17 What we have conquered is still open to
being appropriated. It is still open to the elderly to decide how old age, a
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 17

possibility they have actualized in the past, is going to be actualized. What

for things constitute properties are for Dasein existentialia. Accordingly,
Dasein has no “properties.” That is a term applicable to things alone; the
characteristics of Dasein all have to do with possibility, that is, with exis-
tence, and so are rightfully called existentialia.
A comparable analysis applies to future possibilities. They are not purely and
simply outstanding to Dasein, the way redness is utterly absent from a white
door. A young Dasein has the possibility of being old in the future; but oldness
is not now utterly absent from a young Dasein. Such a Dasein is already a future
old Dasein, in the sense that youth is lived with old age on the horizon. One
plans for the future, and even to live entirely in the moment is still to take one’s
bearings from the future, namely, by purposely turning one’s back on it. Old age
always looms over youth, but redness does not loom over a white door.
This existential analysis of Dasein’s future possibilities applies preemi-
nently to death. That is a possibility every Dasein will make actual, and it is
one every Dasein is already making actual. Every Dasein breathes an atmo-
sphere of mortality. Death is not utterly outstanding, not something utterly
closed off to us while we live, not something purely and simply missing. We
all actualize death in a preliminary way and live as future dead persons; we
are constantly comporting ourselves to death.
On the other hand, once we do die, we will not be able to comport
ourselves to death any longer. There are no possible ways of being dead,
possible ways of comporting ourselves to death once it arrives in propria
persona. Death is the one victory (or defeat) for which we will indeed be
too old. In Heidegger’s terminology, death is “unsurpassable,” unüber-
holbar (SZ, p. 250); death cannot be “overtaken,” über-holen. The term
applies to automobiles and driving. Death cannot be passed, overtaken, as
one car passes another and puts that other car in the rearview mirror. Death
cannot be put in our rearview mirror; we cannot overtake it and look back
upon it.
Accordingly, being dead is not like being old or being anything else at all.
Comportment, even the negative one of flight, requires some understanding
of what one is comporting oneself toward, some disclosure of it. But death
takes away all disclosedness, all looking, whether forward or back, and so
makes impossible any comportment.
Death takes away all possibilities whatsoever, makes them impossible.
Death is the possibility of the impossibility of any possibilities. Death is the
possibility of the impossibility of possibility and thereby is the possibility of
the impossibility of Dasein or of existence (since existence is comportment
toward possibilities).
In summary, death is the only possibility that is always being made actual
(in the existential sense: death is always with us, always menacing, always
18 Chapter 1

coloring our lives) and the only possibility that can never be made actual (in
the ready-to-hand or present-at-hand sense: Dasein cannot be dead, there can-
not be a dead Dasein, death makes Dasein impossible).
Being and Time is concerned with death as an existentialium and not with
death as a thing ready-to-hand or present-at-hand; the treatise is concerned
with being-toward-death, with the way death enters into our lives as long as
we are living. Being and Time offers an existential analysis, an analysis in
terms of most proper possibilities, and shows how Dasein can grasp himself
or herself as a whole while still alive. Death is not an obstacle to wholeness,
for death is not, even now, something entirely outstanding. The problem
of grasping Dasein as a whole therefore seems to be solved. According to
Heidegger, even everyday inauthentic Dasein is in constant comportment
toward death, although this may be precisely by attempting to flee from
death. Death is therefore not something Dasein attains only when deceased.
The extreme future possibility of Dasein is always already incorporated into
Dasein in being-toward-death. For that reason, Heidegger concludes that it is
not justified to infer, based on an ontologically inappropriate understanding
of Dasein’s death as something outstanding, that Dasein cannot be grasped as
a whole. The fact that Dasein is always ahead-of-oneself, by constantly pro-
jecting onto possibilities, is not evidence against wholeness in the existential
sense; on the contrary, this ahead-of-oneself is what “first makes wholeness
possible” (SZ, p. 259).
Heidegger goes on to say that the problem of the possible wholeness of
this being, the being some particular one of us is in each case, could have
been posed in a legitimate way only by bringing Dasein’s mode of Being as
existence into relation with death as the extreme possibility. Yet the issue of
wholeness is not resolved so easily, and in the very next sentence Heidegger
declares: “Nevertheless, it remains questionable whether the problem has
been sufficiently worked out” (SZ, p. 259). The theme still to be taken up
is authenticity, authentic being-toward-death. As long as authentic being-
toward-death has not been exhibited and ontologically determined, an “essen-
tial deficiency” adheres to the existential interpretation of being-toward-death
(SZ, p. 260).
The existential analysis of death shows how future death is incorporated
into present Dasein and thus demonstrates the possibility of grasping Dasein
as a whole. What still needs to be shown is this possibility being carried out,
Dasein actually grasping itself as a whole. It is a matter of the transition from
theory to practice. In other words, does the theory hold in practice? What
has to be exhibited is Dasein in practice understanding itself as a unitary
whole, Dasein incorporating death into its way of living. Ordinary, everyday,
inauthentic Dasein does not incorporate death but, on the contrary, flees from
death and in practice denies that death is always looming. Only authentic
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 19

being-toward-death faces up to death, even though this “facing up” will prove
to be a peculiar one. In any event, the essential deficiency to be repaired has
to do with an exhibition of Dasein’s wholeness, Dasein in his or her whole-
ness shown to himself or herself as a unitary whole. That exhibition will be
supplied by describing authentic being-toward-death.
The distinction between authentic and inauthentic comportment toward
death revolves around the character of death as a possibility. Inauthentic
comportment does everything to evade this character; authentic comportment
enhances it. Authentic comportment is a constant dying. It will turn out that
such constant dying is exactly the Socratic comportment toward death.
Inauthentic being-toward-death does everything it can to conceal the fact
that death is possible at any moment, and inauthenticity thereby prevents
Dasein from taking up his or her own chosen way of being-toward-death.
People take concern with death to be morbid. For example, inauthentic (idle)
talk about death is meant to be heartening: “they” tell a seriously ill per-
son that there is no need to worry since modern medicine can do wonders.
People do recognize there is such a thing as death, but they speak of it as a
mere “case” of something that just happens. They pass death off as an ever-
recurring actuality and thereby conceal its possibility-character. Accordingly,
Dasein is placed in the position of lostness in the “they” with respect to what
should be a preeminent possibility for existence, “a most proper possibility
to be oneself” (SZ, p. 253).
By contrast, authentic being-toward death enhances the possibility-
character and discloses this possibility as a most proper one. Heidegger’s
name for the authentic attitude toward death is “anticipation.” It might seem
Heidegger is making authenticity a morbid preoccupation, and the German
term, Vorlaufen, seems even more morbid, since it literally means “forerun-
ning,” “running ahead” into death. But of course Heidegger does not mean
this “running ahead” as committing suicide, nor does it mean brooding over
death, obsession with death. Inauthentic comportment turns death into an
object of calculation, an actuality that can be reckoned with either by predict-
ing, avoiding, or hastening. That is what Heidegger means by saying “they”
pass death off as an actuality and conceal its possibility-character. Running
ahead is precisely not such calculation about death.
Anticipation must be understood in the existential sense; it then refers to
Dasein’s peculiar relation to possibilities. To anticipate death is to live now as
a future dead person and to do so in full consciousness of breathing an atmo-
sphere of mortality. To anticipate death is to recognize that death is a most
proper possibility, one that is always being made actual and one that leaves
a person free to do so in his or her own chosen way. To anticipate death is
therefore a way of understanding death. Anticipation proves to be a way of
“understanding one’s extreme possibility as a most proper possibility” (SZ,
20 Chapter 1

p. 263) and thus proves to be the possibility of “authentic existence” (SZ, p.

263).
To anticipate is therefore not so much to understand death as such; it is to
understand Dasein’s relation to possibilities as such. It is to understand that
Dasein’s possibilities are most proper possibilities, ones which Dasein always
runs ahead into and ones which leave Dasein the choice of how to run ahead
into them. That choice, the choice to be oneself as a product of one’s own
making, instead of going along with the crowd, is authenticity. So anticipa-
tion is, as Heidegger says, the possibility of authentic existence.
Then just how does one anticipate? How does one comport oneself authen-
tically to death? A prime example of authentic being-toward-death is the life
of Socrates. Accordingly, the quotation from the Sophist, with the death of
Socrates in the background, is again appropriate. It again prefigures what the
treatise is about. How then did Socrates face death?
The Sophist is not the dialogue in which Plato portrays the execution of
Socrates, the administering of the poison hemlock. That suggests Socrates’
authentic comportment toward death is not his serenity and resoluteness in
meeting his end. Such comportment is not what Heidegger means by antici-
pation. Instead, Socrates is the exemplar precisely by his comportment in the
Sophist.
What does Socrates do in this dialogue? —Almost nothing except listen to
a stranger philosophizing about Being, a stranger taking the first philosophi-
cal step. For Socrates, taking this step, distinguishing Being from beings, is
what it means to die. In other words, Socrates is a prime example inasmuch
as he maintains that the philosopher is always dying, that the practice of phi-
losophy is dying.
Death is the soul existing by itself, the separation of the soul (Phaedo,
64C). Death can even be characterized as the purification of the soul. The
philosopher does indeed constantly strive toward this purification and so can
be said to practice dying. The crucial question, however, concerns exactly
what the philosopher’s soul is to be separated from, purified from.
Let us consider three dialogues central to the portrait of philosophy as dying,
as separation, purification, of the soul. The Phaedrus begins with Socrates in
a way purifying himself from his body. Instead of returning home from the
Piraeus and satisfying the body’s need for food and sleep, Socrates spends the
day in philosophical discourse. But what motivates him to reject the body’s
needs is not the prospect of an afternoon in pure thought. On the contrary, it is
something as bodily as can be. Phaedrus entices Socrates into the countryside
by offering to read him a speech written on a scroll he is carrying. Phaedrus
says the speech is most appropriate for Socrates’ ears, and the reason is that
the speech deals with erotic matters. Specifically, it is a speech containing
trick arguments useful in the seduction of boys. Socrates says he is so eager
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 21

to learn these arguments that he will follow Phaedrus even as far as Megara,
which is a way of saying “all over Attica.” Accordingly, the Phaedrus does
not portray the philosopher as purifying the soul from the body. If anything, it
portrays the philosopher as preoccupied with the body, with Eros.
In the Phaedrus, Socrates not only learns trick arguments for seduction, he
also proceeds to employ them. In accord with the trick arguments, Socrates
disguises himself as a non-lover and shows Phaedrus the advantage of yield-
ing to him. Phaedrus eventually surrenders (Phaedrus, 243E):

Socrates: Where is that lad I was addressing?

Phaedrus: He is always near you, especially close, whenever you want him.
Socrates: So then, O beautiful lad . . .

Socrates in this dialogue shows himself to be exactly in accord with his char-
acterization of the philosopher: a lover of beauty and erotic. If this is death,
the separation of the soul, it is most definitely not the separation of the soul
from the body.
In the Symposium, philosophy is equated with “Platonic love.” That is
the pinnacle of the “ladder of love” as described by Diotima (Symposium,
210A-212A). The ascension up this ladder does amount to a purification of
the soul from the body. At the lowest level is the carnal love of one body
for another one, a physically beautiful one. During the ascent, the object
of love becomes further and further removed from the beautiful body and
becomes more and more rarified and ideal. It is no longer the beautiful body
that counts, but only the beauty of the body, the beauty abstracted from the
beautiful body. Indeed the beautiful body eventually becomes optional, and it
is bypassed in favor of a beautiful soul. On the subsequent rungs, the bodily
is neglected more and more, until, finally, Being, or the Idea of beauty, is
not grasped as reflected in anything bodily, or as reflected in anything of our
world at all, but is gazed upon directly, without intermediary, and in a way
that is adequate to the vision.
If such Platonic love is the practice of philosophy, then this practice is
indeed a dying in the sense of a separating of the soul from the body. But is
it the sort of love Socrates actually practices? Not at all. In the Symposium,
Socrates is characterized as a satyr (215B, 216C), that is, a lecher or, in
today’s parlance, a “dirty old man” and specifically one who proceeds from
conquest to conquest (218A–B). Socrates is on the prowl for beautiful bodies
and not at all intent on bypassing such bodies in favor of the Idea of beauty.
Socrates may well be intent on the Idea, but he grasps it precisely through the
intermediary of beautiful beings and not by neglecting them.
Diotima’s portrait of Platonic love is a comedy; it is not Socratic love as
actually practiced. Yet it is Socrates himself who puts on this comedy, and we
22 Chapter 1

are well prepared for it, since he is utterly out of character at the dinner party.
He is purified (having taken a bath, most unusual for him), “all fancied up,”
wearing comedians’ socks (versus the buskins of tragedy), and merely repeat-
ing things he has heard in a fit of inspiration, the words of a priestess of Apollo.
Some sort of buffoonery is in the offing, and we soon learn what it is: Socrates
is holding pure, intellectual, non-carnal “Platonic love” up to ridicule.18 The
love actually proper to Socrates is most definitely carnal. Socratic love sees the
Ideas precisely as reflected in worldly things, as grasped through the intermedi-
ary of beautiful bodies, and not as gazed upon directly in the manner of a kind
of vision accessible only to the gods. Then how is the practice of philosophy
a dying, a separating of the soul? To see that, we need to turn to the Phaedo.
The dialogue most explicitly relating philosophy to death is this one occur-
ring on the very day of Socrates’ passage into Hades. As his soul is about
to take leave of his body, Socrates says he can face the prospect calmly and
hopefully, since all his life he has been attempting to free the soul from the
fetters of the body. He has done so by practicing philosophy, and in this pur-
suit the body is a hindrance. Therefore, to philosophize is to die in the specific
sense of separating soul from body.
A casual reading of the Phaedo does indeed make it seem Socrates despises
the body and believes philosophizing is a matter of simulating death. Yet, a
Platonic dialogue never yields up its treasures to a casual reading. Attending
to the dialogue with the same care19 that went into the composing of it, we
find indications enough that, as surprising as it may be, throughout his final
day on earth Socrates is again putting on a comedy. As with all Socratic com-
edies, this one expresses a deliberately exaggerated position, one designed to
be so extreme that its untenability will be manifest to everyone (excepting
those with no sense of humor).
The comedy is suggested at the very outset of the discussion of philosophy
and death, when Socrates, sitting on the side of his prison bed and placing
his feet on the ground, says he himself has no knowledge of the matters to
be discussed and will merely repeat things he has heard. Throughout the dia-
logue, Socrates does not speak in his own name. We know that when Socrates
speaks for another, as when he speaks in the name of Diotima, he will say
something ridiculous. That his feet are on the ground only makes it more
obvious by contrast: he is about to say something groundless.
The comedy begins with the very first topic, the prohibition against suicide.
Socrates relates what he has heard: “Are we not the property of the gods, and
just as the gods will be displeased if we take our own life, so likewise if some
animal that was our property killed itself on its own initiative, would we not
be angry with that animal and punish it?” (Phaedo, 62C).
The comedy continues as Socrates turns to death itself, not merely suicide,
and offers an absurd definition. “Death is the releasing of the body from the
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 23

soul, such that the body by itself then comes into its own, and is likewise the
releasing of the soul from the body, such that soul by itself then also comes
into its own. Is not death precisely this?” (Phaedo, 64C). Accordingly, the
soul is the prison of the body, just as the body is of the soul. At death, both
these prisoners are released and come to their full potential. The soul is bad
for the body, and vice versa. I scarcely need to make the absurdity explicit:
if the two cases are indeed analogous, as Socrates has heard, then the soul
after death is as corrupted as a corpse. If that is the full potential of the body,
namely, decay and corruption, and if the full potential of the soul is an analo-
gous one, then it is absurd to suppose such a soul could attain the heights of
philosophy.
Socrates goes on repeating the hearsay. But he never actually makes any
assertions, and that might be his way of distancing himself from the things he
has heard. He speaks about philosophy as the practice of death, but he only
poses questions: Is it not then the case . . .? Does it not then seem . . .? Would
we not then say . . .? The entire discourse is a hypothetical one. Inasmuch as
it is all based on the hypothesis of an absurd definition of death, it is equally
absurd.
The absurdity is evident in the long catalog of experiences the philosopher
would supposedly repudiate. It is most evident in regard to sex. Socrates asks:
“It does not then seem, does it, that the philosophic person would pursue
aphrodisial pleasures?” (Phaedo, 64D). He receives a sharp negative reply:
In no way! But Socrates, as we have just seen, was famous for his amo-
rous encounters, and earlier in this very dialogue that would repudiate sex,
Xanthippe is said to be visiting Socrates with a babe in her arms (Phaedo,
60A). Therefore, Socrates married a woman much younger than himself and
was begetting children even when he was sixty-nine years old. So much for
the repudiating of Aphrodite!
The same sort of performative contradiction occurs again (Phaedo, 63D-
E). Socrates is proposing the view that the philosopher should not postpone
death but instead should embrace it as soon as lawfully possible (that is, not
by suicide). Philosophy is the practice of dying, so it would be irrational of the
philosopher to delay death for even one moment. In the midst of this discourse,
Socrates is interrupted. The executioner warns him that by speaking so much,
Socrates will warm his body and will impair the chilling action of the poison.
Socrates might then need to take another dose and if that is not effective, even
a third. By speaking with so much heat, Socrates is delaying death. Socrates’
response is to tell the executioner to prepare all three doses, for the talking will
go on. In the very midst of claiming that the philosopher would do nothing to
delay death and will be speaking with better people in the other world, Socrates
delays death, precisely to go on speaking with the people of this world. The
24 Chapter 1

exquisite irony is not lost on Crito, who says he was certain Socrates would not
take the executioner’s advice.
Shall we then simply dismiss the notion that for Plato philosophizing is
dying, the separating of the soul? No; to philosophize is indeed to seek such
a separation, but it is not the separation of the soul from the body. Instead, it
is separation from exactly what makes the Socratic discussion of philosophy
and death comical, namely, hearsay. That is the lesson of the Phaedo: the
struggle of the soul to come into its own autonomous existence is a struggle
against unexamined presuppositions, the unexamined life, taking things for
granted. The body is not the prison of the soul; on the contrary, the prison
is constituted by secondhand knowledge, idle talk, average everydayness,
mediocrity. The prison is inauthenticity.
The soul of the philosopher needs to be dead to what “they” say, needs to
release itself from thralldom to the way things are bandied about in everyday
chatter. The soul comes into its own by separating itself from everyday life.
That, if we read Plato carefully, is how philosophizing is dying. In other
words, the Socratic method, refusal to accept the usual substitution of beings
for Being, coincides with philosophizing, with separating the soul from its
prison, with authentic anticipation of death. In other terms, it is exactly the
practice of Socratic love: intimate, personal contact with a being in order to
grasp the Idea reflected in that being.
For Being and Time, what most concretely is authentic comportment
toward death? What is it to be constantly dying by choosing one’s own com-
portment toward death? What is it to “face up” to death? As I read Heidegger,
it is not at all a matter of thinking about death as such but instead is a way of
understanding Dasein’s existence, Dasein’s relation to possibilities as most
proper possibilities. It is thus a matter of intimate contact with a particular
being, Dasein, and attempting to read off from it the meaning of Being in
general. For Heidegger, authentic being-toward-death, anticipation, is, most
concretely, a matter of pursuing phenomenological ontology.
Authentic being-toward-death is thus nothing other than what Socrates is
constantly striving for, the disclosure of Being by penetrating into beings.
Authentic being-toward-death is not preoccupied with death; it is preoccu-
pied with the Being of the being who is always comporting himself or herself
toward death. That is how the middle of Being and Time is comparable to the
middle of the Platonic dialogues: the central concern is the first philosophical
step, carried out in the context of death. The pursuit of philosophy, phenome-
nological ontology, is exactly what constitutes authentic being-toward-death.
Both Plato and Heidegger see an intrinsic bond between philosophizing
and dying, but the perspective is different in each case. For Plato, to philoso-
phize is to approach death, to release the soul from the prison constituted by
everyday understanding. For Heidegger, authentic dying is philosophizing,
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 25

understanding one’s own death as a most proper possibility. For both Plato
and Heidegger, philosophizing and authentic dying have the same opposite,
namely, reliance on hearsay, and amount to the same practice, namely, won-
dering about the meaning of Being.

To return to the question of the wholeness, the unity, that was to be supplied
by authentic being-toward-death, it follows from Heidegger’s analysis that
the life of philosophical thought is the most unified one. For Socrates, in
order to institute wholeness in oneself, a person requires a paradigm, a prime
example of something unified, something preeminently one and self-same.
These paradigms are the Ideas, since, in contrast to the things that partake of
them, the Ideas cannot possibly deflect from their self-sameness. Beautiful
things may change and may come and go, but the Idea of beauty always is
and is always the same, even if we possess only a more or less adequate grasp
of that Idea. The philosopher, constantly lifting his or her gaze to the Ideas,
thereby acquires something of the paradigm of unity needed to make himself
or herself a unified whole. For Heidegger, everyday Dasein is dispersed into
moments: past, present, and future. Everyday Dasein does not understand
possibilities as most proper ones and instead takes death as outstanding and
the past as over and done. Only authentic being-toward-death, philosophy,
grasps these as intertwined, as unified, and thereby provides the paradigm
of unity. Thus, the pursuit of philosophy attests to the possibility of grasping
oneself as a whole and accordingly exhibits the possibility of interpreting the
Being of the being we ourselves are and of reading off from it the meaning
of Being in general. Thereby the earlier solution to the problem of grasping
Dasein as a whole is shown to hold; it is not merely a theoretical solution. The
transition from theory to practice is carried out in authentic being-toward-
death, and the “essential deficiency” is thereby repaired.

ENDING

The Platonic dialogues and Being and Time end the exact same way: they
reach an impasse and break off. They take the first philosophical step but stop
short of the second. They distinguish Being from beings but do not proceed to
the second step, the actual determination of the meaning of Being.
Some of the dialogues are altogether negative, in the sense that they merely
say what Being is not, namely, not any of the beings, any of the examples
offered to Socrates when he is seeking the Idea. These dialogues thereby pre-
cisely take the first step and then simply give up the search for Being. Most
of the other dialogues, instead of taking the second step, end with a myth or
an invocation of the gods. It would not be wholly unjustified to say that the
26 Chapter 1

trajectory of the Platonic dialogues in general is from the first philosophical

step to myth.
The Phaedrus, for instance, begins with the first step and ends with
Socrates offering a prayer to Pan. The Republic begins with the first step and
ends with the myth of Er. The Sophist begins with the first step inasmuch as it
invokes Parmenides of Elea, the philosopher of the difference between Being
and beings, and ends by distinguishing the divine and the human workman.
Many other dialogues invoke the gods at the very end or near the end. Let us
look more closely at the trajectory of the Republic.
The Republic begins with Socrates’ birth, his descent from Being to beings,
and it ends with a myth about birth, the embodiment of the soul of Er. This
myth is Socrates’ own fabrication, and we can suppose he is purposely tying
the end of the Republic to the beginning. Indeed, the name Er (Ἠρóς, from
ἀρóω) means “begotten,” “born.” Furthermore, Er is said to belong to the “tribe
of Pamphylos” (γένος Παμφύλου, literally “the genus of all-phyla,” the “tribe
of all-nations”) (Republic, 614B). Accordingly, the myth, just like the story of
Socrates’ descent to the Piraeus, is meant to have universal applicability. Er is
even told that he is to be a “messenger to all mankind” (Republic, 614D).
The myth of Er is a demonic one, devoted mostly to the strange sights
grasped by the soul of Er in the other world, prior to embodiment. The myth
reaches its conclusion with the embodiment of that soul, and the crucial point
is this: Er does not know how he came to be embodied, how he entered into
the world (Republic, 621B). He merely finds himself there, in the presence of
things, unable to account for how this presence came about.
Accordingly, the trajectory of the Republic is from a coming into the pres-
ence of the world to a myth about that coming into presence. What the myth
expresses is an inability to account for the unconcealment of the world to us.
We cannot say how we come into the world, how we recognize beings as
beings, how we know what it means to be in general. The myth turns back to
the first step and declares it to be inexplicable. Therefore, the reason the dia-
logues do not take the second philosophical step is that they cannot account
for the first step and thus cannot move beyond it.
The presence of beings is a mystery to us; it depends on something that has
to be expressed in myth, such as the myth of the prenatal grasp of the Ideas
at a heavenly banquet or the myth of Er. The unconcealment of beings to us
depends on something demonic, divine, something beyond our power.
The same trajectory, from the first philosophical step to myth, is also that
of Heidegger’s general course of thought, his path from Being and Time to his
later philosophy. In what follows, I offer at least a guideline to the complexi-
ties of that development beyond Being and Time.
Heidegger’s magnum opus was supposed to “work out” the question of
Being. The book itself specifies the tripartite structure of any questioning,
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 27

namely, an interrogation (1) of something (2) about something (3) in order to

find out something (SZ, p. 5). Being and Time was to work out the question
of Being by interrogating some being about its Being in order to find out the
meaning of Being in general. The three parts of the structure of questioning
correspond to the three divisions of Part One of the treatise. The first division
chooses the proper being to interrogate, Dasein. The second division inter-
prets the Being of Dasein, and the third division was to read off the meaning
of Being in general. The treatise stops with the completion of the second
division.
The successive editions of Being and Time for twenty-five years announced
on the title page: “First half.” That designation was then abandoned, since
what the missing part would offer could no longer be attached to the treatise
as it stood. It would not be the second half of that particular first half. Yet, for
Heidegger, the path of Being and Time remains necessary in order to stir up
in us the question of Being. Thus, Being and Time raises the proper question
but leads in the wrong direction. The question of Being remains; the projected
answer is untenable. Being and Time is valid in taking the first philosophical
step but not in the projected second step. Twenty-five years of thinking made
it more and more evident that the second step, the determination of the mean-
ing of Being in general, would not be what it was projected to be.
The Being of Dasein, existence, has to do with possibilities: Dasein’s
possibilities are most proper ones. It could be said that existence refers to
Dasein’s peculiar way of aging. We are not too old for our past actualities
nor too young for our future possibilities. Past actualities are still present pos-
sibilities, and future possibilities are already present actualities. Our aging,
our existence, is such that our past, our future, and our present are thoroughly
tangled together; these are not outside one another but, quite to the contrary,
are unified, preeminently in authenticity.
What then is the meaning of existence, the meaning of the Being of
Dasein? In other words, how does Being and Time, in its second division,
interpret the Being of Dasein? For Heidegger, to ask about the meaning of
something is to ask for that upon which it must be projected in order to be
comprehensible (SZ, p. 151). Existence, the peculiar relation of Dasein to
possibilities, Dasein’s peculiar present relation to past possibilities and to
future possibilities, is made comprehensible by projecting Dasein onto time.
Dasein’s existence is comprehensible only if Dasein has a peculiar tangled
relation to past, present, and future. This peculiar relation is what Heidegger
calls Dasein’s “temporality,” Zeitlichkeit. So temporality is the meaning of
the being who asks the question of Being.
The third division of Being and Time would read off from temporality the
meaning of Being in general. Heidegger proposes that that meaning would
also have to do with time. But it would be a distinct sort of time, given a
28 Chapter 1

distinct time-name, not Zeitlichkeit, but Temporalität.20 The task of funda-

mental ontology, namely, the interpretation of Being as such, consists in
“working out the Temporalität of Being” (SZ, p. 19) Only an exposition of the
problematic of Temporalität will provide the “concrete answer” (SZ, p. 19) to
the question of the meaning of Being. The transition from the second to the
third division of Part One was to have been a transition from Zeitlichkeit (the
time of Dasein) to Temporalität (the time of Being).
The transition was never carried out. The book was left unfinished, and
nothing in Heidegger’s later philosophy corresponds to the projected third
division, an interpretation of Being as fundamentally time. Heidegger does
not say explicitly why the meaning of Being cannot be understood as time,
not even as the peculiar time called Temporalität. Could it be because such an
interpretation of Being would amount to storytelling? It would be doing what
the “muses” mentioned by the Stranger in the Sophist proposed: reducing
Being to some particular being. Instead of water or air, this being would be a
most peculiar one, time. But such a reduction would still be treating us like
children and would amount to an undoing of the first philosophical step. It
would disrespect the ontological difference by using a being, time, to explain
Being. It would indeed provide a “concrete” answer to the question of the
meaning of Being. But any concrete answer to this question is storytelling.
A concrete answer would dispel the perplexity regarding the meaning of
Being. Heidegger’s philosophical progression from Being and Time onward
is the opposite, an enhancing of the perplexity. He makes Being more enig-
matic, not more concrete. Heidegger’s later philosophy is aimed precisely
at calling attention to the mysteriousness of Being, the inexplicability of the
presence to us of the light by which we recognize beings as beings. That is
why he employs what has to be called mythological language. Such language
is an asylum ignorantiae; it is resorting to fable out of exasperation. Being
is so uncanny that it is wiser to call attention to our ignorance by resort-
ing to myth than to suppose we could offer a rational explanation. Thus,
Heidegger’s later philosophy corresponds to the myth involved in the theory
of recollection or to the myth of Er: an attempt to explain the disclosure of the
world to us, our recognition of beings as beings, but an attempt so outlandish
as to call attention to the fact that this disclosure cannot be explained. All we
can do is wonder at it.
Heidegger’s mythological talk amounts to his committing the pathetic fal-
lacy. The overriding misplaced pathos is the central enigma of Heidegger’s
later philosophy, the so-called “history of Being.” Heidegger speaks of
Being itself as having a history; on its own initiative, Being shows itself to
us more clearly or withdraws more and more. That is the history of Being,
and for Heidegger it is history properly so called. The self-showing and self-
withdrawing of Being are the events, and they motivate the corresponding
 Being and Time as a Platonic Dialogue (On Philosophy and Death) 29

human epochs: the relatively clear self-showing of Being sends on its way the
ancient epoch, and the relative withdrawal of Being, whereby we are granted
a less and less adequate understanding of what it means to be, destines the
current technological epoch. Or Heidegger will say that truth is a goddess,
one who unveils herself to us more or less. Truth itself is given a new name:
“unconcealment.” Heidegger emphasizes the negativity and passivity in this
name; unconcealment is not something we humans accomplish but instead is
something granted to us. Accordingly, for the later Heidegger, the beings we
ourselves are, Dasein, should not be understood, in the manner of Being and
Time, as disclosers of the meaning of Being but as ones to whom that mean-
ing is disclosed. Thereby Dasein is most properly understood as shepherd,
steward, preserver.21 Or again, Heidegger comes to agree with Parmenides
that Being and thinking are the same. Heidegger, however, understands this
identity in his own way as appropriation: Being appropriates our thinking.
We understand what it means to be because we think in accord with the way
Being shows itself, the way Being appropriates our outlook on what it means
to be in general. Our thinking is a response to something that claims us. The
philosopher does not take up the topic of Being; on the contrary, Being takes
up the philosopher, just as the goddess Aletheia took Parmenides by the right
hand. Or, to choose a final example, Heidegger calls Being a clearing, the
lighted space we step into which allows us to see beings. But the clearing is
not something we accomplish; it grants itself to us, and the degree of clarity
is primarily in the hands of that which does the granting.
All of these instances of the pathetic fallacy, misplaced attributions of
intentions and actions, are versions of the first, the attribution of a history to
Being. Furthermore, the pathetic fallacy is a version of myth, and all myths
draw our attention to something inexplicable, something demonic and beyond
our power. Accordingly, the trajectory of Heidegger’s philosophy is the same
as that of the dialogues: they end the same way by progressing from the first
philosophical step to myth, from the first step to an explanation of that step
which is not an explanation at all but an enhancing of its mystery.
Heidegger’s trajectory is not from the first step to the second but to myth
as an expression of perplexity, an expression of wonder about the first step. It
is the trajectory of the Platonic dialogues and also the trajectory of Socrates’
personal itinerary as a philosopher.
In the Phaedo, a few moments before he calmly drains the bitter cup,
Socrates looks back on his philosophical itinerary. He says it began when he
tried to learn the causes of things and was dissatisfied with the extant answers.
These were the answers proposed by “muses,” as the Stranger calls them. The
causes were said to be “air, the ether, water, and many other such ἄτoπα”
(Phaedo, 98C). Socrates recognizes these as átopa, “things badly placed.”
These causes place a being on the level of Being, reduce Being to a being.
30 Chapter 1

Socrates’ recognition of these as átopa means he began with the ontological

difference, the first philosophical step. But the ending is not the second step.
Earlier in the Phaedo, Socrates tells his friends what has been occupying
him in prison while awaiting his delayed execution (delayed because of an
Athenian religious observance). What he finds most fitting for him to pursue
at the end of an itinerary that began with the first philosophical step is not
to venture the second step but to mythologize, μυθoλoγεῖv (Phaedo, 61E).

CONCLUSION: BEING AND TIME

AND PLATO’S SOPHIST

If Being and Time, in its beginning, middle, and end, can be likened to a
Platonic dialogue, then it can be likened especially to the one invoked by the
epigraph, namely, the Sophist. Just as, for Heidegger, the asking of the ques-
tion of Being leads inexorably to the problematic of death and to philosophy
itself as authentic being-toward-death, so everything in the Sophist turns on
the relation between the question of Being and the determination of the genu-
ine philosopher:

In the Sophist, Plato considers existence in one of its most extreme possibilities,
namely, philosophical life. Specifically, Plato shows indirectly who the authen-
tic philosopher is by displaying who the sophist is. And he does not show this by
setting up an empty program, that is, by saying what one would have to do to be
a philosopher; on the contrary, he shows it by actually philosophizing. For one
can say who the sophist is as the true non-philosopher only by actually living in
philosophy. Thus it happens that this dialogue manifests a peculiar intertwining
of Being and philosophy. Precisely on the path of a reflection on the Being of
beings, Plato interprets the sophist, and thus the philosopher, in their existence.22

If we recall that in this case the genuine philosopher to be differentiated

from the sophist is one who is listening in his jail cell with a sentence of death
over his head, then the likening of Being and Time to the Sophist is complete.
 Chapter 2

Signs and Mortality

PHENOMENAL ATTESTATION THAT

THE WORLD IS A COSMOS

As does Hegel at every step of the dialectic, Heidegger stresses the necessity
for the assertions of the reflecting philosopher to find attestation in pre-reflec-
tive experience. In the terms Heidegger employs in Being and Time, the dis-
tinction at issue is that between the phenomenological (phänomenologisch)
and the phenomenal (phänomenal).1 Any self-showing is a phenomenon,
but things as they show themselves phenomenologically, to the phenomeno-
logical philosopher, may be mere semblance—unless they are also disclosed
in the same way phenomenally, that is, disclosed to everyday experience,
to practical engagement with things and not simply to the reflective gaze.
Everyday Dasein—right in midst of his or her practical preoccupation with
things—must sense, at least to some extent, the structures made explicit in
phenomenological philosophizing. What the reflecting philosopher sees while
taking distance from practical experience must also be seen by pre-reflective
Dasein while immersed in practical experience.
Consider the structure of the world.2 For the philosophical reflections of
Being and Time, the world is a cosmos in the Greek sense. The κóσμος is
indeed the whole, everything taken together, but the focus of the Greek term
is not the whole but the togetherness. The cosmos is a well-ordered whole.
Thus, the opposite of the cosmos is not nothingness; the opposite is chaos.
The cosmetician is for the Greeks the hairdresser, the one who arranges hair
beautifully. And the opposite of ordered hair is not baldness but is dishev-
elment, messy hair. The general is also called a cosmetician: the one who
arranges troops in well-ordered battle formation. By extension, the world as
a whole is a cosmos, not simply everything that in some way or other avoids

31
32 Chapter 2

nonbeing and not simply what is all-encompassing, the context for every-
thing; instead, the cosmos is the beautiful arrangement of everything.
The Latin term for world, mundus, corresponds exactly to cosmos. The
basic meaning of mundus is “neatness,” “elegance,” and only by extension
is it applied to the world, in virtue of the splendid order of everything in the
universe.
In Being and Time, Heidegger expresses an understanding of the world as
an ordered whole not by using the terms κóσμος and mundus but by devis-
ing synonyms for them: relational totality, equipmental totality, referential
structure, involvement, significance. All of these designate the world as an
ordered whole, a totality wherein the parts are well arranged, are assigned to
one another and fitted together.
Despite what might seem a morbid cloud hovering over Being and Time,
in virtue of the prominence of the themes of death, guilt, and anxiety, the pri-
mary experience according to Heidegger is a positive one: an understanding
that the things of the world hang together, that the world is in joint. The world
is of course not in perfect order, not a perfect cosmos. But for Heidegger the
disorder stands out from a more general background of order, not vice versa.
Indeed Heidegger does emphasize the negative. He appreciates the nega-
tive even more than did Hegel, appreciates it for its disclosive power. For
example, as was mentioned earlier, Heidegger’s word for truth in the primor-
dial sense, the sense of the Greek alētheia, is “unconcealment.” Heidegger
is constantly calling our attention to the negative, the concealment. For
something to appear, it must overcome a prior concealment, must step out
of a previous darkness. Yet, what is most important for Heidegger is not the
negative as such but the fact that we humans are not the ones who overcome
this prior concealment and darkness. We have no capacity to do so; on the
contrary, that overcoming is a gift to us. We can deal with things in the light,
but the fact that things are illuminated at all is not in our power. We have
some control over present things, but their presence as such is not in our con-
trol. So the emphasis on the negative is meant to inculcate a sense of piety
toward something that has gifted us with the presence of things.
In regard to the world in general, for Heidegger our first experience is one
of an ordered whole, although it might initially be a weak whole, vague as to
details and indeterminate in content. Yet again what is most important is that
we humans did not bring this order out of chaos. The ordering has already
been done for us; it is a gift to us. Heidegger is calling on us to respect what
has given us this gift, although he does not say who or what this giver is.
Nevertheless, Heidegger’s philosophy is basically a positive, optimistic phi-
losophy, not a morbid one.
Accordingly, Heidegger’s emphasis on being-toward-death must be placed
in context. For Heidegger the primary experience is not death, disintegration,
 Signs and Mortality 33

negativity; on the contrary, the disintegration stands out against a previous

background of integration. The first experience is not that of fragments,
which are then built up into a whole; instead, what comes first in experience
is the wholeness from which the fragments are broken off. In Heidegger’s
terms, the “worldhood of the world,” the vague, global sense that things fit
together, is prior to any experience of particular things fitting together. If
death is the experience of disintegration, of our world falling apart and falling
out of our grasp, then that is possible only because of a prior experience of
the world as integrated, as holding together, as in our grasp. But what is the
phenomenal evidence that the world is experienced as a cosmos? And how
does the negative experience of death arise in contrast? Those are the ques-
tions I address in this chapter.

Phenomenal evidence means disclosure to everyday practical Dasein. How

then is the world as cosmos supposed to be brought home to such Dasein?
Practical Dasein concerns himself or herself with the task at hand and
does not stop to reflect on the structure of the world in which he or she is
immersed. So how is the world as an integrated whole brought to light for
everyday Dasein? How does this Dasein, precisely in the midst of his or her
preoccupation with practical affairs, sense that the world is a cosmos, that
all things hang together? Heidegger finds the phenomenal evidence in two
everyday situations: the ordered totality is lit up to everyday Dasein through
the breakdown of the usual relations among use-objects and also through the
experience of signs.
I wish to take a fresh look at Heidegger’s analyses. Despite almost 100
years of commentary on them, I do not believe they have been exhausted,
and I hope to bring out something still latent in them. I will also expand the
analyses by adding new phenomenal evidence, tied to price tags. Finally, I
will ask whether the experience of an integrated world does not in fact make
the atmosphere of mortality more stifling—indeed all the more stifling as that
integration approaches perfection.

TOOLS AS CONSPICUOUS, OBTRUSIVE, OBSTINATE

Let us begin with the first way of disclosure mentioned by Heidegger. It is a

lighting up of the cosmos, the ordered totality, through a disturbance in the
relations among use-objects (tools, gear, equipment). To repeat, Heidegger,
the reflecting philosopher, is looking for a motive in the midst of practical
dealings that would make the world as a whole stand out to the very one
who is dealing with things practically. Heidegger wants to appeal to practi-
cal experience, and so he proceeds by way of examples. They all have to
34 Chapter 2

do with hammers and nails, either those wielded by the shoemaker or the
carpenter.
The crux of the problem is that the cobbler (or carpenter) is submerged
in his or her work and does not even attend to the tools he or she wields,
let alone to the totality of references in which the tools are involved. What
then could motivate the cobbler to step back from practical preoccupation
and come to the verge of theory, that is, to look directly upon the relations
between hammers and nails instead of taking those relations for granted?
Heidegger discovers the motive in unusual, although by no means rare,
occurrences, namely, negative ones: things do not always run smoothly.
The well-ordered totality breaks down at times, the relations among things
become disrupted, the assignments of one part of the world to another get
thrown out of joint. These negative experiences harbor the disclosure of
something positive; the breakdown of the assignments constitutive of the
world calls attention to those very assignments. The order that is now missing
becomes palpable by its absence.
Heidegger discusses three sorts of cases (SZ, pp. 72–76). First, the worker
may encounter something unusable: a damaged tool or some unsuitable mate-
rial. The immediate consequence, in Heidegger’s terms, is that the equipment
becomes “conspicuous,” which is to say that it calls itself to our attention and
we are forced to gaze on it in a radically new way.
The term “conspicuous” designates very well the new way of gazing, for
ordinarily tools are just the opposite: they are transparent. The skilled worker
attends to the work and not to the tool. The tool is as transparent as the hand.
Just as a normal person does not attend to the hands while working or to the
tongue while talking or to the feet while dancing, so do tools become incor-
porated into the body and share its transparency.
From an objectivistic perspective, such as that of Aristotle (De Anima,
432a1–2), the hand is a tool, admittedly the innermost tool, the first tool, the
tool that uses other tools, but nevertheless is on the side of external objects.
The subject, the user of the tool, is further inward, the soul. From a phenom-
enological perspective, the hand is not innermost tool; on the contrary, the
tool is the outermost hand. The tool, as well as the hand, is on the side of the
subject. No normal person wields his or her own hand as a tool, one that could
be misplaced, for instance, and skilled workers even wield very complex
tools as hands. Tools and hands are transparent; they are overlooked in favor
of the work to be done.
What happens when hands are injured or tools break? We then gaze on
them as foreign objects. That is, they lose their transparency and we look on
them in terms of their physical properties. We look on them not as use-objects
but as sheer physical things with physical properties or, in Heidegger’s termi-
nology, not as ready-to-hand but instead as present-at-hand.
 Signs and Mortality 35

Heidegger brings up two other sorts of disturbances to the usual order in

the equipmental totality. An item of equipment may be missing or may be in
the way. If the hammer is missing, then its counterparts, the nails, become
obtrusive. They force themselves on our attention under the guise of inert
matter simply lying there. If the hammer is in the way, blocking access to
some other item of equipment, then the hammer becomes obstinate. It loses
its transparency and forces us to deal with it in a new way; it looks unruly
and instead of wielding it we must transport it as dead weight to some other
location in objective space.
What is the point? What is disclosed to everyday Dasein in these common
negative experiences? According to Heidegger, what is brought home to
Dasein is not simply the fact that tools are also present-at-hand objects and
thus are usually ready-to-hand. That would not be the disclosure of a cosmos.
What is disclosed rather is that tools are interconnected with other items of
equipment. What is most important in the negative experiences is the disrup-
tion of the relations among the items of equipment.
Consequently, from a Heideggerian perspective the most disclosive nega-
tive experience is not, as is commonly thought, the encounter with the broken
hammer. For the most part, this experience brings home to Dasein only the
circumstance that the hammer is usually transparent rather than conspicuous.
Heidegger stresses that the broken hammer is not fully displaced into the
realm of the present-at-hand. The broken hammer remains ready-to-hand; as
a result, Heidegger sees this experience as announcing only a tension in the
relations between the hammer and the nails and not a full disruption. The
more radical negative experiences, and thus the more disclosive ones, are the
other two, those of obtrusiveness and obstinacy.
In these latter experiences of a full displacement of the ready-to-hand into
the present-at-hand, what is disturbed, and thereby illuminated, is the rela-
tion between the hammer and the other items of equipment. Indeed the purest
case is the one of the missing hammer, for then it is expressly the nails that
obtrude on our attention and not simply some item of equipment or other, as
in the case of the hammer that is obstinate. The hammer in the way could not
be experienced as blocking access to nails, for the hammer has to be picked
up in order to use the nails. A hammer resting on top of nails would not be
experienced as obstinate but precisely as ready-to-hand. The obstinate ham-
mer must be blocking access to something else, such as nuts and bolts.
It is the missing hammer, not the obstinate one and certainly not the con-
spicuous one, that highlights the relation between the hammer and its proper
counterpart, the nails. The obtrusive nails then disclose not simply that items
of equipment belong together, that they form a whole; on the contrary, what
is now lit up is the fact that this is a well-ordered whole. At least marginally
intruding upon the gaze of everyday Dasein on account of the absence of the
36 Chapter 2

needed hammer is now something previously taken for granted, the beauti-
ful arrangement of the whole, the way all the parts of the world fit together:
hammers with nails, nails with leather, leather with ranching, ranching with
barbed wire, barbed wire with blast furnaces to convert iron ore into steel,
and so forth.
Accordingly, Heidegger has found the evidence he was seeking. What is
disclosed by the negative experiences (especially by the missing hammer),
called to the attention of everyday Dasein in the very course of his or her
practical dealings, that is to say, disclosed phenomenally and not merely
phenomenologically, seen close up by everyday pre-reflective Dasein and
not merely at a distance by the reflecting philosopher, is that the world is a
cosmos.

TOOLS AS OSTENTATIOUS

Heidegger does not claim the three sorts of disturbances he mentions are
the only ones throwing out of joint the ordered relations among use-objects.
Indeed there are no doubt many other motives in everyday experience to look
on equipment and tools wrenched from their normal context and to focus on
their present-at-hand properties. I wish to bring up one other such motive,
whereby use-objects are disclosed not as conspicuous, obtrusive, or obstinate,
but as ostentatious.
It is by no means a rare experience for a worker to need to shop for a new
tool. Nevertheless, shopping is a disruption of the relations constitutive of the
work world, for the tools on display in a store are removed from the totality
of their involvements with other items of equipment. We do not reach for a
hammer on display in order to drive nails with it. On the contrary, we focus
on the physical properties of the hammer. We consider the shape, size, mass,
and material of the hammer, all of which we overlook when actually wielding
the hammer in the course of work. So the hammer on display is something
present-at-hand.
Yet we do evaluate that hammer in terms of our specific needs. In other
words, what sort of nails will the hammer be assigned to? The nail used in
cobbling shoes is different from the one used by a carpenter in framing a
house. The respective hammer will need to have its own distinctive size and
heft. The nail also dictates the shape of the hammer: cross peen for the cob-
bler, claw peen for the carpenter. The nail dictates the material of the hammer
as well. The tiny nail of the cobbler requires a hammer made such as to maxi-
mize precision, the large nail of carpenter calls for a hammer that maximizes
force. Therefore, the cobbler’s hammer will have a bare handle in order to
transmit feeling to the user’s fingers, and the handle of the framing hammer
 Signs and Mortality 37

will be wrapped in order to dampen shock. The nail may even dictate the
magnetic properties of the hammer. The cobbler’s nail is of brass, the carpen-
ter’s of steel. Accordingly, carpenters may at times profit from a hammer with
a magnetized head, whereas such a hammer would be of no use to the cobbler.
A comparable analysis could be carried out in regard to shopping for nails.
The choice of nails is dictated by the material to be nailed, which in turn is
dictated by the thing to be built, which is ultimately dictated by that for the
sake of which the hammering is done in the first place, namely, the satisfying
of some interest of Dasein, such as the desire to live in a house sheltered from
the elements or to walk on rough ground without injuring the feet. Thus, nails
in a store are present-at-hand things evaluated in terms of the role they will
play in a practical context.
The point of mentioning all these relations between hammers and nails and
other equipment is that they are relations taken for granted in the workplace
but made the focus of concern in the store. Shopping for tools thus lights up
the referential structure as a whole. Shopping is a motive, within everyday
practical experience, to come to the verge of theory and look directly upon
the ordered references of one part of the world to another. The common expe-
rience of shopping, therefore, provides phenomenal evidence to everyday
practical Dasein that the world is a cosmos.
The hammers on sale in a store also announce a vastly different context
of tools, beyond their references to other tools. It is a context indeed always
present in the workplace but only remotely sensed there as a far horizon. It is
the context of financial commerce. The hammers on display in a store do not
simply hang there as unembellished tools. On the contrary, they are attrac-
tively packaged and pretentiously advertised.
The tools all bear a brand name, and the various brands compete for sales.
Therefore, tools in a store are not simply displayed; they are touted. Each
manufacturer sings the praises of its own tools and even gives the tools
grandiloquent names. What is to all appearances an electric drill as sold by
Milwaukee Tools is not actually a drill; it is a “Magnum hole shooter.”
Everything about an item of equipment on display in a store is meant to
catch the eye and to persuade. A worker may want a tool in a workshop to
stand out prominently, so he or she does not need to fumble for it. But in a
store a tool is made prominent not for the sake of ease of use but only in order
to be more readily sold.
The tool grasped in order to wield it is not the same as the tool picked up in
order to buy it. The first is something ready-to-hand, transparent, overlooked
in favor of the task. The latter is something present-at-hand, focused on for
itself as a physical object. Comparable to the case of the broken, missing, or
obstructing tool, the one in the store is a present-at-hand object; the differ-
ence is that there is nothing wrong with this present-at-hand object. On the
38 Chapter 2

contrary, it is—or at least is touted as—an ideal example of what the tool
should be. As does a broken tool, the tool on display forces itself on our atten-
tion, but it does so as something attractive rather than disagreeable, something
that will make the work fly rather than disturb it. A tool in the store, dressed
to the nines and praised to the skies, is—as I would call it—ostentatious.
The ostentatious tool announces not only the referential totality of other
tools but also a more encompassing economic world. The reason is that tools
in a store always bear a peculiar sign, the price tag. The price of something is
colloquially called the “bad news.” But in a store, even the price is attractive
and ostentatious. For the price tag is not simply a ready-to-hand thing car-
rying useful information about the cost. In a store, the price tag is placed in
a context of persuasive salesmanship. That is why prices on a tag in a store
are invariably preceded by the word “only” and succeeded by at least two
exclamation points.
The price tag does not merely supply information about the number of dol-
lars that will be accepted by the store in exchange. The tag, situated within
all the advertising, also attempts to persuade the prospective buyer that he or
she will in fact be saving money by purchasing this tool rather than another.
No matter what its price, the tool will lead to increased profits. The price tag
thus places the tool in a context wider than that of the relation of one item of
equipment to another. It places the tool within that art which, according to
Socrates, all artisans practice in addition to their own proper art. This addi-
tional art is the one Socrates calls the “money-making art” (Republic, 346C).
The price tag is therefore not merely one thing pointing to another thing,
the wallet; on the contrary, it also invokes a whole context that surrounds
all work, the encompassing economic world. Therefore, the theme of price
tags leads to the other way—besides the breakdown of the usual functioning
of tools—in which, according to Heidegger, the cosmos is illuminated phe-
nomenally, that is, lit up for everyday practical Dasein, namely: through the
experience of signs.

SIGNS

The section on signs in Being and Time (Part One, First Division, Chapter III,
§17) is one of the most tortuous discussions in the entire treatise. Let us try to
make our way through the tangle.
Heidegger notes that there is a twofold referential structure involved in
signs. Like any other item of equipment, signs are referred to some useful
task. Signs possess an in-order-to, a usefulness, a serviceability. In this way,
signs merely fulfill the ontological structure of any tool or item of gear. The
complication is that the useful task of signs is itself to refer. Signs fulfill the
 Signs and Mortality 39

task they are referred to by referring in turn. But these two referrings are not
the same. This constitutes a first complication. The second is that signs, more
than other tools, refer not merely to some other item of equipment but instead
point to the referential structure as a whole. The title of this section 17 of
Being and Time is “Reference and Signs,” and the most problematic word in
the title is “and.” Just how are references intertwined with signs?
Let us begin by taking up the first complication, the distinction between
the two ways of referring. The sign is referred to its task differently than the
way the sign itself refers to something. The sign refers in the specific mode of
“indicating.” Thus, Heidegger says in a typically abstruse passage from this
section: “Every reference is a relation, but not every relation is a reference.
Every ‘indication’ is a reference, but not every referring is an indicating. It
follows then that every ‘indication’ is a relation, but not every relating is an
indicating” (SZ, p. 77).
To make sense of this, we need to gather from Heidegger’s text the exact
meaning he is giving to the terms “relation,” “reference,” and “indication.”
“Relation” (Beziehung) is the general term and applies to the “going together”
(Zusammenhängen) of two things in any way at all, no matter how intrinsi-
cally or extrinsically. The cause is in a relation to the effect, but so is the
tangent to the circle. “Reference” (Verweisung) is the peculiar going together
characteristic of tools or equipment. A synonym Heidegger introduces in
this section is “serviceability.” All tools are serviceable for something; that
is how tools refer. “Indicating” (Anzeigen) is the peculiar serviceability of
signs (Zeichen); signs refer by indicating. Thus, in paraphrase, the quoted
passage runs as follows. “Every way an item of equipment is serviceable for
something constitutes an instance of a relation, but not every way two things
go together is a matter of one being serviceable to the other. Every indicating
is a way an item of equipment is serviceable for something, namely, by refer-
ring to it, but not all serviceability is by way of the indicating performed by
signs. It follows then that every indication through signs is a way two things
are related, but not every relating of two things is a matter of one indicating
the other by a sign.”
So Heidegger is saying that a sign, as an item of equipment, is referred
to some task, is put in service to some task. That task is to refer, by way of
indication, to something else. But this latter referring, the indicating, is not a
serviceability; it is merely a pointing out. A tool such as a hammer refers to
nails by way of serviceability; the hammer serves to drive the nails. But a sign
pointing to nails is not in service to the nails. The sign is in service to whoever
wants to have the nails pointed out, and the sign performs this service merely
by showing the way to the nails. Indeed this may be a necessary function,
since no one can hammer nails if he or she cannot find them. But the showing
of the way is a different sort of referring than is the hammering. Thus, there
40 Chapter 2

are two referrings at play in signs: the referring done to the sign (its assigned
serviceability), and referring done by the sign (its pointing something out).
These referrings are not the same; the first is characteristic of all equipment,
signs included, the second is peculiar to signs.
Heidegger’s example has to do with driving a car. Specifically, the exam-
ple is the “red pivoting arrow” which indicates, for instance at an intersection,
the path the car will take. The position of the arrow is controlled by the driver,
but Heidegger notes that it is ready-to-hand equipment not only for the driver,
the one concerned with steering the car, but also for the other drivers shar-
ing the road. These others make use of the equipment they see deployed and
either move to the other side or stop. As an item of equipment, the directional
arrow is constituted through reference. It has the character of an in-order-to,
a particular serviceability; it is in order to indicate. The indicating of the sign
can be understood as a “referring.” But then it must be stipulated that this
referring as indicating is not the one of the “ontological structure of the sign
as equipment” (SZ, p. 78).
The ontological structure of the sign as equipment is a matter of being
referred to some task. The referring as the indicating performed by the sign is
not to refer something else to some task but merely to point to that something.
Let us extend Heidegger’s example and consider the directional arrow
and also the steering wheel. Both the wheel and the arrow are related to the
heading of the car. And they also both refer to the heading. But they refer to
it in two different ways. The steering wheel refers in the way of all equip-
ment, namely, by being in service to the heading; the steering wheel is there
in order to change the heading. The arrow refers only in the way peculiar to
signs, namely, by indicating the heading. The task of the steering wheel is
to change the heading, the task of the arrow to indicate the heading. If this
indicating can also be understood as a “referring,” then two distinct referrings
are operative in signs.
The distinction can be seen in the fact that the referring constitutive of
equipment assigns a task to something; the steering wheel assigns a task to
the steering mechanism. But the referring constitutive of indication is not
the assignment of a task; the arrow does not assign any task to the steering
mechanism. Yet, even here, a complication sets in, implicit in Heidegger’s
statement that the indication performed by the arrow is especially useful to
the other drivers. Those drivers either get out of the way or stop. In other
words, the arrow does assign a task to the other drivers. They do not merely
look on the arrow as providing neutral information. They need to act on this
information. Consequently, even the sign engages further tasks and therefore
does also refer in the way constitutive of all equipment.
This complication leads to the second one mentioned above, namely: the
sign is not simply one thing referring to another, one item of equipment
 Signs and Mortality 41

pointing to another, but instead is an item of equipment pointing to the equip-

mental structure as a whole. The experience of signs, of any sign, illuminates
the hanging together of all things and is therefore phenomenal evidence that
the world is a cosmos.
Heidegger’s statement is as follows. He maintains that a sign is not merely
a thing that stands to another thing in an indicational relation. Instead, a
sign is an item of equipment that “explicitly” raises to circumspection the
equipmental totality, whereby “the ready-to-hand world announces itself
as an integrated whole” (SZ, p. 80). Although Heidegger here uses the term
“explicitly,” he does not mean this circumspection of the equipmental total-
ity is clear and full. In other passages on the same pages as the quotation,
he says the view of the whole offered by signs is merely a survey, is not an
actual grasping, and may be altogether indefinite. Therefore, signs offer only
a glimpse of the cosmos, as do unusable tools, but the question is how signs
offer any view of the whole at all.
Let us take an example correlated to Heidegger’s, an example from the
domain of driving a car. Consider a stop sign. A Heideggerian analysis would
proceed along the following lines. The sign at the intersection and the brake
pedal at the disposal of the driver are both related to the stopping of the car.
They both refer to the stopping but do so in different ways. The pedal is
assigned the task of bringing the car to a stop, whereas the sign has the task
of telling the driver it is time to press on the pedal and engage the braking
mechanism so as to make the car stop. Bringing a massive car to a halt is not
like stopping a child’s wagon or a sled. One cannot simply extend a foot and
scrape it along the ground. The driver is aware, at least in the back of his or
her mind, that a great deal of force is required to stop a car. Yet, the driver
will merely apply a small amount of pressure to the pedal. Nor is this pressing
down on the pedal in a natural relation to the stopping, since pressing on the
adjacent pedal has the opposite effect of accelerating the car. Accordingly, the
driver has some sense that a very complicated artificial connection has been
instituted between the pedal and the stopping. The driver might be totally
ignorant of master cylinders and of the hydraulic system involved in the brak-
ing mechanism, but he or she is aware that some complicated mechanism or
other is in play multiplying the force exerted on the pedal and distributing it
to the wheels. The driver is aware that the brake pedal is assigned a task and
that the pedal will in turn assign other items of equipment other tasks until
the desired result is achieved. The driver thereby glimpses that things in the
car hang together and form an ordered totality.
Furthermore, the order continues on beyond the car and its braking mecha-
nism. The stop sign tells the driver not only that it is time to press on the
brake pedal but also that vehicular traffic as a whole is a regulated system
and that this system occurs within a larger system comprising all possible
42 Chapter 2

travel destinations and all the reasons for traveling to them. And travel exists
within a more comprehensive system that constitutes modern life as such.
Consequently, the organization of the entire world looms on the horizon of
the stop sign. In other words, that is, in Heidegger’s words, the sign is not
merely one thing pointing to another thing, the brake pedal, but instead is
an item of equipment that announces the entire ready-to-hand world as an
integrated whole.
Could not reflection on any tool make the same announcement? Does not
any item of equipment offer circumspection of the equipmental nexus? No
doubt; yet, Heidegger claims, “A need for signs is pregiven” (SZ, p. 108).
Although he does not spell out the reason, it is plain. Whereas there is no
motive to reflect on the equipmental nexus in the ordinary course of work,
the sign, even when practical affairs are proceeding smoothly, as usual, does
offer such a motive. Quite apart from any malfunction in the braking system,
the stop sign brings to explicit circumspection the linkage between the brake
pedal and the stopping mechanism. Phenomenal evidence is supposed to be
disclosure to everyday Dasein right in the midst of his or her practical preoc-
cupations. Malfunctioning equipment motivates a change in attitude: from the
everyday practical attitude to a reflective theoretical one. So the referential
totality is thereby disclosed, strictly speaking, outside of the practical attitude.
On the other hand, signs offer a disclosure of the totality without disturbing
the practical preoccupation of every Dasein. The broken hammer suspends
Dasein’s activity of cobbling; traffic signs do not take Dasein’s attention
away from driving. The disclosure of the referential nexus by way of signs
occurs within the practical attitude, on the margin of it, but still within it.
Therefore, it is rather in signs, more than, as is commonly thought, in unus-
able equipment, that is to be found what Heidegger seeks, phenomenal attes-
tation to the world as a cosmos.
Does any sign at all have power to illuminate a ready-to-hand structural
whole? The question of whether the Heideggerian analysis can be applied
to any sign whatever is an empirical one. It could be answered affirmatively
only by way of induction, that is, by considering all the signs that ever
existed. Wincing from this impossible task, let us consider instead only a few
examples, taken from a neutral source.
Husserl considers indicational signs in the first investigation of the Logical
Investigations.3 His examples are meant to be as varied as possible and
include the brand of a slave, the flag of a nation, the canals on Mars as signs
of intelligent Martians, memory aids such as the knot in a handkerchief, fos-
sils as signs of antediluvian life, public memorials, and characteristic marks.
Surely not even one of these signs is an instance of a thing merely pointing to
another thing. The brand draws attention to the entire institution of slavery;
the flag recalls the complex whole which is the nation; the canals on Mars, if
 Signs and Mortality 43

taken as signs of intelligence, make us envision the intelligent construction of

the canals by the Martians; the knot in the handkerchief, said to be “popular”
(beliebt) by Husserl and also mentioned by Heidegger (SZ, p. 81), is a sign
not simply of some thing but of the need to go to the store and buy that thing
on the way home; fossils light up the complexity in the propagation of life;
public memorials memorialize not merely some person but the accomplish-
ments or heroic deeds of that person; and characteristic marks such as scars
or birthmarks do not simply point to the person bearing the mark but also
bring to mind the complex circumstances which produced the mark. Just as
any thing is complicated and involved in a wide range of relationships, so the
sign pointing to the thing will also allow a glimpse, even if only by survey
and altogether indefinitely, of all those relationships. On the horizon of every
sign is the cosmos.
In summary, a sign for Heidegger is not merely one thing pointing to
another. Every sign opens out onto the entire equipmental context which is
the cosmos, the world as such. Another name for this integrated whole, as
was mentioned above, is the “worldhood of the world.” This worldhood is
not something external to Dasein. Dasein is not an isolated subject requir-
ing some sort of bridge in order to escape from interiority and make contact
with outer things. For Heidegger, the worldhood of the world is an essential
moment of the Being of Dasein. Heidegger makes the intrinsic connection
between Dasein and world explicit in his discussion of anxiety. Anxiety also
opens up the worldhood of the world and so is disclosive of the Being of
Dasein (see below, p. 65). But the same connection is in play already here
in regard to signs. Accordingly, for Heidegger it is insufficient to say that
a sign is not merely one thing pointing to another or even to the world as a
whole; more than that, the experience of signs is an encounter with the Being
of Dasein.

BARCODES

In our electronic age, things are more interconnected than ever. Let us then
consider a typically modern sign and the modern way of responding to it. The
sign is the modern price tag, namely, the barcode affixed to an article for sale,
and the corresponding response is to pay by credit card.
The numbers on an old price tag are not merely signs pointing to a certain
amount of cash. As was mentioned, those numbers open out onto the whole
world of financial dealings, even if the medium of exchange is currency and
coins. Afortiori, today’s barcode is not simply one thing pointing to another.
Even to an external gaze, without knowing what the barcode means, this
sign looks like something artificially produced and deriving from unknown
44 Chapter 2

but complicated devices. A handwritten or typed price tag, viewed simply

as a sign, already points to the ink and pen or the printer that produced it.
In turn, ink and pen and printer have their wider horizons, expanding out
to the cosmos as a whole. The barcode has the same horizons; due to its
unintelligible provenance, however, the barcode raises those horizons to
explicit circumspection. The circumspection remains altogether indefinite,
and everyday Dasein has only some vague sense of how the barcode is
produced and how it can mean anything. But this vague sense includes
amazement. The price tag with a barcode is much more amazing than a tag
with handwriting. The amazement leads to explicit circumspection of the
whole electronic world to which the barcode points. No one is amazed that
a handwritten price tag points to ink and paper and to the outer horizons of
ink and paper, and so there is no motive to pay those horizons any heed.
But the unintelligible interrelations of the electronic world make them all
the more striking.
Clerks in stores nowadays no longer ask, “cash or plastic?” Almost every-
one pays with a credit card, except for those who pay by smartphone. To
swipe a credit card or to scan a smartphone is to engage a most mysterious
chain of events. Very few persons, if any, could say exactly what connects
the swiping of one’s card and the balance in one’s bank account. Yet, every-
one knows that this indirect connection is highly efficient and free of error.
The clerk is much more likely to make a mistake giving change for cash than
the electronic processes are prone to error. The ready-to-hand world today
is an electronic world rather than a mechanical one and is much more of an
integrated whole. The concatenation of assignments from one part of the
electronic world to the other has become flawless. A typewriter platen would
at times move two spaces when the typist struck the space bar once; a word
processing keyboard never disobeys the operator’s commands.
Consider again the brake pedal and the stopping of the car. In older cars,
the linkage between these, although completely mechanical, was already
complex. Today the complexity has increased exponentially, because com-
puters have intervened. The average new car today is equipped with fifty
microprocessors, including those that distribute braking to the wheels in such
a precise way that skids and swerves are things of the past. In other words,
the linkage between pedal and wheels has become amazingly sure and pre-
cise. The braking system of a car, now more than ever, is a ready-to-hand
integrated whole.
To return to price tags in the form of barcodes, the point is that these
signs open out not only to the financial horizon surrounding everyday practi-
cal Dasein but also to the electronic horizon incorporating more and more
of everyday life and doing so more and more efficiently. Circumspective
glimpsing of the electronic horizon, motivated by signs such a barcodes, thus
 Signs and Mortality 45

provides phenomenal evidence that now more than ever—although perhaps

not entirely to the good—the world is a cosmos.

GENETIC PHENOMENOLOGY

Before concluding his discussion of signs with a summary, Heidegger

devotes the long penultimate paragraph to “primitive Dasein” (SZ, pp. 81–2).
Heidegger is referring to prescientific Dasein, and such Dasein no doubt
exists nowhere else in today’s world than in childhood and exists even there
less and less. Very early on, today’s child is deprived of innocence, the inno-
cence of protection from exposure to the objective attitude of natural science.
Heidegger’s discussion of primitive Dasein is a “genetic” one in Husserl’s
sense. Such an analysis seeks to describe experience in its temporally earli-
est stages, that is, in childhood.4 Heidegger had already said, in a previous
section of Being and Time, that familiarity with the primitive mentality can
be helpful in phenomenology (SZ, p. 51). The reason is that phenomenology
measures the distance between things as experienced and things as science
conceives of them. For adults who have grown up in the scientific age, how-
ever, it is difficult to know what is actual experience and what is only the
scientific theory of experience. There is a gap between, for instance, what
we do perceive (such as depth) and what the science of the eyes tells us we
perceive (flat images).5 Science covers experience over with debris, and it is
difficult for us modern adults, imbued with the scientific spirit, to recognize
the debris as debris. Hence the importance of a genetic phenomenology, a
consideration of the experience of prescientific Dasein. How do children
experience tools and signs: as things ready-to-hand or as present-at-hand? Or
as something else altogether?
A fundamental phenomenological thesis maintained by Heidegger asserts
the priority of the ready-to-hand over the present-at-hand. What we come
across “initially and predominantly” (zunächst und zumeist) are practical
things understood precisely in terms of their practical properties. It is a later
attitude that discloses these things as present-at-hand, as physical objects with
mere physical properties. For Heidegger, the present-at-hand is subtracted
out of the ready-to-hand. The ready-to-hand properties are not added on to
a previous experience of things as mere physical things constituted by the
so-called primary properties of size, shape, and mass. Only in the scientific
outlook are these properties primary; in the order of experience, they come
second.
Yet Heidegger does not offer evidence. He asserts the priority of the ready-
to-hand as if anyone who considers it will recognize immediately that this
priority holds good. He even makes fun of the opposite position: “It is not the
46 Chapter 2

case that things are at first present as bare realities, as things in some sort of
natural state, and that they then in the course of our experience receive the
garb of a value-character, so they do not have to run around naked.”6 Bare
nature, nature as bereft of values, nature as conceived in science, is not the
foundation of the ready-to-hand world; it is just the reverse. The discussion of
the primitive mentality in the context of tools and signs is meant to be helpful
to phenomenology by providing phenomenal evidence for these phenomeno-
logical assertions.
Heidegger’s analysis begins with what might seem to be a denial of the
priority of the ready-to-hand. Heidegger says the primitive mentality does
not know tools and does not use signs. But the reason is that children merge
the sign and the thing signified. For example, the shadow is not a sign of the
person; it is the person. That is why children are careful when walking not
to have their shadow stepped on and not to step on someone else’s shadow.
For the primitive mentality, the sign coincides with the signified; thus,
children have no experience of signs as ready-to-hand items of equipment,
as things referring by indication to other things. But this coinciding of
sign and signified does not amount, Heidegger stresses, to an identification
of two present-at-hand things. The “remarkable coincidence” of the sign
with the signified is not a matter of the sign-thing undergoing some sort
of “objectification,” as if it were experienced as a pure thing and placed,
along with the signified, in the ontological region of the present-at-hand.
The “coincidence” is not an identification of previously isolated things but
instead is the sign as not yet liberated from what it designates. The coinci-
dence is not founded in a prior objectification but in an “utter lack of objec-
tification” (SZ, p. 82).
To objectify is to look upon something from an outside perspective. To
objectify the eyes, for example, is to take them as characterized in science. If
children do not objectify, they could have only a rudimentary sense of their
own body as a physical thing. Children shut their eyes tight in order to block
out an unpleasant smell. Children do not understand the sensory modalities
as objective systems. Children are caught up in the world and have only a
rudimentary sense of the body’s modes of access to the world. That is why,
for Heidegger, the primitive mentality does not view a sign as one present-
at-hand thing identified with another: there are no present-at-hand things in
the child’s world. But it also explains Heidegger’s claim that signs in the
primitive mentality are not ready-to-hand either. There are no tools or ready-
to-hand things in primitive experience. Tools are means to an end; there are
no means in the child’s world, only the end, the world. For the child, there
are no organs of vision or olfaction, only undifferentiated access to the world;
no sights and smells, only things to see and smell not differentiated from one
another.
 Signs and Mortality 47

There are no tools in primitive experience—not because primitives do not

use implements but because primitives do not detach the implement from the
work to be done. In Heidegger’s words, the use of tools in primitive Dasein
is completely engrossed in its directedness toward what is to be accomplished
by the tool, so that the tool “cannot in the least detach itself” (SZ, p. 82).
Accordingly, what is first in primitive experience is neither the present-at-
hand nor the ready-to-hand. Then how are things experienced by prescientific
Dasein? What makes up the world of children? Are so-called primary proper-
ties first, or are secondary properties first? Heidegger answers in a negative
way: the ontology of the ready-to-hand provides no clue for interpreting the
primitive world, and, to be sure, even less does the “ontology of pure things
[= the present-at-hand]” (SZ, p. 82). So we are told only what the primitive
world is not. But this negativity might be disclosive.
The world of prescientific Dasein is composed neither of things ready-to-
hand and even less of things present-at-hand. This world is then removed
from the secondary qualities and is even more removed from the primary
qualities. On this basis, the basis of what it is not, the conclusion would fol-
low that the primitive world is composed not of things at all but only of the
tertiary properties of things, their emotional values. Furthermore, this conclu-
sion has positive phenomenal meaning; it discloses pre-reflective experience.
Heidegger does at least hint at the priority of the tertiary qualities by twice
relating the primitive mentality to magic (Zauber) (SZ, p. 81). The world of
primitive Dasein, the world of children, is a world populated not by things
but by enchantments. That means things in the child’s world are first per-
ceived only in terms of their emotional values. Accordingly, to take a prime
genetic example, the child first perceives the warmth on the parent’s face, a
warmth stemming from the-child-knows-not-what. As a later acquisition, the
child perceives the smiling face as such, as a thing, and then finally the child
might (or might never) attend to the shape of the parent’s mouth in forming
the smile and the color of the parent’s eyes. In the course of development out
of childhood, perception proceeds from tertiary properties (emotional values)
to secondary properties (useful things) to primary properties (physical shapes
and sizes). So the temporal progression is from enchantments without things
to ready-to-hand things to present-at-hand things.
In the end, the genetic phenomenology ventured by Heidegger does offer
phenomenal evidence for the priority of the ready-to-hand over the present-
at-hand. Such a priority does hold, except that something has been disclosed
of even greater priority. What are first perceived, what are first in the order of
experience, are not bare things, nor tools, but emotional values: not present-
at-hand things with physical properties, nor ready-to-hand things with useful
properties, but enchantments, magical properties without any things. That is
why in Being and Time the primary disclosure of the world is not through
48 Chapter 2

reason or perception but rather through moods. The first experience is not that
of things hanging together; the first experience is not of definite things at all,
any sort of things, even tools, but is a vague sense of hanging-togetherness, a
mood attuned to the holding together of I-know-not-what, a mood of enchant-
ment. The worldhood of the world, from which individual worldly things
stand out, is the correlate of a mood. That mood is the primary modality of
Dasein’s disclosedness, and it is a mood of integration, not disintegration.
Therefore, the primary experience for Heidegger is a positive one: the world
holds together.

BARCODES AND THE ATMOSPHERE OF MORTALITY

One difference between barcodes and the equipment familiar to Heidegger

is that such price tags have attained perfection or at least have come within
negligible distance of perfection. They are perfect items of equipment and
also perfect signs opening out onto a more perfect cosmos than the referential
totality envisioned by Heidegger.
Price tags in the form of barcodes are, as tools, perfect items of equipment
compared to hammers and nails. Barcodes cannot break down, be missing,
or get it the way; thus, they cannot be conspicuous, obtrusive, or obstinate.
They cannot break, and even if torn or scratched such that only an invisible
trace of them remains, they can most likely still be read by electronic scan-
ning equipment. Barcodes cannot get in the way of anything, because they
are immoveable and are purposely placed so as not to cover over any useful
information. And barcodes cannot even go missing. Barcodes nowadays are
not stickers glued onto the item for sale. They are imprinted directly on the
packaging and so cannot be lost. For items sold without packaging, such as
books, the barcode is imprinted directly on the item. If this disquisition on
Heidegger and price tags makes its way into some volume or other, a bar-
code will be imprinted on the back cover. It may be a painful reminder to the
reader that he or she has greatly overpaid to learn of my humble ideas, but
she or he will not be able to peel the barcode off. And it will make no sense
to rub it out, cover it over, or snip it off. That will merely call attention to the
price even more. Inconspicuous, unobtrusive, and nonobstinate barcodes are
perfect tools.
As signs, barcodes are perfect not merely insofar as they never make mis-
takes in carrying out their pointing function and always ring up the correct
price on the electronic cash register. As do all signs, barcodes also announce
the all-encompassing horizon of what they point to. In the case of barcodes,
the horizon announced is the integrated system held together by micropro-
cessors and incorporating all aspects of reality. More than ever before, the
 Signs and Mortality 49

world is a cosmos, an ordered whole that at least in comparison to the braking

mechanism of an automobile or the referential totality of the cobbler’s equip-
ment, is perfectly arranged.
Price tags as barcodes are perfect tools, perfect signs, and provide phenom-
enal evidence of a ready-to-hand world integrated more perfectly than ever
before. Yet, they do not keep us from breathing an atmosphere of mortality.
On the contrary, they make that atmosphere all the more close and stifling.
In the first place, we are so very dependent today on the smooth function-
ing of the electronic world that the unlikely but still possible breakdown of
a microprocessor can cause much more widespread damage than a breakage
of some mechanical device. The more the things in our lives are dependent
on electronic devices, the greater is the threat of chaos from a malfunction.
That is the lesson of the sorcerer’s apprentice. The “apprentice in magic” (the
Zauberlehrling of Goethe’s poem) inundated the house because he did not
know the incantation which would restrict the forces he had set in motion.
The indiscriminate unleashing of magical powers, though they promise inte-
gration, also harbors the danger of unprecedented disintegration and havoc.
Electronics make our world fragile as no other world ever was. Not only
may the magical powers malfunction or be misused accidently, they may also
be exploited for well-nigh-universal mayhem by persons of ill will. We are
banqueting with a sword suspended by a thin thread above our heads.
Most fundamentally, however, the electronic world reminds us of our
mortality simply by way of contrast to what is not electronic, namely, our
own bodies. Of course, electronics can keep us alive as never before. But
high-tech medical devices are among the worst offenders; they remind us
most forcefully that our bodies are not perfectly integrated, which is why we
require the devices in the first place. Modern medical devices have increased
our life expectancy. But the more these devices are publicized and the more
the increase in life expectancy is called to our attention, then the more we are
aware of what cannot be postponed indefinitely, our death. To feel assured
that modern medicine can do wonders and allow us to turn our back on death
is to make prominent exactly what we are turning from and thus is to increase
the sense of our own mortality.
Any high-tech device, medical or not, has the same effect of bringing to
at least implicit awareness our own bodily imperfection and fragility. The
phenomenal evidence derives from the fact that we, embodied persons, are
always part of the world opened up by a sign, any sign, even a barcode. In
paying for some item, I am reminded of the labor of my body which allowed
me to earn the money to make the purchase. The microprocessor that controls
the brakes reminds me of the foot that still has to press on the pedal. And even
if the brakes themselves are totally controlled by an on-board microproces-
sor, such that I merely have to sit back and watch the car drive itself, this
50 Chapter 2

system still reminds me of the body which these efficient brakes are meant
to protect. The perfect world of computers is always connected to my body,
a body which shows its imperfection and mortality all the more by contrast.
To eschew all high-tech things and attempt to return to a simpler life, closer
to nature, would of course be counterproductive, for a person would need to
be constantly conscious of where the high-tech things are—precisely in order
to avoid them. To be preoccupied with turning one’s back on something is a
sure way to let that thing enter into one’s life and indeed would mean being
ruled by that thing.
For Heidegger, disintegration, being-toward-death, is not the first experi-
ence; it stands out against a previous experience of integration, a whole in
which everything hangs together. But if the integration nearly attains perfec-
tion, then any imperfection stands out all the more prominently. Barcodes,
electronics, the perfect integration of the world—these bring home all the
more impressively the contrast to our own imperfect bodies, where disinte-
gration is seriously possible at any moment. Accordingly, with the advent of
barcodes and the cardiac pacemaker, all the heavier became the atmosphere
of mortality.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT: POETIC MOTIVATION

I was motivated to take up Heidegger’s analysis of signs and think it in

the direction of price tags and barcodes by a poem, “Sans soleil,” by Rita
Malikonytė Mockus.7 According to this poem, the “utter light of diurnal
logic” “accounts adjectives price tags,” whereas, in the “sunless place,”
“compliance is a priceless noun.”
This poem is taking the first philosophical step. It is distinguishing the
diurnal domain of beings from what is sunless and nocturnal, Being. The
poem, perhaps unintentionally, is a commentary on one of the first distinc-
tions Heidegger’s magnum opus draws between beings and Being. Heidegger
expresses the distinction in his own Latin and leaves it untranslated: enti non
additur aliqua natura (SZ, p. 4).8 In terms of the poem, the translation would
run: “To Being, there cannot be tied any price tag.”
In the day, adjectives can be assigned to beings. Things have a determi-
nateness and are distinguished from one another. Diurnal things possess
sharp contours and stand out against one another. That is how everyday logic
“accounts” things, puts a price tag on them, allowing them to be traded. That
is to say, price tags allow beings to be taken up in everyday “commerce.”
In the night, however, in the sunless place, contours merge and show no
sharp distinctions. Things blend into total compliance9 with one another; noth-
ing steps out as unique. Night is the great melting pot, the uncanny domain
 Signs and Mortality 51

where no commerce is possible. This is the domain of Being, the nebulous

domain into which all things fall and from which they will emerge in daylight.
In order to show themselves as individuals, beings will need to demonstrate
noncompliance, that is, take on definite contours and thereby stand out from
one another and from the nebulous background which engulfs them.
Being is without a price tag, without a denomination in the linguistic sense.
Nothing can determine Being. Therefore, after he speaks Latin, Heidegger
also says: Being cannot come to the “determinateness which would allow it
to be addressed as a being” (SZ, p. 4). To recognize this indeterminateness is
to take the first philosophical step.
If the realm of beings is the everyday, earthly, most common one, then the
realm of Being is the most uncanny, unearthly, demonic one, Hades. What
the poem motivated was a grasp of the connection between signs, especially
price tags and barcodes, and death. What price tags disclose—at least implic-
itly—is that which has no price tag, no denomination, namely, Being, Hades,
death. Accordingly, a sign, any sign, perhaps especially a modern electronic
sign such as a barcode, is not merely one thing pointing to another thing; it
discloses our mortality.
This poem trades in images: light, day, darkness, night. These are of course
only images and must not be taken literally. To see in the light of day means to
grasp beings (whether by vision or in any other way) with an understanding of
what it means to be in general, not with the illumination measurable by a pho-
tometer. But the images (beings/light/day, Being/Hades/night) are appropri-
ate. We see beings in the light, but that light is provided by something which
itself is dark. The self-showing of Being is the light, but all light recedes in
favor of that which it allows to be seen. Without an understanding of what it
means to be, we could not grasp any being as a being. But that understanding
itself is most obscure: we cannot say how we came by it or what it amounts to.
It is uncanny, demonic. From sunless Hades comes the light which illuminates
the upper region. Persephone is the goddess of the dark, the underworld. Yet,
she is intimately related to the upper region and spends time there every year;
perhaps that is why Hölderlin translates her name as Licht, “Light.”10
 Chapter 3

Anxiety and Mortality

ANXIETY AND WONDER

The understanding of authentic dying as philosophizing, such as I have

proposed and attempted to work out in the first chapter, might seem irrec-
oncilable with Heidegger’s explicit statement that “Being-toward-death is
essentially anxiety” (SZ, p. 266). This seems so especially because the state-
ment occurs precisely in the section of Being and Time (§53) devoted to an
existential projection of authentic being-toward-death. It would then seem
that the authentic approach to death is a matter of the dread of dying, a pre-
occupation with death, rather than, as I maintain, a matter of taking the first
philosophical step, preoccupation with Being.
Yet Heidegger does not say anxiety is primarily, or even at all, directed
at death. It is certainly not fear of death, and Heidegger even calls such fear
a “perversion” (SZ, p. 266) of anxiety. Indeed in his own copy of Being and
Time, Heidegger later attached a qualifying remark to the statement about
being-toward-death as essentially anxiety. The remark reads: “but not merely
anxiety, and afortiori not anxiety as mere emotion,” aber nicht nur Angst
und erst recht nicht: Angst als bloße Emotion (SZ, Gesamtausgabe edition,
p. 353n).
If not mere emotion, then anxiety is precisely what it is said to be in the
title of the section of Being and Time devoted to it, “a preeminent mode of
Dasein’s disclosedness” (SZ, §40). Therefore, I wish to look closely at what
anxiety discloses and to show that my understanding of authentic dying is
confirmed and not contradicted by Heidegger’s characterization of being-
toward-death as essentially anxiety.
To be anxious, in Heidegger’s sense, indeed has an emotional aspect.
Anxiety is an unsettling experience, an upheaval, but it is not a negative

53
54 Chapter 3

experience in the sense of apprehension or fright. Anxiety, as I read Heidegger,

is wonder, the wonder which motivates a distinguishing of beings from
Being, a taking of the first philosophical step.
Anxiety for Heidegger is basically the experience of affective detach-
ment from the beings of the world. Beings no longer provide orientation
for an understanding of what it means to be, and thus the way is paved for
distinguishing beings from Being. Anxiety is finding the presence of beings
inexplicable. Anxiety thereby motivates a wondering about this presence, and
wonder, as Aristotle says, is and always was the beginning of philosophy.1

ANXIETY AND THE “FOR-THE-SAKE-OF-WHICH”

Anxiety in Being and Time is the experience of the beings of the world,
including things and people, as deprived of significance. It is not a matter
of the disappearance, absence, of the beings of the world, as if Dasein took
no notice of them. Beings are not insignificant in the sense of remaining in
the background, attracting no attention. On the contrary, for anxious Dasein
beings obtrude all the more—but as foreign, as there without rhyme or reason.
The world goes on as before, unbroken, intact, but leaves the anxious person
untouched. The melancholic Hamlet expresses this experience exactly:

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the uses of this world. (Hamlet, I, ii, 133–34).

The uses of Hamlet’s world are not broken in themselves, they remain in
good order, and he does not disregard them; on the contrary, they jut out,
but they do so as barren: “This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory” (Hamlet, II, ii, 317–18).
Heidegger distinguishes two kinds of relations in regard to the world. In
the previous chapter, I focused on the first kind: the things in the world are
interrelated inasmuch as one of them is taken up “in order to” accomplish
something else. Hammering is undertaken in order to fasten boards, which is
in order to build a wall, which is in order to frame a house. These relations
are “the uses of this world.” But such in-order-to relations are themselves
undertaken “for the sake of” something, namely, Dasein, some possibility
of Dasein. All the relations involved in building a house are for the sake of
providing shelter to Dasein.
There can be breakdowns in both kinds of relations. As discussed above,
hammers may become unusable, or go missing, or get in the way. These are
everyday disruptions in the functional relations among things and are indeed
disconcerting, but they do not occasion anxiety. They may provoke frustration,
 Anxiety and Mortality 55

worry, even misery, but not anxiety in Heidegger’s sense. Anxiety is a break-
down in the order of the other kind of relations, the “for the sake of which,”
the “seems to me.” Anxiety is a fracture in the connection between the beings
of the world and some particular Dasein. It is the experience of the world as no
longer for the sake of any possibility of this Dasein, as foreign to any possible
project of this Dasein, as seeming to be weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable.
Thus, anxiety has nothing to do with apprehension about health, wealth,
popularity, or any other worldly affair. Concern over these matters implies a
connectedness to the world (Or else why be apprehensive about them?), and
it is precisely such a connection that is sundered in anxiety. Anxiety is the
experience that health, wealth, and the rest do not matter. For the most part,
anxiety in Heidegger’s sense arises precisely when worldly affairs, the in-
order-to relations, are proceeding smoothly and are not troubling.
Accordingly, when Heidegger declares that being-toward-death is essen-
tially anxiety, he cannot be referring to the dread of dying. A person dreads
death only if he or she is still attached to the world, wants to maintain contact
with the world. If such contact is of no matter, then dying cannot be a source
of apprehension.
Is it possible that authentic being-toward-death, anxiety, is the dread of
something that comes after death? Hamlet asks:

Who would fardels bear,

To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others we know not of? (Hamlet, III, i, 76–82)

In other words, can being-toward-death be anxiety in the sense of dreading

the fires of hell? Can a person feel detached from this world while neverthe-
less feeling attached to the next? Perhaps. Such dread of hell, however, would
surely be a prime instance of the fear which Heidegger calls a perversion
of anxiety. Heidegger characterizes it as “cowardly fear” (SZ, p. 266), and
indeed it would be cowardice to concern oneself with escaping hell without
feeling the necessity of actually doing something in this world to deserve
heaven. Furthermore, the dread of the undiscover’d country cannot, as a mat-
ter of principle, be what Heidegger means by being-toward-death as essen-
tially anxiety. The reason is that Being and Time deliberately remains on this
side of death: it is “purely ‘this-sided,’” rein “diesseitig” (SZ, p. 248). The
book makes no decision on an afterlife or on whether or not it is even possible
to ask what lies on the other side of death (SZ, p. 248).
56 Chapter 3

THE BEFORE-WHICH OF ANXIETY

Heidegger distinguishes two moments in the full structure of anxiety: the

Wovor and the Worum, the “before which” and the “about which.” The same
moments occur in fear, but in the case of fear the Wovor and the Worum are
particular beings in the world. That is to say, these beings are particular and
are worldly. In the case of anxiety, no such beings are involved. I might be
fearful as I stand before the raging storm and about the possibility of my
property being flooded. Or I might be fearful before the current economy
and about losing money on my investments. In fear, the menace arises from
a definite place in the world and concerns a particular possibility of Dasein’s
worldly existence.
On the other hand, the Wovor of anxiety, that before which anxiety is anx-
ious, is completely indefinite. The Wovor cannot be specified; the anxious
person says, “It is nothing,” that is, no identifiable particular object or event.
Something is definitely menacing in anxiety, but the source of the menace is
completely indefinite. It comes from nowhere. Yet, according to Heidegger,
this “nowhere” is not without meaning; what is illuminated in anxiety is a
locality in general before which anxiety is anxious. This space is occupied by
beings as a whole.
According to Heidegger, anxiety does not see a definite “here” or “there”
out of which the menace is approaching. What characterizes the “before
which” of anxiety is the circumstance that what is menacing resides nowhere.
Anxiety does not know what it is anxious before. This “nowhere,” however,
is not meaningless. On the contrary, for Heidegger, therein lies a locality
in general, the disclosedness of the world in general for “essentially spatial
being-in-the-world” (SZ, p. 186). What menaces in anxiety can therefore
not approach from a determinate directionality within what is round about;
it is already there. Although it is indeed nowhere, it is so close as to be
oppressive.
Heidegger concludes2 that the “before which” of anxiety is the world as
such. But in anxiety this world is disclosed in a peculiar way. It remains a
world of things in good order, in joint, but appears as “irrelevant,” “insig-
nificant,” “inconsequential” (SZ, p. 186). In anxiety, one does not encounter
anything with which one could be “involved” (SZ, p. 186). “Involvement” is
another way of expressing the “for the sake of which.” Anxiety is the experi-
ence of a broken relation—not between one worldly thing and another, but
between beings as a whole and Dasein. The world is not now disregarded,
but just as in the case of broken tools, the world takes on a specific character,
indeed comparable to the change of a ready-to-hand thing into something
present-at-hand. Now, however, it is the entire world that undergoes this
transformation.
 Anxiety and Mortality 57

Heidegger applies to the world as a whole the same analysis he carried out
with regard to ready-to-hand beings within the world. Just as in the case of a
breakdown in the assignments of one tool to another, the tool becomes conspic-
uous (broken tool), obtrusive (missing tool), and obstinate (tool in the way),
so in the case of anxiety, that is, with a breakdown in the order of the for-the-
sake-of-which, the entire world in a similar way becomes a sterile promontory.

OBTRUSIVENESS

In the first place, according to Heidegger, for anxious Dasein, innerworldly

beings are in themselves so completely unimportant that on the basis of this
insignificance of what is within the world, the “world in its worldhood”
alone still obtrudes (SZ, p. 187). Recall that the “worldhood of the world” is
Heidegger’s name for the vague global sense that things fit together, prior to
an experience of particular things fitting together. So Heidegger is saying that
in anxiety this global sense of the system of in-order-to relations obtrudes.
According to the earlier analysis of tools, when a hammer is missing, the
nails become obtrusive: they force themselves on our attention transformed
into inert matter simply lying there, bearing no message to us. The nails appear
as present-at-hand things, looking alien to any use we could make of them.
In the case of anxiety, the entire ready-to-hand system, the worldhood of the
world, undergoes the same transformation. The world obtrudes as something
inexplicable. What obtrudes is not this or that, and also not all present-at-hand
things taken together as a sum; what obtrudes instead is the possibility of the
ready-to-hand in general, that is, “the world itself” (SZ, p. 187).
The hand of the ready-to-hand is always the actual hand of some Dasein.
If the ready-to-hand in general seems impossible, that could be only because
the link to the hand has been severed. If a disruption occurs within the realm
of the ready-to-hand, that realm appears as needing to be repaired, but not as
impossible. For the entire realm to seem impossible, it must be cut off from
Dasein. In other words, the world must show itself as unprofitable to me, as
inexplicably there, cut off from any project of mine. In anxiety, the world
obtrusively shows itself as inexplicable; beings as a whole force themselves
on my attention, but they do so in a way that makes me wonder what they
are doing there.

OBSTINACY

In anxiety, the world also appears as obstinate. Within the realm of inner-
worldly things, the obstinate tool is the one in the way, blocking access to
58 Chapter 3

some other item of equipment. A hammer in the way loses its usual transpar-
ency (transparency in favor of the work to be done) and forces us to deal with
it a novel way. Instead of wielding the tool as it is intended to be wielded, we
must transport it as dead weight to some other place in order to gain access to
what it is blocking. Heidegger’s word, translated as “obstinate,” is aufsässig.
The usual translation would be “rebellious,” “defiant,” or “refractory” (in the
manner of an unruly child). But “obstinate” captures Heidegger’s sense very
well. “Obstinate” (from Latin sto, “stand”) and aufsässig (from Latin sedeo,
“sit”) share the same basic meaning: to occupy a place defiantly, insolently,
unwilling to be displaced.
Heidegger applies the term in the context of anxiety as follows. In the
before-which of anxiety, the “It is nothing and nowhere” becomes manifest.
The obstinacy of the innerworldly nothing and nowhere thus signifies phe-
nomenally: the before-which of anxiety is “the world as such” (SZ, p. 187).
Heidegger is saying that what presents itself as obstinate in the experience
of anxiety is the character of the before-which as nothing and nowhere. This
obstinacy is comparable to that of a tool in the way, but it operates in reverse.
What is obstinate resides in the circumstance that the menace in anxiety
refuses to occupy a definite place and be a definite thing. The menace is
unwilling to be placed at all. It will not stand or sit anywhere.
This obstinacy is exactly what is uncomfortable in anxiety. A definite thing
at a definite place in the world can be confronted. To confront is to turn the
menace into an object of fear. That is what Heidegger expresses by noting
that the way to dispel anxiety is to absorb oneself in worldly things (SZ, p.
186). Even if these are broken and troublesome, they offer the comfort of
certainty: a definite something at a definite someplace. As Hamlet recognizes,
we would rather bear the ills we have than venture those we know not of.
It is in this context of distinguishing anxiety and fear, the indefinite menace
and the definite one, that Heidegger claims, without explanation, that anxiety
makes fear possible. Or is he saying that fear makes anxiety possible? His
German phrase is ambiguous: Angst, die ihrerseits Furcht erst möglich macht
(SZ, p. 186). That could mean: “anxiety, which for its part first makes fear
possible” or “anxiety, which fear for its part first makes possible.” Since both
readings are justified grammatically, we need to look to the sense in order to
decide.
The question reduces to this: do we progress from the definite menace to
the indefinite one, or vice versa? Do we first find individual things menacing,
and then by some sort of process of induction conclude that the world as a
whole is menacing? Or is a vague global sense of menace prior? Heidegger’s
answer is intimated by the conclusion he draws regarding the obstinacy of
the nothing and nowhere. He says, as just quoted: this obstinacy “signifies
phenomenally: the before-which of anxiety is the world as such.” Heidegger
 Anxiety and Mortality 59

said the same earlier: the “nowhere” is not meaningless; on the contrary,
therein lies a locality in general, the disclosedness of the world in general for
essentially spatial being-in-the-world. How does this conclusion follow, and
what does it say about the priority of fear or anxiety?
In play here regarding obstinacy is basically the same account of anxiety
as in the case of obtrusiveness, but now the analysis is couched in terms
of place and the disclosedness of the world for essentially spatial Dasein.
Accordingly, I will appeal here to one of the arguments propounded by Kant
in the “Metaphysical exposition of space” of the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant argues: “We could never represent to ourselves the absence of space,
although we can quite well think it as empty of objects” (A24/B38).
The intention of a “metaphysical exposition” is to show that a certain con-
cept is apriori. So this argument is meant to show that space is apriori, that is,
prior to acquaintance with the individual things and relations actually found
in space. Space is prior to these relations and not abstracted out from them.
The representation of space as such, the realm of spatiality, must precede any
empirical acquaintance with what is in space. In the argument just quoted,
Kant is presumably reasoning as follows: there would be a contradiction
involved in representing the absence of space, for space is the realm that
makes possible any presence or absence.3 In order to think absence, we would
need to represent space already, and so it is impossible to think the absence of
space; it would be thinking the absence of what makes possible the thinking
of absence. But there would be no contradiction involved in thinking of space
as absent of objects, since space is not abstracted out from spatial objects.
Accordingly, space has been metaphysically exposed as apriori.
Applied to Being and Time, the same sort of argument would run: it is
impossible to disclose spatial objects without representing the worldhood of
the world, but we can represent worldhood without any objects in it. In other
terms, unless the spatial “locality” is open to us, we could not have disclosed
to us any definite spatial objects; but the locality is not necessarily populated
by any definite things. This means the indefinite locality, the nowhere, that is,
the no particular where, must precede any definite somewhere.
Therefore, inasmuch as anxiety for Heidegger is the disclosedness of the
locality in general, it is prior to fear, which is the confrontation with indi-
vidual worldly beings. Accordingly, the proper translation of the ambiguous
passage above is: “anxiety, which for its part first makes fear possible.” Only
because we are anxious can we be fearful. Only because we have a sense of
the worldhood of the world can an individual item in the world stand out.
Only because we find something in general menacing, something we know
not what, do we find individual items emerging in their particular menace.
Heidegger maintains that anxiety is an original and direct disclosure of
the world as world (world as world = worldhood of the world). It is not the
60 Chapter 3

case that this disclosure emerges by “deliberate abstraction” (SZ, p. 187) out
of innerworldly beings, which would be first experienced, leaving only the
thought of the world, before which anxiety might subsequently arise. On the
contrary, anxiety, as a mode of affectivity, is the “very first” (SZ, p. 187)
disclosure of the world as world.
Anxiety makes fear possible—provided anxiety is not understood as mere
emotion. Anxiety, as Heidegger has described it, is primarily a disclosedness,
although indeed one accompanied by discomfort. Anxiety is the disclosure
not of individual present beings but of the realm that allows beings to be
present, namely, the worldhood of the world (= Being). But anxiety is not the
same as any other disclosure of the world, such as the one through perception
or through practical immersion in things. Anxiety is the disclosure that there
is something remarkable about the presence of beings. They stand out from a
vague background, one which we glimpse but cannot directly face. Anxiety
is the sense that there is something inexplicable, uncomfortable, perplexing,
about the presence of things, something we cannot confront. The disclosure,
in anxiety, of the obstinacy of the nothing and nowhere is thus equivalent to
a sense of wonder. Anxiety is the disclosure, at least implicitly, that the back-
ground from which beings emerge is not a being on the level of other beings;
the presence of individual beings cannot be accounted for by appealing to
some other beings. The way is thus paved for the perplexity which motivates
the first philosophical step, the recognition of the difference between Being
and beings.

CONSPICUOUSNESS

The conspicuous item of equipment is the defective one. As discussed in the

previous chapter, for Heidegger defective equipment falls on our gaze (is
auffällig, “striking,” “prominent,” “conspicuous”) such as to call attention to
itself. But the attention received by the broken tool is negative; we look upon
the broken tool as sheer matter, not a tool but a present-at-hand thing with
physical properties. Yet, for Heidegger, as we know, the broken tool is not
fully displaced from the ready-to-hand into the present-at-hand. The broken
hammer remains, in some measure, ready-to-hand. Presumably Heidegger is
thinking that a hammer with a broken handle can still be wielded by the peen
and used for hammering. Defective equipment is still viewed as equipment,
usable but exhibiting, as we discussed earlier, a tension drawing it toward the
present-at-hand.
With regard to the disclosure of the world in anxiety, Heidegger does not
use the word “conspicuous.” I suggest it is because nothing compares here
to the imperfect displacement of ready-to-hand things into the domain of the
 Anxiety and Mortality 61

present-at-hand. The transformation of the world in anxiety is complete. We

are detached completely from the world and do not merely feel a tension
drawing us away. Furthermore, in anxiety we are detached from the entire
world and not merely from some part of it. In anxiety, we do not find some
areas of the world flat and unprofitable and other areas engaging. Nor can we
make some idiosyncratic use of the world, the way a broken hammer, with
a little improvisation, might still be employed in hammering. Finally, for
anxious Dasein the flatness of the world has an aura of constancy. The con-
spicuous tool does not present itself as never being able to serve a practical
purpose, as never able to be repaired. But in anxiety, as Heidegger describes
it, the unprofitability of the world is experienced as constant. Therefore,
instead of speaking of the conspicuousness of the world as disclosed in anxi-
ety, Heidegger thematizes its constancy, Ständigkeit.
Heidegger refers to the constancy of anxiety in the course of discussing
authentic comportment toward death. A difference between authentic and
inauthentic being-toward-death resides in the circumstance, as was discussed
above in the first chapter, that authentic comportment enhances the possibil-
ity-character of death. Death is possible at every moment, something inau-
thentic comportment attempts to cover over. Yet, death is always menacing,
and authentic anticipation of death must live in recognition of this constant
menace. For Heidegger, it is anxiety that discloses the constancy of the men-
ace and allows the menace to remain open.
Heidegger asks about constancy and answers his own question in a very brief
passage. How does anticipation disclose the indefiniteness of the preeminent
possibility of Dasein such that the “when” remains constantly indefinite? In the
anticipation of indefinitely certain death, Dasein is open to a constant menace.
Authentic being-toward-the-end must maintain itself in this menace and can so
little play down the menace that it must rather accentuate the indefiniteness.
How is the genuine disclosure of this constant menace possible? For Heidegger,
all understanding bears an affective tone. He then says that the affect capable of
holding open the “constant menace to Dasein is anxiety” (SZ, 265–66).
Heidegger is connecting the indefiniteness of the certainty of death with the
indefiniteness of the before-which of anxiety. Anxiety is the experience of the
nothing and the nowhere, of no thing which can be confronted, and so anxiety
in its disclosedness bears an affective tone of uncomfortableness. Such an
affect could indeed correspond to the menace of indefinitely certain death.
Anxiety would allow authentic being-toward-the-end to sustain the indefi-
niteness of the menace of death. On the other hand, Being and Time often
declares that authenticity, including, presumably, authentic being-toward-the-
end, is not constant. Authenticity is the exceptional state, a departure from
inauthenticity, and will always return back to inauthenticity. How then does
anxiety hold open a constant menace?
62 Chapter 3

Attached to the last word of the quotation above is a footnote referring the
reader to “§40, pp. 184ff.” That is the earlier section we had been discussing,
about anxiety as a preeminent mode of disclosedness. The section includes a
single allusion to constancy. Heidegger first characterizes the before-which of
anxiety as the uncanny, and then he says, “This uncanniness pursues [nach-
setzt, “sets out after”] Dasein constantly” (SZ, p. 189). Heidegger offers no
explicit explanation, so we need to look for ourselves in order to grasp the
sense of such constant pursuit.
Heidegger introduces the concept of uncanniness by distinguishing anxiety
from Dasein’s everyday familiarity with the world. The publicness of the they
introduces into the average everydayness of Dasein a comfortable self-assur-
ance, a self-evident feeling at home. Anxiety, on the other hand, hales Dasein
back out of falling absorption in the world. Everyday familiarity collapses.
Dasein is individualized, but is so nevertheless precisely as being-in-the-
world. Being-in attains the existential mode of not being at home. According
to Heidegger, nothing else than this not being at home is meant by the talk of
“uncanniness” (SZ, p. 189).
It might seem that the sense of uncanniness, of not being at home in the
world, arises in opposition to the already established, average everyday
sense of comfortable familiarity. Anxiety would disrupt the familiarity and
introduce a novel way of looking at the things of the world. Anxious Dasein,
instead of supinely taking orientation from the they, would be individualized,
would find its individuality for the first time by breaking with the they. But
this apparent order, authenticity following upon everydayness, is incorrect, as
Heidegger intimates by saying that anxiety hales Dasein back from absorp-
tion in the world. Anxiety does not introduce anything new; it is a return to
the old. The everyday absorption in the beings of the world is not original; on
the contrary, it is a matter of “falling.” And falling, for Heidegger, is a falling
from somewhere, a fleeing from something, something more original.
Accordingly, what now becomes phenomenally visible is the before-which
of falling, that from which it, as flight, actually flees. It does not flee from
innerworldly beings but rather flees precisely toward them, as things with
which Dasein, lost in the they, can dwell in comfortable familiarity. The fall-
ing flight into the being-at-home of publicness is flight from the not-at-home,
from the uncanniness, which lies in Dasein as thrown being-in-the-world.
According to Heidegger, this uncanniness pursues Dasein constantly and
menaces, even if not explicitly, one’s “everyday lostness in the they” (SZ, p.
189).
It is an axiom of Being and Time that the experience of flight, of turning
one’s back on something, is disclosive. We must know what it is we are turn-
ing from, must take orientation from it, in order to avoid it. We must have
some understanding of what is pursuing us in order to flee from it. Flight takes
 Anxiety and Mortality 63

direction from that which it is fleeing, which must therefore be already dis-
closed, at least implicitly. So Heidegger is saying in the passage just quoted
that the absorption in beings, along with the comfortable familiarity involved
in such absorption, is made possible in its orientation (toward beings) by a
prior experience of not feeling at home. That experience is uncomfortable,
and we flee from it. Inasmuch as Dasein’s normal, average everyday mode of
comportment is inauthenticity, then Dasein is always fleeing from authentic-
ity. That is what it means to say that uncanniness constantly pursues Dasein.
To flee from uncanniness, to turn one’s back on authenticity, the authentic
and the uncanny must already be disclosed. Dasein must know, at least
implicitly, what it is falling from.
Inasmuch as the before-which of anxiety is the uncanny, Heidegger’s
claim that anxiety holds open the constant menace is intelligible. The world
disclosed in anxiety has an aura of constancy precisely as that from which
average everyday Dasein is constantly fleeing. We are constantly pursued
by uncanniness, that is, by what we find uncomfortable in anxiety, namely,
the indefiniteness of the certainty of death. Inauthenticity is nothing other
than the flight from this pursuit, nothing other than flight from anxiety. That
is how, as quoted at the beginning of this chapter, being-toward-death is
essentially anxiety. At least it is so as regards inauthentic dying. Such being-
toward-the-end is essentially anxiety not as brooding on death, or dreading
it, but as taking orientation from what is disclosed in anxiety, namely, the
indefinite certainty of death. Such being-toward-the-end takes the negative
path, the shunning of anxiety. In doing so, however, it is determined by anxi-
ety and merely takes the opposite course. It is anti-anxiety, but, as Heidegger
says, everything anti- thinks essentially in the spirit of that which it is anti-.4
Accordingly, inauthentic being-toward-death is essentially anxiety but is not
merely anxiety and afortiori not anxiety as mere mood.
Inauthenticity covers over the indefiniteness of the certain possibility of
death and thereby turns anxiety into fear. It attempts to make death an actual-
ity which can be confronted. But that comportment is precisely a fleeing from
death as possibility. So inauthentic being-toward-death, the dread of dying,
is a fear of anxiety, cowardice toward anxiety. When Heidegger asserted
that being-toward-death is essentially anxiety, he added that incontrovertible
although only indirect proof of this assertion is provided by being-toward-
death as characterized earlier, when it perverts anxiety into cowardly fear
and, with the overcoming of this fear, manifests “cowardice toward anxiety”
(SZ, p. 266). How does the one prove the other?
Heidegger is referring to the earlier characterization of inauthentic being-
toward-death, where even thinking about death counts publicly as cowardly
fear, as insecurity in one’s existence, and as morbid flight from the world.
The “they” does not recognize the courage required for anxiety toward death.
64 Chapter 3

The infallible though indirect proof then amounts to this: when inauthenticity,
the dominance of the they, overcomes the fear of death, which presumably
happens by turning death into an actuality that can be calculated and thereby
confronted and disposed of in some way or other, then inauthentic Dasein is
displaying cowardice toward anxiety, toward the indefinitely certain possibil-
ity of death. And such cowardice demonstrates, by way of contrast (by way
of “indirectness”), that authentic being-toward-death is essentially anxiety in
the opposite sense of courage toward anxiety. Inauthenticity overcomes the
fear of death out of fear of anxiety, out of fear of the uncomfortableness of the
indefinitely certain possibility disclosed in anxiety. What inauthenticity turns
its back on is what authenticity embraces, namely, anxiety. Thus, authentic
being-toward-death is essentially anxiety, a living in full awareness of the
indefinite. Accordingly, both authentic and inauthentic being-toward-the-end
take their orientation from what is disclosed in anxiety. One attitude flees, the
other embraces. But both are essentially anxiety.

Anxiety makes fear possible. That is the conclusion Heidegger again draws
from his discussion of uncanniness. Heidegger first repeats that the disclosure
of the world as uncanny has priority, and then he calls fear a fallen mode of
anxiety. The comfortable-familiar way of being-in-the-world is a modal vari-
ant of the uncanniness of Dasein, not the reverse. Existentially-ontologically,
the experience of not being at home must be considered the more original
phenomenon. For Heidegger, only because anxiety always already deter-
mines being-in-the-world, can Dasein, in concernful and affective involve-
ment with the world, ever be afraid. Fear is anxiety which has fallen into the
world, is inauthentic and therefore “self-concealed anxiety” (SZ, p. 189).
Heidegger says uncanniness is more original—provided “originality” is
taken in the existential-ontological sense. Authenticity is more original than
inauthenticity in that sense. In that sense, inauthenticity is a modal variant
of authenticity, and not the reverse. But there is another sense in which the
reverse does hold, and that is the sense in which Being and Time declares so
often that authenticity is the modal variant, the exceptional phenomenon that
endures only for a moment; inauthenticity is the rule. It is so in what would
have to be called the existentiell-ontical sense in contrast to the existential-
ontological one. Ontically, that is, factually, experientially, inauthenticity is
prior; it is where we first find ourselves. But ontologically, that is, in terms of
conditions of possibility, authenticity is first, since inauthenticity must know,
as implicit as this knowledge may be, what it is turning its back on. Factually
speaking, fear is more original than anxiety; it is predominant and anxiety is
latent. Ontologically, the order is reversed. Accordingly, Being and Time is
not inconsistent in claiming here that not being at home is the more original
phenomenon.
 Anxiety and Mortality 65

A question remains with regard to authentic being-toward-death. Such

authenticity is an embracing of anxiety rather than a fleeing from it. It is pos-
sible to shun anxiety constantly, but could Dasein actually live constantly in
anxiety? Can the affect characteristic of anxiety, the uncomfortable sense of
the indefinite, the not-at-home, the uncanny, be sustained? Can one live con-
stantly in perplexity and wonder? Can one live a life of constant dying, con-
stant openness to the indefinite menace? Is it possible to enhance constantly
the uncertain possibility in its possibility-character? If shunning anxiety is
cowardice, then fully embracing it and never falling away from it would be
not only courageous but even heroic. Is such heroism possible? Have there
ever been such exceptional instances of Dasein, such heroes? I wish to leave
these questions open for now and reserve the answer for the end of this chap-
ter on death and anxiety.

THE BEFORE-WHICH OF ANXIETY

AS THE BEING OF DASEIN

Despite all the previous analyses in which Heidegger determined the before-
which of anxiety as the world, the locality in general, the worldhood of
the world, the entire system of ready-to-hand relations, the nowhere and
the nothing, he concludes by identifying the before-which in an apparently
unrelated way. The identification offers support for my understanding of
anxiety and authentic dying as preoccupation with disclosing Being, phi-
losophizing, rather than preoccupation with death. But the conclusion, the
final identification of the before-which of anxiety, will seem surprising, and
Heidegger offers it in a few brief sentences without explanation. Therefore,
it will require some effort to make sense of it. What Heidegger concludes is
that the before-which of anxiety is the Being of Dasein. The before-which of
anxiety is nothing ready-to-hand within the world. Yet this nothing is not a
total nothingness. The nothing of the ready-to-hand is grounded in the “most
original something” (SZ, p. 187), namely, the world. Ontologically, however,
the world belongs essentially to the Being of Dasein as being-in-the-world.
Accordingly, if the nothing, that is, the world as such, manifests itself as the
before-which of anxiety, then that signifies: the before-which of anxiety is
“being-in-the-world itself” (SZ, p. 187).
Heidegger’s motive in taking up the topic of anxiety was to find phe-
nomenal evidence for the unity of what he asserted to be an utterly unitary
condition, namely, being-in-the-world. In Being and Time, that is the name
for the Being of Dasein (along with other names, such as existence, Existenz,
and care, Sorge). Although unitary, being-in-the-world can be considered
in terms of its three constitutive moments: the world, the disclosive activity
66 Chapter 3

of being-in, and the self, the who of being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world

cannot be separated out into discrete pieces, but that does not preclude its
having a multiplicity of structural moments.5
Heidegger proceeds to phenomenological reflection on the three moments,
discussing them separately but never losing sight of their unity, and then
he seeks the phenomenal evidence. Such evidence, as we know, means
disclosure to everyday Dasein and not merely to the reflecting philosopher.
Anxiety is the everyday experience to which Heidegger appeals for the
requisite evidence. In anxiety, the three moments of being-in-the-world are
revealed in their unity, while the distinctiveness of the individual moments is
respected as well. The before-which of anxiety corresponds to the world, the
about-which is the who, and anxiety precisely as affect is an exemplary phe-
nomenon of being-in. In the experience of anxiety, the structural moments of
being-in-the-world are gathered together and shown in their unity to everyday
Dasein, the one undergoing the experience, and not merely to the reflecting
philosopher. At least that is Heidegger’s claim and is his motive for making
anxiety so prominent in Being and Time.
For Heidegger, Dasein is not an isolated subject, one needing some sort
of bridge to connect to the world. Dasein is not a subject in the usual sense,
a consciousness aloof from the object. That is one of the reasons Heidegger
chooses the name “Dasein” for the beings we ourselves are. We are already
out there, in the world. I believe this immediate connection to the world
cannot be proved; phenomenology can only point it out and offer it for
our acceptance or rejection. An opposing philosophy, such as idealism or
empiricism, can always deny this immediate connection and supply its own
equivalent of it.
Accordingly, Heidegger is not attempting to prove that Dasein is already
out in the world and that there could be no worldless Dasein. He is not trying
to convince anyone that the world belongs essentially to the Being of Dasein.
And I do not wish to argue for or against. What I question is how the world as
revealed in anxiety can be the sort of world Dasein is intrinsically related to.
Heidegger maintains there is no such thing as a worldless Dasein, yet that
is precisely how he has described anxious Dasein. The world as revealed
in anxiety is entirely severed from Dasein, whereby indeed some artificial
bridge or shock might be required in order to arouse interest. In anxiety the
world is disclosed, quoting again Heidegger’s own words, as irrelevant, insig-
nificant, and inconsequential, as a world in which Dasein has no involvement.
Anxiety is the experience of affective severance from the world. Then how is
this world one that essentially belongs to the Being of Dasein as being-in-the-
world? And how is the experience of anxiety supposed to supply phenomenal
evidence, that is, evidence to anxious Dasein himself or herself, that he or she
is intrinsically connected to the world?
 Anxiety and Mortality 67

Heidegger does not address these problems directly, but he seems at least
implicitly aware of them when he writes about the solipsism of anxiety.
Anxiety individuates and so discloses Dasein as solus ipse, “self-alone.” Yet,
for Heidegger, this existential “solipsism” so little places an isolated subject-
thing worldlessly suspended in a “harmless void” that it instead brings Dasein
exactly before its world as world and thereby before itself as being-in-the-
world (SZ, p. 188).
The most significant word above is “harmless” (harmlos). Heidegger
maintains that the world disclosed in anxiety, even if seemingly remote from
Dasein, is not a harmless one. Indeed no harm can come to a subject-thing
suspended in empty space. Nothing could assault this subject, touch it with
the intention of doing harm. But the specter of such an isolated Dasein is by
no means comforting. Such a Dasein would not have unbounded freedom, on
the grounds that nothing is hemming in that freedom. On the contrary, there
would be no freedom at all, since there would be nothing on which to exercise
the freedom. A void would do extreme harm to freedom.
The classic analogy is drawn by Kant.6 It is a central tenet of the critical
philosophy that the higher faculty must remain tethered to the lower on pain
of falling into illusion. Reason must retain a bond to sensibility; otherwise,
what follows is not unbounded knowledge but no knowledge at all. So the
situation is comparable to that of a dove flying through the sky. The dove
feels the resistance of the air against its wings and thinks to itself that if only
that resistance were removed it could really soar. The bird is not disclosive
Dasein and does not realize that what resists is also what makes possible.
Anxiety, by holding up the specter of an utterly distant world, calls Dasein
back to his or her senses. Anxiety provides the shock motivating the recog-
nition that Dasein is being-in-the-world. Anxiety then does bring Dasein in
an extreme way before its world as world, as the place where it can exercise
its powers. A worldless Dasein is a contradiction in terms; without a world
Dasein would have nothing on which to exercise its disclosiveness. A world-
less Dasein would not be da, would not be there for any disclosedness.
Anxiety discloses this connection to the world by holding up the specter of
the opposite: Dasein without a world. Anxiety grants the wish of Kant’s dove:
it removes the resisting air. Presumably, the bird quickly learns the lesson: a
void does extreme harm.
Heidegger indicated in the section title that anxiety is a preeminent mode
of Dasein’s disclosedness. It is preeminent inasmuch as it discloses the very
Being of Dasein as being-in-the-world. Therefore, Heidegger’s conclusion
holds good: the before-which of anxiety is the Being of Dasein in the sense
of being-in-the-world, in the sense of intrinsically belonging to the world.
Anxiety is not a brooding over death; it is a motive to philosophize about the
Being of Dasein.
68 Chapter 3

THE ABOUT-WHICH OF ANXIETY

AS THE BEING OF DASEIN

What is anxiety anxious about? What is menaced? As in the case of the

before-which, the about-which of anxiety is nothing definite. It is not any
particular possibility of Dasein, not anything which could be a for-the-sake-
of-which. Versus the case of fear, what is menaced cannot be identified with
any particular thing or event, not even death. Accordingly, death can be
feared, but it cannot be that about which anxiety is anxious. Dying is neither
the before-which nor the about-which of anxiety. Yet, we will see again that
being-toward-death is essentially anxiety.
The about-which of anxiety is not any definite thing which would be of
concern to Dasein, for the obvious reason that the world is meaningless for
anxious Dasein. The about-which is not a definite possibility of Dasein with
regard to some particular thing in the world. Just as the before-which is the
world as such, the worldhood of the world, and not any particular worldly
thing, so the about-which is Dasein’s relation to the world as such, to world-
hood, and not to any worldly thing. The general relation of Dasein to the
world is a matter of authenticity or inauthenticity, Dasein understanding
itself in terms of the world, including things and other Daseins, or in its own
freely chosen terms. Since, in anxiety, beings become meaningless, they can
no longer provide orientation for one’s self-understanding. Dasein is thrown
back on his or her own resources for self-understanding. That being thrown
back on oneself is the about-which of anxiety. In anxiety, beings ready-to-
hand within the world sink away, as do all worldly beings whatsoever. The
world has nothing more to offer, and just as little does one’s fellow Dasein.
Anxiety thereby takes from Dasein the possibility of self-understanding in the
manner of fallingness, that is, in terms of the world and the way things have
been publicly interpreted.
Anxiety individuates; since it deprives worldly things of significance, it
motivates taking oneself in one’s own hands, making oneself a product of
one’s own devising. Anxiety is thus a motive to authenticity. That means
anxiety reveals to Dasein its freedom to choose its own way of being-in-the-
world. Freedom concerns Dasein’s peculiar relation to possibilities as most
proper ones. The about-which of anxiety is the Being of Dasein as being-
in-the-world with respect to the who of being-in-the-world. The about-
which of anxiety is the authentic self rather than the they-self. Anxiety is
the disclosure of the freedom of Dasein with respect to the possibility of
authenticity.
The preceding paragraph is a skeleton outline of Heidegger’s analysis
of the about-which, a very dense, almost cryptic, analysis. I will attempt to
explicate it as follows.
 Anxiety and Mortality 69

Anxiety throws Dasein back on that about which it is anxious, its authentic
possibility to be in the world. By depriving the public world of significance,
anxiety deprives Dasein of its inauthentic way of self-understanding, its tak-
ing the easy way out, namely, supinely going along with the crowd. Instead,
anxiety discloses to Dasein the path to authenticity, and that path is exactly
what Dasein is anxious about in anxiety. Anxiety opens up a daunting prospect,
namely, the possibility of rejecting peer pressure and choosing for oneself one’s
own way to be in the world. This is a throwing back, because in falling into
inauthenticity, Dasein is turning away, at least to some extent deliberately, from
authenticity. Dasein knows, at least implicitly, where its authenticity lies, and
that is how Dasein is able to turn away from it. Anxiety is the making explicit of
what Dasein has been turning from, and that is the about-which of anxiety, the
prospect of relying on oneself. This making explicit is a throwing, because it is
not simply a neutral disclosure of the path to authenticity but rather contains an
element of reprimand; in anxiety, Dasein is urged toward authenticity.
Anxiety individuates Dasein toward its most proper being-in-the-world,
which, as partaking in understanding, essentially projects upon possibilities.
Anxiety individuates Dasein from the they and toward its own freely chosen
way of being-in-the-world. Every way of being-in-the-world includes some dis-
closure of what is involved in such a way; in other words, every way of being-
in-the-world includes an element of understanding. Moreover, understanding is
always projective; to understand is to grasp something in terms of some context
or horizon, and this context or horizon is not given, but is instead projected by
the one who understands. Understanding has in itself the “existential structure
we call projection” (SZ, p. 145). There are two directionalities of the projection
involved in self-understanding, directionality toward two sorts of possibilities,
which means toward two modes of existence (since existence always has to
do with possibilities, which is why the structure of projecting upon possibili-
ties is called an existential structure). Dasein can understand itself in terms of
possibilities it devises from its own resources, whereby the understanding and
the existence are authentic, or Dasein can understand itself in terms of the pos-
sibilities derived from the world and other Daseins, whereby the understanding
and the existence are inauthentic. This latter way is easy and makes no great
demands on Dasein; the authentic way is what anxiety is anxious about.
In the about-which of anxiety, therefore, anxiety discloses Dasein as
possibility and indeed as that which it alone can be on its own basis as
something individuated. In anxiety, there is a disclosure to Dasein of the
fact that it faces a choice of possibilities, and so anxiety discloses to Dasein
where its authenticity lies, namely, by making of itself something unique,
something it alone, as an individual, can be, an individual entirely individu-
ated, totally taking its orientation from itself and not from the world or other
Daseins.
70 Chapter 3

Anxiety manifests in Dasein a being-toward a most proper capacity to be,

which means a being-free for the freedom of seizing upon oneself and choos-
ing oneself. Anxiety discloses to Dasein its own individual possibility to be,
which means it discloses to Dasein its freedom to seize itself by its own hands
and choose for itself its own mode of being-in-the-world.
Anxiety brings Dasein before its being-free for the authenticity of its Being
as possibility, a possibility it always already is. Anxiety does not disclose
merely negative freedom, freedom from constraint, but instead shows Dasein
what it is free for. What Dasein is most properly free for is the possibility of
authentic Being. But Dasein always already is this possibility inasmuch as it
has chosen some form of existence, and yet Dasein always also has this pos-
sibility in the manner of Dasein’s distinctive relation to possibilities, which
are for Dasein, but not for things, most proper ones, ones that remain open
even after being chosen.
Yet, this Being is at the same time that to which Dasein as being-in-the-
world is delivered over. Dasein has been delivered over to authenticity, which
is not purely and simply outstanding, something entirely futural. Dasein has
already been delivered over to this way of being-in-the-world; even the most
inauthentic existence is lived with at least a vague sense that there is more
to human potential than merely going along with the crowd. Every Dasein
senses a call toward authenticity, a deliverance over to authenticity, and anxi-
ety is the forceful experience of this call. The about-which of anxiety is not
something new but is instead something Dasein has already been consigned
to, the possibility of authentic existence.
In summary, the about-which of anxiety is the Being of Dasein. Anxiety
is the disclosure of the authentic mode of Being. Anxiety holds open to
Dasein the prospect of choosing one’s own way to be in the world. It is a
daunting prospect versus the ease of falling into inauthenticity. In any case,
the about-which of anxiety is not death; anxious Dasein is not anxious at the
prospect of dying. Nevertheless, authentic being-toward-death is essentially
anxiety—provided such being-toward-death means philosophizing, preoccu-
pation with Being. Anxiety brings home to Dasein not its end but its relation
to possibilities. Anxiety is a coming to understand the Being of Dasein as
essentially possibility. Anxiety brings Dasein before the authenticity of its
Being as possibility.
The before-which and the about-which of anxiety are therefore the same, not
death, but the Being of Dasein. Both the before-which and the about-which are
being-in-the-world, but are so in two different perspectives. The before-which
is being-in-the-world with the moment of world brought into relief. Anxiety
is disclosure of the world as essentially belonging to Dasein, as an intrinsic
moment of the Being of Dasein as being-in-the-world. The about-which of
anxiety is the Being of Dasein with the moment of the who brought into relief.
 Anxiety and Mortality 71

This who is disclosed in its possibilities of the authentic self and the inauthentic,
the individuated self and the they-self. In both the before-which and the about-
which, what anxiety discloses is the structure of the Being of Dasein. That is
what anxiety is preoccupied with, not death. If preoccupation with disclosing the
Being of Dasein is, as I claim, what Heidegger means by authentic dying, then
being-toward-death is essentially anxiety.

ANXIETY AS BEING-IN

For the sake of completeness, let us discuss the third moment of being-in-the-
world, the moment of being-in. It too is made prominent in anxiety, whereby
anxiety discloses the unity of all three moments of being-in-the-world. The
about-which of anxiety reveals itself to be also the before-which: being-in-
the-world. The sameness of the before-which of anxiety and its about-which
extends even to anxiousness itself. For anxiousness, as affect, is a basic mode
of being-in.
Heidegger’s term “being-in” does not refer to spatial relations. Water is
not in a bucket in Heidegger’s sense of being-in. Being-in requires disclos-
edness. To be in the world means to abide there disclosively, to have some
understanding of what one is doing in the world. In Heidegger’s sense, only
Dasein is in the world.
Heidegger recognizes three modes of disclosiveness, three modes of
being-in: understanding, discourse, and affect, or: reasoning, talking things
through in words (discourse is not simply an expression to the outside of
things already disclosed but is itself a disclosing to the one who is talking; we
learn our own thoughts by attempting to express them), and having moods.
For Heidegger it is the latter that is most disclosive. The other, higher modes
for the most part only bring to conceptuality what has been more primarily
disclosed by bodily attunement. This is a common phenomenological theme,
echoed for example by Merleau-Ponty when he maintains that perception is
most basically not a grasp of colors or shapes but a grasp of the emotional
essence of the thing perceived.7
Among all the affects, anxiety is in Being and Time the preeminent one, the
preeminent mode of Dasein’s disclosedness. That is exactly what is expressed
in the title of the section on anxiety. Accordingly, anxiety is a preeminent
modality of being-in (since being-in = disclosedness). And what anxiety dis-
closes, as we have seen, is the Being of Dasein, being-in-the-world. Included
in the understanding of its own Being is an understanding of its own disclos-
edness. Included in the self-understanding of anxious Dasein is at least an
implicit grasp that the world is revealed by the experience of anxiety. That
is the reason the sameness of the before-which and the about-which extends
72 Chapter 3

to anxiety as affect; it too discloses being-in-the-world, and in this case the

moment of being-in is set in relief.
It follows, then, that anxiety is phenomenal evidence for the unity of being-
in-the-world. The three moments are unified in anxiety: they all are disclo-
sive of being-in-the-world, and each makes prominent a particular moment.
Yet we might doubt: is this actually phenomenal evidence? Does the person
experiencing anxiety sense a disclosure of this unity? Would it not require
reflection to see the unity rather than merely undergoing the experience?
Does anxious Dasein, while undergoing the experience, sense this unity of
the before-which, the about-which, and the affect? Or is this revealed only
after the fact, that is, revealed to the reflecting phenomenologist? Heidegger
does not address this problem directly, but he offers a clue to it in speaking
of the rarity of anxiety: with the predominance of fallingness and publicness,
“authentic anxiety is rare” (SZ, p. 190). Heidegger goes on to observe that
even rarer than the existentiell fact of authentic anxiety are the attempts to
interpret this phenomenon in its basic existential-ontological constitution and
function. The reasons, according to Heidegger, reside partly in the general
neglect of the existential analytic of Dasein but more especially in an oblivi-
ousness to the phenomenon of the disclosiveness of affect, the phenomenon
that affect is itself disclosive. The factual rarity of the phenomenon of anxi-
ety, however, does not deprive it of its suitability for assuming in principle
a methodological function for Heidegger’s existential analytic. On the con-
trary, the rarity of the phenomenon is an indication of the fact that Dasein
(for the most part concealed to itself on account of the way things have been
interpreted publicly by the they) becomes disclosable in an original sense in
this basic affect.
The first, most obvious question concerns authentic anxiety. What is it?
Heidegger does not say more than that it is rare. Presumably it is the oppo-
site of inauthentic anxiety, which Heidegger does not characterize either,
but which could very well be the anxiety of someone who experiences the
insignificance of worldly things and feels the motivation toward individua-
tion and authenticity but does not act on that motive. Such a person would
shrug off the anxiety and return to his or her obsession with daily tasks. Such
a person, after the fact, would indeed say, as Heidegger claims, “It was noth-
ing.” Heidegger believes that that means “nothing definite,” but it could also
mean “nothing important,” nothing that touches me personally, nothing that
requires a response on my part. If authentic anxiety is taken as the opposite,
the positive response to the urge toward authenticity, then its rarity would
certainly be intelligible. Many people experience anxiety, yet inauthenticity
predominates, that is, “fallingness and publicness” are the rule.
There is another possible way of understanding authentic anxiety.
Heidegger hints at this way when he immediately goes on to complain about
 Anxiety and Mortality 73

the neglect of his philosophy. Following up this hint, I wish to show that
authentic anxiety could be the anxiety of someone who is already existing
in authenticity, the anxiety to which only an already authentic person is
impelled. Indeed a multitude of problems immediately arises in regard to this
view, for anxiety is the precondition of authenticity, not vice versa. Anxiety
includes the discomfort of being urged out of inauthenticity into authenticity.
An already authentic person would not feel that discomfort.
Yet authenticity could be a condition of anxiety, and the rarity of the
phenomenon could also be explained thereby. The issue is the motivation of
anxiety. Heidegger hints at only two motives, darkness and physiology, and
I will pursue those hints in the next section of this chapter. Yet besides those
hints, Heidegger, in the context of discussing the motives to anxiety, inserts
this complaint of the neglect of the analytic of Dasein, the obliviousness to
the phenomenon of disclosive affect, and the extreme rarity of attempts to
interpret anxiety in its existential-ontological constitution. What is rare, in
other words, is any philosopher thinking along with Heidegger, any philoso-
pher attempting an analytic of Dasein. If authentic anxiety is rare because of
this neglect of the analytic of Dasein, then Heidegger’s philosophy is itself a
motive to such anxiety.
A philosopher following in the footsteps of Heidegger is not necessarily
authentic. It is possible to be a Heideggerian simply because it is the in thing
to do. Heidegger is not suggesting that only Heideggerians are authentic. In
fact, he later mostly complained that he has no authentic followers, that is,
no one who genuinely engaged with his philosophy, even by opposing it.
He complained that his so-called followers were not thinking for themselves
but were occupied with Heidegger-scholarship. They were concentrating on
his words instead of thinking for themselves about the matters at issue in his
philosophy so as to make their own original contribution. I believe Heidegger
is exaggerating. No one attracted to his philosophy has ever been, or would
be, content to be an epigone and merely spout Heideggerian jargon without
even attempting to clarify it.
The prime matter at issue in Heidegger’s philosophy is the question of the
meaning of Being. It is the neglect of this question that he laments. Authentic
anxiety does not require reading Being and Time. But it does require openness
to what that book is attempting to provoke, namely, perplexity in regard to what
it means to be. And such perplexity does include an element of authenticity, for
it requires, as the Stranger says, dissatisfaction with what the previous “muses”
believe about the meaning of Being. In Heidegger’s terms, it requires individu-
ating oneself from the usual sanction of the neglect of the question of Being on
the grounds that we are all already well-acquainted with what it means to be.
To someone sharing the Stranger’s perplexity, the experience of anxiety
might indeed provide phenomenal evidence of the unity of being-in-the-world.
74 Chapter 3

Wondering about the Being of Dasein could “occasion” authentic anxiety,

just as, we will see, a particular physiological makeup could. It is not a mat-
ter of causality; perplexity is only a nudge in a certain direction. But it might
make one alert to what anxiety could disclose about Being. Thus, anxiety
might be phenomenal evidence to a philosopher—but not in his or her later
reflection on the experience; it would be evidence while the experience is
transpiring. Thereby, anxiety is in principle phenomenal evidence. But it is
not evidence to inauthentic Dasein, to the they. It is phenomenal evidence
only to authentic anxiety, that is, to someone provoked into perplexity by
Heidegger’s philosophy. That is how authenticity could be a condition of
authentic anxiety and not just a result of anxiety. It would also explain
Heidegger’s assertion about the rarity of authentic anxiety. Indeed, in view
of his complaints, we might conclude that Heidegger is of the opinion that he
himself is the only one who experiences in anxiety phenomenal evidence for
the unity of being-in-the-world.

MOTIVES OF ANXIETY

What motivates anxiety? Heidegger is maddeningly noncommittal about the

motives. He offers only two, very ambiguous hints. The first concerns dark-
ness. In the discussion of uncanniness, he says that anxiety does not need
darkness: anxiety can arise in the most innocuous situations, nor is there need
for darkness, which does commonly foster a sense of uncanniness. In the
dark, we are offered, very emphatically, nothing to see, although the world is
precisely and indeed “more obtrusively, there” (SZ, p. 189).
In the dark, I cannot take my bearings from things, and so I am thrown
back on my own resources to find my way. Since I must negotiate unseen
obstacles, the world obtrudes all the more—as a foreign place. Thus, darkness
is similar to the situation of anxiety: things offering no orientation, the world
itself obtruding as unfamiliar, myself thrown back on my own resources.
Yet, the differences between anxiety and being in the dark are so great
as to make the similarities insignificant. First of all, in darkness the orienta-
tion I am deprived of is purely spatial, whereas in anxiety what is at stake is
self-understanding. Furthermore, in darkness the obtrusiveness of the world
is purely a jutting out of individual things which I may collide against; this
is incomparable to a disclosure of the worldhood of the world, an obtruding
of the entire system of ready-to-hand relations. Finally, darkness does not
call on me to individuate myself; on the contrary, the task is precisely to
insert myself seamlessly into the everyday world. Therefore, Heidegger is
not wrong to say anxiety has no of need darkness, but his statement falls far
short. In fact, anxiety is impossible in the dark.8 I might fear for my safety
 Anxiety and Mortality 75

in the dark, have an eerie feeling, and find the things of the world obtrusive.
But I am too preoccupied with these matters to have the leisure for anxiety
in Heidegger’s sense.
According to Heidegger, anxiety can arise in the most innocuous situa-
tions. Here we do have a motive or at least a condition of anxiety. If things
are going badly, then I have to focus on fixing them. If there is a breakdown
in the realm of the in-order-to, then I have to occupy myself with repairing it.
If I am worried about death, I am focused on my physical well-being. If I am
preoccupied with any worldly concern, if something is not innocuous, then
I have no leisure for anxiety. So anxiety even requires the most innocuous
situations.
Accordingly, leisure is a necessary condition for anxiety. A counter-proof
is that the way to dispel anxiety, as Heidegger says, is to throw oneself into
practical tasks. Preoccupation with worldly concerns is the way to flee anxi-
ety. To be anxious is not, despite what they say, insecurity in one’s existence
(see above, p. 63); on the contrary, insecurity is what motivates the flight
from anxiety.
If, as I maintain, anxiety is a matter of disclosedness, preoccupation with
the Being of Dasein, philosophizing, then leisure will all the more appear as
a necessary condition. According to Aristotle, philosophy begins in wonder,
but he also recognizes leisure as what makes wonder possible. The sciences
concerned with wisdom arose only when people had leisure from the neces-
sity of producing things, whether those things catered to necessity or luxury
(Metaphysics, 981b).
The other motive mentioned by Heidegger is physiology. “Anxiety is often
‘physiologically’ conditioned” (SZ, p. 190). Yet, for Heidegger, this fact is an
ontological problem, not merely a problem in regard to its ontical occasion-
ing and progression. Physiological inducement of anxiety is possible only
because Dasein is anxious “in the ground of its Being” (SZ, p. 190).
Despite this naturalistic way of speaking, Heidegger could not possi-
bly mean that anxiety can be caused by physiology. That would fly in the
face of a basic phenomenological tenet: in the realm of experience, there
can be no causes, only motives. Causality is restricted to inanimate nature.
Phenomenology is not empiricism. Therefore, the conditioning, occasioning,
and inducing mentioned by Heidegger must be taken in the sense of motivat-
ing; one’s physiological makeup may make one more or less prone to anxiety,
but physiology never by itself causes anxiety.
According to Heidegger, physiology can induce anxiety only because
Dasein is anxious in the ground of its Being. What is the ground of the Being
of Dasein? We know (chapter 1) that for Heidegger temporality is the mean-
ing of the Being of Dasein, that on which the structure of being-in-the-world
must be projected in order to make it comprehensible. Temporality could also
76 Chapter 3

be considered the ground of the Being of Dasein. I believe, however, that it

will be more fruitful to take ground here in a somewhat different sense, not
as meaning, as condition of possibility, but as what is most basic to Dasein,
what is most proper, what makes Dasein be Dasein, most fully Dasein. The
ground is Dasein at its deepest level, the level attained only in perfection: in
other words, ground not as arche but as telos.
What then is the telos of Dasein, what would make Dasein most properly
Dasein? The answer is authenticity. Let us first ask how authenticity is anx-
ious, intrinsically anxious, and then ask how the anxiety of authentic Dasein
could be physiologically induced.
Authentic Dasein is always anxious if anxiety means not mere emotion but
affective disclosure. What authentic Dasein most discloses is itself, being-
in-the-world, with the three moments shown in their unity as well as their
particularity. This disclosure is disclosed preeminently in anxiety, and so
authentic Dasein is intrinsically anxious.
The physiological conditioning Heidegger is invoking here cannot be a
sheer matter of brain functioning. Heidegger’s philosophy is as far from
today’s neuroscience as can be imagined. Heidegger is not envisioning some-
thing as ridiculous as an anxiety-neuron. So Heidegger must mean physiol-
ogy in a loose sense, equivalent to temperament. We at times do refer to
the temperaments in physiological terms: rich blooded versus poor blooded,
gutsy versus gutless, lion-hearted versus chicken-livered. There are bold
temperaments and timid ones. Macbeth upbraids a pusillanimous servant:
“Go, prick thy face and over-red thy fear. Thou lily-liver’d boy” (Macbeth,
V, iii, 14–15).
From the manner in which Heidegger distinguishes fear and anxiety, we
could say that the timid temperament tends toward fear and the strong one
toward anxiety. Authenticity and anxiety require courage. So the physiologi-
cal condition that makes a person open to anxiety is that of a stout-hearted
temperament, not a weak-kneed one. That is how anxiety could be induced
physiologically, that is, fostered, but only because Dasein is basically anx-
ious, anxious in its telos, authenticity. A strong temperament may make a per-
son more open to anxiety in Heidegger’s sense, but of course, as Heidegger
says of darkness, anxiety does not require such a physiology.

What then does motivate anxiety? Anxiety is basically wonder. There are
conditions attached to the possibility of the feeling of wonder: leisure and an
openness to perplexity. Anxiety as wonder also requires courage. All these
are conditions of anxiety but not causes. Dasein cannot of its own resources
place itself in anxiety or provoke a feeling of wonder. Dasein can resist the
feeling of wonder and can flee from anxiety into cowardly fear. The most
Dasein can do positively is to prepare for anxiety, perhaps by attempting
 Anxiety and Mortality 77

to come to self-knowledge. Nevertheless, anxiety is unmotivated, and that

would explain why Heidegger is so vague about the motives. In the end, anxi-
ety has to be understood as a sheer undeserved gift. Anxiety, like philosophy,
is not something Dasein takes up; on the contrary, anxiety and philosophy
take up Dasein. Anxious Dasein should feel privileged.

CONSTANT ANXIETY

Let us return now to a question raised earlier: Is a life of constant anxiety

possible? According to Heidegger, anxiety in the guise of uncanniness always
pursues Dasein. It is certainly possible to live entirely in accord with this
pursuit—in the negative sense of constantly fleeing from it. That is the life
of inauthenticity. The question is whether it is possible to live an entire life
embracing anxiety. The avoidance of anxiety is a cowardly life; it turns anxi-
ety into fear. The life that embraces anxiety would then be one of extreme
courage and heroism. Is such heroism possible?
This heroism would be a matter of constantly dying, constantly being-
toward-death, constantly open to the indefiniteness in the certain menace of
death, constantly separating oneself from hearsay, constantly purifying the
soul of everydayness. Has anyone ever lived such a life? I wish to propose
two examples of such heroes, ones we have already met as heroes in a dif-
ferent context: Socrates and Husserl. The philosophical life is already an
extreme form of Dasein, and Socrates and Husserl are extreme examples of
that life. They never cease philosophizing all their waking hours, which I take
to mean that they are constantly preoccupied with wonder, with perplexity,
with distinguishing Being from beings. Such preoccupation is precisely what
it means to approach death authentically, and it also means to live constantly
in anxiety, not as emotion but as disclosedness of the Being of the beings we
ourselves are.
With regard to Socrates, I will follow three lines of evidence: his never
leaving the city, his alternative penalty at his trial, namely, meals for the
remainder of his life at public expense, and his portrayal in Aristophanes’
Clouds. All three cases are instances of Socratic irony; Socrates shows who
he is by giving the appearance of who he is not.
Socrates is famous for never leaving the city, and I exploited this fame in
chapter 1 so as to place the Phaedrus between the Republic and the Timaeus.
By never leaving the city, Socrates seems preoccupied with worldly affairs.
That is how he was understood by Cicero; instead of pursuing things that
transcend the human sphere, Socrates “called philosophy down from the
heavens and relegated it to the cities of men and women.”9 Thus Socrates’
questions were ethical and political: What is courage? What is piety? What
78 Chapter 3

is the ideal polity? But this is sheer irony; as mentioned earlier, even when
the ostensible topic of his conversation is some moral issue, Socrates’
aim is always to open up the divine realm, the realm of the Ideas. In other
words, he is concerned with bringing philosophy, or the human gaze, up
to heaven. Only in the superficial, physical, spatial sense does Socrates
remain in the city; his attention is constantly on what lies beyond, in the
realm of the Ideas. Indeed, Socrates is famed for his aphrodisial encounters.
He does not practice Platonic love in the sense of bypassing the carnal so
as to gaze at the Ideas “by themselves, in the clear, unmingled, uninfected
with the slightest tinge of anything bodily or human” (Symposium, 211E).
Nevertheless, Socrates is not mired in carnality. Socrates is intent always
on recollecting the Ideas, especially that most lustrous idea, beauty, but he
approaches the divine realm through intimate contact with the beautiful
bodies of this world, not apart from them. In that sense, it could be said that
Socrates is most in the city and also most beyond, most immersed in beings
and also most intent only on what can be attained by passing right through
them.
Socrates was found guilty on charges that basically amounted to hubris,
and the prosecuting citizens proposed the penalty of death. Socrates offered
an alternative: a lifetime of free food (a reward reserved for heroes of Athens
such as champions in the Olympic games). This proposal struck the dikasts
as so hubristic that eighty of those who had found him innocent then voted
to execute him.10 Socrates’ alternative presents the appearance of hubris, but
it may be Socrates’ way of acknowledging he is a man as are other men—he
needs bodily nourishment and does not feed on Ideas alone. But this appear-
ance of humility is itself ironic: Socrates is famous for needing very little
food, sleep, and clothing. He does live more than would seem humanly pos-
sible in the world of the Ideas and does not eat as do other men.
Aristophanes presents Socrates as living up in the clouds. The Socrates
of the play does not merely ascend to the clouds at times, he resides there.
An ancient anecdote reports that Socrates was in attendance at the first per-
formance of the Clouds, and when the actor portraying him entered (though
he did of course not walk on stage), Socrates stood up and turned around so
the other audience members could see how the mask of the actor faithfully
matched the original. The irony is that by this gesture Socrates was showing
that he took no offense at this portrayal; it is all a joke. But in fact Socrates
did live up in the clouds, not in the pejorative sense of Aristophanes, whereby
Socrates is a charlatan teaching trick arguments, but by constantly practicing
recollection of the Ideas. Socrates is closer to heaven than is anyone else.
Husserl was the proverbial absent-minded professor. But that too is an
ironic characterization, because from a philosophical point of view, absent-
mindedness is precisely attention to practical affairs. Present-mindedness
 Anxiety and Mortality 79

is to be preoccupied with Being in distinction from beings. And Husserl

was apparently as distant from the practical, material world as could be
imagined.
Husserl’s powers of concentration and sustained study were legendary.
He wrote every day, amassing 35,000 closely written pages, found after his
death. His assistant provided him a stack of newly sharpened pencils every
morning, and they all had to be sharpened the next day. Husserl took distance
from the real world, as if he was constantly carrying out his transcendental
reduction.
This reduction, as mentioned in chapter 1, is an abstaining of judgment
regarding the existence of the world. It is entirely comparable to the experi-
ence of anxiety as described by Heidegger. Under the reduction, the things of
the world are looked upon from a distance; they do not touch the philosopher,
who becomes, in Husserl’s terms, a “disinterested spectator.” Husserl’s entire
phenomenology is carried out in this attitude, which seems to have been
Husserl’s way of being-in-the-world in general. The transcendental reduc-
tion does not arise from denial or doubt concerning the things of the world.
They are held at arm’s length for the sole purpose of contemplating them.
Therefore, as Merleau-Ponty says, the best way to characterize the reduction
is to call it wonder.11 It seems to have been Husserl’s constant state.

SUMMARY OF HEIDEGGER ON DEATH AND ANXIETY

The understanding of being-toward-death as preoccupation with disclosing

Being, with reading off the meaning of Being in general from the Being
of Dasein, is confirmed and not contradicted by Heidegger’s assertion that
being-toward-death is essentially anxiety. Anxiety is not the dread of dying;
it is the disclosedness of the Being of Dasein as being-in-the-world. Indeed
it is the preeminent mode of such disclosedness. Anxiety is the experience of
the beings of the world as insignificant; it thereby throws Dasein back on his
or her own resources in order to come to self-understanding. Anxiety thereby
pursues Dasein with a motive to authenticity. Inauthentic being-toward-death
flees this pursuit; authentic dying embraces it. But both the authentic and the
inauthentic take their direction from what is disclosed in anxiety; both are
thereby essentially anxiety.
Anxiety is phenomenal evidence of the unity of the Being of Dasein as
being-in-the-world. It is phenomenal evidence—to someone who is already
following Heidegger in asking the question of Being.
A life of constant anxiety, constant dying, constant wonder, constant phi-
losophizing, constant authenticity, is possible. But such a life is rare, heroic,
practically superhuman.
80 Chapter 3

Anxiety requires courage, leisure, and openness to perplexity. Anxiety can

be resisted, but it cannot be compelled. It is unmotivated. It is a gift.

ADDENDUM: POETIC EXPRESSION OF ANXIETY

[Untitled sonnet]
John Keats

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.12

This poem expresses a transition from Heideggerian fear to Heideggerian

anxiety. At first, the poet is attached to the world and is afraid of losing his
hold on it. He fears he will die without filling volumes with his poetry and
without attaining the person he loves. His demise is the before-which of his
fear; fame and love constitute the about-which.
The last two and a half lines provide indications enough that the poet has
become anxious instead of fearful. He is on the shore of the wide world; that
means he stands at its edge, not involved in it but instead looking on from a
distance. The world is wide; he is facing the world as such and not merely
some definite things within it. The wide world is the indefinite one. The poet
is alone; other Daseins have become insignificant. He stands there; it is not
said that the poet goes there. He is transported there; anxiety has overcome
him, he was not seeking it out. In anxiety, the poet thinks—presumably not
of death, fame, and love, for worldly things and other people leave him
untouched. He must be thinking of nothing; that is exactly what he says:
worldly things have sunk into nothingness, that is, into uncanniness. The poet
is not at home there on the shore. He is experiencing anxiety. The question
 Anxiety and Mortality 81

is whether the poet will respond in an authentic way or will shrug off the
anxiety and return to his everyday world of fears.
The evidence points to this experience as inauthentic anxiety. The poet will
indeed return to everydayness, for he says he stands of the shore when—that
is, whenever—he has these fears. The poem is in the present progressive
tense. So he will return from anxiety to those fears. He is one of those persons
who later say, “It was nothing.” Nevertheless, he must retain some recollec-
tion of what was disclosed in anxiety. The anxiety has had some sustained
effect, or else he would not recollect it in the poem and apparently find solace
in it. The poet is therefore open to anxiety and has the courage for it. But he
is not one of the rare Daseins who live in it constantly. Unlike Socrates and
Husserl, this poet is not more than human.
 Chapter 4

Conscience and Mortality

Hamlet:
Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak
With most miraculous organ.
. . . The play’s the thing
Wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.
Hamlet, II, ii, 630–42

CONSCIENCE AND THE BEING OF DASEIN

We have seen (chapter 1) that being-toward-death, authentic dying, anticipation,

is not a matter of resolutely facing up to one’s demise but is instead a matter of
philosophizing, preoccupation with disclosure of the Being of Dasein. The expe-
rience of signs (chapter 2), which might seem to be a matter of one thing pointing
to another, and today a matter of one thing pointing to the menace of death, is
also a disclosure of the Being of Dasein. Furthermore, anxiety, which essentially
characterizes being-toward-death (chapter 3) is not the dread of dying but is also
the disclosure of the Being of Dasein. We are about to see in the present chapter
that conscience as well, which is intrinsically connected to anticipation, that is, to
authentic being-toward-death, is also nothing other than disclosure of the Being
of Dasein, whereby it, too, is a matter of philosophizing.

CONSCIENCE AS CALL

Heidegger takes up the topic of conscience to provide, once again, phe-

nomenal evidence. The evidence concerns anxiety and its role in authentic
83
84 Chapter 4

being-toward-death. While reflecting on the experience of anxiety, the phe-

nomenological philosopher sees an intrinsic connection between anxiety and
authenticity. For reflection, anxiety is a motive to authenticity, since anxiety,
the experience of the insignificance of the world, motivates individuation.
Moreover, the reflecting philosopher sees an urge toward authenticity in anxi-
ety: anxiety is not simply disclosure of the opposite, inauthenticity, lostness
in the they, but also includes a positive impetus toward authenticity. But is
there phenomenal evidence that anxiety compels, even demands, authentic-
ity? Heidegger finds the phenomenal, everyday evidence in the experience of
conscience.
Heidegger begins by setting out the problem (SZ, p. 258). We are seeking
phenomenal evidence for an urge toward authenticity. Authenticity is pos-
sible only as a self-recovery from lostness in the they. For that self-recovery
to be possible, the authentic self has to be disclosed to Dasein. It is not enough
that anxiety simply holds out the specter of inauthenticity, lostness in the
world. It is not enough that the world has been made insignificant. There must
be a positive disclosure of authenticity. Because Dasein is lost in the they, it
must first find itself. And in order to find itself, it must first be disclosed to
itself in its possible authenticity.
After identifying this disclosure of the authentic self as the voice of con-
science, Heidegger then outlines the path the analysis will take. Conscience
is disclosive. Dasein’s disclosedness is constituted by affect, discourse, and
understanding. The mode of disclosedness most proper to conscience is dis-
course. Conscience is a call. As a call, it is an appeal to the authentic self, by
way of a summons to accepting its most proper guilt. (It is in this summons
that Heidegger will find the phenomenal evidence for an urge toward authen-
ticity.) Everyday understanding does take conscience to be speaking of guilt
but fails to see wherein Dasein is primordially guilty, guilty in its very Being.
The task is then to exhibit the connection uniting authenticity, conscience,
and primordial guilt, the guilt which attaches to the very Being of Dasein
rather than the one stemming from an actual transgression.
Dasein is lost in the they because Dasein listens to others and fails to hear
its own self. The voice of the they is constantly droning in Dasein’s ears.
This hearing has to be broken off by a different voice, a different appeal, a
different call, that of conscience. If Dasein is to recover itself from lostness
in the they, then Dasein must find itself as the self which has turned a deaf
ear to itself and has done so by becoming all ears for what the they says.
This enthralled hearing must be broken off; that is, it must be interrupted by
a different kind of hearing, one which is given to Dasein by Dasein itself.
The possibility of such an interruption lies in an “unmediated appeal” (SZ,
p. 271). This call will break off Dasein’s self-neglecting spellbound hear-
ing of the they, provided this call awakens a hearing in every way opposite
 Conscience and Mortality 85

to the hearing that is lost in the they. The hearing attuned to what the they
says is captivated by the noise of the manifold ambiguity of everyday idle
talk which is always buzzing about the latest; in contrast, the call must call
noiselessly, unambiguously, and without providing any foothold for curios-
ity. According to Heidegger, “What calls in this way is conscience” (SZ, p.
271).
What does Heidegger mean by an unmediated appeal? Presumably a medi-
ated appeal would be hearsay, an appeal passed along through a third party.
So this appeal would have to stem from the same Dasein as the one to whom
the appeal is addressed. If so, then we can understand how the appeal would
dispel the self-neglect involved in listening to the voice of the they.
Heidegger proceeds to say that conscience is not simply like a call; this is
not a mere image, a metaphor. That is how Kant did conceive of conscience:
a law court, a tribunal. To speak of conscience as a call is not such a meta-
phor; conscience is a call, a discourse, it gives us something to understand.
Nevertheless, it is not an utterance in words. Vocal utterance is not essential
to discourse and so is “not essential to the call either” (SZ, 271). Conscience
has no tongue but speaks with most miraculous organ.
Silence can be eloquent. The negative can be positive. Heidegger is
the philosopher of negativity—that is, of the positive power of the nega-
tive. Self-concealing, irony, hiding behind a pseudonym—all these can be
more revelatory than direct self-showing. The silent treatment can be more
expressive than an insult. Others who appreciate the negative are dialecti-
cal philosophers. According to Heidegger, however, they do not see what is
positive about negativity and invoke it merely to keep the dialectic ongoing.1
For Heidegger himself, the preeminent disclosedness to Dasein is in fact by
way of negativity, that is, through silence, concealment, absence, absconding.
Thus, it will be no surprise if conscience discourses by keeping silent.
Heidegger proceeds to articulate the structure of any discourse. This
structure consists of three moments (SZ, p. 272). Discourse includes an
about-which, that which is talked about. Furthermore, discourse provides
information regarding the about-which and does so in a particular respect.
That is, out of the about-which, discourse draws what it actually says, the
said as such. Finally, in discourse as communication, what is said is made
accessible to others, one’s fellow Dasein, commonly by way of utterance in
language.
Thus, the three moments in any discourse are:

1) what is talked about (the theme)

2) what is said (the particular information regarding the theme)
3) the actual communication of the information (commonly to other
Daseins and commonly by way of language).
86 Chapter 4

Heidegger then applies this structure to the discourse constitutive of con-

science. First, in the call of conscience, what is the about-which, the talked
about, the theme? Since this is a call, the question means: toward what is the
call aimed, what is appealed to? In the case of conscience, this is not a what
but a who. Dasein itself is obviously the about-which of conscience. This
answer, as incontestable as it is, is also unacceptable, for it is too indefinite.
Conscience does not simply call on Dasein to be attentive to itself. The call is
not about Dasein in general. Instead, the call is about the way Dasein under-
stands itself, about Dasein in its self-understanding.
How does Dasein understand itself? In its everyday average immersion in
the world, Dasein understands itself in a worldly way, taking direction from
other Daseins. The self of everydayness is the they-self. Everyday Dasein
understands itself as undifferentiated from the they. For Heidegger, the call
is indeed about the they-self and affects the they-self but is addressed only to
the authentic self latent in the they-self and passes over the they.
Dasein, in the guise of its worldly self-understanding, gets passed over in
the appeal. The call to Dasein’s self takes not the slightest cognizance of that
worldly self-understanding. Because only the authentic self latent in the they-
self is summoned and brought to hear, the they collapses. But the fact that
the call passes over the they and the public way of interpreting Dasein does
not at all signify that these are not affected. Precisely in passing over, the call
thrusts the they into insignificance, the very they that is “intent on notoriety”
(SZ, p. 273). The authentic self, which the appeal deprives of its refuge and
hiding place, is thereby delivered to itself by the call.
We see an obvious similarity to anxiety, which also reduces the they to
insignificance. But with conscience the thrusting into insignificance is more
forceful and more effective. The call of conscience is oblivious to the they,
but the they is thereby nevertheless touched to the heart. For the they is intent
on notoriety; to undergo being passed over is the death of the they. The call
of conscience gives the they the silent treatment, a more effective repudiation
than any reasoned argument or even than the mood of anxiety. Conscience,
in colloquial terms, touches the they right where it hurts, in the desire of the
they for acclaim.
Anxiety is the experience of the entire world as insignificant, and that is
the motive to authenticity. But the call of conscience does not turn the self
inward, closing it off from the world. Conscience makes the they, but not the
world, seem insignificant. The appeal to the authentic self latent within the
they-self does not press the authentic self back upon itself into an interiority,
as if it was supposed to close itself off from the external world. The call leaps
over all that and dissipates it, in order to appeal solely to the authentic self,
which nonetheless does exist in no other way than in the “mode of being-in-
the-world” (SZ, p. 273).
 Conscience and Mortality 87

Thus, the call of conscience in a sense dissipates anxiety; at least it dis-

sipates the isolation of Dasein from the world, which is central to the experi-
ence of anxiety. The call of conscious “leaps over” all that. It does not appeal
to authenticity by making the world insignificant; on the contrary, it appeals
directly to the authentic self, without the mediation of the insignificance of
the world. The call of conscience leaves untouched the world which is an
essential moment of being-in-the-world. Anxiety seems to be summoning
Dasein to a life of constantly experiencing the uncanniness of the world,
whereby action in that world would be cowardice toward anxiety, a dissipat-
ing of the uncanniness.
The ideal of authenticity as provoked by anxiety would be the life of
Socrates and Husserl, a life withdrawn from worldly affairs. But conscience
is calling for a different life, a life of authenticity lived out in the world, not in
one’s interiority. According to Hamlet, “Conscience does make cowards of us
all” (Hamlet, III, i, 83), holding us back from action. Admittedly, Hamlet is
not using “conscience” in Heidegger’s sense. Hamlet is referring to reflection,
brooding, thinking too much. Nevertheless, Heidegger can be understood as
claiming the opposite: conscience does make heroes of us all. As we will
see, conscience urges Dasein to act in the world and even discloses the most
proper action to take under the given circumstances.
Regarding the second moment of discourse: What is said in the call of
conscience? What does the call call out? What does it tell Dasein? What par-
ticular information about the theme does conscience assert? Taken strictly,
conscience says nothing. What does conscience call out to the one appealed
to? The call expresses nothing, provides no information about worldly events,
“has nothing to narrate” (SZ, p. 273).
The call of conscience is silent. But there can very well be a silent call,
a silent summons in a specific direction. In everyday experience, a look of
disapproval can be most effective and does not need words. But conscience is
not a silent expression of disapproval; it does not dissuade. On the contrary,
it summons forth, ahead. It shows the path to take rather than the one to
avoid. Conscience is a “calling forth (‘forward’)” (SZ, p. 273). Accordingly,
conscience is not the same as Socrates’ daimon. Conscience is not the spirit
that ever denies.
Heidegger takes pains to distinguish the summoning of conscience from a
summons in the legal sense, the summons to stand trial. Perhaps Heidegger is
purposely differentiating his view from that of Kant: conscience as tribunal.
In any case, for Heidegger conscience is not the provoking of an inner debate.
Conscience does not strive to open a self-dialogue in the self that has been
summoned. “The intention of the call is not to place the summoned self ‘on
trial’ in any sense” (SZ, p. 273). Heidegger’s point is that conscience does
not turn Dasein inward. He describes such a turning in very pejorative terms.
88 Chapter 4

The self to which conscience appeals is not the self that can become to itself
an object of judgment, not the self of curious dissection of its inner life, and
not the self of an analytic gaping at psychic states.
Instead of all this, namely, conscience as a dissuading daimon or a
deliberative tribunal, that is, conscience as provoking a turning back or a
turning inward, for Heidegger conscience is a calling forth to possibilities.
Conscience is an appeal to the possibility of being a self in the most proper
sense, a calling of Dasein “forth (forward) to its most proper possibilities”
(SZ, p. 273). For now in Heidegger’s phenomenology of conscience, this is
merely an allegation. Let us see how he works it out.
Heidegger’s next step is to ask about the third moment of discourse, the
mode of communication. How does conscience communicate its call? The
call dispenses with utterance of any kind. The call does not place itself
in words at all and nevertheless is anything but obscure and indefinite.
Conscience discourses solely and constantly in the mode of silence. But
it thereby not only loses nothing in the way of perceptibility but even
compels into self-reticence the Dasein that has been appealed to and sum-
moned. The fact that what is called out in the call lacks a formulation in
words does not thrust the phenomenon into the indefiniteness of a mys-
terious voice but only indicates that the understanding of what is called
out must not cling to the expectation of a “communication in the usual
manner” (SZ, pp. 273–74).
Thus, the communication, the third moment, takes place entirely in
silence. The call is silent, what is called out is silent, and the one who is
called responds in silence. Silence does not simply mean that no words are
spoken out loud; it means no words at all are involved in the phenomenon
of conscience. The disclosure of conscience, although conscience is a mode
of discourse, occurs at a more fundamental level of disclosedness, not that
of language but of affect. Although not placed in words, what is disclosed is
“unequivocal” (SZ, p. 274), and the target (Einschlagsrichtung, lit. “impact-
direction,”) is a sure one (SZ, p. 274).
Heidegger concludes the section on “The Character of Conscience as a
Call” by maintaining that the next step toward an ontologically adequate
interpretation of conscience will need to be clarification of the caller and
called and the relation between them. The interpretation needs to clarify not
only who is called by the call but also who does the calling, how the called
is related to the caller, and how this relation is to be grasped ontologically as
a “nexus of Being” (SZ, p. 274). These clarifications are the tasks of the next
section of Being and Time, on “Conscience as the call of care.” This section
and the following, on guilt, constitute the heart of Heidegger’s phenomenol-
ogy of conscience, and I will follow the course of the analysis with close
attention. For the first section, I will employ interpretive paraphrase, if you
 Conscience and Mortality 89

will pardon the somewhat self-contradictory expression, and then will return
to the usual exposition with commentary.

CONSCIENCE AND CARE

Let us begin with the one who is called. Conscience summons the authen-
tic self from its lostness in the they. This self is indefinite and empty in its
“what”—versus the “what” of the they-self. That everyday self is not indefi-
nite and empty; it possesses the definite content supplied by the world and
other Daseins. The they-self is a present-at-hand thing in the world, with the
content, the properties, appropriate to a present-at-hand thing. The call of
conscience leaps over this thing and touches a self that lacks present-at-hand
content. Yet, this authentic self latent in the they-self is touched unequivo-
cally and unmistakably. Therefore, the one called is called irrespective of
prestige as a person. The they-self lives on prestige, and if such prestige is
passed over in the call, then the they-self becomes insignificant within the
experience of conscience. The one called is not the they-self; for the rest, the
one called is unfamiliar and indefinite.
The caller, too, is conspicuously indefinite. The caller is nothing worldly
and so is unfamiliar to everyday Dasein. Yet the caller is not purposely in dis-
guise; the caller simply refuses to be determined. And this indeterminateness
has a positive character: it shows that the caller is entirely given over to the
call and can only be heard, not idly chatted about. Therefore, the question of
who the caller is is indeed not an appropriate question when actually hearing
the call of conscience. The hearing should be given over entirely to hearing
and not to asking theoretical questions. But the issue is legitimate within an
existential analysis.
Is it at all necessary to ask explicitly who does the calling and who is
called? Conscience is Dasein calling itself. It is insufficient to state that obvi-
ous fact, however, for the caller and the called are not simply identical. The
caller is not someone other than myself and yet is not simply myself. The call
is not in my power, not something I myself carry out, and it even calls to me
against my will. Conscience comes from beyond me and yet indeed from me.
Everydayness recognizes only one mode of Being: presence-at-hand. Even
tools are considered present-at-hand things; they merely possess additional
properties, ones relating to usefulness. Thereby the voice of conscience is
interpreted as some alien thing invading Dasein—God or some function
planted in us in the course of our biological evolution. These interpreta-
tions explain away the phenomenon as experienced, but a phenomenological
analysis is seeking phenomenal evidence and so must save the phenomena:
the call comes from Dasein and yet from beyond Dasein. In other words,
90 Chapter 4

conscience is a peculiar phenomenon specific to Dasein and can be under-

stood only through an adequate interpretation of the mode of Being of this
being, a mode which is not presence-at-hand.
The distinctive mode of Being of Dasein is existence, being-in-the-world.
Things present-at-hand do not exist; they are not in the world. Only Dasein
is in the world disclosively; only Dasein is “into” the world, involved, inter-
ested. Only Dasein “exists,” that is, takes some stand or other in regard to the
world. Dasein has no choice in this matter; Dasein has been delivered over
to being-in-the-world. Even to make no choice about a definite way to exist,
that is, even simply to go along with the way the they relates to the world, is
a choice. Therefore, Dasein is thrown into existence and does not by its own
powers place itself in relation to the world or not. Dasein is free to choose
its own way of existence, but this is a thrown freedom; Dasein is free by
necessity.
This thrownness, this necessity of choosing, is ordinarily concealed to
Dasein. Everyday Dasein takes the easy way out and drifts along with the
crowd. Everyday Dasein does not realize it is then surrendering its freedom to
the they. Anxiety, however, the experience of the insignificance of the world
and of other Daseins, discloses the possibility of another way of existing, a
deliberately chosen way, an authentic way. Anxiety is the experience of real-
izing that one has been fleeing from one’s most proper possibility of choosing
for oneself. Anxiety motivates a cessation of this fleeing.
Could not conscience then be the addition of an admonition to the opening
up of the possibility of authenticity? In other words, the caller would be anx-
ious Dasein, Dasein as facing the insignificance of the world and as motivated
to individuation. Conscience would not be a mere disclosure of the authentic
self but would also involve the authentic self summoning Dasein to actually
be this possibility. Conscience would add to anxiety the experience of being
admonished, Dasein being called forth to be what is opened up through anxi-
ety. So anxiety would make the call of conscience possible. Anxiety would
provide conscience with a voice, something to call out, namely, authenticity,
and conscience would be the voice as actually calling. At least, that could be
a way of understanding conscience, namely, the caller not simply as Dasein
but as authentic Dasein and the called as everyday inauthentic Dasein, that is,
the caller as anxious Dasein and the called as complacent Dasein. But does
this understanding fit the phenomenal facts as we have laid them out? That
is, does it save the phenomena?
The phenomenal characters to be accounted for are: the indefiniteness
of the caller, its unfamiliarity, its repudiation of curiosity, its silence, and
its assurance of striking the proper target. First, the caller is indefinite in
its “who.” That means the caller is nothing worldly; definiteness is a prop-
erty acquired by circumscription amid other worldly things. If the caller
 Conscience and Mortality 91

is Dasein in its authenticity, then the caller is Dasein as uncanny, not at

home, suspended in a void. Accordingly, in terms of the world, authen-
tic Dasein cannot be made into something definite. Second, the caller is
unfamiliar, something like an alien voice. But what could be more alien
to the they than the authentic, individuated self which is constituted pre-
cisely by the call passing over the they as insignificant? Third, conscience
offers no support for curiosity and idle chatter. That makes perfect sense
if the caller is the authentic self, for this self has no content which could
be spoken about in public. As a call to individuation, conscience offers
nothing that could be shared in common; authenticity is the renunciation
of everything common. Fourth, the call discourses in the mode of silence
and is met with silence. The call has nothing to say which could be made
public; that is the entire point of the call—to individuate rather than make
public. But everything spoken out loud can be made public. The only
alternative is to communicate by means of silence. Accordingly, both the
caller and the called keep silent. Not only are the caller and the called
not chatterers, they also have nothing to chatter about. Lastly, the call is
assured of its target; it cannot be misunderstood as aiming at anything
other than the authentic self. This assurance derives from the fact that the
authentic self is radically individuated and cannot mistake itself for any-
thing else. Authentic Dasein has nothing in common with anything with
which it could be confused. Therefore, in summary, the phenomena can be
saved by taking conscience as intrinsic to Dasein and not as the invasion
of some foreign thing such as God or some process of evolutionary biol-
ogy—provided the caller is authentic Dasein and the called is the same
authentic self, as called out from its latency in the they-self.
It is the affect of anxiety that opens Dasein to the call of conscience.
Anxiety is a motive to individuation by disclosing the world as insignificant
and Dasein as not at home there, as uncanny. It is conscience, however, that
lends the motive toward individuation its motive power. Anxiety discloses
the path to authenticity, to projecting one’s self-understanding upon freely
chosen possibilities, especially upon that preeminent of all possibilities, the
indefinitely certain possibility of death. Conscience is the call to actually take
that path toward authenticity, toward one’s most proper possibilities under-
stood as such, toward a freely chosen way of confronting one’s mortality.
It was said in the discussion of anxiety that uncanniness constantly pursues
Dasein; conscience is that pursuit in full force. Inasmuch as the voice of
conscience can never be totally suppressed, uncanniness constantly pursues
Dasein, constantly motivates Dasein toward authenticity and away from lost-
ness in the they.
The sameness of the caller and the called in conscience is now shown
to be ontically possible. The ontological grounding requires understanding
92 Chapter 4

conscience in terms of Dasein’s own peculiar mode of Being. The Being of

Dasein is care. Conscience is the call of care. That must now be clarified.
The fundamental ontological characters of Dasein are existence, facticity,
and fallingness. These form a unity, and the question is how to characterize
the unity. In what phenomenon are they unified? The characters are not differ-
ent from the moments of being-in-the-world; they simply make more explicit
the characters of facticity and fallingness. The basic understanding of Dasein
as in immediate contact with the world remains.

1) The moment of existentiality refers to the circumstance that Dasein

always understands itself in terms of possibilities. Dasein projects itself
upon possibilities, and so Dasein is always already ahead of itself. This
moment (ahead of itself) expresses an openness to the future.
2) Facticity is the same as thrownness. Dasein is thrown into a world; as
anxiety shows, Dasein is abandoned to itself and already finds itself in
a world not of its own making and in that world not by its own choice.
Dasein is always already in the world and yet cannot rely on that world
to understand itself, as anxiety also shows. This moment (already in)
expresses an openness to the past.
3) Fallingness is equivalent to everydayness, inauthenticity. Dasein is
always absorbed in the world, fleeing from the uncanniness of its authen-
tic self into the familiarity of the busy public world. Dasein is always
“into” the ready-to-hand things of the world. This moment (being into)
expresses an openness to the present.

The three moments joined together yield the structural whole of Dasein.
The Being of Dasein then signifies “ahead-of-itself being-already-in (the
world) as being-into (the beings encountered within the world)” (SZ, p. 192).
This structure (ahead of itself, already in, being into) is the fulfillment of the
meaning of the term “care.” Care is the phenomenon unifying the ontological
characters of Dasein. Care names the Being of Dasein.
Why the term “care”? It is appropriate, provided the term is understood
ontologically rather than ontically. Thus the term does not refer to care in
the sense of solicitude, nurturing, love (hate is an example of care; it is tak-
ing interest in someone versus total indifference). Nor does it mean practice
versus theory (theory is care; it is taking an interest, thematizing). Nor does it
mean apprehensiveness (in the sense of having cares versus being carefree).
Nor does it signify gloom, melancholy.
Ontologically, as unifying the moments of the Being of Dasein, care means
any way of being interested in anything, even if the interest is negative and
manifested by turning one’s back on a threat or on something uncomfortable.
The only opposite to care is utter indifference to everything. Care is exactly
 Conscience and Mortality 93

equivalent to intentionality in Husserl’s sense; consciousness is always

directed to something. Life is relational. A Dasein without a world, even a
world to turn its back on, a Dasein that is utterly carefree (in the ontological
sense), a Dasein that needs some bridge to escape from its own interiority, is
a contradiction in terms.
How does this structure make conscience the call of care? How does con-
science take its ontological possibility from the fact that the Being of Dasein
is care? The answer is that conscience is structured the same way as is care;
conscience can therefore take on the structure it has because Dasein is already
structured in the exact same way. Conscience is the call of care: the caller
is Dasein in its thrownness (as already being in) and anxious about its pos-
sibility; the one appealed to is precisely this same Dasein, summoned to its
most proper possibilities (as being ahead toward); and the called is Dasein
as summoned out of its fallingness in the they (as being into the world of its
concern).
Put schematically, the three moments of care (thrownness = already being
in; falling = being into the world; existence = being ahead of itself) corre-
spond to the moments of conscience (caller, called, call) as follows:

1) Caller: thrownness (facticity). The caller is Dasein which in its thrown-

ness is anxious about its authenticity. The caller is authentic Dasein as
latent in the they-self.
2) Called: falling (inauthenticity). The called is Dasein as falling, as lost in
the they-self.
3) Call: existence (possibility). Dasein is called to its most proper possibil-
ity, as individuated from the they-self.

This analysis of conscience has saved the phenomena inasmuch as it has

recognized conscience as a phenomenon intrinsic to Dasein and has not had
recourse to outside powers. Conscience has been traced back to the ontologi-
cal constitution of Dasein, to the structural moments of the Being of Dasein
as care. But many misgivings now arise in regard to this interpretation which
seems so far removed from “natural experience.” How can conscience be
understood as a summons to authenticity when in ordinary experience it
merely reproaches and warns? Also, does conscience in fact speak so inde-
terminately and emptily about a possible way for us to be in the future? Does
conscience not speak determinately and concretely about our failures, both
those we have already committed and ones we are contemplating? Does con-
science offer anything positive at all? Is it not rather merely critical? Even a
“good conscience” is only a judgment about the legitimacy of some action,
and in that sense is positive, but is not itself a disclosure of what action to
take.
94 Chapter 4

These misgivings are legitimate, although they do not mean that the ordi-
nary understanding of conscience has the final world concerning an ontologi-
cal interpretation. Furthermore, the misgivings are premature inasmuch as
the analysis of conscience has not reached its goal by merely grounding the
phenomenon in the Being of Dasein as care. What is still needed is an account
of the hearing, the understanding, of the call of conscience. This hearing is
intrinsic to the phenomenon of conscience and not an optional addition. To
grasp conscience as a disclosure of and demand for authenticity, we need to
delimit the character of the hearing of the call.
What is heard in the experience of conscience, what is given to understand,
has something to do with guilt. That is what “natural experience” most insists
on—conscience is a voice speaking of guilt. To save the phenomena, we
must therefore turn our attention to guilt. The foregoing general ontological
characterization of conscience will provide a ground for an existential grasp
of conscience as a discourse that exposes Dasein as guilty.

GUILT

After the preceding interpretive paraphrase, I return now to exposition with

commentary.
According to Heidegger, ontological investigations of phenomena such as
guilt, conscience, and death must begin in everydayness (SZ, p. 281). What
is the common understanding of guilt? It is basically understood as owing
something, failing to fulfill some obligation, depriving someone of some-
thing he or she has a claim to. It is being responsible for a lack, a privation,
something that should belong to another but has been stolen or was never sup-
plied on account of one’s failure to supply it (sin of omission). For everyday
Dasein, what is owed is understood in terms of things present-at-hand. Even
if what is lacking is something usually ready-to-hand, such as an automobile,
it becomes an object present-at-hand to the one who has lost it.
Heidegger maintains that what an ontological investigation can derive from
the everyday understanding of guilt is that this phenomenon is constituted by
a lack, a negativity, and by the sense of some agent being responsible for that
lack. An existential inquiry must take this ordinary understanding of guilt and
place it in relation to Dasein’s sort of Being, which is not presence-at-hand
or readiness-to-hand but existence. Any guilt whatever harbors the character
of a “not.” So we need a way to understand the “not” as applied to existence.
Also, guilt includes the idea of responsibility for the negativity, being the
basis for it.
These moments in the structure of guilt occur very differently in the
everyday understanding of guilt and in the ontological way appropriate
 Conscience and Mortality 95

to an analytic of Dasein. For everydayness, guilt means being the basis

of a lack in the existence of another, such that this basis is itself deter-
mined as “lacking from the lack it has brought about” (SZ, p. 282). That
is a typically convoluted Heideggerian way of saying that a thief is guilty
only after thieving, not before. In everydayness, the lack, the negativity,
the guilt residing in the one who causes a lack in another derives from
the lack that has been caused. A thief is considered to be lacking in some
way (the way that makes him or her be called by the derogatory name of
thief) on account of the theft of the other’s property. The negativity in the
thief accrues to him or her from the negativity he or she has caused in
another. It is not the other way around; we do not consider anyone a thief
until he or she has stolen something. The thief does not steal because he
or she is guilty; he or she is guilty because of the thieving. In summary,
for everyday Dasein in concernful relations with the world and with other
Daseins, the negative (the lack, the guilt) in the basis (the thief) for a lack
in another (the neighbor who has been robbed) does not derive from the
basis (the thief) itself but only derives from the negativity (the lack in the
neighbor) brought about by that basis (the thief).
A phenomenological, existential analysis of guilt is not concerned with
Dasein’s relations to others and to the world. The call of conscience telling
of Dasein’s guilt applies to Dasein as such, not to thieves as such. Dasein is
intrinsically guilty, and so the structure of the guilt is different from the one
of everydayness. The moment of being the basis of a negativity remains, and
so does the moment of bringing about a negativity. (These moments are for
Heidegger formal ontological characters of any guilt.) But the essential dif-
ference between everyday and existential guilt is that in the latter case the
negativity in the basis is not a mere reflection from the negativity it causes.
The negativity in the basis does not derive from causing a lack. On the con-
trary, there is a lack, a negativity, intrinsic to the basis, which is the reason
it causes the lack. Taken in terms of Dasein as such, a thief steals, so to
speak, on account of being already guilty. Therefore, Heidegger character-
izes the intrinsic, primary, ontological, existential guilt of Dasein as follows:
it is being the “negative basis of a negativity” (SZ, p. 285). According to
Heidegger, that means Dasein as such is guilty, but he wonders if this intrin-
sic negativity can actually be exhibited in the Being of Dasein.
Let us first take up Heidegger’s attempt at exhibiting the intrinsic negativ-
ity, whereby his conclusion is supposed to follow: Dasein as such is guilty.
We will then be in a better position to cast a critical regard at his phenom-
enology of guilt.
Heidegger returns to the three moments of the structure of care and shows
how each moment is suffused with negativity. Then he shows how two of
the moments are the basis for the third. Thereby care will be exhibited as
96 Chapter 4

structured in the manner of a negative basis of a negativity, which is the defi-

nition of existential guilt. Accordingly, Dasein as such is guilty.
Let us begin by reiterating, as does Heidegger, the ontological char-
acters of care. The three moments are existence (projection toward the
future), facticity or thrownness (finding oneself already in the world), and
falling (everyday preoccupation in worldly affairs, being “into” the world
in the present).
Existence, projection upon possibilities, is negative inasmuch as these pos-
sibilities are not simply in Dasein’s power to devise at will. Dasein’s possi-
bilities are given, and freedom amounts merely to appropriating and choosing
among limited possibilities. Dasein’s freedom is not infinite, and Dasein’s
power of imagining new possibilities is limited. Furthermore, Dasein is not
free not to choose some possibility or other. Finally, choosing one possibility
necessarily means forgoing others, not choosing them. Therefore, this first
moment of care is permeated with negativity.
Thrownness is negative inasmuch as Dasein has been brought into its
“there,” its disclosive relation to the world, but not by its own power. Dasein
has literally been brought there; it did not bring itself. Dasein finds itself in
the world but cannot account for how it itself came to be there. Being there
was not the result of its own free choice or the exercise of its own powers.
Facticity is negative precisely inasmuch as it is thrown and not something
Dasein itself has undertaken. Dasein simply and inexplicable finds itself
already in the world. Thus, this second moment of the structure of care is also
permeated with negativity.
Two of the moments of care are negative. Heidegger now argues that these
two moments, in their negativity, constitute the basis of the negative third
moment, falling: “Negativity resides essentially in projection [first moment]
as also in thrownness [second moment]. This negativity is the basis of the
possibility of the negativity of fallingness [third moment], that is, the negativ-
ity of inauthenticity” (SZ, p. 285). Therefore, care is structured as the negative
basis of a negativity, two negative moments forming the basis of the negative
third one, corresponding to the definition of existential guilt. Accordingly,
Dasein in its very Being, Dasein as such, is guilty.
This analysis is Heidegger’s answer to his question of whether something
like an intrinsic negativity, an existential guilt, can be exhibited in the Being
of Dasein. It is the core of Heidegger’s phenomenology of guilt, yet he treats
this exhibition in a most casual manner. Heidegger offers no elaboration or
evidence. He merely asserts in one brief phrase that projection and thrown-
ness, in their negativity, form the basis of the negativity of the third moment.
Heidegger does not even say explicitly how fallingness is negative. He
merely italicizes the prefix: inauthenticity. So inauthenticity is negative inas-
much as it is not authenticity. Hardly enlightening. Since Heidegger offers no
 Conscience and Mortality 97

evidence, perhaps believing the matter is self-evident, let us attempt to think

through the issues critically on our own.
An issue relatively easy to dispose of is the negativity of fallingness. Not
only is fallingness not authenticity, it is also subject to the concealment,
the not letting things be seen, that permeates all inauthenticity. The they is
superficial, and idle chatter propagates the superficiality. Lostness in the they
prevents looking for oneself, is a surrendering of freedom, and is not the full
potential of Dasein. Therefore, the negativity of falling is self-evident.
What is not self-evident is how the other moments constitute the basis of
fallingness. We might draw a clue from the temporality of the structure of
care. Each of the moments has a temporal correlate. Existence is projection
into the future. Thrownness is finding oneself already in the world and so
is correlated with the past. Falling is current involvement in the world in
the present. Therefore, Heidegger is describing a movement in the Being of
Dasein as care: from the future, back to the past, and then into the present.
Such a movement is the way that in general temporality temporalizes, accord-
ing to Heidegger. Future, past, and present exhibit the phenomenal characters
of out toward the future, back to the past, and involvement in (being “into”)
ready-to-hand things in the present. The future has the priority; it traverses
the past and then awakens the present. For Heidegger, temporality temporal-
izes itself out of the future such that, by futurally taking up the past, it first
awakens the present. “The primary phenomenon of primordial and genuine
temporality is the future” (SZ, p. 329).
We see this movement of temporality again and again in Being and Time.
For example, it is the structure of everyday concernful dealings with ready-
to-hand things. These dealings begin with a projection of some possible prod-
uct, such as a house to shelter Dasein, a projection which leads the carpenter
back to the hammer which already exists and which is then used in the present
to fasten boards. In terms of involvement, the movement is from a project, to
a with-which, and then to an in-which: from a possible shelter, to the already
extant hammer with which to fasten boards, and then to the actual involve-
ment in hammering. It is also the movement from the for-the-sake-of-which
to the in-order-to: from some possibility of Dasein as the for-the-sake-of-
which to the hammer which is in order to fasten.
Signs possess this same temporal structure. The experience of signs pro-
ceeds from an indication to stop the car in the immediate future, back to the
brake pedal which already exists, and then to the present engaging of a com-
plex mechanism of interrelated worldly functions that brings the car to a halt.
The temporality of anxiety is admittedly an exception to the rule.
Anxiety proceeds from the past, to the future, and then to the present.
Anxiety begins with a disclosure of lostness in the world (thrownness,
past), to a projection of authenticity (existence, future), to a taking of
98 Chapter 4

an actual authentic stance (falling, present). The first two moments are
reversed. I surmise the reason is the circumstance that anxiety does not
actually disclose authenticity; instead, it discloses the opposite, the inau-
thenticity Dasein is motivated to turn its back on. As Heidegger says,
however, for Dasein to find its authentic self that self must first be shown
to it (see above, p. 84). Anxiety does not disclose the authentic self; such
disclosure is the work of conscience. The summons of conscience shows
authentic Dasein to itself and thereby imparts motivating power to the
indefinite motivation included in anxiety. Consequently, anxiety does
not proceed from a future authenticity; it proceeds from a past inauthen-
ticity. Nevertheless, for purposes of comparison to the temporality of
conscience, the essential remains, even in anxiety: the first two moments
combine forces to impose on the third, the present.
If temporality temporalizes from out of the first two moments toward the
third, then it makes sense that falling (present) would be founded on the other
moments (future and past), and not vice versa. But how does falling derive
its negativity from existence and thrownness? Heidegger does not say, but
the implication is that the future and the past lend their own negativity to the
present. Dasein’s projection upon possibilities is permeated with negativity,
its thrownness is as well, and insofar as the present involvement is awakened
by these, it cannot help but be flooded with negativity. Thus, there is evidence
for Heidegger’s basing the negativity of one of Dasein’s ontological charac-
ters on the negativity of the other two.

Misgivings still abound, of course, ones Heidegger himself had raised. The
main one concerns the demand that a phenomenology of conscience remain
faithful to, though not be entirely judged by, “natural experience.” Would
everyday Dasein find that its experience of conscience is recognizable in
Heidegger’s analysis? The answer, at least at first view, is a resounding
“No!” Heidegger’s analysis is a highly artificial and abstract construct; no
one would think of conscience in Heidegger’s terms unless he or she had
read, closely read, Being and Time. Nevertheless, if we generalize and
attempt to see through the abstruse language, we might find that Heidegger
is indeed touching on natural experience. As regards possibilities: we do all
recognize that our freedom is limited and that we cannot bend the world to
our will. We do all also recognize that we have to choose among possibili-
ties and that we have to forgo some which will be lost forever. In terms of
the world: we do find ourselves in one that is given to us without the rhyme
or reason. We do not know how we came to be involved in the world and
what we are supposed to do there. As for our actual present involvements,
we find ourselves tempted by many superficial things and under enormous
peer pressure. Thus, the negativities Heidegger speaks of are not foisted
 Conscience and Mortality 99

onto everyday consciousness. Being and Time offers a highly elaborated

and obscurely presented view of natural experience, but it is faithful to such
experience.
Yet even if natural experience recognizes the negativities Heidegger speaks
of, how is their disclosure a matter of conscience? Does everyday Dasein
recognize itself as guilty of these negativities? Does the voice of conscience
heard by everyday Dasein speak of this sort of existential guilt? Again at first
view the answer is a resounding “No!” Conscience speaks of actual transgres-
sions; what brings guilt is stealing and not simply being-in-the-world as care.
Yet let us take a clue from Heidegger’s characterization of existential guilt
as “primordial” (SZ, p. 284, referred to above, p. 84). The clue is then to
relate this guilt to original sin. Indeed Heidegger himself explicitly closes off
this possibility: the primordial guilt attaching to the very constitution of the
Being of Dasein is to be strictly distinguished from “the status corruptionis
[postlapsarian state of corruption] as understood in theology” (SZ, p. 306n).
Heidegger goes on to say that the ontology of Dasein, as a philosophical
questioning, in principle knows nothing of sin. Indeed original sin in the theo-
logical sense, the inheritance of guilt from a transgression by remote ances-
tors, has nothing in common with conscience as understood by Heidegger.
Nevertheless, I believe a fruitful comparison can be made.
Original sin can be understood as neither an actual transgression nor
the inherited state of corruption from an actual transgression. Instead, let
us understand it as a sin of omission. This omission would stem from the
negativity in the Being of Dasein and would then relate to conscience in
Heidegger’s sense. What sin of omission are we all guilty of? Answer: the sin
of complicity in the spirit of the age. Our age is the epoch of modern technol-
ogy, and this technology is a matter of a certain outlook on things in general.
Heidegger’s compelling critique of technology demonstrates that technology
is not primarily a matter of practice; it is a matter of theory, a way of look-
ing upon nature. Modern technology in its essence is the view of nature as
a storehouse of disposables. A certain practice follows from that theory, the
practice of ravaging nature to produce disposable goods, but technology itself
is the theory behind the practice.
The spirit of our age is that of disrespect for nature as material we are
entitled to consume. That consuming, that ravaging, makes our age the age
of consumerism. Is anyone today totally innocent of consumerism? Are we
not all complicit in it? Does anyone have a perfectly clear conscience? Even
if we have not stolen anything, are we not all guilty of omitting many steps
that could be taken to resist the consumer mentality? And do not these omis-
sions stem from a negative propensity in our makeup, the propensity to go
along with the crowd? Therefore, does not everyday Dasein hear, as weakly
and implicitly as it may be, the voice of conscience as set out, in a highly
100 Chapter 4

elaborate and abstract way, by Heidegger? Then does not Heidegger’s onto-
logical analysis of conscience save the phenomena?

Before taking up the other misgivings mentioned by Heidegger, we still need,

as he said, a better grasp of the hearing of the call of conscience. What does
the call give Dasein to understand? Answer: what is heard is that Dasein
is guilty in its Being, that its Being as care is pervaded with negativity.
Conscience calls Dasein back from its obliviousness of this guilt, an oblivi-
ousness promoted by lostness in the they and the superficiality and din of
everyday chatter. Conscience calls Dasein forth to appropriate itself out of
the they-self, to appropriate itself as the being it genuinely is, to appropriate
the primordial guilt attached to its very Being. In short, conscience summons
Dasein to be guilty wholeheartedly.
This summons is not, of course, a call to commit evil (SZ, p. 287). It is a
summons to existential guilt, not to the guilt that derives from stealing present-
at-hand things. The summons to be guilty signifies a calling forth to a possible
way of Being, namely, authenticity, which Dasein in each case already is latently.
Conscience is not a summons to become guilty through transgressions and omis-
sions; it is a summons to appropriate the guilt Dasein always already has and thus
is a summons to be “authentically guilty” (SZ, p. 287).
Conscience is a summons to something positive, namely, authenticity.
Authenticity is a projection upon possibilities that arise from the individu-
ated self rather than from the they-self. This positivity, however, is the dis-
closure of being guilty as the most positive, primordial way for Dasein to be.
Although conscience does not give any information, it is nevertheless not
merely critical; it is positive. It discloses that the most primordially possible
way for Dasein to be is “as being guilty” (SZ, p. 288).
What is being guilty as Dasein’s most primordial way to be? What does it
mean to be authentically guilty? Heidegger says explicitly only that it is “equi-
distant” (SZ, p. 288) from seeking out factual guilt and from the intention to be
liberated from existential guilt. Presumably, although the passages in question
are abstruse even by the usual standards of Being and Time, what lies equidistant
is what Heidegger does eventually identify as the way the appeal of conscience
is authentically understood (SZ, p. 289), what he now calls “wanting to have a
conscience,” Gewissen-haben-wollen (SZ, p. 288). So understanding the appeal
of conscience, authentic guilt, is wanting to have a conscience. To hear the appeal
is wanting to be appealed to. What could all this mean?
It does not mean wanting a clear conscience, and it does not mean deliber-
ately fostering conscience, willfully provoking the call of conscience (SZ, p.
288). Right at the beginning of his phenomenology of conscience, Heidegger
stressed that conscience is not in Dasein’s power; conscience even speaks
against one’s will. Therefore, Heidegger declares that this wanting to have
 Conscience and Mortality 101

a conscience is simply readiness for the appeal. What is involved in this

readiness? It seems to presuppose what it makes Dasein ready for. It presup-
poses what it itself is supposed to make possible. If understanding the appeal
requires a readiness, and if that readiness itself results from hearing the
appeal, then Dasein is entangled in a circle.
Although Heidegger makes no mention here of this circle, it would be an
instance of what he calls the “hermeneutical circle.” Such a circle is not a vicious
one, for it is not sterile, leading nowhere. For Heidegger, the task is not to resolve
the circle, to find an absolute starting point, but to leap into the circle in the correct
way. How can this circle involving conscience be entered?
The readiness for hearing the appeal amounts to this: a breaking of the
bondage to the they and openness for bondage to one’s own proper possibility
of existence. Such breaking off of the domination of the they is the work of
anxiety. So anxiety is a way to break into the circle, and we see how anxiety
and conscience are indeed related the way Heidegger had earlier intimated:
anxiety makes the hearing of the call of conscience possible. Anxiety pro-
vides conscience with a voice, something to call out, namely, authenticity,
and conscience would be the voice as actually calling. Therefore, wanting to
have a conscience, wanting to be appealed to, is to be open to anxiety.
I believe Being and Time hints at another preparation for hearing the
voice of conscience, a way of preparation more in Dasein’s own power. This
preparation and way of breaking into the circle would reside in philosophiz-
ing. When Dasein, “in self-understanding” (SZ, p. 287), lets itself be called
to appropriate its guilt, that means Dasein has become free for the call,
ready for the capacity to be appealed to. The implication is that Dasein’s
self-understanding is what constitutes readiness to hear the voice of con-
science. Self-understanding is what lets Dasein be called. Self-understanding,
however, preoccupation with the Being of Dasein, is philosophizing. So
philosophizing, disclosure of the Being of Dasein and wonder about Being
in general, is preparation for appropriating one’s existential guilt. In other
words, philosophical disclosure of the Being of Dasein as care, as suffused
with negativity, is readiness for the call of conscience. Therefore, what it
ultimately means to appropriate one’s guilt authentically, to be existentially
guilty, to want to have a conscience, is to philosophize, to be preoccupied
with the Being of Dasein as care.
The circular problem, however, arises again immediately in regard to
this way of understanding the authentic appropriation of existential guilt.
According to Heidegger, conscience is what first discloses the Being of
Dasein as riddled with guilt and negativity. In other words, hearing the voice
of conscience is preparation for philosophizing, for philosophical disclosure
of the Being of Dasein as care. Thus, hearing the call makes philosophy
possible; it is the first disclosure of care. So how can philosophizing be
102 Chapter 4

preparation for hearing the call? Each presupposes the other. Philosophy is
preparation for hearing the call; hearing the call makes philosophy possible.
Heidegger does not mention the circle in this form either, but Being and
Time would surely allow the circle to stand. The proper response would be
to leap in at whatever point one found oneself and let the two sides enrich
each other. For the later Heidegger, however, I believe philosophy and the
hearing of a summons do not form a circle at all. There is a first beginning;
one of them takes the initiative and motivates the other. Expressed in terms
of his later thought, the issue is the relation between Being and philosophy
or between the gods and the philosopher. For the later Heidegger, these are
related in the pre-Socratic way, whereby the gods have the priority. The phi-
losopher does not take up Being as a topic; on the contrary, Being takes up the
philosopher. Philosophy is a response to a claim stemming from something
ascendant over Dasein. That is why, as noted earlier, Dasein comes to be
characterized as steward and preserver rather than discloser.
Being and Time is the expression of a philosophy of rugged individual-
ism. Not only is there the almost constant denigration of the they, the crowd,
the everyday, but Dasein is also presented as self-sufficient in its disclosed-
ness. The understanding of the meaning of Being is the accomplishment of
Dasein’s staunch exercise of its own disclosive powers. That self-sufficiency
is the reason Heidegger keeps insisting that conscience is not to be understood
as a voice arising from anything outside of Dasein. Conscience is a phenom-
enon running its course entirely within Dasein; it is merely the authentic self
summoning the self that is lost in the they. For the later Heidegger, however,
the disclosure of Being is primarily a gift offered by the self-showing of the
gods (indeed a self-showing by way of absconding), of Being, of truth. There
is something ascendant over the Being of Dasein, something that holds sway
over Dasein’s disclosedness. Dasein is not self-sufficient in its disclosedness.
Dasein must to some extent receive the truth and not merely wrest it out. That
is why eventually “truth” is given a new name, a negative and passive one:
“unconcealment.” This is not, Heidegger insists, a mere change in name; it
represents a change in attitude: from a view of Dasein as discloser to the one
of Dasein as shepherd.
Accordingly, the later Heidegger, looking back on Being and Time, writes
in the margin of his copy of the book, at the passage concerning care as the
structure of Dasein’s disclosedness, “But care itself is under the sway of the
truth of Being” (SZ, Gesamtausgabe edition, p. 252n).

Heidegger now turns to the misgivings he had noted earlier, the discrep-
ancies between his ontological analysis of conscience and the everyday
interpretation. He stresses that the way everyday inauthenticity understands
conscience cannot be the “ultimate criterion” (SZ, p. 290), yet an ontological
 Conscience and Mortality 103

analysis has no right simply to disregard the everyday understanding. Indeed

that understanding should now become intelligible, especially in the ways
it misses the phenomena and the reasons it conceals them. Thereby light is
shed back on the ontological analysis by contrast with the failings of every-
dayness. Heidegger himself says that this confrontation with everydayness,
while important, is a subsidiary one, whereby a cursory treatment will suffice.
Heidegger lists four misgivings; I will let a look at his discussion of two of
them suffice for present purposes.
The first misgiving has to do with time. The existential interpretation takes
conscience as a calling forth to guilt, whereas the everyday understanding
sees conscience only as following after an evil deed, a looking back on some-
thing that has already occurred. Existentially, the call of conscience precedes
the guilt; for everydayness, the guilt precedes the call.
The crux of the matter, for Heidegger, resides in the “ontological fore-
having” (SZ, p. 290), that is, the presupposed understanding of what it
means to be in general, which forms the background for the interpretation,
whether existential or everyday. Everydayness recognizes only one mode of
Being: presence-at-hand. Time is then conceived as a linear succession of
present-at-hand events. Conscience, the call, guilt, the evil deed—these are
all present-at-hand things, and they occupy a fixed position on the temporal
series of present-at-hand events. Taken in these terms, the voice of con-
science is indeed positioned after the evil deed; conscience is experienced as
subsequent, as being called up by the past event. But—and this is the heart
of the issue—the phenomena of conscience such as the call and guilt are not
present-at-hand things. Their proper ontological context is not presence-at-
hand but existence. They are phenomena pertaining to the Being of Dasein.
Therefore, their proper temporality is the one of care. Such a temporality
is not a linear one; it is a very convoluted one in which the future has the
priority. Therefore, if taken in its proper context, it is possible for the call of
conscience to be a calling forth to guilt, authentic guilt. Thereby the call of
conscience precedes the guilt, rather than following afterwards. The call is
one to appropriate authentically the Being of care, which means to appropri-
ate care as guilty—as the negative basis of a negativity. In its most proper
context, therefore, the call precedes the assumption of guiltiness; it is a call to
become guilty, to take on explicitly what is latent in the structure of the Being
of Dasein, namely, existential guilt. The call of conscience precedes existen-
tial guilt, the guilt proper to the temporality of existence; only in the foreign
context of presence-at-hand does the call of conscience follow upon guilt.
This misgiving has therefore been laid to rest. It depends on an inadequate
understanding of what it means to be and is not a refutation of the existential
interpretation. Furthermore, the everyday understanding, as Heidegger fore-
told, has become intelligible, especially in the ways it misses the phenomena
104 Chapter 4

and the reasons it conceals them. It misses and conceals by not philosophiz-
ing, by preoccupation not with the Being of Dasein but instead with everyday
affairs and with the loud chatter of the they.
The other misgiving I wish to take up questions whether conscience is
entirely critical, entirely negative, as the everyday interpretation maintains, or
whether it also has a positive content, as in the existential understanding. In
other words, does conscience disclose positive possibilities for acting in the
world, or does it merely pass judgment on already accomplished or proposed
actions? Does conscience in any way tell us what to do?
In its denial that conscience has such a positive content, the everyday
understanding, according to Heidegger, is indeed correct—within certain lim-
its. Conscience has no positive content in the sense of providing useful infor-
mation for calculating the advisability of some particular action. Conscience
does not give specific advice or provide practical maxims. Conscience is not
positive with regard to specific worldly concerns, for the simple reason that
conscience is about a being of an altogether different ontological kind than
such concerns, namely, Dasein. Yet in that ontological realm, conscience is
the most positive of all: it summons Dasein forth to its most proper positivity
of existence, namely, authenticity. It is a call for Dasein to become factically
authentic, to exist factically as authentic being-in-the-world. “To hear the call
authentically amounts to engaging in factical action” (SZ, p. 294).
Factical is a synonym for ontic, existentiell, phenomenal, worldly, practi-
cal. Thus, Heidegger is here envisioning a positive practical application of
conscience. Since the world is essential to the Being of Dasein as being-in-
the-world, the disclosure of the authentic self by conscience must also dis-
close something about the authentic way to be related to the world, thus about
authentic factical action in the world. In this way, conscience might be indi-
rectly disclosive of positive possibilities of action. At this point, Heidegger
leaves this positivity undeveloped.
Heidegger concludes his engagement with the misgivings by discussing the
moral implication of the everyday versus the existential interpretation of con-
science. It might be thought that, since everyday Dasein does not experience
conscience in the primordial, existential sense, then this Dasein is morally
inferior. Such is not the case. Nor is a Dasein in possession of an existen-
tially adequate understanding of conscience necessarily morally superior.
Honorable action stemming from the ordinary experience of conscience is
“no less possible” (SZ, p. 259) than is dishonorable action from a primordial
understanding of conscience. Knowing the theory does not necessarily entail
putting it into practice. Nevertheless, Heidegger maintains, the existential
interpretation of conscience does disclose possibilities for a more primordial
existentiell understanding. Existentiell understanding is understanding put
into practice, as long as ontological conceptualizing does not allow itself to be
 Conscience and Mortality 105

“severed from ontic experience” (SZ, p. 295). Therefore, the existential inter-
pretation of conscience does offer at least the possibility of actions that are
more honorable. For now, Heidegger does not pursue the connection between
conscience and these possibilities. He will soon come back to it.

PRACTICAL WISDOM

In the final section of the chapter on conscience and guilt, Heidegger seeks
the full existential structure of hearing the voice of conscience. He termed this
hearing “wanting to have a conscience.” It is an understanding of oneself in
one’s most properly possible way to be, namely, authenticity. It is a disclos-
edness of Dasein to itself. All disclosedness is comprised of the moments of
discourse, affect, and understanding. Accordingly, to unfold the full existen-
tial structure of hearing the call, which is wanting to have a conscience, those
moments need to be made explicit.
Heidegger begins with understanding, which is always a projection on
possibilities. What does Dasein project itself upon in wanting to have a
conscience? We know the answer is that Dasein here projects itself on its
most proper, existential guilt, upon the negativity in the structure of care.
Heidegger now expresses the projection of wanting to have a conscience
as a projecting of oneself, according to the respective case, on the most
proper factical possibility of one’s potential for being-in-the-world. This
potential, however, is understood “only by actually existing in that pos-
sibility” (SZ, p. 295). This way of expressing the projection included
in hearing the summons of conscience provides a first indication that
Heidegger is linking conscience to ontic practice. He says that the pro-
jection is carried out according to the respective case, which means the
projection varies, case by case. It is not an abstract universal projection
that takes no account of the factical situation of the respective Dasein.
Furthermore, the projection is upon a factical possibility. Since “factical”
means “practical,” “existentiell,” Heidegger is here speaking of the pos-
sibility of acting authentically. Finally, Heidegger says that the potential
for authentic being-in-the-world is understood only by actually existing in
that possibility. In other words, it is understood in the course of actually
existing as a being-in-the-world, as “into” the world in some definite way
or other, acting practically in the material world.
With regard to the affect corresponding to this understanding, that is,
the affect accompanying the self-disclosure of Dasein in existential guilt,
Heidegger identifies it with anxiety, as we might expect. In understanding
the summons of conscience, Dasein is individuated and as such is uncanny
to itself. This uncanniness, Heidegger now says, is concomitantly disclosed
106 Chapter 4

in understanding but is genuinely disclosed “only in anxiety” (SZ, p. 296).

This, too, expresses a distinction between theory (understanding) and prac-
tice (anxiety), and Heidegger is giving the priority to practice. That is not
surprising and accords with Heidegger’s general view that Dasein’s prime
mode of disclosure is affect. But the conclusion Heidegger now draws is
surprising: wanting to have a conscience becomes “readiness for anxiety”
(SZ, p. 295). It is surprising because previously the relation was the exact
opposite—anxiety as readiness for the understanding that constitutes want-
ing to have a conscience. The affect was readiness for the understanding;
now it is the reverse. Previously, the ontic, factical experience of anxiety
was readiness for the ontological, theoretical understanding of the being of
Dasein as care. Now the existential is readiness for the existentiell. Theory
is yielding to practice.
The third intrinsic moment of disclosedness is discourse. We know that
conscience in its entire structure (call, calling, called) discourses in the mode
of silence. Therefore, Heidegger is saying nothing new here by identifying
the mode of discourse as silence, except that he distinguishes this silence
from being mute (SZ, p. 296). A person is mute from having nothing to
say or from not being able to say anything. But silence implies “having
something to say” (SZ, p. 296). Thus, the call of conscience does not strike
Dasein dumb. It does give Dasein something to say, but Dasein does not
say it. Heidegger intimated earlier that Dasein is silent in hearing the call of
conscience because conscience gives Dasein nothing to say. Dasein is taken
up entirely in the hearing and has nothing to say in reply. Now Dasein has
something to say. What? What would Dasein, responding genuinely and fac-
tically to the call of conscience, talk about? It would certainly not be more of
the idle chatter of the they. Furthermore, while the experience of disclosed-
ness was actually under way, Dasein would not speak out. But Heidegger is
presumably leaving open the possibility of a later ontic, though authentic,
talk. I believe I would not be entirely reckless in suggesting that such talk
would reach its highest state in philosophical discourse. In particular, Being
and Time may be a prime instance.
Heidegger summarizes and gives a name to the disclosedness pertaining
to the hearing of the voice of conscience as follows. Dasein’s disclosedness
that resides in wanting to have a conscience is constituted by the affect of
anxiety, by understanding as self-projection on one’s most proper guilt, and
by discourse as silence. This preeminent, authentic disclosedness, attested to
in Dasein itself by conscience, this silent, ready-for-anxiety self-projection of
one’s most proper guilt, “we will call Entschlossenheit” (SZ, p. 296).
Entschlossenheit would ordinarily be translated as “resoluteness,” but I
wish to leave the translation open until we examine Heidegger’s characteriza-
tion of the phenomenon he is naming with this term (SZ, pp. 296–301). It is
 Conscience and Mortality 107

preferable to allow the characterization to determine the translation, and not

vice versa. But I will offer a hint as to the direction I believe Heidegger is
taking.
The hint is provided by the German dictionary of the Brothers Grimm,2 the
dictionary favored by Heidegger. As with almost all the entries, the Grimms
first provide the Latin equivalent, even for words that are not rooted in Latin,
and then the German meaning. The Latin is animi praesentia, “presence of
mind.” The German is Geistesgegenwart, again literally “presence of mind.”
The entry does not offer any synonyms but includes a historical reference to
Goethe, who used the term to mean “nimbleness of mind.” Therefore, the
meaning of Entschlossenheit is almost the opposite of “resoluteness,” with
its connotation of a closing off of possibilities. To be resolute is to be loyal to
some course of action, whereas, according to the Grimms, Entschlossenheit
means to have one’s wits about one and be open to new possibilities. The
Grimms are therefore taking the word in its etymological sense: ent-schlos-
sen, “un-closed.” “Resoluteness” bears almost the exact opposite sense.
Heidegger begins his characterization by asserting that Entschlossenheit is
a preeminent mode of Dasein’s disclosedness. Disclosedness has to do with
truth, and so Entschlossenheit is a disclosure of truth. Entschlossenheit is
even the most primordial disclosure of truth, the acquisition of the most pri-
mordial, most authentic truth concerning Dasein. Resoluteness might indeed
consist in steadfast adherence to the truth, but it has nothing to do with a
disclosure of truth.
To disclose the truth of Dasein is to disclose being-in-the-world, including
all three moments: the who, the world, and the affective being-in. Heidegger
now fills a long paragraph with an overview of his understanding of the
world of everyday concern, the world structured according to the for-the-
sake-of-which, the in-order-to, the ready-to-hand, the co-Dasein of others,
the they, and so on. His conclusion is that this entire world is transformed
by the disclosedness of Entschlossenheit. The ready-to-hand world does not
become another one in terms of content, nor is the circle of relations with
one’s fellow Dasein exchanged for another circle. Nevertheless, Dasein’s
way of relating to ready-to-hand things in dealing with them concernfully
as well as Dasein’s relation to others in being with them solicitously—these
relations are now first determined on the basis of what “they most properly
could be” (SZ, p. 298).
Accordingly, Entschlossenheit has a radical, although subtle effect. It does
not change the content of one’s relations, does not substitute one set of things
and other Daseins with another set, but those relations now become authentic.
Heidegger does not say exactly what this transformation is, but presumably
these relations are in some way, some radical way, improved. They become
all that they could be.
108 Chapter 4

Heidegger continues to determine Entschlossenheit by saying that insofar

as it is authentic disclosure of the self of Dasein, it does not detach Dasein
from the world. How could it, since Entschlossenheit is authentic disclos-
edness and so illuminates nothing other than genuine being-in-the-world?
Entschlossenheit points the way to authentic dealing with things and authen-
tic relations with others. For the first time, these relations become genuine
and not ones ruled by the ambiguity, jealously, and idle chatter that character-
ize lostness in the they.
Entschlossenheit is not a seizing upon possibilities, not a remaining faithful
to some chosen project. On the contrary, Entschlossenheit is itself the disclo-
sive projection and determination of what is practically possible at any given
time. This sense of Entschlossenheit as characterized by Heidegger could
hardly present it in greater contrast to resoluteness.
The counter-concept to Entschlossenheit, as understood existentially, is
not Unentschlossenheit as usually understood. Unentschlossenheit ordinar-
ily means irresoluteness, indecision, being wishy-washy. But that is not the
counter-concept to Entschlossenheit as existentially understood. The proper
counter-concept to Entschlossenheit as Heidegger employs the term is every-
day understanding, lostness in the ambiguous way the they discloses things.
Accordingly, Entschlossenheit, in the existential sense, cannot mean resolute-
ness, as is evident by Heidegger’s discussion of the counter-concept.
Heidegger concludes his characterization of Entschlossenheit by distin-
guishing the “situation” (die Situation) from the “general location” (die
allgemeine Lage) (SZ, p. 299). Both terms, “situation” and “location,” have
a spatial connotation but, as Heidegger is using them, only the latter is pre-
dominantly spatial. The they lives in a location, more or less absent-mindedly
walking through life, although possessing enough spatial orientation not to
bump into things. Entschlossenheit, however, gives Dasein a situation, a
situs, a site, a settlement, a place to be at home and dwell. Authentic Dasein
is not merely spatially oriented in the world but is also disclosive of the most
genuine possibilities for acting in that world. Entschlossenheit, authentic
being-in-the-world, being-in-a-situation, is presence of mind, nimbleness of
mind, wisdom in regard to practical things.
How then to translate Entschlossenheit? What is Heidegger character-
izing with this term? Certainly not “resoluteness.” Heidegger is referring to
something almost the exact opposite of what we mean by resoluteness or
perseverance, tenacity, single-mindedness. Heidegger means some kind of
open-mindedness, some kind of disclosure of possibilities, specifically ones
having to do with practice.
For the translation I am about to propose, I will take a clue from
Heidegger’s discussion of the Aristotelian intellectual virtues. The particular
virtue relevant for my purpose is φρόvησις, phrónesis, “practical wisdom.”
 Conscience and Mortality 109

I do not need to rehearse Heidegger’s lengthy commentary. At the end, he

focuses on a peculiar property noted by Aristotle: “there is no forgetting
with regard to phronesis” (Nicomachean Ethics, 1140b28). The reason is that
phronesis is in each case new; phronesis does not merely repeat a judgment
made earlier, a judgment which could be forgotten. Circumstances are always
different, and phronesis is the nimbleness of mind to make the correct judg-
ment concerning what should be done here and now.
Heidegger’s conclusion is that Aristotle has in this way turned phronesis
into conscience: “Certainly the explication Aristotle gives is very meager.
But it is nevertheless clear from the context that we would not be going too
far in our interpretation by saying that Aristotle has here come across the
phenomenon of conscience. Φρόvησις is nothing other than conscience set
into motion, making an action transparent. There is no forgetting in regard to
conscience; it always announces itself.”3
I believe that in the existential analyses of Being and Time, Heidegger
has carried out the corollary: he has turned conscience into phrone-
sis. Conscience set into motion, conscience as heard authentically, is
Entschlossenheit, which, as characterized by Heidegger, is practical wis-
dom, phronesis. Therefore, deriving the translation from the characteriza-
tion rather than vice versa, I propose phronesis as the proper word to render
the meaning of Entschlossenheit.4
If Heidegger is speaking of phronesis, the various characterizations now
make sense, whereas they are inexplicable if thought in terms of resolute-
ness. In all cases, Heidegger is referring to a disclosure of the correct choice
of action at any given time, and that capacity is phronesis, not resoluteness.
The strangest of the characterizations had to do with the way Entschlossenheit
brings about a radical change in Dasein’s relations to the world and to other
Daseins. Heidegger said that these relations are now first determined on the
basis of what they most properly could be. Resoluteness would not be able
to bring about such a change, but phronesis does have the power to do so.
If Dasein’s relations were infused with practical wisdom, rather than being
ruled by the ambiguity, jealously, and idle chatter that characterize lostness
in the they, then a new world would indeed open up.
What is the justification for Heidegger’s turning conscience into phronesis?
There are two main problems. The first concerns the practical applicability of
conscience. How does it come to have any applicability to the world at all?
Heidegger has stressed that conscience has no positive content in the sense of
providing useful information for calculating the advisability of some particu-
lar worldly concern, for the simple reason that conscience is about a being of
an altogether different ontological kind, namely, Dasein. Furthermore, anxi-
ety is essential to conscience, is readiness for hearing the voice of conscience,
and anxiety involves a sense of affective detachment from the world. How
110 Chapter 4

is conscience supposed to undo this detachment when all that is supplied by

conscience is a summons to understand the structure of care?
The second main problem concerns the vast scope of phronesis as described
by Heidegger. Phronesis is such an all-encompassing nimbleness of mind that
it discloses the best possible action to take in any given situation. Even if
some practical applicability of conscience can be demonstrated, how could
this applicability be so universal as to be capable of transforming the whole
world into what that world most properly could be? The voice of conscience
summons Dasein to an appropriation of guilt. How could guilt be connected
to the kind of practical wisdom Heidegger is describing?
With regard to the first problem, let us begin by noting a trade-off, as it
were, between conscience and guilt. They are completely incompatible and
cannot both be present in the same Dasein. One drives out the other. Anxious
Dasein feels detached from the world because the relation between the in-
order-to and the for-the-sake-of-which has been severed. Anxious Dasein
does not sense itself as a for-the-sake-of-which. The functional relations
among things in the world proceed normally, but these relations do not appear
to be for sake of this Dasein. Hence, the affective detachment. To appropriate
existential guilt is to accept the entire structure of care, the entire structure
of being-in-the-world. The world is an essential moment of care. And an
essential moment of the world is the for-the-sake-of-which. Consequently, to
appropriate guilt is to accept the role of the for-the-sake-of which. Thereby
guilt dispels anxiety; it reunites Dasein to the world.
Anxious Dasein feels no guilt for the events occurring in the world. That
is a consequence of experiencing oneself as detached, as looking on from
a distance at the world as an alien place, as leaving the particular Dasein
untouched. Conscience is the voice telling Dasein that such detachment is a
lie. We are attached to the world, responsible for what is going on there. We
are guilty. There is no escaping this guilt; even to do nothing and claim no
responsibility is a way of acting, and we are necessarily responsible for what
results from this supposed inaction.
Guilt dispels anxiety. By the same token, guilt profits from anxiety.
Because anxiety took away a sense of attachment and responsibility, the
restoration of these in guilt is all the more impressive. Without anxiety, there
would be no authentic sense of guilt. Without anxiety, the connection of
Dasein to the world would be taken for granted, and Dasein would remain in
its everyday absent-mindedness. Everyday Dasein lives in a state of neutral-
ity with regard to guilt and anxiety, with no sense of either. That neutrality
could be offered as an excellent definition of inauthenticity. Authentic Dasein
is one that passes through a strong sense of one to a strong sense of the other.
Anxiety is a gift and not entirely negative, but conscience, guilt, attachment,
responsibility—these have the final word.
 Conscience and Mortality 111

Conscience makes heroes of us all. At least it would have compelled the

brooding Hamlet to stop behaving as if he were an outside spectator of his
own life and begin to act.
The second main problem flows from the first. Granted that conscience can
have practical applicability, at least inasmuch as it motivates some action in
the world, how can it turn into the phronesis characterized in Being and Time?
To answer, we need to examine exactly what is disclosed in the appropriation
of existential guilt.
To hear the summons of conscience is to appropriate the full structure
of care, the full structure of being-in-the-world. The moments of care are
the who, the world, and affective being-in. Conscience calls on Dasein to
appropriate, but appropriation requires understanding. Therefore, conscience
is calling on Dasein to understand care (existentially) and then appropriate it
(existentielly). This summons to understanding is left implicit in Being and
Time. But it is self-evident; Dasein cannot blindly appropriate its own Being.
It must have some sense of what it is appropriating. So conscience is a sum-
moning of Dasein to self-understanding, specifically to self-understanding
as care. Included in the self-understanding of care are all the moments.
Conscience is summoning Dasein to understand all the moments, the who,
the world, and the being-in, in their unity. The point I am arguing toward is
that there is nothing else left to understand. Furthermore, to understand every-
thing in its unity is to understand the Being of beings. It is to philosophize.
Therefore, conscience is a summoning of Dasein to philosophy.
Conscience is a summons to contemplate the meaning of what it means
to be tout court, a summons to phenomenological ontology. Now, our sense
of what it means to be has enormous practical significance. For example, as
already mentioned, if Dasein understands what it means to be as amounting
to disposability, then the instruments to turn nature into disposables will be
produced and the actual ravaging will be carried out. Being and Time does
not suggest what will be disclosed by authentic Dasein, while contemplating
care in all its moments, as the meaning of Being. Presumably, such Dasein
will resist the outlook of modern technology, the view of Being as equal to
disposability. Then nature might be spared the ravaging, and the entire world
might indeed be changed for the better.
In summary, philosophy, inasmuch as it discloses what it means to be,
does turn into phronesis. Indeed philosophy, ontology, leads to practice only
indirectly. It provides no specific practical maxims, but it does lead to a spe-
cific practice, since how we look on things determines what we do with them
and do to them. Accordingly, conscience, the summons to appropriate one’s
guilt, to understand the structure of care, to contemplate what it means to be
in general, to philosophize, does amount to phronesis and even to a universal
phronesis.
112 Chapter 4

What Heidegger is saying, in Socratic terms, is that virtue can be taught,

virtue is a matter of knowledge. Socrates does not mean that if we truly and
genuinely know the right thing to do (or to avoid), we will do it (or avoid it).
Socrates is not referring to such a simplistic connection between virtue and
knowledge. To understand the Socratic connection, we need to begin with
the distinctive Greek conception of virtue. The Greeks can and do speak of
the virtue of a thing, such as an axe. The virtue of the axe is its sharpness,
that which allows it to go on functioning as an axe, that which keeps it same
with itself. Human virtue is then not some moral quality added on to human
nature; human virtue is that which keeps a person same with human nature,
same with himself or herself. In general, for the Greeks, virtue means self-
sameness. The connection between virtue and knowledge is this: in order
to institute a self-sameness in ourselves, we need a paradigm to live up to.
We need a shining example of self-sameness to emulate. This example is
supplied by the Ideas. As was mentioned earlier, the Ideas are radically self-
same. It is by recollecting the Ideas, therefore, that we acquire the paradigm
that makes it possible for us to institute a self-sameness in ourselves, which
amounts to being virtuous. For Socrates, the Ideas and especially the Idea
of beauty can be taught; there is a method to recollect them. That method is
Socratic love. By intimate contact with a beautiful thing, we are provoked to
behold the Idea of beauty appearing through. That intimate contact, however,
cannot remain at the level of mere carnality; it must be open to philosophy.
Socratic love can be generalized; it then refers not to aphrodisial relations but
to any intimate, personal knowledge. To practice Socratic love is to look and
grasp some being for oneself and not rely on hearsay. Socratic love is then
a separating the soul from what they say about a thing. To practice Socratic
love is thus equivalent to dying. And dying is equivalent to philosophizing,
disclosure of the Ideas, disclosure of Being as such. This knowledge is the
one that really matters, the one connected to virtue. How we understand
what it means to be determines how we comport ourselves toward beings.
Therefore, as Heidegger says, what is revealed in conscience, the whole of
Being in general, does have radical practical potential. Our practice in regard
to beings depends on our understanding of what it means to be in general,
and inasmuch as this knowledge is provided by conscience, Socratic love,
recollection of the Ideas, philosophizing, then ontology is a radically trans-
formative phronesis.
Let us return to the caller. For Being and Time, the caller is the authentic
self summoning itself out of its latency in the they-self. Yet does not the
authentic self that does the calling also need to be called? Can the phenom-
enon of conscience remain entirely within the compass of Dasein? For the
later Heidegger, it cannot. Dasein does not call itself to philosophy; some-
thing ascendant, Being, does the summoning. The philosopher is one who
 Conscience and Mortality 113

is claimed, and philosophy is a response. In Being and Time, Heidegger

dismisses any sort of outside caller. But I believe the book does contain an
adumbration of the later view. The adumbration consists in an obscure refer-
ence to the “voice of the friend.”5
The topic of the voice of the friend arises in a discussion of hearing as the
basis of discourse: our speaking is a response to something we have heard.
Heidegger at first relates hearing to other Daseins, friends (or enemies) in the
usual sense and maintains that hearing is the existential openness of Dasein
as Being-with in relation to others. Heidegger immediately goes on to expand
the role of hearing in a most surprising manner: hearing even constitutes the
primary and authentic openness of Dasein for its “most proper possibility
with regard to Being, by way of hearing the voice of the friend whom every
Dasein carries with it” (SZ, p. 163).6
The most proper possibility of Dasein with regard to Being is simply
Dasein’s understanding of what it means to be in general. So the hearing at
issue here is not merely an openness to other Daseins but is an openness to the
meaning of Being. That is why Heidegger says that this hearing even consti-
tutes such openness; it goes beyond interaction with other people.
Therefore, the friend at issue here is Being itself, its “voice” is the self-
disclosure of Being to us, and “hearing” this voice is understanding what
it means to be in general. Heidegger is employing figurative language to
express what makes Dasein Dasein, namely, an understanding of Being.
If we take the voice of conscience to be a caller that is ascendant over
Dasein and not simply the authentic self, then the voice of the friend and
the voice of conscience are one and the same. This voice is a summons to
philosophize, to hear the self-disclosure of Being. And such hearing would
indeed have practical effects, for it would turn into phronesis.

AN ANTICIPATING PHRONESIS

At the end of the chapter on conscience in Being and Time and at the begin-
ning of the next chapter, on Dasein’s temporality, Heidegger finally raises
the issue of the connection between conscience and being-toward-death. Is
there an intrinsic connection, such that conscience by its own internal logic is
brought into connection with anticipation, authentic dying? Heidegger finds
this connection in what he calls an “anticipating phronesis” (SZ, p. 302).
The general idea is as follows. Phronesis obtains its capacity to dis-
close practical possibilities from the ontology that lies behind it. The more
adequate the ontology, that is, the understanding of the meaning of Being in
general, the more genuine will be the phronesis, the disclosure of the concrete
situation for taking action. Therefore, phronesis must be based on an adequate
114 Chapter 4

understanding of the Being of Dasein. To be specific, it must be based on an

understanding of Dasein as a whole.
The wholeness of Dasein has two aspects, which could be called the struc-
tural and the temporal, the synchronic and the diachronic. Structural whole-
ness refers to the unity of the moments of care, the unity of the moments of
being-in-the-world. The diachronic wholeness is the unity of Dasein in its
extension through time, all the way to death. Conscience discloses the struc-
tural wholeness; anticipation, the temporal.
Therefore, phronesis must of its own internal logic become an anticipat-
ing phronesis. In other words it must be based on an ontology of Dasein that
includes the temporal wholeness, the wholeness supplied by anticipation,
authentic being-toward-death.
We have seen that anticipation is not preoccupation with dying; it is neither
a fleeing from death nor a resolute facing up to the end. Anticipation is a way
of understanding the possibility of death as a most proper possibility. Such a
possibility is distinctive of Dasein, and thus anticipation is an understanding
of the Being of Dasein. Anticipation is equivalent to philosophizing.
Phronesis is the application of ontology. Conscience is the call to appro-
priate one’s existential guilt, which means to understand the structure of
care, which means to understand the Being of Dasein as being-in-the-world,
which means to understand the meaning of Being in general, which means
to philosophize.
Accordingly, the intrinsic connection between conscience and authen-
tic dying, between phronesis and anticipation, derives from their common
ground. That ground is philosophy. Phronesis and anticipation are unified
by converging on the same point: an understanding of what it means to be in
general.

CONCLUSION TO THE FIRST FOUR CHAPTERS,

ON THEMES FROM BEING AND TIME

The themes of these four chapters have been death, signs, anxiety, and con-
science. As disparate as these might seem, they are all of them about disclos-
ing the Being of Dasein, philosophizing. They are all of them about hearing
the voice of the friend, a hearing that makes Dasein be Dasein, a place where
Being discloses itself, a place where resides an understanding of what it
means to be in general. They have all of them also been about the hearing of
the voice of conscience, for to hear that voice also means to understand the
Being of Dasein, specifically as care, as being-in-the world.
There is another voice which figures very largely in Being and Time, the
voice of the they. That voice constitutes a radical negativity in Dasein. It
 Conscience and Mortality 115

is the voice of mediocrity, ambiguity, complacency, inertia. It is a constant

menace to philosophy, since it is satisfied with the average everyday superfi-
cial understanding of what it means to be, self-satisfied in its lack of perplex-
ity over the question of Being. This voice spells the death of philosophy.
The voice of the they is the loudest of all the voices mentioned in Being
and Time. We all hear it loud and clear. It is a voice that constantly pursues
us. This voice which would strangle the call to authenticity and to philoso-
phy is what is most morbid about our lives. This voice, even more than the
menace of death, makes our atmosphere a mortal one. The voice of the they
does not threaten life as such, but it smothers anxiety and existential guilt.
It separates the soul—not from the body but from autonomous existence. It
divides us from ourselves, that is, from our “fair judgment, without the which
we are pictures, or mere beasts” (Hamlet, IV, v, 86).
 Chapter 5

Music of Mortality

Orsino:
That strain again! it had a dying fall.
Twelfth Night, I, i, 4

BEETHOVEN’S KREUTZER SONATA

When in the first chapter I compared Being and Time to a Platonic dialogue, I
stipulated, although it was hardly necessary, that I was not referring to style.
Being and Time is prose and, even more than that, belabored prose. To work
one’s way through it is to tread over rocky ground indeed. Yet Heidegger
could write artistically, and in this chapter, as promised, I will produce
evidence.
Heidegger’s small book Gelassenheit1 does, I believe, qualify to be called
art. As I attempted above in regard to the Timaeus, I will again emulate
Agathon (Symposium, 197E) and blend play and seriousness, this time with
a view to demonstrating that Heidegger’s Gelassenheit is a sort of music and
indeed music specifically about death.
Heidegger himself seems to have been attuned much more to the sounds of
nature than to music. I can offer excellent anecdotal testimony, deriving from
a late teacher and colleague of mine, André Schuwer, OFM. This Franciscan
friar enjoyed a personal relationship with Heidegger and was one of the very
few regular visitors allowed at the philosopher’s rustic chalet in the Black
Forest. Schuwer visited Heidegger every summer for many years. On one
occasion, in the midst of a conversation about St. Bonaventure, Heidegger
suddenly broke off the discussion and led Schuwer outside to hearken to the

117
118 Chapter 5

sound of sheep and sheep bells off in the distance. Schuwer said the sounds
were only faintly audible, with the sheep themselves not even in sight, but the
disordered jangles and bleats caught Heidegger’s ear and brought him great
delight. According to Schuwer, he and Heidegger never discussed music.
Of course Heidegger did know and appreciate classical music and
must have listened often, considering his extensive record collection. But
Heidegger did not play an instrument, and musical references are extremely
rare in his writings. He seldom thematizes music as an artform, and when
he does, his purpose is to denigrate it, as we are about to see. In referring to
things heard, Heidegger’s typical examples are not musical sounds but the
creaking wagon, the north wind, the rapping woodpecker, the crackling fire
(SZ, p. 163). These are quintessential examples taken from the world close to
Heidegger’s heart.
In downplaying music, Heidegger stands in stark contrast to Husserl. The
founder of phenomenology was a virtuoso on the violin and in his writings
often refers to music and especially to his favored instrument. He takes up
the violin not only when discussing sound; he also has recourse to it in terms
of its elegant shape and even in terms of monetary value.2 Furthermore, the
hearing of a melody is for Husserl the prime illustration of the synthesis of
time, whereas Heidegger, although he writes extensively on temporal experi-
ence and as Husserl’s assistant even edited for publication Husserl’s lectures
on the consciousness of internal time, does not ever appeal to music in this
context.
Heidegger nevertheless did enjoy classical music and apparently had
a broad taste, but I believe I can identify the one piece he knew best and
heard most often. That is Beethoven’s Violin Sonata No. 9, op. 47, the
Kreutzer Sonata. It is what Husserl, in some variation without the piano
accompaniment, liked to play to guests after dinner. And there was a time,
when Heidegger was Husserl’s assistant, that he was a frequent visitor at the
Husserl home. Heidegger even writes letters, ones we would call bread-and-
butter letters, thank you’s, expressing gratitude to the Husserls for allowing
him to dine with them and for treating him like a son. No doubt there were
also other guests on many of these occasions, and so Heidegger would have
heard Husserl playing the Kreutzer Sonata often.
Therefore, it is with some evidence that I venture to say Heidegger knew
the Kreutzer Sonata well. If there was any classical music that haunted
Heidegger in phantasy (this haunting in phantasy is how Husserl describes
the tunes we usually have playing in our head), it was the Kreutzer Sonata.
Furthermore, it is likely that Husserl, an extreme semper docens, someone
“always teaching,” would not have been content with merely playing but
would also have analyzed the musical composition for the education of the
audience. Therefore, Heidegger might very well have known some musical
 Music of Mortality 119

theory, at least in regard to sonata form. That form is composed of four

moments: melodic theme, counter-theme, resolution, and coda or tailpiece. I
am proposing that Heidegger knew something about this form and had special
familiarity with the Kreutzer Sonata.

GELASSENHEIT

I turn now to Heidegger’s little (seventy-five pages) book Gelassenheit,

which has at least this extrinsic connection with music that it contains a lec-
ture offered in commemoration of a composer, Conradin Kreutzer. I wish to
show an intrinsic connection with music. That is, I wish to show that the book
needs to be understood in musical terms and is in fact Heidegger’s version of
the Kreutzer Sonata.
The book as a whole is called Gelassenheit. It has two parts; the first
is also simply called “Gelassenheit,” and the second is “A discussion
of Gelassenheit.” Heidegger will put his own construction on the word
“Gelassenheit,” but in any case it is what unifies the book. Judging by the
titles, the book is as unified as can be; it is all about Gelassenheit. By way of
preliminary orientation, it could be said that this word, derived from lassen,
“to let,” in general means “letting things go.”
The unity of the work is very difficult to see in the published English
translation. The entire book is called Discourse on Thinking, and the two
parts are “Memorial address” and “Conversation on a country path about
thinking.” What unifies the book and is mentioned three times in the German
titles receives no mention at all. In particular, what is nearly impossible to
see is the connection between the two parts, how the second flows from the
first. Indeed a reader can gather from a translators’ footnote on the very first
page of the “Conversation” that it antedated the memorial address.3 The order
as published and the intrinsic connection between the two parts will prove
crucial for my interpretation of the artistry of the book.
The first section of Gelassenheit is indeed a memorial address. It was
delivered by Heidegger at a public commemoration of the 175th birthday of
the composer Conradin Kreutzer. This Kreutzer was one of a family of promi-
nent German musicians active at the time of Beethoven. Conradin was not
the Kreutzer to whom the sonata is dedicated. That is his cousin Rodolphe,
himself a composer and by all accounts the finest violin player of his day. As
for Conradin as a composer, he was especially known for his part-songs for
male chorus.
At the commemoration, Heidegger begins his remarks by saying that
the only proper way to honor a composer is to listen to his works being
performed. Heidegger says he himself is on the program only to make it a
120 Chapter 5

thoughtful commemoration: an Andenken is supposed to be a Denken (G, p.

13/44). But the genuine commemoration will follow immediately afterward
in the musical performance. Presumably, then, there is a male chorus waiting
in the wings. There are three male voices, tenor, baritone, and bass, so there
is at least a male trio ready to sing works by Conradin Kreutzer. That will be
the important event of the day.
Heidegger then presents his talk about Gelassenheit. In point of fact, he
says very little about Gelassenheit. His main concern is to distinguish two
ways of thinking, and that presumably is the reason the English translation of
the title and subtitles ignores the term “Gelassenheit” and focuses on think-
ing. So I do concede that the English translation has motivation; I believe it
is mistaken, but at least it is a motivated mistake.
Heidegger’s procedure regarding the term “Gelassenheit” is the one I fol-
lowed with regard to Entschlossenheit. First he characterizes it, and then he
finds the fitting word. The characterization is couched in terms of our rela-
tion to the devices of modern technology and consists of two paragraphs as
follows:

We can use technological things, indeed use them just as they are meant to
be used, and yet we can at the very same time keep ourselves so free of them
that we let go of them. We can take up technological things just as they were
designed to be taken up, and yet we can do so such that at the very same time
we are letting them alone as things which do not touch us in what is most
inward and proper to us. We can say “Yes” to the unavoidable use of techno-
logical things while at the very same time saying “No” to them inasmuch as we
repudiate their claim to exclusivity, whereby they would distort, confuse, and
ultimately devastate our essence.
Yet if we in this way say “Yes” and “No” simultaneously to technological
things, will not our relation to the technological world become ambiguous and
insecure? Quite to the contrary. Our relation to technology will become marvel-
ously simple and serene. We will let technological things into our daily world
and at the very same time keep them out, that is, let them alone as things that
are not absolute but are instead dependent on something higher. I would call
this attitude of a simultaneous “Yes” and “No” to technology by an old word:
detachment [Gelassenheit zu den Dingen]. (G, pp. 24–25/54)

Heidegger’s word is an “old” one inasmuch as it figures in medieval spiri-

tuality. Detachment means to live in such a way as to be in the world but not
of it, detached from the world in spirit but not in body. Such a way of life
brings serenity (a possible translation of “Gelassenheit,” naming its result).
Detachment is not renunciation of the world and withdrawal into a cloister,
and it is not wholehearted abandonment to worldly concerns either. In regard
 Music of Mortality 121

to the root lassen, it means to let the world go. But this letting go must be
understood in a double sense. It means to let the world go on and also to let
go of it.
In relation to technological things, detachment means to let these go on,
not fight against them in the manner of the Luddites, smashing them, or even
simply attempting to refrain from using them or using them in some idiosyn-
cratic way. Heidegger says they are to be used the way they are meant to be
used. They even call us to ever greater achievements (G, p. 24/53). So they
can go on. But the attitude of detachment also means letting go of them, not
putting one’s heart and soul into them and becoming dominated by them.
Heidegger says they are not absolute since they depend on something higher.
In Heidegger’s philosophy of technology, technological things indeed depend
on how Being reveals itself. But in this context of a public discourse, I believe
Heidegger means something more mundane. He had already referred to our
freedom, and so he might be implying that that is what technological things
depend on. They depend on our freedom to allow them into our lives or not.
So they are not absolute; they depend on “something higher,” namely, our
freedom. Technological things would be nothing without our consent. If we
remember our freedom in relation to them, then we can use them and yet
recognize their subordinate place and take distance from them. That is how
detachment is a simultaneous “Yes” (“I let them go on”) and “No” (“I let go
of them”).
There is another old name for the attitude of detachment—old at least in
the sense that we have come across it earlier in our discussion of Heidegger
on authentic being-toward-death. That word is “anticipation.” Anticipation,
too, is a simultaneous “Yes” and “No”—in this case, spoken in relation
to death. Anticipation recognizes the constant possibility of death and
even enhances that possibility, thereby saying “Yes.” But anticipation also
says “No” to death, does not let death dominate one’s being-in-the-world.
Anticipation does not exhaust itself in fleeing death or calculating about
it. Anticipation recognizes death as a most proper possibility, that is, as
one which leaves us our freedom in choosing our own way to live with
the menace of death. For Heidegger, anticipation says “No” to death not
by attempting to avoid it at all costs or control it but by philosophizing, by
preoccupation with Being.
In the book Gelassenheit, Heidegger describes the attitude of detachment
as equivalent to a certain kind of thinking. Indeed most of his commemora-
tive speech is devoted to distinguishing two ways of thinking: calculation
versus contemplation. Calculative thinking is not necessarily computational
in the sense of using mathematics. It is calculative the way an insincere
person is calculating. This attitude sees in nature only what can be derived
from it for one’s own benefit. This attitude sees in nature only disposables.
122 Chapter 5

So calculative thinking is identical with the attitude toward nature that

defines modern technology. It sees in beings only other beings, disposable
ones.
Contemplative thinking sees in beings the handiwork of Being, that is,
sees beings as having been granted presence by an understanding of what it
means to be in general, by the self-showing of Being to us. Con-templ-ation
is what is carried on in a templum, the space in the sacred precinct reserved
for observing auguries, that is, for seeing the work of the divine in worldly
things, for a raising of the sight toward the gods. An augury is an omen, a
being which bears a divine message, a being through which the gods speak
to us, a being in which we can see Being rather than a disposable. Thus
contemplative thinking, as attuned to the Being of beings, is philosophizing.
Therefore, contemplative thinking is equivalent to anticipation, authentic
dying.
In musical terms, anticipation (authentic being-toward-death, philoso-
phizing, contemplative thinking) would be the main theme (Being) played
over a ground bass (the menace of death constantly making its presence felt
underneath). That, I wish to show, is exactly how the trialogue composed by
Heidegger, if interpreted as music, plays out.

“DISCUSSION OF GELASSENHEIT”

We arrive now at the second part of the book Gelassenheit, remembering that
what was to follow Heidegger’s memorial address was a performance by a
male chorus in close-part harmony. In the book, what follows is “A discus-
sion of detachment.” It is a trialogue, and in the published English translation,
it simply follows on the next page. But in the original German, what immedi-
ately follows the memorial address is a title page by itself and then an almost
blank page (G, 50) listing the cast of characters in the trialogue:
Forscher
(F)

Gelehrter
(G)

Lehrer
(L)
The German prelude to the trialogue resembles the program to a play or
musical performance: first the title4 by itself, then a page listing the cast of
characters or performers. It is as if we are being introduced to a performance.
 Music of Mortality 123

What follows is then the trialogue—not a narrated one, but one in which the
lines are assigned to the various speakers themselves.
The players will be: Scientist, Scholar, Teacher. Furthermore, since the
German language has masculine and feminine forms for the individuals who
pursue these occupations, the players are identified as all males. What is
announced, therefore, is that a male trio is about to perform. Accordingly,
what in the book follows the memorial address is exactly what Heidegger
said would follow on the day of the actual commemoration—a male cho-
rus in close-part harmony. This chorus will perform what could be called
Heidegger’s Kreutzer Sonata.
Moreover, I wish to show that the trialogue, if interpreted as music, will
not only be a discussion of detachment but will also be an example of it.
In other words, it will be an actual example of contemplative thinking,
anticipation, detachment, authentic being-toward-death, preoccupation
with Being—all the while sensing the menace of death in the background.
It will concretize what the memorial address could only speak about in the
abstract. Thereby the trialogue might be seen as Heidegger’s concession to
the power of music, a recantation of his usual derogatory remarks. Music
brings home what the philosopher can only show from a distance. The phi-
losopher can only discourse about Being; music, in a way to be worked out
below, lets us hear its voice.
Music is thereby an additional voice in the atmosphere we breathe. In
the air are not only the voice of the friend, the voice of conscience, and the
voice of the they. Music, too, is in the air; if music is the voice of Being,
and Being provokes wonder, then this voice might be able to drown out
the voice of the they, the voice that is the death of philosophy. Indeed,
we all usually have some tune or other haunting us in phantasy; perhaps
music is then that very friend whom “every Dasein carries about.” Thereby
Heidegger’s denigration of music will, by the logic of his own thinking, be
overturned: music might show itself to be the primordial art form, the one
wherein Being most reveals itself.

PHILOSOPHY OF MUSIC

Before proceeding to the actual musical interpretation of the trialogue, I will

set the stage by discussing the philosophy of music in general. I will first
explicate Heidegger’s disparagement of music and will then appeal to two
other phenomenologists, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Husserl.
Painting in very broad strokes, philosophy can be portrayed as always
having denigrated music. Music is inferior to the other arts because it cannot
represent any definite beings. Accordingly, it cannot be conceptualized; it
124 Chapter 5

offers nothing from which to abstract and discover the universal. Therefore,
music is far removed from thinking and can contribute little or nothing to the
project of philosophy. Music can only excite the emotions.
This last paragraph expresses roughly Heidegger’s view. To understand
his position more precisely, we need to situate music within Heidegger’s
general philosophy of art. The most convenient way to do so is to distinguish
Heidegger’s thinking on art from aesthetics.
Aesthetics, for Heidegger, is not equivalent to the philosophy of art.
Aesthetics is only the metaphysical approach to art. Thus, aesthetics arises
with the beginning of metaphysics; prior to that, in the pre-Platonic era, there
was no aesthetics:

The aesthetic consideration of art commences precisely with the inception of

metaphysics. That means the aesthetic attitude toward art begins the moment
the essence of ἀλήθεια [alétheia, “unconcealment”] is transformed into ὁμoίoσις
[homoíosis, “homogenization,” “assimilation”], the conformity and correctness
of perceiving, presenting, and representing. This transformation starts in Plato’s
metaphysics. In the time before Plato, a consideration “of” art did not exist, and
so all Western considerations of art from Plato to Nietzsche are “aesthetic.”5

The difference between Heidegger’s “philosophy of art” and aesthetics

can be seen in the transformation from alétheia to homoíosis as definitions of
truth. In the pre-Socratic era, truth was a goddess, one who took the thinker
by the hand (although of course the thinker still needed to reach out a hand
to the goddess for her to take up). In the post-Socratic era, truth is an agree-
ment or conformity instituted by the subject. In other terms, the difference
between the two eras is that between an understanding of Dasein as discloser
rather than steward, shepherd, preserver. Therefore, even Being and Time has
not completely broken with metaphysics. Dasein is still thought of as subject,
as discloser. Accordingly, the later Heidegger writes: “In Being and Time,
Dasein still has an ‘anthropological,’ ‘subjectivistic,’ ‘individualistic,’ etc.
appearance, and yet the opposite of all this is in view in that work. To be sure,
it is not in view as the sole or even primary focus.”6
Aesthetics, the subjectivistic, metaphysical outlook on art, takes its orienta-
tion precisely from aísthesis, the sensory impression on a subject. Art is there
to deepen our lived experience. Before we consider Heidegger’s contrasting
approach, let us see how music fits into aesthetics. Indeed it is the pinnacle
of the arts from an aesthetic point of view, because it is most immediately
about aísthesis, lived experience, feeling. I will provide what I believe is
Heidegger’s most complete and explicit denunciation of music in its associa-
tion with feelings. The passage is intricate but requires only a little commen-
tary to become clear. Heidegger himself provides a succinct summary, one
 Music of Mortality 125

which says it all: “To feel the feelings counts as the high point of lived experi-
ence: music therefore the absolute art.” The extended discussion derives from
the same entry as the summary in the Black Notebooks:

“Art” is currently undertaking the management and the corresponding organiza-

tion of lived experience (as a feeling of the feelings), whereby the conviction
must arise that now for the first time the tasks of calculation and planning are
uncovered and established, and thus so is the essence of art. Since, however,
the enjoyment of the feelings becomes all the more desultory and agreeable as
the feelings become more indeterminate and contentless, and since music most
immediately excites such feelings, music is thus becoming the prescriptive
type of art (cf. Romanticism, Wagner and—Nietzsche). Music bears in itself a
proper lawfulness and also a calculability of the highest kind, yet that does not
at all contravene—but merely manifests—how decisively it is that pure number
and the sheer feeling of the feelings are compatible and require each other. All
types of art are being apprehended musically, in the manner of music, that is, as
expressions and occasions of the enjoyment of the feelings (feelings of achieve-
ment, glory, power, communion). Poetry, in case such ever arises beyond
mere ink–slinging, is becoming “song” and the word merely a supplement to
the sound and to its flow and rhythm. “Thoughts,” especially if they disturb
contemplationlessness, are prohibited; moreover, one disposes of the genuine
thoughts (λόγoι) in the calculation and planning that can “effect” something.
The interpretation of art in terms of lived experience is being elevated to the
role of the measure for all active and productive human comportment (τέχvη);
comportment is most highly honored when judged to be “artistic.”7

Heidegger is saying that “art” (in quotation marks as not actually deserv-
ing the name in the context of aesthetics) is now viewed aesthetically (that
is, in terms of lived experience, feeling), and therefore music is becoming
the “prescriptive type of art,” “absolute art.” The reason is that music most
immediately excites the feelings. In music, the feelings are “contentless.”
Presumably, Heidegger means that these feelings are not tied to any particular
being exciting them. We can see why Michelangelo’s Pietà arouses feelings
of compassion, but music arouses tenderness or any other feeling for no rea-
son other than to arouse it. Yet it might seem that music should be foreign
to feeling, since music is ruled by a strict lawfulness and a calculability.
Heidegger must have learned, perhaps from Husserl, how very mathemati-
cal music is; to compose music requires a strict adherence to mathematical
rules. But that relation to number, as abstract and removed from concrete
feelings as numbers might seem, only shows how compatible mathematics
and feelings actually are. Heidegger goes on to say that all art is being viewed
in the manner of Romanticism—as giving priority to the feelings. Poetry is
126 Chapter 5

becoming song; that is to say, what matters is not the thoughts but only the
musical quality of poetry, namely, the sounds and rhythm. (I do not believe
this critique of poetry would apply today. Poetry has indeed more and more
become ink-slinging, and almost any expression of anything, as long as it is
chopped up into lines, now counts as poetry. Thoughts are certainly absent
from the vast majority of today’s so-called poetry, but so is any sort of sound
or rhythm that could turn the poetry into song. Yet Heidegger is surely correct
that contemporary poetry, nearly all of which is composed in the diction of
a grammar school child, does not disturb contemplationlessness. Today, any
poetry that challenges the reader to think or that even uses words of more than
two syllables is branded elitist.) According to Heidegger, thought that tran-
scends everyday comprehension is assigned not to the poet but to the inventor
of new technological devices. But even these devices are ultimately meant to
enhance our lived experience, whereby the inventions that are most highly
honored and are called artistic are the ones that are most closely applicable
to the exciting of the feelings. Heidegger’s implied conclusion is that these
inventors and inventions should, in the metaphysical–aesthetic age, not only
be called “artistic” but also “musical.”
In the “philosophy of art,” that is, the approach espoused by Heidegger, art
has a higher vocation than the mere excitation of feelings and the deepening
of lived experience. In a sense, art is indeed there to excite the feelings, but
these are not feelings as usually understood. Art is there to jolt us out of our
complacency over the fact that there is something rather than nothing. Art for
Heidegger does not portray present beings; it portrays the presence of those
beings, the astounding fact that beings have emerged into presence, have
had a presence bestowed on them. In other words, art is there to jolt us into
wonder, to make us contemplate, to philosophize about Being. The function
of art is not to confirm us in our subjectivity; it is to make us less of a subject
in control and more of a reverential wonderer. The experience of art is then
something very close to anxiety or the hearing of the voice of conscience. Art
is a hearing of the voice of the friend, the voice trying to make itself heard
over the everyday clamor of the they. It is a voice calling us to contemplation
instead of calculation. It is a voice calling us to individuation in the sense of
becoming shepherd, steward, preserver of “something higher,” of Being, of
that which bestows presence. Thus, according to Heidegger, if art ever attains
“the highest possibility of its essence,” it will “awaken and found anew our
vision of, and trust in, that which bestows.”8
Presumably, for Heidegger, music in a post-metaphysical age will descend
from the zenith to the nadir. If music is so strictly tied to the arousing of
feelings, and if contentless feelings are what counts least, then music could
no longer be the paradigmatic art. Is that true? Does music say nothing
 Music of Mortality 127

about Being and merely arouse subjective feelings? I am about to challenge

Heidegger’s view, indeed from Heidegger’s own perspective.

MERLEAU-PONTY

Merleau-Ponty, like Heidegger, mostly disparages music and links it to

feeling and lived experience. There could not be a more exact and striking
description of the effect of music on lived experience than the following:
“Music is not in visible space; on the contrary, it undermines that space,
besieges it, and supplants it. People waiting to hear a concert are overly
composed for what is to come; they take on the disinterested air of judges
and exchange smiles and a few words, oblivious to the fact that the ground
is about to quake beneath them and that they will soon be like a ship’s crew
tossed about on the surface of the sea by a storm.”9
Merleau-Ponty maintains that the space of music is not that of visual per-
ception. Music has its own spatiality, although the spaces of the various senses
are merely “moments of a global configuration which is the one space, and
I can understand that my power to attain this one space is inseparable from
my ability to sever myself from it by ensconcing myself in a single sense.”10
What then happens if I ensconce myself in hearing, specifically hearing music
in a concert hall? According to Merleau-Ponty, “When I reopen my eyes in
a concert hall, visible space seems to me very confined in comparison to that
other space in which, a moment ago, the music was breaking forth. Even if I
keep my eyes open during the whole performance, it seems that the music is
not truly contained in this precisely delimited and paltry space I see before
me. The music insinuates a new dimension into visible space, and it is there
that the music ebbs and flows.”11
The space of music is more encompassing than visually perceived space.
Music opens up a space from which the other spaces are broken off. Visual
space is paltry in relation to musical space. If all this is so, then precisely as
more encompassing, musical space is apriori, the condition of the possibil-
ity of experiencing individual spaces within it. Musical space is a condition
of the possibility of visually perceived space. Let us establish this apriori
character by appealing once again (see above, p. 59) to Kant’s metaphysical
exposition of space.
Kant attempts to demonstrate that space is an apriori intuition. As an intu-
ition, space is distinct from a concept; as apriori, space is a condition of the
possibility of experience. Kant argues (Critique of Pure Reason, A25/B39)
as follows. Both space and concepts involve a one–many relation. In the
case of concepts, the real things are what must undergo limitation. In order
to arrive at the concept, we must consider a thing in a limited respect, the
128 Chapter 5

respect which the thing has in common with other such things. In the case of
space, it is the other way around; space itself must be limited to arrive at the
parts that fit within it. So space is an intuition. It follows then, that space is
also apriori, for if the parts are broken off from it, then in regard to space, the
whole is “absolutely prior to the parts.”
But how is this possible? How could anyone experience the whole of
space, especially as prior to the parts? It is possible, according to Kant, if
space is considered an “infinite given magnitude.” That does not mean space
is an infinitely large container; such a container could not be given. Space is
given as a whole inasmuch as it is the realm of extensiveness, the realm that
makes possible any delimited quantitative extension.
In more Heideggerian terms, space is the realm individual beings must step
into in order to appear as spatial beings. Space is the clearing that provides
beings their possibility of coming to presence. Space, specifically the most
encompassing of all spaces, is what allows beings to be present to “essentially
spatial Dasein” (see above, p. 59).
We saw in chapter 1 that Heidegger compares the most proper phenom-
enon of phenomenology, namely, Being itself, to space and time for Kant.
Now we see the corollary: space is comparable to Being. For essentially spa-
tial Dasein, space is Being. That is to say, the most encompassing space, the
space that is prior to its parts, the whole of space as the realm of a clearing, is
Being. But—coming to the point of this entire disquisition on space—music
is our access to that most expansive space. Thereby music is the voice of
Being. In listening to music, what is disclosed to us is Being as making pos-
sible an experience of beings.
Certainly some qualifications would be needed here. For instance, it would
not seem that all music could carry out this function. The full effect of hear-
ing the voice of Being in the guise of the most expansive space is possibly
limited to symphonic music in a large concert hall. Furthermore, it does not
follow that no one has an experience of spatial beings before attending a
classical concert. There are of course other modes of access to space itself,
but music might be the most striking mode of access. It might indeed require
music for us to be jolted out of our complacency and actually wonder how
beings come to presence. Music is the voice of Being calling over the voice
of the they and even over the voice of conscience that tells us of our guilt.
Thereby music provokes—or at least might provoke—wonder in a positive
way: wonder not simply at the inexplicability of the presence of things but
wonder as exuberant joy that we have been gifted with a world. Great music,
whether Beethoven’s Ninth or not, tells us that “above the starry firmament a
loving parent must dwell.”
Merleau-Ponty comes to something like this conclusion himself, in his
discussion of art in a book called L’Oeil et l’Esprit. The Eye and the Mind is
 Music of Mortality 129

devoted almost entirely to visual works of art and contains many reproduc-
tions of modern artworks, such as drawings by Matisse and paintings by
Klee. Merleau-Ponty is here mostly in dialogue with Descartes on the issue
of visual perception. But Merleau-Ponty does turn to music, again with what
might seem a disparagement: “Music is too far on this side of the world and of
what can be designated in speech to be able to represent anything but beings
as sketched out in advance, Being as surging and ebbing, as expanding, as
bursting forth and eddying.”12
Merleau-Ponty takes this characterization of the power of music to be a
reproach: music does not depict the things in being, namely, the world and what
can be designated conceptually. Music can represent only Being, the dynamism
of Being. But is that not rather praise of music instead of censure? At least from
the viewpoint of the capacity of music to provoke wonder, Merleau-Ponty is
heaping the highest honor on music. Music is indeed on this side of the world
and of conceptuality. But that means music is apriori. It opens the listener to
the sketch in advance, the paradigm, the matrix, from which all beings emerge.
As residing on this side, music opens up what is closer to us than the beings in
the world. What resides closer than beings is Being, and accordingly music is
the voice of Being, calling on us to contemplate in wonder what we might oth-
erwise take for granted: beings are present on account of “something higher.”

HUSSERL

Husserl did not elaborate a theory of music or of art in general. He does see,
however, the crucial role of art in the practice of phenomenology. The phe-
nomenological method is one that operates on examples, and these examples
need to be as varied as possible. Our own experience and the offerings of
history are limited, and our imaginations are sluggish, preventing us from
devising original examples in phantasy. Therefore, the phenomenologist must
rely on great imaginative art, especially as present in poetry, to supply the
required examples and to fertilize our own imaginative powers. The “purely
fictitious” thereby becomes the “element in which phenomenology lives and
breathes.”13
Husserl mentions music often enough, but he does not thematize it.
Nevertheless, he proposes a theory of passive synthesis that applies to music
and that applies especially to music about death. Husserl’s understanding of
passive synthesis will prove to be an essential basis on which I will build my
claim that the experience of music is a mode—perhaps the best mode—of
anticipation, authentic being-toward-death.
Basically for Husserl the difference between active and passive synthesis
amounts to this: in cases of passive synthesis, the material to be synthesized
130 Chapter 5

has already undergone synthesis prior to being apprehended, whereas in

cases of active synthesis, the material is first apprehended discretely and only
afterwards synthesized. A discursive concept is a prime example of some-
thing actively synthesized: first we must run around (dis–curs) collecting the
discrete examples and then abstract out what they have in common. First we
must experience individual trees and then subsequently synthesize them into
a concept. In passive synthesis, however, there are no discrete elements; the
elements are already synthesized when apprehended. What we immediately
apprehend is the result of a synthesis already performed.
Passive syntheses are perceptual rather than discursive ones and have
two modes, applying respectively to spatial and temporal experience. Let us
begin with the passive synthesis involved in spatial perception. A profile of
a perceived thing is surrounded by an inner and an outer horizon. The profile
looks the way it does partly on account of the influence of these horizons.
For example, to consider the outer horizon, a gray object on a white back-
ground looks much darker than the same object on a black background. The
appearance of the object has already been synthesized with the background
when we apprehend it. We do not first see the object and then the background
and then by reasoning deduce how the one influences the other. In our very
apprehension of the object, the background has already done its work. That
is the sense of passivity. It does not mean spatial perception is a matter of
passive undergoing, as if it were the reception of some blunt force. We must
be engaged in attempting to see in order for the passive synthesis to operate.
We must be active perceivers.
The same passive synthesis is involved in the inner horizon, namely, the
other profiles of the object I am looking at, the profiles now hidden from
view. The way I protend these other profiles is passively synthesized with
the given profile. For instance, if I am walking along a city street, the fronts
of the houses look like the fronts of real houses; the fronts have a solidity
about them. But if I am walking on the set of a movie production, where I
surmise that the fronts are mere fronts with nothing but scaffolding behind
then, then the fronts will appear differently. The projected back of the house
influences passively the way the front appears. In general, if I believe some-
thing exists in reality, it will appear differently than it does if I believe it is
only imaginary. This circumstance, the dependence of an appearance on the
projected inner horizon, is the one and only motive behind Husserl’s tran-
scendental reduction. If the reflecting phenomenologist wants to describe
phenomena, appearances, just as they are given, without the influence of the
projected inner horizon, then that inner horizon has to be put out of play.
That is to say, judgments about reality or non-reality must be suspended.
The phenomenologist must refrain from any judgment about whether this
is a front of a real house or a movie set house; the phenomenologist must
 Music of Mortality 131

describe how the font appears by itself and so must abstain from any judg-
ments about the inner horizon, about that which makes something real or
not.
As to the passive synthesis of time, Husserl’s prime example is the hearing
of a melody. In order to hear a melody as a melody and not as one single chord
of notes or at the opposite extreme as discrete notes without inner connection
to one another, the notes need to be synthesized in a certain way. The listener
to the melody must retain the past notes (yet retain them as past, with a sense
that they are slipping away) and protend the future notes (as future, with a sense
that they are still approaching). If the notes were all to be apprehended with-
out any differentiation of past, present, and future, then the notes would seem
to be sounding all at once, and that is not a melody. On the other hand, if the
notes are apprehended discretely, as totally differentiated into past, present, and
future, that is, totally outside the horizon of the other notes (perhaps one note
now, another an hour later), then the melody again breaks down. In the case of
discrete notes, they would have to be actively synthesized by recalling them in
deliberate memory; the notes would no longer influence one another and the
melody would vanish. The notes must be passively synthesized in a melody:
that means the notes must be heard as already synthesized with the other notes
but not so united as to be one with the sounding note. While hearing the pres-
ent note, we must have some vague expectation of what is coming and must
possess a vague retention of what has passed—without the effort required to
remember explicitly. The future and the past must be to some extent, and only
to some extent, present in the current note heard.
Especially with respect to the passive synthesis of a melody, the term
“passive” is misleading. A lackadaisical, totally passive listener will not hear
a melody; if I let my attention wander while listening to music, the melody
is lost. The passive synthesis of music requires an active, engaged listener.
Passive synthesis, the actual hearing of a melody, is a favor granted to some-
one who is actively listening.
Any note, in order to be heard as the note of a melody, must be involved
in complex temporal relations. The future must already—to some extent—be
present in it, and the past must still—to some extent—be retained in it. Taken
out of this temporal horizon, a note is just a discrete note. The crucial point
for my purposes is that this temporal complexity involved in music is pre-
cisely the one that constitutes the meaning of the Being of Dasein. It is the
exact same complex temporality as the one that must be projected in order to
make the Being of Dasein comprehensible. The passive synthesis of the notes
in a melody is thus made possible by the meaning of the Being of Dasein.
Music, melodies, can be heard because Dasein’s possibilities are most
proper ones. Past possibilities, ones already chosen, are still to some extent
open possibilities, and future possibilities are already to some extent actual in
132 Chapter 5

the present. Death is the future possibility. Music therefore is structured like
being-toward-death.
Death may not explicitly lie on the horizon of all musical experience. But
all such experience does include at least some expectation that the melody
will end. Thereby, the listener has a sense that not only is the forthcoming
note already present, but so is the next one and the next, all the way to the end.
Music involves at least implicit awareness that the end is already present and
is not utterly outstanding. Bringing Husserl and Heidegger together, it can
be said that Dasein’s death is passively synthesized with his or her present.
Music, inasmuch as it involves the same passive synthesis, is at least implicit
disclosure of authentic dying.

HEIDEGGER’S KREUTZER SONATA

With all of the above as preparation, we come finally to the second part of
the book Gelassenheit, the “Discussion of detachment,” the trialogue. My
intention is to interpret it as music, specifically as voices raised in three-part
harmony. That is precisely what Heidegger said would follow his speech. If it
can be shown that the trialogue is also in sonata form, then it could be called
Heidegger’s Kreutzer Sonata. If it can be shown that the theme of this sonata
is being-toward-death, then this sonata might be music about the Being of
Dasein. It might be a carrying out of contemplative thinking, anticipation,
hearing the voice of conscience, hearing the voice of the friend, philosophiz-
ing. Music might even show itself as more appropriate to what philosophy
attempts to accomplish than is abstract thought.
The first step is to see how the roles are distributed to the three male voices.
The lead tenor is obviously the teacher. He directs the discussion, and the
other participants defer to him. This teacher is not explicitly identified as
Heidegger, but it could be no one else. The teacher speaks in the vocabulary
and from the general outlook of Heidegger, but the teacher proposes so many
paradoxes that he might be some Zen Master parading as Heidegger—or vice
versa.
The baritone (or second tenor) is the scholar. He mostly remains subservi-
ent to the tenor but does at times take the lead. To him is assigned the all-
important theme of the coda. He is a typical pedantic scholar, with a memory
for the history of philosophy. He knows all the right words to say, all the
formulas, but it is not certain he knows what they actually mean.
The bass is the scientist. He is the dullest and mostly just reverberates the
words of the others. He is versed in the natural sciences and has only half
shaken off the objectivistic attitude. Nevertheless, he is completely open to
the new way of thinking proposed by the teacher.
 Music of Mortality 133

In order to interpret the trialogue as a sonata, three aspects must be

accounted for: harmony, florid passages, and sonata form. Eventually, this
sonata will also be tied to death.
As to harmony, it is possibly the most striking aspect of the entire discus-
sion. The participants stem from very different backgrounds. What should a
Zen Master, a pedant, and a natural scientist have in common? Almost noth-
ing. And yet, except for some minor disagreements which are soon resolved,
the three voices speak in perfect harmony. They agree about everything. In
music, harmony requires two or more notes sounding together. That is not
possible in a written trialogue, but I believe Heidegger simulates such har-
mony by having the participants very often finish one another’s sentences.
That is as close as a trialogue can come to sounding a chord. Many sentences
involve the contribution of all three choir members. One sentence is even
composed of five separate contributions. These voices are in total close-part
harmony.
A sonata is designed to showcase virtuosity with florid passages. In the
trialogue, nearly every sentence is a florid passage. The trialogue is as far
from dull logic-chopping as could be imagined. The voices all speak in
elaborate, enigmatic, esoteric language without actually making any con-
ceptual advancement. They rehearse some themes from Heidegger’s later
philosophy, and Being is given a new name, “region.” But the reader will
find nothing to learn here. No new insights are gained, and no phenomena
are clarified. The participants are engaged in philosophizing, but they settle
no issues definitively. They open themselves to where their contemplative
thought is directing them, but it leads nowhere in particular. The participants
have definitely taken the first philosophical step, but the second eludes them.
They are mired in wonder, wallowing in wonder, and do not accomplish any-
thing that could be set down as a philosophical thesis. The trialogue remains
“on this side of what can be designated in speech.”
With regard to sonata form, the first three moments are more or less clearly
marked in the trialogue; the coda definitely is. After an introductory section,
the first theme is voiced by the lead tenor. It is the theme of “region” as a
name for Being (G, p. 40/65). The counter-theme is assigned to the bass: the
theme of “waiting” (G, p. 46/69). The resolution is accomplished by the tenor
again: “appropriation” (G, p. 52/73). As in Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata, the
themes are not precisely distinct and appear and reappear in various guises.
The coda of the trialogue is the most significant section of this sonata.
Its theme is assigned to the pedantic scholar, who offers a pedantic word, a
Greek word standing alone as one of the fragments of Heraclitus: Ἀγχιβασίη
(G, p. 71/88). The coda itself is in sonata form: the baritone offers one mean-
ing of the term, the bass offers a counter-meaning, and then the tenor finally
resolves the issue.
134 Chapter 5

Heraclitus’ word ἀγχιβασίη (anchibasíe) is a nominative singular feminine

noun formed from the roots ἄγχι, “near,” and βαίvω, “to go.” Accordingly, the
basic meaning of the word is “approaching.” The scholar proposes the mean-
ing “going forth,” the way knowledge is a striking out in search of the truth.
The scientist, true to his background, proposes the meaning “attacking forth,”
the way nature is attacked by the methods of science. The teacher reverses
the direction of the motion and proposes the meaning “drawing near,” not as
something Dasein accomplishes toward the truth but as a movement of the truth
toward Dasein. That in general would express contemplative thinking versus
calculative thinking. Contemplation is the work of a shepherd, steward, pre-
server, in openness to the self-offering of Being. The other participants accept
this meaning, and the trialogue ends, with harmony restored.
If we apply Husserl’s understanding of passive synthesis to the end of the
trialogue, assuming the discussion is a sort of music, then I believe we can
see the coda on the horizon of the entire discussion. The word ἀγχιβασίη—
its meaning—is in play throughout; at the end the word simply comes to be
sounded explicitly. This word is comparable to the last note of a melody or
like death; at the end, the last note and death arrive in their own person, but
they were present beneath the surface all along.
The term ἀγχιβασίη does mean “drawing near,” and the teacher correctly
identifies the direction of the movement—an approach of Being toward
Dasein. But the teacher leaves implicit the connotation of the term: an impor-
tunate pressing close. The Greek word was characteristically applied to the
behavior of a creditor toward a debtor. This is not a neutral approach of one
thing to another in objective space but is instead a “dunning,” “buttonholing,”
“constantly pursuing.” Therefore, what the teacher is leaving implicit is the
application of the term to death. Death is the creditor, and we all owe it a debt.
Death is constantly badgering us for payment. It is indefinitely certain in its
possibility. The teacher is then correct to speak of the drawing near of Being,
the uncanny; what he leaves implicit is that the most uncanny of all is death.
This sense of something constantly rumbling on underneath, threatening,
pursuing, is not lost on the participants in the trialogue. The scholar (G, p.
69/87) says the word was pursuing him from the very beginning. The teacher
(G, 70/88) says they have all along been confronted by something ineffable.
The scholar (G, p. 72/89) concludes that ἀγχιβασίη is the most appropriate
name for their conversation as a whole. What is most ineffable, what most
pursues, what most confronts, what most draws near is death. Therefore, this
theme, although announced explicitly only in the coda, is the theme of the
trialogue, and it makes Heidegger’s Kreutzer Sonata music about death.
What is the proper response to the menace of death? For Heidegger, authen-
tic being-toward-death is not calculation about death, not preoccupation with
death, but instead is contemplation of the meaning of Being. That is exactly
 Music of Mortality 135

what is transpiring in the trialogue: while sensing the menace of death, the
dunning of the creditor, the participants engage in philosophizing and wallow-
ing in wonder. The participants thereby say “Yes” and “No” to death. They
allow death to pursue them, but they do not allow it to dominate. The trialogue
is detachment in the guise of contemplative thinking, namely, philosophizing
about the meaning of Being. The trialogue contains no conceptual determina-
tion of what detachment is. Instead, the trialogue exemplifies detachment.
The trialogue can be such an exemplification precisely if understood as
music. In order to explain that, we need to bring together Merleau-Ponty,
Husserl, and Heidegger on the theme of music. From Merleau-Ponty and
Husserl, we learn that music discloses being-toward-death. From Heidegger,
we learn of detachment as the authentic way of being-toward death, and in
his trialogue we see that detachment in play.
Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology thematizes the spatiality of music. What
listening to music discloses is that we are not secure in space. Music reveals
a complex spatiality such that we can never be sure where we stand; while
listening we are, as Merleau-Ponty says, tossed about with the ground quaking
beneath us. And when we open our eyes and return to our ordinary world, space
looks paltry and strange. Music disrupts our experience of space and shows us
as insecure in space. Husserl’s phenomenology thematizes the temporality of
music. Listening to music discloses that we are not secure in time. Our tempo-
rality is a complex one, in which an end is always impending. Our present is
always threatened, if not by the utter end then at least by something not wholly
in our control. Therefore, from Merleau-Ponty and Husserl, we learn of music
as disclosing the Being of Dasein as insecure, as being-toward-death.
From Heidegger we learn of detachment, contemplative thinking, as
the authentic response to the constant threat of death. In the trialogue, this
detachment amounts to the participants carrying on with the melodies of the
sonata while the danger of the creditor drones on beneath. The melodies are
in a sense sneering at the ground bass: the music will go on despite the threat
beneath, aware of it but refusing to be dominated by it. The melodies are say-
ing “Yes” and “No” to the ἀγχιβασίη.
If we generalize, then we can say that all classical music is structured like
this trialogue; all classical music is in sonata form or at least in the form of
a melodic line over a ground bass. Then all such music is structured like
detachment, like the Being of Dasein as being-toward-death and as the refusal
to be dominated by it. In addition, music is an even more effective disclosure
of the Being of Dasein than is philosophy, because, on Heidegger’s own
terms, affect has a priority over rational understanding, which merely brings
the more primordial disclosure to concepts. Then, in accord with Heidegger’s
own thinking, Being speaks in music more than in philosophy. Music is the
voice of Being.
136 Chapter 5

SOCRATES

Let the coda to this chapter—which attempted to mingle play and serious-
ness on the theme of music and mortality—be a return to Socrates. We know
him as the paradigm of authentic being-toward-death, constantly practic-
ing Socratic love, constantly gazing through worldly beings to the Ideas in
heaven. What is his relation to music?
In his prison cell, on the morning of his execution, Socrates tells of a
recurrent dream. He says he heard many times in his past life a command
in a dream to “make music and keep at it” (Phaedo, 60E). Socrates took the
command to mean that he should keep at what he was already doing, namely,
philosophizing, since “philosophy is the greatest music” (Phaedo, 61A).
But now Socrates wonders if the command (not the voice of his exclusively
dissuading daimon, so perhaps the voice of conscience, the summons of
phronesis) might not mean to engage in music in the usual sense, and so he
composes a hymn to the god whose festival was in progress. Socrates is refer-
ring to Apollo, whose festival was the occasion for the delay in the carrying
out of the execution.
Socrates does not here explain how philosophy is the greatest music, but
in another dialogue, he does take up the relation between philosophy and the
muses (Phaedrus, 259C–D). Philosophy is the province of the two greatest
and oldest muses, Calliope and Urania. The pursuit of philosophy is an honor-
ing of these greatest muses, and so is the greatest music, or at least it rivals
the music of these muses themselves.
These muses are the patrons of philosophy because their province is the
greatest things: heaven and reason (= the relation between Being and Dasein).
The muses disclose these things, but the muses do not compose philosophical
treatises; they merely make music and sing. According to Socrates, however,
they make the most beautiful music. In other words, they offer the greatest
disclosure of Being and of Dasein merely by making music; if the music
is beautiful enough, it does not need conceptualization. It can disclose the
meaning of Being and yet remain on this side of what can be designated in
speech.
Socrates in the end turns to music; he composes a hymn to Apollo.
Presumably, he made the hymn as beautiful as he could. He must have come
to the realization that beautiful music is by itself a disclosure—indeed the
best possible disclosure, a disclosure rivaling that of the muses themselves—
of what philosophy is attempting to say in concepts. Thus, Socrates began by
believing that philosophy is the greatest music, and in the end he senses that
music might be the greatest philosophy.
 Chapter 6

Corona-Virus-Disease-2019
and Mortality

COVID-19 SLOGANS AND HEIDEGGER’S

VITAL CATEGORIES

We breathe an atmosphere of mortality inasmuch as death is in the air in the

figurative sense. Death colors everything we do. Death is also in the air in
the literal sense, inasmuch as music and the voice of the they resound in our
ears. But the atmosphere today is mortal in another sense as well: it is con-
taminated with carcinogens and deadly viruses. What would a Heideggerian
approach to philosophy and death have to say about the current corona-virus-
disease–2019 (acronym: COVID-19) pandemic? Are there distinct possibili-
ties in our current plight for philosophizing, that is, for disclosing the Being
of the beings we ourselves are?
The air in this pandemic is filled not only with a new corona virus but also
with new voices, slogans about the proper response to contain its spread.
Four slogans have been drummed into everyone’s consciousness. They take
the form of commands: Lock down. Practice social distancing. Wash your
hands. Mask up. From a Heideggerian perspective, what do these slogans, all
of them reminding us of our mortality, offer as food for thought—specifically
for thought in the sense of contemplation?
Dasein is not the human person as such. Indeed Dasein is always “mine”
to some particular person, and there is no Dasein apart from a person. But
Dasein is the person thematized in a restricted way. Da-sein is a person con-
sidered only with respect to Sein, Being. The concept of Dasein prescinds
from everything about a person that is irrelevant to a disclosure of what it
means to be.
Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein is not a philosophical anthropology, not a
theory of the human being as such, not a theory of human life. For example,

137
138 Chapter 6

Being and Time says nothing about sexual difference, since that is irrelevant
to the meaning of Being in general. It is not the case that only one sex under-
stands Being within the horizon of temporality. It is not the case that for only
one sex is discourse a middle-voiced phenomenon, a disclosure not simply
to the outside but even to the very one who is discoursing. It is not the case
that for only one sex is there a priority of the ready-to-hand over the present-
at-hand. Nor does Being and Time say anything about many other human
characteristics that would need to be included in a philosophical anthropology
but are irrelevant to Dasein as the “there” of Being. Heidegger says nothing
about eating and sleeping, as if he failed to recognize that a person has these
needs. But these are physiological needs, and Heidegger’s perspective toward
Dasein is ontological, not biological.
In the period prior to Being and Time, however, Heidegger was indeed
occupied with human life as such. He called it “factical” life, and he attempted
to articulate its properties, which he called “categories.” The perspective is
still philosophical, not biological, but already we see a distinction from Being
and Time, where Dasein is more radically differentiated from things and has
to be characterized in terms of “existentialia” rather than properties or catego-
ries. Factical life is human life as lived not with respect to an understanding
of the meaning of Being but rather with regard to life itself. The categories
of factical life are the ways a human being comports himself or herself to his
or her own everyday life amid everyday concerns. Heidegger’s philosophy of
factical life amounts to a prolonged reflection on inauthenticity. Being and
Time will add authenticity.
Heidegger’s most sustained discussion of factical life occurs in a lecture
course from the winter semester of 1921–1922.1 What I wish to exploit from
this lecture course is the remarkable parallel between the categories of facti-
cal life and the slogans mentioned above:

Lock down: category of sequestration (Abriegelung)

Social distancing: category of abolition of distance (Abstandstilgung)
Wash your hands: category of frantic self-concern (tolles Sorgen über sich
selbst)
Mask up: category of larvance (Larvanz) (Latin larvatus, “masked”).

I will attempt to think the slogans in the direction of Heidegger’s catego-

ries. Thereby the pandemic might be seen to offer distinct possibilities for
contemplation, and we might uncover again an intimate connection between
philosophy and death. My attempt was motivated by a recent poem about the
COVID-19 pandemic and its “unexamined slogans.” I will end this chapter
with a close Heideggerian reading of the poem in full. But let us first turn to
Heidegger himself.
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 139

RELATIONAL SENSE OF LIFE: CARING

In the lecture course on factical life, antedating Being and Time by five years,
Heidegger is still seeking his genuine philosophical voice. But the vocabulary
of his magnum opus is foreshadowed. Heidegger does not yet use “Dasein”
in the technical sense; here it simply means “existence” and is equivalent
to “life.” It means “to be in and through life” (PI, p. 85/64). The basic idea
of Dasein as a technical term, however, is already visible. Life, existence,
is relationality, and what life necessarily relates to is the world. Heidegger
takes “living” in a transitive sense: life lives something, and what it lives is
the world. The world is not an optional accoutrement to life; life is always
already involved in the world. Therefore, the concept of being-in-the-world
is adumbrated as a name for the beings we ourselves are.
Furthermore, Heidegger already calls the essence of factical life “care.”
The term means basically the same here as it does in Being and Time, but
Heidegger is more explicit that care simply means finding something to be
of interest, to be meaningful, whether negatively or positively: “Living, in its
transitive meaning, is to be interpreted according to its relational sense as car-
ing: to care for and about something; to live as directed to something, which
is to care for it. . . . In unrestrained excitement, in near indifference, and in
everything in between—‘to live’ means to care. What we care for and about,
what caring adheres to, is equivalent to what is meaningful” (PI, 90/68).
The difference from Being and Time is that the caring which character-
izes factical life is primarily a caring for one’s own continuance in life: “In
its broadest relational sense, to live is to care about one’s ‘daily bread.’ . . .
Privation (privatio, carentia) is both the relational and the intrinsic basic
mode and sense of the Being of life” (PI, 90/68). In this early lecture course,
Heidegger has a much more jaundiced view of humanity than he does in
Being and Time. Factical life is self-absorbed, a continuous attempt to satisfy
a constant privation, a constant hunger. Caring is interested in the world pri-
marily because that is where one’s daily bread might be found. To flee from
this hunger and possess many things that can satisfy it is not to escape priva-
tion. It is entirely to be preoccupied with it; to avert privation is, as always,
to acknowledge all the more insidiously what one is turning away from. To
stockpile provisions might seem to bring security, but it is actually all the
more to acknowledge the privation that always threatens, no matter how full
one’s storehouse. The more one is preoccupied with security, the more inse-
cure one becomes.
The caring which characterizes factical life is equivalent to inauthen-
ticity, as it will later be called. Caring is relationality, and the general
categories of the relationality of factical life are the following. In caring
about meaningful things, life experiences an inclination, a pull toward
140 Chapter 6

something specific. This pull stems from life itself; it is its own proclivity.
Such proclivity impels life into the world, rigidifies life, and petrifies its
directionality toward the world. Life thereby takes from worldly things its
directionality toward itself. Life experiences itself only in the form of its
world; life is essentially experienced as world. Life is thereby transported,
abandoning itself to the pressure exerted by the world. With the passage
of time, the relationality of life becomes disperse, and newly awakened
proclivities keep life increasingly disperse. Life becomes played out at
random. Any claim of life to see itself as more than its world is contested
by the diversions offered by the world, whereby life becomes self-satisfied.
Heidegger concludes: “The more incisive interpretation of the relationality
of caring has thus disclosed and set in relief the following general catego-
ries of life: inclination, proclivity, being-transported, dispersion, and self-
satisfaction. Those are the phenomena which must guide the interpretation”
(PI, 102/76–77).
What a jaundiced view of life! Heidegger is precisely describing com-
plete inauthenticity: life not only related to the world, but life as under the
complete dominance of the world, life as taking its self-understanding from
worldly things, life as world. Furthermore, this is Heidegger’s entire account
of factical life. He does not see any motive toward authenticity. In particular,
nothing in factical life corresponds to the experience of anxiety (disclosure
of the possibility of authenticity) or conscience (disclosure of practical ways
of making authenticity actual).
Death does loom over factical life, but this life is inauthentic being-toward-
death. Factical life is preoccupied with death solely in the sense of fearing
death, is concerned solely with averting death, prolonging life. As Heidegger
says, the basic sense of factical is privation, concern with one’s daily bread.
Nevertheless, in turning away from authenticity, factical life must sense
at least implicitly what it is turning from. So there may be possibilities of a
disclosure of authenticity. Insofar as the particular categories of factical life
Heidegger is about to describe are equivalent to the slogans of the pandemic,
these slogans may then offer an occasion for contemplation.

LOCK DOWN!

To lock down is to stay home, isolate oneself, barricade oneself. What con-
stitutes the most fundamental barricading of oneself? For Heidegger, what
is most fundamental is self-barricading: the sequestration (Abriegelung,
from Riegel, “bar,” “obstacle,” “barricade”) of life against itself. Such self-
barricading constitutes the first specific category of factical life. Factical life
is sequestration.
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 141

Heidegger draws on the general categories of factical life and argues as

follows. In being transported by the meaningful things of the world, that is,
in the hyperbolic development of ever new possibilities of diversion, factical
life constantly eludes itself, nudges itself out of the way. Factical life, in con-
stantly bustling about over worldly concerns, has no free moment to examine
itself. But factical life knows very well, even if implicitly, what it is doing. In
order to nudge itself out of the way, factical life must know where it itself is
to be found. Eluding requires consciousness of what to elude. The more that
life increases its worldly concerns and its proclivities toward worldly things,
all the more certainly does life have to do with itself. But it has to do with
itself in a negative way, as what is to be avoided. In caring for worldly things,
life avoids caring for what is not one of things of the world, namely, itself, the
authentic self (Heidegger does not use the term “authenticity” in this lecture
course, but it is obviously what he means by the self that is eluded in worldly
concerns). Factical life sequesters itself, barricades itself, from itself so as not
to encounter itself; it desires to be diverted from itself. Life desires to be care-
free, unworried about itself, assured of its own importance in worldly affairs,
even if these are no great matter. For example, factical life busies itself with
sharpening pencils and arranging paper clips so as to seem to itself engaged
in meaningful activities, all the while eluding the actual tasks of writing and
thinking. “In concernful sequestration against itself, factical life develops
ever new possibilities of meaningfulness in which it can bustle about and
thereby be assured of its own significance” (PI, p. 107/80).
In sequestration, factical life finds itself only in the world, only as engaged
in busy-work. “Caring life indeed finds itself precisely in the mode of inclina-
tion within the world and has no inducement to seek itself in some other way”
(PI, p. 106/79). Then what is it seeking in eluding itself? Heidegger’s jaundiced
answer: it is ever seeking to make things easy for itself. Heidegger explains the
easiness in terms of Aristotle’s distinction between the ease of vice and the dif-
ficulty of virtue (PI, p. 108/81). It is a matter of quantity. Vice is easy because
there are many ways to go wrong; virtue is difficult because there is only one
way to hit the mark. By multiplying hyperbolically the possibilities of diversion,
it is easy for life to elude itself. It itself is only one mark out of a myriad of oth-
ers. “Mundane difficulties are actually ways to take our ease” (PI, p. 108/81).
Factical life desires to be carefree. That is still a mode of care, a mode of the
concern of life for itself, namely, “the assurance that nothing will be closed
off to it” (PI, p. 109/81), that it can cope with any problem. Carefreeness is
the security that derives from attending to life’s superficial problems while
eluding the decision regarding whether these problems, even if complex and
challenging, are all that life is meant to accomplish. Factical life eludes the
primal decision: “Carefreeness then shapes the world and, in order to be sat-
isfying, must increase; it becomes hyperbolic and grants an easy concern and
142 Chapter 6

fulfillment . . . . At the same time, hyperbolic existence proves to be ellipti-

cal [harboring an ellipsis]: it eludes that which is difficult, that which can be
attained in only one way. It recognizes no fixed limits, and it is unwilling to
be posed upon a primal decision and in it” (PI, p. 109/81).
The primal decision, the difficult one, is that between authenticity and inau-
thenticity. Factical life contains no motive to pose this decision. Factical life,
as described by Heidegger a hundred years ago, is not anxious; it contains no
motive to be unsatisfied with worldly concerns. Nor are our own lives today
anxious; we are too much caught up in the fear of corona-virus-disease-2019
to have a free moment for concern over anything but, as just quoted, “the
conserving and preserving of existence.” Nevertheless, the slogans drummed
into our heads might give us food for thought.
If we examine the command to lock down in the direction of Heidegger’s
vital category of sequestration, we might disclose the inauthenticity of a life
constantly bustling about over mundane matters. Thereby, the COVID-19
pandemic might be an occasion for contemplation. We might take some
little thing, such as a slogan, and find in it a way to disclose the opposite of
inauthenticity. Contemplation would then be directed at how we are actually
locked down, actually isolated and sequestered—not from others but from
ourselves, our authentic selves. Locking down amounts to busying ourselves
with mundane practical affairs, trivial ones and even ones of supreme impor-
tance for the continuation of the life we have been living, inauthentic life.
Contemplation might then, in the manner of anxiety rather than fear, show
the path to a decision between authenticity and inauthenticity. That would
amount to disclosing the Being of Dasein, philosophizing.

PRACTICE SOCIAL DISTANCING!

The command to social distancing is not well expressed. Social distance and
closeness are matters of the affections and are unrelated to the spread of germs.
I am socially close to the ones I love (or hate) even if an ocean rolls between us.
The following poem could not express better the spatial experience of lovers:

Unforgotten
by Robert W. Service

I know a garden where the lilies gleam

And one who lingers in the sunshine there;
She is than white-stoled lily far more fair,
And oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream!
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 143

I know a garret, cold and dark and drear,

And one who toils and toils with tireless pen,
Until his brave, sad eyes grow weary—then
He seeks the stars, pale, silent as a seer.

An ah, it’s strange; for, desolate and dim,

Between these two there rolls an ocean wide;
Yet he is in the garden by her side,
And she is in the garret there with him.2

Social distance cannot be measured by yardsticks, and so it makes no sense

to maintain a social distance of six feet, as the slogan commands. What sort
of distance is a category of factical life according to Heidegger? The lecture
course describes a complex distancing, complex both in regard to things and
other persons. In both cases, the complexity amounts to an establishing of
distance and a simultaneous abolition of it.
With respect to other persons encountered in the world, Heidegger’s jaundiced
view sees factical life always seeking distance rather than equality or coopera-
tion. The distantiation takes the form of a seeking of preeminence: “Factical life
is intent on rank, success, position in life (position in the world), superiority,
advantage, calculation, bustle, clamor, and ostentation” (PI, p. 103/77–8).
Is such seeking of differentiation from others a matter of authenticity,
refusing to follow the crowd? Not at all. It is still taking one’s bearings from
others. It is in fact an abolition of the distance from others. To seek prece-
dence is to let others determine what constitutes the order of importance
and is then simply the wish to be first in that order. So such distancing is
inauthentic being-with-others; it is taking direction from others. Furthermore,
it amounts to abolishing the distance from others in the additional sense of
doing exactly what everyone else is doing: to distinguish themselves from the
they by seeking preeminence is precisely what they strive to do. Accordingly,
with respect to other persons, factical life seeks a distantiation which is actu-
ally an abolition of distance.
With regard to things, the category of distance concerns the way meaning-
ful objects stand “before” (vor) us. On the one hand, factical life takes the
“before” in the sense of “not too close,” “at some remove.” Thereby things
are held at a distance and can be viewed impartially, disinterestedly, as things
that do not touch us personally. Thus is born the theoretical attitude, the
stance of objective science: “The ‘before’ of the theoretical attitude presents
itself as the highest value in the form of objectivity, scientificity, free intel-
lectual honesty, impartiality” (PI, p. 122/91).
In adopting this theoretical attitude, however, life “mis-measures itself”
(PI, p. 103/77). What is placed at a distance for impartial inspection is in
144 Chapter 6

fact closer than science believes. Factical life actually abolishes the distance
between itself and the meaningful things of the world, or, better, factical life
disperses itself into these things such that no distance ever arises. In other
words, factical life abolishes the distance between itself and scientific objects
inasmuch as it takes these objects to be primary. They are closest in the sense
of what is first encountered, the foundation for the higher, supposedly more
distant objects of value or usefulness. Thus, the scientific object is held at a
distance and simultaneously placed closest.
As already quoted in chapter 2, Heidegger in this context scoffs at the
notion that things are first bare objects (= present-at-hand) which then receive
a garb of value so that they do not have to run around naked. He immediately
proceeds to say that “the objectivity, ‘nature,’ first arises out of the basic
sense of the Being of the things of the lived, experienced, encountered world”
(PI, p. 91/69). In failing to recognize this order of priority, however, factical
life relates to things as it does to other persons, namely, by way of an estab-
lishing of distance (from nature, nature as “before,” not too close) which is
actually an abolishing of distance (nature as primary, the closest).
If we think the command regarding distancing in the direction of
Heidegger’s category of factical life, then the question arises as to who—and
what—actually is closest to us. If we do not wish to mis-measure, then we
will need to contemplate.
With regard to things: if we contemplate closeness and distance, that is,
think of them while attuned to Being, then we would have to say that Being
is closest. Being is what must be understood in order then to encounter beings
as beings. Yet Being is also what is most distant: always overlooked in favor
of beings. Being imparts visibility to beings and then recedes in favor of those
visible beings. Heidegger offers a simile: Being is like the eyeglasses sitting
right on our nose. The glasses are spatially closest but recede in favor of the
distant objects they bring into focus (SZ, p. 107). To realize this peculiar char-
acter of closeness and distance with respect to Being and beings is a way to
take the first philosophical step. Consequently, the slogan, although not well
expressed—or perhaps precisely because it is not well expressed—provides
an occasion for philosophizing.
With regard to other persons: Who is close and who is distant? Those
who are physically close may be like the eyeglasses on our nose: overlooked
in favor of the distant one we are focusing on. The physically close are not
necessarily first. Thereby we uncover something of the Being of Dasein,
something of being-in-the-world. We uncover something of the moment of
being-in. That moment names the modes of Dasein’s disclosedness, which
takes place through moods, discourse, and understanding. Heidegger stresses
that moods are primary. To be in the world does not mean simply to be spa-
tially present there; it means to be related emotionally—through love or hate
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 145

or anything other than complete indifference. Thus, the slogan, as poorly

expressed as it is, offers an occasion for thinking of what makes another
person close or distant. Thereby the slogans of COVID-19 again prove an
occasion for contemplating Being, the Being of Dasein as being-in-the-world
with the moment of being-in made prominent.

WASH YOUR HANDS!

The command regarding frequent washing of the hands corresponds to the pre-
occupation of factical life with itself. According to Heidegger’s analysis, the
preoccupation arises because factical life “has no time” (PI, pp. 139–40/104),
that is, no free time. Every instant of hyperbolically dispersed life is filled with
some diversion or other. The consequence is that life becomes obsessed with
itself, that is, with its own continuation. With no time to pause and reflect on
its frenzied pursuits, factical life makes no decision on them except to desire
them to go on. “Factical caring takes itself into care” and becomes “entrapped
in itself” (PI, p. 140/104). Care “devotes itself more and more to the continu-
ance of life and eventually becomes obsessed with living” (PI, p. 140/104).
Factical life becomes “frantic self-concern” (PI, p. 140/104).
If we reflect on the slogan in the direction of Heidegger’s analysis of
factical life, we might indeed be led to contemplation—with regard to our
frantic relation to time and thus with regard to temporality as the meaning
of the Being of Dasein. We might also think of Lady Macbeth’s obsessive
handwashing in her futile attempt to cleanse away guilt. We could then
contemplate our own existential guilt, one that has nothing to do with mur-
der or stealing and that cannot be washed off in any way at all. We might
also think of Lear, as quoted in the epigraph to this book, wiping the smell
of mortality from his hand. We could then contemplate how death is in the
atmosphere, namely, as something that can be smelled on a hand which is
still alive. More fundamentally, however, Heidegger’s philosophy offers
resources for contemplating just what it means to be endowed with hands.
What is the “essential realm” of the hand? How is the hand related to the
Being of Dasein?
The motive for pursuing these questions lies in the full statement of the
command: Wash your hands frequently and keep them away from your face!
What is the relation of the hand to the face and specifically to the mouth?
For Heidegger, the essential realm of the hand is the word. But the human
being is the being that by essence possesses words; accordingly, the defini-
tion of the human being as the animal possessing discourse is equivalent to
defining the human being as the animal possessing hands. To possess words
and to possess hands are equivalent. How so?
146 Chapter 6

Heidegger’s most sustained reflection on the hand occurs in a lecture

course on Parmenides. Surprisingly, Heidegger’s commentary on this pre-
Socratic philosopher leads to the theme of the typewriter. Heidegger begins
as follows:

The human being acts [handelt] through the hand [Hand]; for the hand is, together
with the word, the essential distinction of the human being. Only a being which,
like the human being, “has” the word, can and must “have” “the hand.” . . . The
hand exists as hand only where there is disclosure and concealment. No animal has
a hand, and a hand never originates from a paw or a claw or talon. The hand sprang
forth only out of the word and together with the word. The human being does not
“have” hands, but the hand holds the essence of the human being, because the word
as the essential realm of the hand is the ground of the essence of the human being.
The word as what is inscribed and what appears to the regard is the written word,
that is, script. And the word as script is handwriting.3

Exactly how is the word the essential realm of the hand? How is the hand
related so intimately to discourse that they arise together? Let us take a
clue from a speech by King Claudius to Laertes. To express how very close
Polonius is to him, the king says:

The heart is not more native to the head,

The hand more instrumental to the mouth,
Than is the crown of Denmark to thy father. (Hamlet, I, ii, 47–9)

The king does not say how the hand is instrumental to the mouth, but presum-
ably it is so by doing more than putting food into the mouth and brushing the
teeth. If we consider the mouth as the organ of speaking and the hand the organ
of writing, then the instrumentality is understandable. The attempt to compose
in writing, to place thoughts down on paper, is not simply a matter of express-
ing already clear thoughts. On the contrary, writing is what gives the mouth the
thoughts that will be spoken aloud. The attempt to express thoughts is what brings
the thoughts forth. Writing does not merely set down what is already on the lips;
on the contrary, it is writing that puts words into the mouth. To be sure, this does
not apply to the hackneyed thoughts and platitudes which constitute the vast
majority of our discourse; but it does apply to original thinking, to any thinking
that is not mere repetition of hearsay and that requires a struggle. Such thoughts
come forth only through the effort to express them, especially in writing. The
effort to write teaches me my own thought. I think by writing. Cogito scribendo.
Speaking—at least the speaking which amounts to more than prattle—does
not merely put into words already constituted clear thoughts; that is a common
phenomenological tenet. According to Husserl, “It is surely not the case that we
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 147

first form thoughts and then seek the fitting words. Thinking takes place from
the very outset as something linguistic.”4 According to Merleau-Ponty, language
itself speaks: the effort to express oneself in words “may surprise even myself,
for it teaches me my own thought.”5 For Heidegger, language is a middle-voiced
phenomenon in the Greek sense, that is, not a mere reflexive but an operation of
benefit to the one engaging in it: “Words disclose something, not simply to the
outside but for the benefit of (middle voice) the very one who is using the words”
(SZ, p. 32). Thoughts become thoughts through the effort at expression, through
being put down in writing, and that is what makes the word the essential realm
of the hand. And that is how the hand is instrumental to the mouth; the hand that
writes provides matter to the mouth that speaks.
In an analogous way, the heart is instrumental to the head. In the brief
speech just quoted, Claudius touches on all three modes of Dasein’s disclos-
edness: the heart corresponds to moods, the head to understanding, and the
mouth to discourse. The relation of the heart to the head is that of a more
fundamental mode of disclosedness (moods) to one that merely raises that
disclosedness to the level of concepts (rationality). In a sense then, the heart
does feed the head, just as the hand feeds the mouth: heart and hand provide
matter to talk about and to conceptualize.
Reflection on the hand, motivated by examining the COVID-19 slogan,
thereby leads to philosophizing, since Being and writing form an “original
essential nexus”:

Writing, from its originating essence, is hand-writing. We call the disclosive

taking up and perceiving of the written word “reading” or “lection,” that is,
col-lection, gathering (gleaning), in Greek λέγειv-λόγoς; and this latter word,
for the primordial Greek thinkers, is the name for Being itself. Being, word,
gathering, writing: these denote an original essential nexus, to which the hand
intrinsically belongs.6

The relation of the writing hand to the word is so intimate that any breach
of that relation leads to destruction of the word. That is why Heidegger dep-
recates the typewriter:

It is not accidental that moderns write “with” the typewriter and “dictate” [dik-
tiert] (the same word as “poetize” [dichten]) “into” a machine. This “history”
of the kinds of writing is one of the main reasons for the increasing destruction
of the word. The latter no longer comes and goes by means of the writing hand,
the properly acting hand, but by means of the mechanical forces it releases. The
typewriter tears writing from the essential realm of the hand, the realm of the
word. The word itself turns into something “stereotyped.” Where typewriting
is only a transcription and serves to preserve the writing, there it has a proper,
148 Chapter 6

though limited, significance. In the time of the first dominance of the typewriter,
a letter written on this machine still stood for a breach of good manners. Today
a hand-written letter is an antiquated and undesired thing; it disturbs speed read-
ing. Mechanical writing deprives the hand of its rank in the realm of the written
word and degrades the word to a means of communication.7

The word as a mere means of communication is a degradation, for the word

has a higher vocation, namely, to teach us our own thoughts and not simply
package them so they can be shared. If the typewriter degrades, we can only
wonder how appalling Heidegger would find the word processor and email.
Even a typed letter on paper is now antiquated and slows down communica-
tion. And word processors allow for so many shortcuts and even predictive
typing that the hand has less and less of a role to play. Word processing is not
even mechanical writing; it is becoming semiautomatic writing. Accordingly,
the COVID-19 slogan about washing hands and keeping them away from the
face and mouth might lead us to contemplate the philosophical significance
of the circumstance that, in one respect, today there is less and less need to
wash the hands: no one has ink stains on the fingers anymore.

MASK UP!

Heidegger’s jaundiced view of factical life is evident one more time—in the
category of larvance. Factical life as a whole is larvant. That does not mean
people in general “wear the mask” in the sense of being inscrutable, con-
cealed to others. On the contrary, factical life is masked to itself.
The references to the larvance or masking involved in factical life all con-
cern the hyperbolic dispersion of life into ever new attractions. Life finds only
a disguise of itself in these diversions:

In being transported by the meaningful things of the world, in the hyperbolic

development of new possibilities of experiencing and caring for the world, facti-
cal life constantly eludes itself as such. . . . In its constant looking away toward
new things, life is always seeking itself and does encounter itself precisely
where it does not suppose—in its masking (larvance) [Maskierung (Larvanz)]
of itself. (PI, pp. 106–7/80)

The looking toward constantly new possibilities amounts to life looking

away from itself inasmuch as life is transported by things, carried off by
things, ones to be experienced and cared for. Yet, life is still pursuing its own
interest in such care, and so life finds itself in the things that transport it. But
what life finds involved there in things is a mask of itself—it finds itself only
as an inauthentic, calculating being.
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 149

Calculative problems are infinite in number and variety. Consequently,

the self-masking of factical life can take the form of this infinity, inexhaust-
ibility, of possible things to be busied with in order to feel assured thereby of
its own significance. “This infinity is the mask factical life places upon and
holds before itself or its world” (PI, pp. 107–8/80). Infinity itself is the mask
in the sense that factical life has no motive to change its calculative attitude.
There is a superabundance of problems, sufficient to last a lifetime. There will
always be more calculative problems to solve, and the “primal decisions” of
life can stay hidden behind them.
Factical life seeks to make things easy for itself. This is true even when
boldly facing up to challenging calculative problems. Factical life goes
willingly toward them and not only toward amusements in the usual sense.
Difficult calculative problems are themselves amusements: “Mundane dif-
ficulties are also actually ways to take our ease” (PI, p. 108/81).
Factical life is confident that even the most difficult calculative problems
will yield to human ingenuity. Science will always eventually solve any calcu-
lative problem. To engage with such problems is doubly assuring: it provides
the assurance of accomplishing something significant and also the assurance
of the mastery, in principle, of any technical problem. Yet, this assurance is
a mask; factical life sees only a specter (Latin: larva) of itself in calculative
thinking.
Heidegger concludes his discussion of larvance as follows: “making things
easy; care in self-concern; delusion, masking, in the claim that ‘life is dif-
ficult’!” (PI, p. 110/82). So factical life is delusional, masked to itself, in two
respects: first, in its preoccupation with busy-work and, second, in claiming
that that is difficult work.
Examining the slogan about masking in the light of Heidegger’s category
of larvance thereby ends in a question: Which is more difficult, calculative
thinking or contemplation? Which is the easy way, which is the retreat to an
ivory tower, a fleeing from the real problems of life, and which is the difficult
confrontation with those genuine problems? In other words, where does the
genuine masking lie? Is contemplation a mask, mere fanciful busy-work? Or
is calculation the retreat, a preoccupation with mundane tasks so as not to face
up to the primal decision?
It is obvious how Heidegger would answer. Yet he is of course not dis-
missing calculative thought as unimportant; as we saw, in Gelassenheit he
even says that high-tech things call us to ever greater achievements. For
the rest of us, each person has to answer in his or her own way. The point
I would make is that inasmuch as the COVID-19 pandemic provides an
occasion to raise the issue, the current plight is again a distinct opportunity
for philosophizing.
At stake in the command to mask up is a decision about contemplation,
philosophy, versus calculative thinking. Which is the genuine masking, the
150 Chapter 6

fleeing from the real problems? Where does philosophy stand with regard to
what really matters? Inasmuch as the slogan about masking leads to these
questions, it provokes contemplation in the form of philosophizing about
philosophizing. The difference between philosophical contemplation and
calculative thinking corresponds to the difference between Being and beings.
Thus, philosophizing about philosophy, motivated by the slogan to mask up,
is a prime way to ask the question of Being.

POETRY AND PHILOSOPHY ENTWINED

As mentioned, I was motivated to examine what is in the air today, besides

the deadly corona virus, by pondering a poem about the “unexamined slo-
gans” of the current pandemic. I wish to tarry with this poem a little while,
inasmuch as I find it thoughtful poetry, the dearth of which Heidegger often
laments. Instead of a poetry that amounts to mere “ink-slinging in verse”8
and “pen-pushing,”9 and instead of a thinking that amounts to “research,”10
Heidegger is hoping for “a poetizing and thinking entwined in each other.”11
Such poetry would be an equal partner with philosophy in the task of
contemplation.
I find in the following poem not only contemplative thought but also
themes from Heidegger’s own thinking. Whether or not these themes were
placed there intentionally by the poet makes no matter, for an author cannot
claim to be privileged in the interpretation of his or her own work. The reader
may legitimately extract from the poem meaning that was not intended by the
author. A thoughtful poem is called so, in part, by virtue of its capacity to
provoke thought.
The poem in its entirety:

Four Viral Ounces of Truth

by Rita Malikonytė Mockus12

Into seclusion, please!

An Event of venomous atmos is
being sphered across the world-
hood’s jaunty tune of ethos
twenty first. Centuria
already toxicosed by affluence
of effluence and smear influence
of unexamined slogans
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 151

Observe social distance!

This will be Observance
Season measured in feet and lonely mouths
Pollinating our breath hives with the Other’s
Coronated presence —
The spring of mutual appropriation

Outside civility
All Gestures furled
Unshaken hands
Rasping themselves pale
In unholy waters
Ousted Faces sealed to their own
infinite freedom masked

Absence
lodged deep in Zoom
happy hours darning
forlorn life to screen flesh-
mislaying joystick
Technologia gods only
touch can save us now.

But the essence! Yes!

The essence is busy being
absent longing
wears a mask too
of provisional truths
Coronial is a baby
received by the Eyes without a face
nursing for Tomorrow’s fresh-
named -desire surviving the
alluvium of Covid days.

Time closes its gate before

Yesterday’s measure is divulged.
What if we are always just
Seconds away from being
Pinched by grace in its
absconding dialect?
152 Chapter 6

I begin with the term “event.” Is the current pandemic an event (Ereignis)
in Heidegger’s sense? The word belongs—as the very center—to Heidegger’s
later thought, his turning from the first philosophical step to a mythological
way of speaking (chapter 1). An event is an initiative on the part of the gods
in relation to mortals, Being in relation to Dasein. An event is a self-showing
of Being to us, a disclosure of what it means to be in general, whereby we are
motivated to comport ourselves to beings in a certain way. For Heidegger,
there have been only two events in history; that is, the history of Being
consists of only two epochs. The original (pre-Socratic) event was a rela-
tively wholehearted self-showing of Being, motivating the ancient epoch of
respect for nature. The later epoch (from Socrates to the present) is marked
by a greater and greater absconding of the gods, withdrawal of Being. With
a defective idea of what it means to be in general, we are motivated to look
on nature disrespectfully, as a mere storehouse of disposable resources. The
ancients saw themselves as stewards; we see ourselves as masters.
Is the pandemic a new event? Of course, the pandemic itself is not; Being
does not send plagues. But Being could be speaking through the pandemic,
motivating a new way of looking at nature, perhaps a return to the earlier,
respectful way. Certainly, in the midst of the pandemic, we no longer see
ourselves as masters over a disposable nature. On the contrary, we view our-
selves as the disposables and natural forces as masters over us. Nevertheless,
this reversal in the direction of the mastery is not evidence of a new event as
long as the essence of the modern attitude, the thinking in terms of mastery,
remains in force.
An event of Being can also be called a happening of truth. The goddess
Truth, Alétheia, is a guise for Being itself. How we understand what it means
to be depends on how completely this goddess reveals herself to us. Thus,
the word “truth” in the title of the poem indicates the overall theme: Is the
pandemic an event? Is a new sense of truth dawning?
The poem will examine four phenomena connected to the pandemic (“four
viral ounces”) and will wonder whether they betoken an event occurring or
about to occur. The four are the four slogans. By calling them “ounces,” their
weight is called into question. If not weighty truths, then they are flimsy and
may easily turn into falsehoods. They are “viral” inasmuch as they concern
the virus and also inasmuch as they have “gone viral,” as is said of anything,
such as a posting on the Web, that is rapidly disseminated. Only what is
superficial, bearing merely an ounce of truth, can spread in that way.
The first stanza speaks of seclusion, called by Heidegger “sequestration.”
What does the poem see as isolated from what? Venomous air is sphered
(speared?) through a jaunty world-hood. If we take this last term as referring
not to the world in the sense of neighborhood but rather to “worldhood” in
Heidegger’s sense, then the corona virus has brought about a disruption in
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 153

the cosmos, the beautiful and happy arrangement of the whole. We know
that two sorts of relations constitute worldhood: the relation of things among
themselves and the relation of the whole cosmos to Dasein. Breakdowns in
the former relations are troubling and are feared. Breakdowns in the order
of the for-the-sake-of-which constitute anxiety and motivate authenticity.
Is the pandemic merely provoking fear? That is, do we merely see ruptures,
isolations, in the order of worldly things? Or on the contrary is the pandemic
making us question our own relation to these things? If we see ourselves as
isolated, then that would be anxiety and would concern not the mere continu-
ance of factical life but the possibility of an authentically chosen relation to
life. Such sequestration, taking distance from the everyday life of busy-work,
would portend an event.
The poem speaks of centuries of the toxic effluence of affluence. The
toxins (and perhaps the viruses) in the atmosphere have derived from a pro-
longed ravaging of nature by the rich nations. Toxicity is not a breakdown in
the relations among things; we call things toxic insofar as they are harmful
precisely to us. Toxic things, however, are not meaningless. On the contrary,
we sense ourselves totally connected to them, except that we find them threat-
ening. Toxins are things we fear, not things we are anxious about.
Yet, the poem also speaks of the “smear influence” of the pandemic. If
the viral disease has smeared our relation to the world, defamed it, then that
would imply a calling into question of the meaningfulness of worldly things.
So the poem sees in the pandemic both fear and at least also the possibility
of anxiety and authenticity.
The second stanza begins a poetizing on the phenomenon of distance. If
social distance is “measured in feet,” then the pandemic is remaining at the
level of inauthenticity. The distances brought to awareness by the pandemic
would be those of calculative thinking.
Mouths are “lonely.” Alone, isolated, from what?—Presumably not merely
from other mouths, since the poem goes on to speak of our breath as polli-
nated by the presence of other people. From a Heideggerian perspective, the
essential loneliness of the mouth would be that of its isolation from the hand,
the hand that writes and that through struggle discloses something original
to say. Instead, according to the poem, our mouth is a hive pollinated by the
breath of others. Rather than the writing hand giving us words to say, other
people are putting words in our mouth. Speaking is inauthentic, a repetition
of hearsay, of the droning on and on of the they like the buzzing in a hive.
Nevertheless, the poem immediately refers to “the spring of mutual appro-
priation.” In Heidegger’s philosophy, mutual appropriation refers to the
relation between the self-disclosure of Being and our response, our attitude
toward beings. Our thinking is called thinking, summoned by a claim stem-
ming from beyond us. Our thinking is the appropriation of a summons that
154 Chapter 6

has appropriated us. The spring, the font, of this mutuality lies on the side
of Being or truth. To recognize this font is to change one’s attitude: from
discloser by way of one’s own powers to shepherd and steward of what is
entrusted to us from “something higher” (chapter 5). Therefore, the poem
once again sees inauthenticity, lonely mouths, but is also holding open the
possibility of the pandemic motivating authenticity, the possibility of an
event.
The poem repeats the command to observe distance; that is, the word
“observe” is used twice. A play on words is announced, for “observe” can
mean both “practice” and “look upon.” Taking “observe” in the latter sense,
the poem is suggesting that the pandemic is motivating a disinterested spec-
tating directed at distances. To take distance from the world and from other
people is to contemplate, to sever the everyday attachment to the world and
to the they. Accordingly, the slogan to observe distance is ambiguous; it may
motivate inauthentic, calculative thinking, or it may portend the distance that
is proper to anxiety and authenticity. The poem is again holding open at least
the possibility of an event.
Wash your hands! “Outside civility,” that is, beyond the bounds of cour-
tesy, we do not shake hands today but instead scrub them as with a rasp. That
should make the hands red, but it is making them pale since their life has been
drained from them. The waters are “unholy,” because instead of blessing the
hands to their proper work, these waters simply sterilize them. But hands
are not meant to be clean; their proper work involves them becoming dirty,
especially with the stains of ink.
Don’t touch your face! The mouth has been “ousted,” dispossessed, of the
hand. If, as the poem states, the mouth is sealed to its own, that means the
hand, writing, is not feeding it; the mouth seems to be “infinite in freedom”
to say whatever it wants. Without the instrumentality of the hand, however,
the speaking of the mouth is mere prattle, repetition of hearsay. This infinity,
like the infinity of diversions in factical life for Heidegger, is a “mask” since
there is always new hearsay to repeat and no motive for quiet contemplation
on the inauthenticity of this sort of talk.
Thus, the poem is here stressing the negative, the impossibility of authen-
ticity, and the next stanza continues along the same lines. Zoom, screens,
joysticks, technologia (high-tech devices) all attempt to “darn” the lacunae,
the absences, of “forlorn” life, that is, a life lorn of touch, the hand. Heidegger
famously claimed, “Only another god can save us.”13 The poem is identifying
this other god: the god of touch.
Touch is the proper domain of the hand, and so is writing. If the god of
touch is Eros, then what will save us is erotic handwriting. That means a writ-
ing which fully caresses the writing materials, namely, paper, pen, and ink,
and does not merely unleash a mechanical writing by way of mere taps of
 Corona-Virus-Disease-2019 and Mortality 155

the fingertips on a keyboard. One could perhaps speak of the fingers caress-
ing the keys of a typewriter. But the keyboard attached to a word processor
is so sensitive and offers such little resistance that the fingers do not caress;
they barely even touch. Furthermore, they need to touch for the briefest
of moments, or else the letters (and not just x) will repeat. Keyboarding is
practically disembodied and keeps the hands clean; handwriting is dirty and
messy. A page of handwriting is covered with crossings out and smudges.
A word processing screen is “flesh-mislaying,” that is, as clean and neat as
pure spirit.
Erotic handwriting, a name that obviously might be taken in a wrong sense,
is nothing other than contemplative thinking. A messy handwritten page is
the locus of the struggle to be original and authentic. A word processing
screen is the locus of calculative thought: everything as clear and unambigu-
ous as are the propositions of mathematics.
So the poem is at least advancing the possibility of a saving god in the form
of the god of touch. That would indeed portend an event. The technological
age is an age of Apollo, an age of purity, spirituality, calculation, moderation,
perfection. What the world needs is a messy touch!
Mask up! According to the poem, “the essence” is absent and masked
in “provisional truths.” The essence of what? For Heidegger, “essence” is
another name for Being. The essence of things is their Being. Yet, Heidegger
does not take essence in the traditional sense of the common, that in which all
beings participate, that which is abstracted out from beings. On the contrary,
the essence is the source which bestows14 presence on beings, not the com-
mon attribute extracted from already present beings.
The poem is affirming this source with a Yes! and then at once goes on
to speak of coronials. That is the colloquial designation for babies born in
the time of the corona virus pandemic. Such a baby is surrounded by “eyes
without a face,” that is, eyes with the rest of the face masked. The eyes by
themselves can expresses only anger or disapproval. The eyes do not smile. It
is the mouth that expresses warmth and joy. A face with only the eyes show-
ing is one that says No! Jean-Paul Sartre encountered the critique that existen-
tialism stresses the negative and has “forgotten the smile of the child.”15 But
what could be more negative than a world in which the child has forgotten
the smile of the adult?
Inasmuch as a coronial is nursing for tomorrow to come, for surviving the
alluvium, the outwash, of COVID days, then the poem is not only negative
but also pessimistic. Desire is for the pandemic to run its course and let the
survivors return to the old normal or the new normal. In any case, the pan-
demic will not have been an occasion for contemplation and will not prove
to have been an event. The pessimism is that the pandemic will be entirely
negative and its truths superficial.
156 Chapter 6

There is a final stanza to the poem, however. The theme is time. In his
analysis of factical life, Heidegger distinguishes the time that we possess and
the time that possesses us. The time that we possess in the bustle of factical
life is distinctive inasmuch as we actually have no time, no free time to do
anything but attend to everyday calculative affairs, even if these are leisure-
time activities. We feel bound to go on vacation, because we need to keep up
with the Joneses, who send us postcards from all over the world. The other
time, the time that possesses us, is called by Heidegger kairological time
(καιρός: “the appointed time”). Heidegger characterizes such time: “To sit
still, to bide the time, to be able to wait” (PI, p. 139/103).
According to the poem, time closes its gate before yesterday’s measure
is divulged. If time can close its own gate, open itself to us or not, then we
do not dispose of time at will. The proper time, kairological time, free time,
the time not filled up by our frenzied activity, would be a gift. Such a gift
would divulge how our yesterdays have been measured, namely, in terms of
our constant bustling about over trivialities. Is it too late? Is the gate already
closed?
The poem ends by asking such a question, formulated with respect to
grace. Indeed, grace absconds, the gods are fleeing, Being is concealing
itself more and more. But there is a possibility of feeling the pinch of a
grace which may be imminent, just seconds away. To feel the pinch, how-
ever, we would have to find the free time for it, the time to sit still and
contemplate. The grace in question would precisely be the gift of the time
to feel the pinch of grace, the gentle goad awakening us from our slumbers
in inauthenticity. To await grace would require the grace of the capacity to
await.
Will this grace be bestowed on us, provided we are ready to accept it? Will
the appointed time come to possess us, provided we are disposed toward
it? Will the pandemic prove to be an event, provided we are ready to be the
steward of an event? The poem leaves these questions open, but inasmuch
as it provokes them, it is entwined with Heidegger’s philosophy in the task
of contemplation. That task is to bide the time while remaining watchful.
Thereby, thoughtful poetry and poetic philosophy might prepare16 for a return
of the goddess Truth—should she be willing again to show herself more than
“provisionally,” by more than “four ounces” of superficial truth gone “viral.”
 Conclusion

Platonic-Heideggerian
Intimations of Mortality

WORDSWORTHIAN INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

I conclude this disquisition on mortality with a poem about immortality. The

poem is William Wordsworth’s “Great Ode.” I will interpret the Ode from the
viewpoint of the Platonic-Heideggerian understanding of being-toward-death
as that understanding has been worked out in the course of the preceding
chapters. My intention is to show Wordsworth poetizing authentic dying as
philosophizing.
The title of the Great Ode speaks of intimations of immortality from recol-
lections of early childhood. The recollections “of” early childhood are the
ones carried out by the child. This is a subjective genitive. Wordsworth is
not poetizing his recollections aimed at early childhood; the Ode is about the
incomparable power of the child to recollect.
Indeed, the poet does look back to his childhood, but that is not recollec-
tion in the proper sense, recollection that offers an intimation of immortality.
According to the poem, only the child, the young child of six, is capable of
such genuine recollection. Thereby the immortality intimated by the recol-
lection is not the poet’s own deathlessness, not human immortality, but is the
eternity of that which is recollected, namely, the “immortal sea which brought
us hither,” the hyper-heavenly realm of the soul’s preexistence according to
the Platonic doctrine of recollection, the realm of the Ideas. With regard to
the poet himself, this poem is about mortality, not immortality, and names
the proper response to the approach of death, not grief but a cultivation of the
philosophic mind. Thus, the Ode poetizes intimations of human mortality,
not immortality, and identifies recollection—that is, Platonic recollection,
philosophizing—as the authentic human way of being-toward-death.

157
158 Conclusion

The Great Ode is a lengthy one, comprising more than 200 verses. That
length makes it impractical to reproduce here in its entirety. I will offer
only the epigraph and the first stanza and will then summarize the course
of thought of the remainder. This poem is not a mere song in Heidegger’s
sense (chapter 5). It is a thoughtful poem, and the course of thought can be
abstracted out. This abstraction, however, is by no means offered with even
the slightest suggestion that it substitutes for reading the poem itself.
Wordsworth must have been at least extrinsically familiar with Plato’s
theory of recollection as presented mythically in the Phaedrus (246A–249D).
We have already encountered this myth in chapter 1 as a supposed explana-
tion of the human soul’s possession of a light by which beings can be recog-
nized as beings or, in terms of Wordsworth’s Ode, the “master-light of all our
seeing.” The Platonic myth tells of the origin of the soul and of its embodi-
ment. All souls, in their primordial existence, join in procession in heaven and
nourish themselves when they banquet by gazing out on the hyper-heavenly
place, a vast expanse of truth, a veritable sea of glory, where the changeless
and deathless Ideas dwell. Divine souls gaze fully at the Ideas; souls destined
for human embodiment are afforded a mere glimpse, but indeed a definite
glimpse. Upon falling to earth, these souls forget—but do not entirely for-
get—the earlier visions at the divine banquet; they retain enough memory of
the Ideas to be able to recollect—that is, unforget—them.1
The Ideas are lustrous, and something of their luster shines through visible
things on earth, especially beautiful things, making possible the recollection.
Recollection is the seeing of the Ideas wrapping earthly things in a celestial
light. Without this light, visible things will seem common and everyday; they
will lack luster and will not provoke recollection.
The preceding is the general Platonic background visible in Wordsworth’s
Great Ode. The poem is written in the first person, and the speaker is presum-
ably the poet himself. It begins as follows:

Ode: Intimations of Immortality

From Recollections of Early Childhood
by William Wordsworth

   The child is father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be
   Bound each to each by natural piety.

There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

    The earth, and every common sight,
      To me did seem
    Apparelled in celestial light,
 Conclusion 159

    The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
    Turn whereso’er I may,
      By night or day.
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.2

I now offer an account of the subsequent course of thought. I have placed in

italics words taken directly from the poem.
There was a time, when I was a child, that every common sight seemed
apparelled in celestial light. Things had a glory about them; I could see the
heavenly Ideas shining through them. Now that I am a man, I know, where’er
I go, that a glory has past away; every common sight is now just plain com-
mon. In relation to what the soul previously experienced in a heavenly life,
our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting. Yet we do not come into this earthly
world in entire forgetfulness; on the contrary, we are born trailing clouds of
glory. We come from God, whose home is our home. Heaven lies about us
in our infancy; in early childhood the world we just left behind is still fresh
before us, open to recollection. As the child grows, shades of the prison-
house begin to close upon him. Yearnings and pleasures form a dark prison
cell confining the soul, keeping it from the celestial light. The growing boy
becomes a youth and must travel ever farther from the east, the sun, the Ideas.
Nevertheless, the vision splendid is still available to the youth; he is indeed
attended by it, but its strength weakens. At length the man perceives the
divine light die away and fade into the light of common day. Things lose their
luster, by which they reflect the Ideas, and now seem dull and commonplace.
Earth, everydayness, is the jailer, and her inmate the grown man. Everyday
concerns make the man forget the glories he hath known and the imperial
palace, the hyper-heavenly realm, the divine procession, whence he came.
But a child of six years, though of a pygmy size, has an immensity of soul.
He is the best philosopher, he retains his heritage, he keeps his eye among us
adults, who are blind. The child can see the eternal deep and is haunted by
the eternal mind. This child is mighty prophet and seer blest. On him those
truths do rest which we adults are toiling all our lives to find, though we are
lost in darkness. Alas, little child, the years will bring the inevitable yoke.
Full soon your soul will bear an earthly freight, namely, custom, everyday-
ness, which will lie upon thee with a weight heavy as frost. Your recollections
will become more and more shadowy. Yet it is impossible that custom could
utterly abolish or destroy them. Your recollections will be to us a perpetual
benediction, the fountain-light of all our day. Our adult souls still have sight
of that immortal sea which brought us hither, still can glimpse that vast
hyper-heavenly expanse of the deathless Ideas. Although nothing can restore
the radiance which was once so bright, and nothing can bring back the hour
160 Conclusion

of splendour of childhood, yet we will grieve not, will not be preoccupied

with dying. Clouds begin to gather round the setting sun, but my eye, that
hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality, gives those clouds a sober, temperate
colouring and not one which provokes grief. Although I recognize the recol-
lective fading that portends my death, I find strength in the fact that years, old
age, can bring the philosophic mind. Accordingly, when I now see the even
most common things, such as the landscape or the meanest flower, I can think
thoughts so deep that I have no tears for my approaching death.

PLATONIC INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

The Platonic background of the Ode is unmistakable. Wordsworth’s theme is

the intimation of the immortal sea, the hyper-heavenly expanse of the deathless
Ideas, the eternal truths. This intimation is made possible by Platonic recollec-
tion. In Wordsworth’s version of the doctrine of recollection, advancing age,
that is, greater and greater distance from the soul’s origin in heaven, makes the
recollections more and more shadowy. That is an intimation of human mortal-
ity, over which (viz., mortality and not immortality) the poet has kept watch.
The proper response is not to grieve, or to brood over death, but to cultivate a
philosophic mind, to think thoughts so deep that fear of death is vanquished.
But there is only one such thought, the meaning of Being itself. Thus the Ode
expresses what could be called, in view of the Platonic background, a Platonic
intimation of human mortality. The Ode also identifies the authentic response,
the one exemplified by Socrates, namely, preoccupation with Being.
To be sure, Wordsworth has put his own construction on the Platonic
myth. It is to all appearances a most questionable construction. According
to the Ode, priority of recollective powers is accorded to early childhood,
indeed to the child of six. The reasoning is that the young child is nearest
in time to the prenatal heavenly procession; the child still trails clouds of
glory, heaven is still lying about the child, truth still rests on the child. That
is an utterly un-Platonic notion. In the dialogues, what makes a person close
or distant in relation to the Ideas is not age, distance in time from the divine
banquet. Recollective powers are a matter of casting off custom, everyday-
ness, hearsay, and separating the soul to its own autonomous existence. In the
dialogues, the best philosopher is the old Socrates. He most sees the Ideas, he
is most proficient in recollection, he is most authentic, and he acts as a mid-
wife helping the young men who surround him to un-un-remember the Ideas.
These young men are closer in time to the original experience of the heavenly
realm, but their memory is duller than that of Socrates.
With respect to this priority accorded the child, the Great Ode does
not make Platonic sense. But it does make phenomenological sense. As
 Conclusion 161

mentioned in a discussion of the primitive mentality in chapter 2, the child

is closest to the phenomena—not in time, but in attitude. What separates the
adult from the phenomena is custom and hearsay, and these are constituted
for the most part today by the scientific outlook. The child is close by reason
of being innocent of the attitude of science,3 the current Western adult attitude
which covers the phenomena with debris. That attitude is what makes for dis-
tance. The child is still in touch with phenomena as they are lived. Therefore,
the child is indeed the best phenomenologist.

HEIDEGGERIAN INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

To show the Ode as expressing a Heideggerian intimation of mortality, that

is, a Heideggerian understanding of authentic dying, we need to consider the
epigraph. There we find a temporal complexity that calls to mind the Being
of Dasein: child, father, man, day bound to day, natural piety.
The child is father of the man. Only a dolt would understand that in the
literal, generational sense. Gerard Manley Hopkins, in a tongue-in-cheek
composition, pokes fun at anyone so sluggish as not to grasp the poetic sense.

[Untitled Triolet]
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

“The child is father to the man.”

How can he be? The words are wild.
Suck any sense from that who can:
“The child is father to the man.”
No; what the poet did write ran,
“The man is father to the child.”
“The child is father to the man!”
How can he be? The words are wild!4

Hopkins slightly misquotes the Great Ode and does not actually identify
the poet, but the repeated statement that the “words are wild” is obviously an
allusion to Wordsworth. By raising the question of the proper sense of the
epigraph, Hopkins may be indicating that there is more at issue here than a
doltish obliviousness to the conventional understanding. Indeed it is difficult
to believe anyone could be so literal-minded; the figurative understanding is
even proverbial. We say that as the twig is bent, so grows the tree. Hopkins
is asking whether we can be so sure this proverb has grasped the proper sense
of Wordsworth’s Ode. Have we, like babies, merely sucked what has been fed
162 Conclusion

to us? Are we as far from understanding how the child is parent of the adult
as is anyone who takes it literally?
The proverb about the twig and the tree reverts at least as far back as
Alexander Pope. Almost a century prior to Wordsworth’s Great Ode, Pope
writes this couplet in Epistles to Several Persons, 1734:

’Tis education forms the common mind;

Just as the twig is bent, the tree’s inclined.5

Pope is speaking of the twig being bent by the adult who planted it. The
adult who educates a child inclines him or her to a certain way of thinking.
Thus, the way adults bend the twig has an effect on development. Early edu-
cation (Pope’s theme) sets the child on a certain path that will be followed up
in adulthood. In this sense, however, the adult is still the parent of the child,
since the adult is the one who plants the twig, who educates the child. On this
understanding, the child actually is not the parent but instead is a twig bent by
the parent. Accordingly, this sense is not in play in the Great Ode.
In general, the conventional understanding of the child as parent of the
adult is that early inclinations prefigure future dispositions. But this under-
standing is also not appropriate to the poem. Indeed the poem is saying the
opposite, namely: early inclinations fade away and die. The recollections of
early childhood are no longer possible in adulthood. The poem is saying that
the child dies in the adult; the child is no longer visible at all in the adult.
The early inclinations are not carried on into adulthood. A more appropriate
epigraph would have been: The child is parent of the adult but leaves the
adult an orphan.
I believe the most pertinent sense of parenthood in this context is the one
suggested in Aristotle’s Physics. The Stagirite is discussing the “efficient
cause” (Heidegger6 points out that this term and the concept of causal-
ity behind it are in fact utterly foreign to Aristotle) and offers two sets of
examples (Physics, 194b, 195a). In both sets, the primary instance of the
“efficient cause” is not the maker, the sculptor, as the term “efficient cause”
would lead us to expect, but is the counselor. According to Aristotle, coun-
seling is the prime example of this sort of causality, and he specifies: “such
as a parent counsels the child” (Physics, 194b30). Accordingly, Aristotle is
thinking of parenthood not just as begetting an offspring but as nurturing that
offspring all the way to maturity. Such nurturing is a matter of counseling,
supporting, encouraging, setting a good example. I believe it is in this sense
of parenthood as counseling and setting a good example that the child is
parent of the adult in the Ode on immortality. The adult takes heart from the
child, takes the recollection of the child as an example to emulate. The child
bestows a “perpetual benediction” on the adult, keeping open the possibility
 Conclusion 163

of recollection in old age. That is how the child is parent of the adult, namely,
in Aristotle’s sense, as counselor.
Indeed the adult, the poet of the Great Ode, does follow the counsel. He
cultivates the philosophic mind. He is able to think deep thoughts even about
the meanest things. The poet is practicing exactly what Heidegger described
as contemplative thinking. Heidegger stipulated that such thinking does not
have to be about things that are “lofty” (hochhinaus); any common thing
lying close by will do (G, 16/47). The point is to think about it in the correct
way, that is, to contemplate rather than calculate. There is only one thought
so deep as to stanch the tears for death, and that is the thought of Being, the
Idea of Being. So the old poet is able to emulate the child and recollect the
Ideas after all.
There still remains the task of understanding the reference to natural piety.
Wordsworth seems to be describing a most unnatural piety. The young are
supposed to be pious toward the old, defer to them and take them as an
example, not vice versa. The old are supposed to bestow benediction on the
young, not vice versa. But if the adult is emulating the child, then the piety
and deference have been inverted. Furthermore, how are day and day to be
bound by natural piety? Presumably the newest day is to feel piety toward
the old. What sort of natural piety is that? What could it mean? What sense
can we suck from it?
Husserl does prefer the example of a melody for the sake of illustrating
the passive synthesis of time. But all temporal experience is structured by the
same synthesis. The future and the past constitute a horizon for all experi-
ence. The future is already present to some extent, and the past is still present
to some extent. A day is lived within the horizon of the next day and the pre-
vious day. The present day is respectful of these horizons. That is to say, the
present day appears as setting in motion a certain, perhaps vaguely outlined,
future and as resulting from a certain past. Any instant of time is beginning
and end—the impetus toward a future and the final result of the past. It may
take reflection to make these relations explicit; after the fact, I can see that
the future which actually eventuated was prepared in the present, and I can
see that the present was foreshadowed in the past and is the logical outcome
of the past. But at least some sense of the present as prefiguring a future
and culminating a past is always part of lived experience. Reflection merely
makes this implicit sense explicit.
Day is bound to day by these complex temporal relations. The present
day is, as it were, deferential toward the future and past. The present day
recognizes the rights of the future and past and allows itself to be influenced
by future and past. That is why the present day seems like both a beginning
and an outcome. The present pays respect to the future and the past. In other
words, the present day shows piety toward the future and past.
164 Conclusion

It is a natural piety at least inasmuch as this temporal complexity is natural

to Dasein. It is indeed the very meaning of the Being of Dasein. Therefore,
in these terms, that is, in terms of the Being of Dasein, it makes sense to say
the child is parent of the adult, just as the adult is parent of the child. The
child shows piety toward the parent by taking direction from the parent; the
parent is pious toward the child in the exact same way, by taking direction
from the child. This complexity perfectly characterizes parenthood in the
sense of counseling. The parent indeed counsels the child and gives direc-
tion to the child. The parent calls up the child to some sort of action. But the
counseling must be appropriate. There is no universal counseling. Therefore,
the counselor must take direction from the counseled. The counseled calls up
the counseling as much as the counseling calls up the counseled. But to take
direction is to show piety. Accordingly, the relations of child to parent and
day to day are indeed ruled by piety.
Inasmuch as the Great Ode poetizes these complex temporal relations, it
amounts to a Heideggerian intimation of mortality. Days are joined each to
each; that includes even the last day. To recognize the child as parent of the
adult is to recognize days as so intertwined that we are neither too old for
our victories nor too young for our defeats. Death is not entirely outstanding.

HEIDEGGER, PLATO, PHILOSOPHY, DEATH

Wordsworth’s Great Ode expresses not merely a Platonic-Heideggerian inti-

mation of mortality but also exemplifies the Platonic-Heideggerian response.
The poet acknowledges human mortality and indeed has kept close watch
over it. Yet he does not grieve; instead, he seeks the philosophic mind. The
poet is seeking the Idea of Being while recognizing that death looms. The
poet lives in an atmosphere of mortality and says “Yes” to death. And he
also says “No” by preoccupying himself with common things in an atti-
tude of philosophizing, Platonic recollection, Socratic love, Heideggerian
anticipation, detachment, contemplation. The poet is carrying out authentic
being-toward-death.

FINAL WORD: PROOF OF IMMORTALITY?

After a long discourse on mortality, let us take up, as does Socrates at the very
end, the theme of immortality. If the way to live one’s mortality is to philoso-
phize, to commune with the immortal Ideas, then is there not a connaturality
of the soul with the deathless Ideas? And would that not suggest the soul is
 Conclusion 165

immortal as well? Indeed Socrates does use this connection to demonstrate

immortality.
In the Phaedo, on Socrates’ last day of earthly existence, he discourses in
a comedic vein about philosophy and death, as we have seen. The conversa-
tion ultimately turns to the question of immortality. His friends are afraid that
the soul after death is simply dissipated like smoke. Socrates offers various
proofs of immortality, such as the one just mentioned based on the connatu-
rality of the Ideas and the soul. Then Socrates proceeds to assure his friends
they can put aside any fear that the soul after death will be dissipated like
smoke, “especially if a person dies on a windy day and not in calm weather”
(Phaedo, 77D).
 Notes

CHAPTER 1

1. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (hereafter SZ), p. 39.

2. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, “On literary composition,” pp. 224 and 226.
3. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, p. 224.
4. Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Vol. I, p. 312.
5. For a fully elaborated and compelling interpretation of the opening of the
Republic as Socrates’ descent into Hades, see John Sallis, Being and Logos: Reading
the Platonic Dialogues, entire Chapter V, especially pp. 313–323.
6. Being and Time as a stand-alone book is actually an offprint (Sonderdruck)
from Volume 8 of the Jahrbuch für Philosophie und phänomenologische Forschung,
a periodical founded and edited by Husserl. “Mathematische Existenz” by Oskar
Becker constituted the second half of that large (809 pages) Volume 8.
Heidegger contributed again to Husserl’s Jahrbuch. Heidegger’s “Vom Wesen
des Grundes” formed part of the supplement to Volume 10, a Festschrift for Husserl
on his 70th birthday. Heidegger himself was the editor of this Festschrift, published
in 1929.
7. Heidegger, Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, p. 239. English translation,
p. 233.
8. On Thrasymachus as Cerberus, see John Sallis, Being and Logos, p. 334. For
a comprehensive view of Socrates as Heracles, see Eva Brann, The Music of the
Republic: Essays on Socrates’ Conversations and Plato’s Writings, pp. 119–22.
9. Heidegger, “Aus einem Gespräch von der Sprache zwischen einem Japaner
und einem Fragenden,” in Unterwegs zur Sprache, p. 131. English translation, p. 36.
10. “Dialectic,” from the Greek δια-, “in opposed directions,” “asunder,” and
λέγειv, “gather,” fundamentally means “oppositional gathering.” Thus “dialectic” is
itself a dialectical term.
11. Husserl’s term is Einklammerung, “placing in clamps.” It could refer to either
bracketing or parenthesizing, and various translators of Husserl render it one way or

167
168 Notes

the other. “Bracketing” is definitely superior, as hinting at the mathematical sense, but
the best American translation would be: “placing in slashes.”
12. Scholarly debate abounds concerning whether the Timaeus does follow imme-
diately after Socrates’ recollection as recorded in the Republic. The grounds for doubt
center primarily on the circumstance that in the Timaeus Socrates’ summary of his
speech of the preceding day is so lacunary. He must be referring to some other, unre-
corded account of his founding of a city in thought. The way I am about to explain the
deficient summary, however, makes more certain rather than more questionable that
Socrates is indeed referring to the Republic. The other reason for doubt concerns the
date of the Lesser Panathenaea. The Timaeus takes place on this festival of Athena,
and Socrates visits the Piraeus to participate in the festival of Bendis. Proclus, in his
commentary on the Timaeus, fixes the date of the Lesser Panathenaea as the 21st of
the month of Thargelion (Procli Diadochi in Platonis Timaeum commentaria, p. 85,
lines 29–30), and so exactly two days after the festival of Bendis, 19 Thargelion. Thus
the dramatic dates confirm the Timaeus following the day after Socrates’ recollection
in the Republic, which follows the day after his visit to the Piraeus. Proclus, called
Diadochus (“Successor,” namely, to the head of the Platonic Academy in Athens),
should be reliable, yet his dating of the Lesser Panathenaea is now in dispute. For
careful arguments that the Timaeus does not occur immediately after the Republic, see
Brann, The Music of the Republic, p. 138.
13. Indeed Socrates left Athens on military service. But that must have occurred
when Socrates was somewhat younger (his last battle, at age 47, was Amphipolis,
422 BC), since he describes himself in the Phaedrus (327C) as “elderly.” Phaedrus
certainly does not greet him as a long-absent friend returning from war, and Phaedrus
explicitly refers to Socrates’ already established reputation for not leaving Athens,
calling this Socratic practice “something to be wondered at as most extraordinary”
(230C–D). Phaedrus could scarcely speak that way to someone who was just then com-
ing from Amphipolis. Furthermore, Amphipolis lies to the north of Athens, whereas
Phaedrus says in detail that he has been “visiting Epicrates, whose house, which used
to belong to Morychus, is near the Olympieum” (Phaedrus, 227B). Thus, the house
was near the temple of Olympian Zeus on the southeast side of Athens. Phaedrus was
eager to “meander on country lanes rather than tread the public streets” (Phaedrus,
227A), and so he would hardly walk all the way through the city to exit at a northern
gate. For further evidence that Socrates meets Phaedrus the morning after the events of
the Republic, see my “The festive and the workaday in Plato’s Phaedrus,” pp. 215–19.
14. Socrates gets himself all “fancied up” (Timaeus, 20C). He is described as
attired the same way at a notable dinner party (Symposium, 174A). It is the attire of
a comedian. When Socrates is dressed out of character, we can suspect he is about to
poke fun at someone.
15. The phrase by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, πάvτα τρόπov ἀvαπλέχωv, is
ambiguous. The braiding could apply to each individual dialogue or to them all
together. Indeed both senses hold good. The well-braided dialogues are themselves
braided together.
16. As expressed in Heidegger’s concept of Jemeinigkeit (SZ, pp. 41–2), Dasein is
always “mine to some person or other.” There is always a respective (je-) person who can
 Notes169

say, “This Dasein is mine (-mein-).” Dasein is always some person’s “mine.” Although
Dasein is not the person as such, there is no Dasein that is not mine to some person.
Heidegger therefore says explicitly in Being and Time that a personal pronoun (das
Personalpronomen) should be used when referring to Dasein (SZ, p. 42). German, unlike
English, is a gender language, and pronouns must agree with the gender of the noun they
modify, not, as in English, with the sex of the antecedent. Therefore, the rules of German
grammar make it impossible to refer back to Dasein, a neuter noun, with pronouns mean-
ing “he or she.” I will at times make use of that locution to capture the sense of what
Heidegger means by a personal pronoun in reference to Dasein, although it does not, and
could not, literally correspond to the pronouns used by Heidegger.
17. Heidegger is presumably referring to Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Part I, sec-
tion 21.
18. For a full account of this comedy and for the evidence that it is a comedy
and precisely not a tragedy portraying Socrates as utterly mired in carnality, see
my “Platonic love: Dasein’s urge toward Being.” I account there also for the claim
made above that in the Phaedrus, the beautiful lad, Phaedrus himself, surrenders to
Socrates’ seduction.
19. For an exemplarily careful and deeply insightful reading of the Phaedo, see
John Sallis, The Figure of Nature: On Greek Origins, Chapter 6, “Earthbound. The
return of nature.” I am indebted to Sallis for much of what I say here about the come-
dic elements of the Socratic discourse on philosophy and death.
20. Zeit in German and tempus in Latin both mean “time.” So Zeitlichkeit and
Temporalität could both be translated as “temporality,” and the distinction would
have to be brought out by a convention, such as using a capital for the latter or calling
it “primal time” or “time proper.” Or else a different time-word could be employed
for one or the other, such as “chronicity.”
21. In Heidegger’s Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), this characterization
of Dasein as steward or preserver occurs at least sixty times.
22. Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, pp. 12–13. English translation, pp. 8–9.

CHAPTER 2

1. Heidegger, SZ, p. 37. Other terms Heidegger employs here for the same
distinction: phenomenological-prephenomenological, existential-existentiell,
ontological-ontic.
2. This paragraph and the next draw on my discussion of Heidegger’s concept
of world in “Anxiety, melancholy, shrapnel: Contribution to a phenomenology of
desire,” p. 144.
3. Husserl, Logische Untersuchungen. 2. Bd. Untersuchungen zur Phänomenologie
und Theorie der Erkenntnis, p. 24. English translation, pp. 169–70. For an attempt
at a vigorous defense of Husserl’s theory of signs against the influential critique of
Jacques Derrida in La voix et le phénomène: Introduction au problème du signe dans
la phénoménologie de Husserl, see my “Husserl versus Derrida.”
170 Notes

4. Since for Husserl, a genetic investigation concerns childhood experience, he

explicitly relates the genetic and the psychological, for instance, in Ding und Raum
Vorlesungen 1907 Husserliana XVI, pp. 178 and 369. English translation, pp. 149
and 334.
5. Science is actually making a concession to lived experience by claiming these
images are flat. Since the retina of the eye is the sensitive surface of a sphere, the
images should all be convex. Everything we see would look like the surface of a ball
if we did see strictly in accord with anatomy and optics.
6. Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles: Einführung in
die phänomenologische Forschung, p. 91. English translation, p. 69.
7. Mockus is a contemporary Lithuanian-American poet. She was born in 1970 in
Kaunas and now resides in Pittsburgh. She writes in English, her third language, after
Lithuanian and Russian. Her poetry has been published in World Literature Today
and other literary magazines. I have engaged with her work already in my “Out of the
experience of poetry.” In Chapter 6, on COVID-19 and mortality, I will again appeal
to one of her poems. Mockus is at work on a large poetry project, to be called “She-
Riffs,” which will include the full text of “Sans soleil.”
8. Thomas Aquinas does say something similar in the respondeo section of the
question about truth cited by Heidegger (SZ, p. 14, n. 2)
9. “Compliance” could very well translate a Heideggerian term for Being: der
Fug. The general idea is “fitting closely together,” “seamlessly dovetailing.” Being is
featureless, indeterminate, contourless, impossible to be denominated. On the other
hand, beings are unfügsam, “intractable.” They do not seamlessly dovetail but instead
take on definite contours, are not compliant, and therefore can be tied to price tags.
Heidegger’s most extensive discussion of beings as differentiated from Being in these
terms occurs in his lecture course on Anaximander, Der Anfang der abendländischen
Philosophie: Auslegung des Anaximander und Parmenides, pp. 10–15. English trans-
lation, pp. 9–13.
10. Hölderlin, Übersetzungen, vol. 5, p. 242. Translation of Sophocles’ Antigone,
Strophe A, v. 926.

CHAPTER 3

1. Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, 982b. Socrates expresses the same: “There is

no other beginning of philosophy than wonder” (Theaetetus, 155D).
2. I will examine the justification of this conclusion a few pages below, in dis-
cussing the “obstinacy” of the nothing and nowhere.
3. I owe this way of understanding Kant’s reasoning to John Sallis, Kant and the
Spirit of Critique, pp. 29–30.
4. Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 77. English translation, pp. 52–53.
5. Throughout Being and Time, Heidegger uses the term “moment” (das Moment,
not the purely temporal der Moment) in the sense worked out by Husserl in the theory
of parts and wholes in the third of the Logical Investigations. Husserl distinguishes
two kinds of parts: relatively independent parts are “pieces” (e.g., a petal of a rose)
 Notes171

and relatively non-independent parts are “moments” (e.g., the color of the rose).
By using the term “moment” in this sense of inseparable constituent, Heidegger is
emphasizing that the parts of a structure always function in unison, even if each part
does make its own specific contribution to the whole.
6. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Introduction, A5/B8.
7. “An object appears to be attractive or repulsive before it appears to be black or
blue, circular or square.” Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception,
p. 32. Merleau-Ponty is quoting the Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka.
8. I am here contradicting a conclusion I had drawn earlier in “Anxiety, melan-
choly, shrapnel,” p. 148.
9. “Philosophiam e coelo devocavit et in urbibus collocavit.” Cicero, Tusculanae
disputationes, p. 434.
10. Diogenes Laertius, p. 170.
11. Phénoménologie, p. viii. Merleau-Ponty is approving the term used by
Husserl’s assistant Eugen Fink.
12. Sonnet written in 1818; published posthumously in 1848. The Complete
Poetical Works and Letters, p. 39.

CHAPTER 4

1. In another place, however, Heidegger does credit Hegel with “experiencing

something of the essence of negativity, even though the negative occurs in Hegel’s
dialectic only to disappear and keep the movement of co-opting in play” (Heidegger,
Beiträge, p. 264. English translation, p. 208).
2. Grimm, and Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch.
3. Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, p. 55. English translation, p. 39.
4. I had earlier proposed “discernment” but was thinking along the same lines as
those leading to phronesis. See my “Corrigenda to the Macquarrie-Robinson transla-
tion of Being and Time,” pp. 232–33.
5. I have discussed this voice more fully in my “Corrigenda,” pp. 220–21.
6. Jacques Derrida has called attention to this voice in “Heidegger’s ear:
Philopolemology (Geschlect IV).” Derrida takes Heidegger literally and questions
who this friendly Dasein could be. Indeed Heidegger uses very little figurative lan-
guage in Being and Time, and so Derrida’s approach to the passage is a motivated
one. Yet, I believe that, inasmuch as it takes the voice of the friend in an ontic rather
than ontological sense, it misses the point.

CHAPTER 5

1. Heidegger, Gelassenheit. Hereafter G with German page number followed

after a slash by the page number of the translation.
2. The violin is mentioned eight times in Ideas II, for example. E. Husserl, Ideen
zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Zweites
172 Notes

Buch: Phänomenologische Untersuchungen zur Konstitution, pp. 22, 149, 186–87.

English translation, pp. 24, 156, 196–97.
3. The “Discussion of Gelassenheit” did indeed precede the commemorative
address. In the German publication, however, notice of that fact is hidden away
in the back of the book. The discussion was taken from conversations in the years
1944–1945. The commemoration of Conradin Kreutzer took place on October 30,
1955, a few days prior to his actual 175th birthday.
4. The exact title is “Toward a Discussion of Detachment.” There is a subtitle:
“Out of a field-path conversation about thinking.” The published English translation
omits the main title.
5. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 172–73. English translation, p. 115.
6. Heidegger, Beiträge, p. 295. English translation, p. 233.
7. Heidegger, Überlegungen VII–XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938/39), p. 150. English
translation, pp. 115–16.
8. Heidegger, “Die Frage nach der Technik,” p. 36. English translation, p. 35.
9. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie de la perception, p. 260.
10. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. 256.
11. Merleau-Ponty, Phénoménologie, p. 256.
12. Merleau-Ponty, L’Oeil et l’Esprit, p. 14. English translation, p. 161.
13. Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen
Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie, p.
132. English translation, p. 160.

CHAPTER 6

1. Heidegger, Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles. Hereafter PI,

with German page number followed by that of the published translation.
2. Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon and Other Verses, p. 56.
3. Heidegger, Parmenides, pp. 118–19. English translation, p. 80.
4. Husserl, Formale und transzendentale Logik, p. 359.
5. Merleau-Ponty, “Sur la phénoménologie du langage,” p. 111.
6. Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 125. English translation, p. 85.
7. Heidegger, Parmenides, p. 119. English translation, pp. 80–81.
8. Heidegger, Überlegungen VII-XI (Schwarze Hefte 1938–1939), p. 182. English
translation, p. 142.
9. Heidegger, Überlegungen XII-XV (Schwarze Hefte 1939–1941), p. 195.
English translation, p. 154.
10. Heidegger, Überlegungen II-VI (Schwarze Hefte 1931–1938), p. 214. English
translation, p. 157.
11. Heidegger, Überlegungen II-VI, p. 65. English translation, p. 50.
12. See chapter 2, note 7.
13. Heidegger, “Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten,” p. 209.
14. It is with respect to the essence of technology that Heidegger first redetermines
the sense of essence from what is common to what bestows. See “Die Frage nach der
Technik,” p. 32.
 Notes173

15. Sartre, L’Existentialisme est un humanisme, p. 10.

16. “The only possibility remaining for us is to prepare a readiness for the advent
or absconding of the saving god (an absconding that might draw us to itself) and to do
so in thinking and poetizing.” Heidegger, “Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten,” p. 209.

CONCLUSION

1. Plato’s term translated as “recollection” is ἀvάμvησις, anámnesis, “un-

forgetting.” The Greek term contains a double alpha-privative and literally means
“un-un-remembering.”
2. The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, pp. 353–56. The three
lines forming the epigraph are from Wordsworth’s “My heart leaps up,” p. 277. The
Great Ode was composed in 1804, “My heart leaps up” in 1802.
3. The scientific attitude has the same roots as the aesthetic one. They both ulti-
mately derive from metaphysics, which, as we saw in Chapter 5, is the Platonic atti-
tude versus the pre-Platonic one. Indeed science and aesthetics are the same, the same
subjectivistic attitude (Dasein as discloser rather than shepherd) applied respectively
to nature and art.
4. Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, p. 87.
5. Alexander Pope, lines 149–50 from “Moral Essays, Epistle I, To Sir Richard
Temple, Lord Cobham,” in The Complete Poetical Works of Pope, p. 159.
6. Heidegger, “Die Frage nach der Technik,” p. 11; English translation, p. 8. I have
fully worked out Heidegger’s understanding of Aristotle’s four causes in my The
Gods and Technology: A Reading of Heidegger, pp. 15–66.
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 Index

aesthetics, versus Heidegger’s atmosphere, x, xii, 15, 17, 19, 33, 49–
philosophy of art, 124–26 50, 115, 123, 137, 145, 153, 164
Agathon, 117 Aufhebung, Hegelian dialectical
Alétheia, goddess, 29, 152 “co-opting,” 6, 8
Amphipolis, Battle of, 9n13 authenticity, “self-effectuation”:
Anaximander, 50n9 authentic being-toward-death,
anticipation: as authentic dying, ix, 18–20; as condition of anxiety, 73;
19–20, 60–61; as contemplative conscience as urge to authenticity,
thinking, 122–23; as detachment, 84–91, 98; as exceptional, not
121; joined to phronesis, 113–14 constant, 61; as individuation,
anxiety: as being-in, 71; as break in the motivated by anxiety, 68; as more
connection of the world to Dasein, original than inauthenticity, 64;
54–56; as constant, 77–79; as possible by following a hero, but not
essentially being-toward-death, 53; as hero-worship, 5–7; as possibly
as gift, 80; its about-which as the constant, 77; as primal decision, 142;
Being of Dasein, 68; its before-which as radical break with the past, 5; as
as nothing, 56–57; its before-which telos of Dasein, 76; as a taking over
as the Being of Dasein, 65; motives of one’s existential guilt, 100
of, 74–77; as phenomenal evidence ἀγχιβασίη, “dunning,” theme of
of the unity of being-in-the-world, Heidegger’s trialogue, 134–35
72; and wonder, 53
Aphrodite, 23 barcodes, 43–45, 48–50
Apollo, 22, 136, 155 beauty: as loved by the philosopher, 21;
Aristophanes, 77–78 as the most lustrous Idea, 12, 78; as
Aristotle, 1, 34, 54, 75, 109, 141, recollected in Socratic love, 112
162–63 Becker, Oskar, 3n6
asthéneia, “lethargy,” 10 being-in: anxiety as affect a primordial
asylum ignorantiae, “recourse out of phenomenon of, 71–74; and
ignorance (exasperation),” 28 COVID–19 slogans, 144–45; as
Athens, ix, 2–3, 9, 9n13, 78 disclosive activity, one of the three
179
180 Index

moments of being-in-the-world, 65–66, have a conscience, 100–101, 105–6;

107, 111; means not physical presence and music, 128, 132; not the Socratic
but to abide disclosively, 71, 144; three daimon, 87–88, 136; as practical
modes of, understanding, discourse, wisdom, 105–11; as structured like
affect, 71–72 care, 92–93
Bendis, 9n12 conspicuousness: of damaged tool,
birth: as mystery of our presence to versus its usual transparency, 34–35;
the world, theme of the Republic, of the world in anxiety, 60–61
2, 26; but a sleep and a forgetting constancy, of the world disclosed in
(Wordsworth), 159–60 anxiety, 61–63
Black Forest, 3, 117 contemplation, versus calculative
bracketing, as transcendental reduction, thinking, 122, 132
8, 8n11 co-opting. See Aufhebung
Brann, Eva, 5n8, 9n12 cosmetician, as arranger of tresses or
troops, 10, 31
calculative thinking, versus cosmos, as world in Heidegger’s sense,
contemplation, 121–22, 134, 149–50, a well-arranged whole, xi, 31–33, 37,
153–55 41–45, 153
Calliope, 136 counseling, as parenting, 162–64
care, as expressing the unity of being- COVID–19, slogans of: and Heidegger’s
in-the-world, 92–93 categories of factical life, 138–50; as
causality, 74–75, 162 unexamined, 150–56
Cerberus, 5 Crito, 24
childhood: as primitive Dasein, 45–48;
recollections of (subjective genitive), daily bread, 139–40
157–61 darkness, and anxiety, 73–75
Cicero, 77 Dasein, “thereness,” defined, 12
clearing, 29, 128 death. See anxiety; authenticity;
Clouds, Socrates’ attendance at, 78 conscience; fleeing; separation;
Cogito scribendo, 146 unsurpassability; wholeness
comedy, Socratic: as deliberate demythologization, 12
exaggeration, 22; in the Phaedo, 22– Derrida, Jacques, 42n3, 113n6
24, 165; in the Symposium, 21–22; in Descartes, René, 129
the Timaeus, 10, 10n14 detachment: as attitude (Gelassenheit)
communication: as a moment of toward technology, 120–22; and
any discourse, 85, 88; as silent in classical music, 135; as effective
conscience, 91; words as mere means removal from the world in anxiety,
of, a degradation, 148 54, 109–10; as exemplified in
compliance, der Fug, as a name for Heidegger’s trialogue, 132–35; as
Being, 50–51, 50n9 shown to be a lie by conscience, 110;
concert hall, 127–28 in Wordsworth, 164
conscience: and being-toward-death, dialectics: “dialectic” as itself a
113–14; as call, 83–87; and factical dialectical term, 6n10; and
life, 140; as guilty conscience, 94– negativity, 85, 85n1
100; hearing the call as wanting to dikasts, 13–14, 78
 Index 181

Diogenes Laertius, 2 Existenz, name of the Being of Dasein,

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 2, 13n15 16, 65
Diotima, 21–22 eyeglasses, 144
discourse: as call of conscience, 86–91;
hearing the voice of the friend as factical life, 138–40
the basis of, 113; as a middle-voiced facticity, equivalent to thrownness, one
phenomenon, 138; one of three of three ontological characters of
modes of disclosedness, 71, 84, 105– Dasein, 92–93
6, 144; philosopher’s discourse versus fallingness, equivalent to everydayness,
music, 123; possessing discourse inauthenticity, one of three
equivalent to possessing hands, 145– ontological characters of Dasein, 68,
47; tripartite structure of, 85 72, 92–93, 96–97
disinterested spectator, 8, 79, 154 fear, versus anxiety, xi, 53, 55–56, 58–
dispersion, as category of factical life, 60, 63–64, 68, 76–77, 80–81, 142
140, 144, 148 feelings, in art, as high points of lived
disposables, as what modern technology experience, 124–27
sees in nature, 99, 111, 121–22, 152 Fink, Eugen, 79n11
distancing, in factical life, as abolition first philosophical step, distinguishing
of distance, 143–45 Being from beings, x, 4, 10–11,
dove (Kant’s analogy), 67 24–30, 50–51, 60, 133, 144, 152
Duquesne University, xiii fleeing, as disclosure of what is fled
from: from anxiety, 75–76; from
efficient cause: as counseling, 162–63; authenticity, 62–63, 79, 90; from
not a genuinely Aristotelian death, 18
concept, 162 freedom, disclosed by anxiety: as
emotion: anxiety not mere instance of, 53, freedom toward authenticity, 68, 70;
60, 76–77; as excited by music, 124 as limited, thrown freedom, 90, 96;
emotional values, as the first perceived, through the specter of Dasein in a
47 void, 67
empiricism, 66, 75 future, as primordial temporality, 97
Entschlossenheit, “dis-closedness,” as
phronesis, not resoluteness, ix, xii, genetic phenomenology, 45–48
106–10 geometry, 10
epoché, “abstention,” 8 Goethe, Johann, 49, 107
Er, 26 grace, 155–56
Eros, 21, 154 Grimm, Jacob and Wilhelm, 107
event, Ereignis, as central term of guilt, being the basis for something
Heidegger’s later thought, 152 negative: as called forth by
everydayness, equivalent to falling, conscience, 103; as disclosing
inauthenticity, 24, 62, 77, 81, 86, 92, positive possibilities, 100–101; in
94–95, 103, 159–60 everyday understanding, 94–95;
executioner, 23–24 as intrinsic, existential guilt, 96;
existence, equivalent to projection, one as two moments of care being the
of three ontological characters of basis for the negativity of the third,
Dasein, 15, 17–19, 24, 27, 69, 92–93 96–98
182 Index

Hades, x, 14, 22, 51 idealism, 66

hammer, of cobbler or carpenter, immortality, xii, 157–65
paradigm of the ready-to-hand: inclination, as category of factical life,
as outermost hand, 34; as tension 139–41
toward presence-at-hand when indifference, as only opposite of care,
broken, 35; as transparent, 34; when 92, 139, 144–45
missing, disclosing the obtrusiveness internal time, 118
of nails, 35 involvement, name for world as
hand, its essential realm the word, 146 organized whole, 32, 36, 56, 97
handwriting, 146; versus typing, as Isocrates, 9–10
erotic touch, 154–55
hearsay, 23–25, 77, 85, 112, 146, 153– Jemeinigkeit, “mineness to some
54, 160–61 person,” 16n16
Hegel, Georg, xiii, 6, 31–32, 85n1
Heracles, 4–5 Kant, Immanuel, 7, 10, 59, 67, 85, 87,
Heraclitus, 133–34 127–28
hermeneutical circle, 101–2 Keats, John, 80
hero, 2, 4–10, 77, 87, 111 Koffka, Kurt, 71n7
hero-worship, 6 Kreutzer: Conradin, 119–20; Rodolphe,
historicality, 5 119; sonata by Beethoven, 118;
history of Being, central enigma of the “sonata” by Heidegger, 132–35
later Heidegger, 28–29, 152 καιρός, “the appointed time,” 156
Hölderlin, Friedrich, 51
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 161 larvance, “masking,” category of
horizons, in passive synthesis, 130–32 factical life, 138, 148–49
Husserl, Edmund: as constantly leisure: as condition for anxiety, 75, 80;
philosophizing, 77–79; his as condition for wonder, 75; as part
breakthrough to phenomenology of the bustle of factical life, 156
the foundation of Being and Time, Library of Congress, xiii
8; dedicatee of Being and Time, lock down, as COVID–19 command,
3; his doctrine of intentionality as 137–38, 140–42
equivalent to Heidegger’s care, 92– love. See Socratic love
93; his examples of signs, 42–43; and
genetic phenomenology, 45, 45n4; magic, 47, 49
hero of Being and Time, 5–7; and mask up, as COVID–19 command,
music, 118–19; and passive synthesis, 137–38, 149–50, 155
130–31; as prescinding from question mathematics, 121, 125, 155
of Being, 8, 11; as subject of a meaning, Heidegger’s concept of,
Festschrift edited by Heidegger, 3n8; xi–xii, 27–28
his theory of parts and wholes. See melody, xii, 118, 131–32, 134, 163
moment; his view of thinking as Merleau-Ponty, Maurice: on language,
intrinsically linguistic, 146–47 147; on music, 123, 127–29, 135;
on perception as grasp of emotional
Idea, Platonic, what is preeminently essence, 79
seen, 11. See also recollection Michelangelo, 125
 Index 183

microprocessor, 44, 48–49 Persephone, as “Light,” 51

middle voice, 138, 147 phenomenal, versus phenomenological,
Mockus, Rita Malikonytė, 23, 50, 50n7, xi, 31
150 phenomenology: can only point out,
moment, defined, versus piece, 66n5 not prove, 66; crucial role of art
money-making art, 38 in, 129; versus empiricism, 75; as
mouth, served by the hand, 146–47 faithful to natural experience, 93–94,
mundus, “neatness,” as world, 32 98–99; maxim of, 6; as ontology, 11;
muses: according to the Stranger, 4, 10– primarily a methodological concept,
11, 28–29, 73; of philosophy, 136 4; spirit of, versus letter, 8; theme
music, philosophy of, 123–32. See also of, for Heidegger, 7. See also genetic
Husserl; Kreutzer; Merleau-Ponty phenomenology
myth, as recourse in place of the second phenomenon, what shows itself: in the
philosophical step, 26–30 formal sense, any property, 7; in the
ordinary sense, any being, 7; in the
negativity, positive disclosive power of, preeminent sense, Being, 7–9
85. See also guilt philosophy. See first philosophical step;
neuroscience, 76 ontology; phenomenology; second
neutrality modification, 8 philosophical step; wonder
Nietzsche, Friedrich, xi, 16, 124–25 phronesis: conscience as phronesis,
nothingness, 31, 65, 80 according to Heidegger, 109–12;
phronesis as conscience, according to
objectification, 46 Aristotle, 108–9
obstinacy: of a tool in the way, 35, 48; physiology, and anxiety, 73–76
of the world in anxiety, 57–58 piety, 32, 161–64
obtrusiveness: of the counterpart of a Piraeus, 2, 9, 9n12, 20, 26
missing tool, 35, 48; of the world in Platonic love. See Socratic love
anxiety, 54, 57, 74–75 play, blended with seriousness, 9, 117,
old age, 16–17, 163 136
ontological difference, Being differenti- poetry: becoming mere song, 126; as the
ated from beings, 3, 10–11, 28–30 element in which phenomenology
ontology, as content of philosophy, with lives, 129; as entwined with
phenomenology as the method, 4, 8, philosophy, 150; the Platonic
11, 24 dialogues as, 1–2; as thoughtful, 156;
original sin, 99 today mere ink-slinging, 125. See
ostentatiousness, of tools for sale, 36–38 also Goethe; Hölderlin; Hopkins;
Keats; Mockus; Pope; Service;
Panathenaea, 9n12 Shakespeare; Sophocles; Wordsworth
Parmenides, 14, 26, 29, 146 Pope, Alexander, 162
passive synthesis: versus active, 129– possibilities, of Dasein as most proper
30; and mortality, 163–64; of music, ones, xi, 16, 18–20, 24–25, 27, 68,
134; of spatial experience, 130–31; 88, 113
of temporal experience, 131–32 practical wisdom. See phronesis
pathetic fallacy, committed by practice social distancing, as COVID–19
Heidegger, 28–29 command, 137–38, 142–43, 151–53
184 Index

preface, as inappropriate in a book of sequestration, as category of factical

philosophy, xiii life, 138, 140–42, 152–53
present-at-hand. See use-objects Service, Robert S., 142
price tags, 33, 44, 50n9. See also sex: not mentioned in Being and Time,
barcodes 138; as supposedly repudiated by the
primitives. See genetic phenomenology philosopher, 23
proclivity, as category of factical life, Shakespeare, William: Hamlet, 54–55,
140–41 58, 83, 87, 111, 115, 146; King Lear,
Proclus, 9n12 epigraph, 145; Macbeth, 76, 145;
projection: as disclosure of practical Twelfth Night, 117
possibilities, 106, 108; as moment shepherd, steward, preserver, as names
of existence, 96–98; as structure for Dasein in Heidegger’s later
included in understanding, 69, 105 thought, 29, 102, 124, 126, 134, 154
properties: of factical life, 138; primary, shopping, for tools, 36–38
secondary, tertiary, 47; of things, signs, as disclosive of worldhood,
versus existentialia of Dasein, 16–17 38–48, 97
silence, as the mode of discourse of
questioning, tripartite structure of, conscience, 85–88, 90–91, 106
26–27 situation, versus general location, 108,
113
ready-to-hand. See use-objects smile, as concealed by masking up, 155
recollection: as carried out by the child Socratic comedy, as a deliberately
in Wordsworth’s Great Ode, 157–60; exaggerated position, 22–24
as containing a double alpha- Socratic irony, 77
privative, 158n1; as Platonic doctrine Socratic love, versus “Platonic” love,
of un-un-remembering, 12, 28 21–22, 24, 112, 136, 164
reference (tools), versus indication Socratic method, as dissatisfaction with
(signs), 39–41 examples, beings, in place of Being,
region, as name for Being, 133 x, 3, 24
repetition, as highly nuanced in Being Socratic “most extraordinary” practice
and Time, 5–6 of never leaving Athens, 9, 9n13
resoluteness. See Entschlossenheit solipsism, existential, 67
Romanticism, 125 sonata form, 119, 133, 135
song, as degradation of poetry, 125–26,
Sallis, John, 2n5, 5n8, 22n19, 59n3 158
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 155 Sophocles, 51n10
satyr, Socrates as, 21 “Sorcerer’s apprentice,” poem by
Schuwer, André, 117–18 Goethe, 49
science, natural, 45–46, 134, 143–44, 161 space: as Being for essentially spatial
second philosophical step, unattained, Dasein, 56, 59, 128; metaphysical
25, 27, 30, 133, 144 exposition of, 59, 127; spatiality of
self-sameness. See virtue music, 127–28, 135; and time as
separation of the soul, dying: as analogous to Being, 7, 10, 128
purification from hearsay, 24; as St. Bonaventure, 117
purification from the body, 21 stop sign, as disclosing worldhood, 41–42
 Index 185

storytelling: as concrete answer use-objects (tools, gear, equipment),

to question of Being, 28; in defined, in relation to the hand, as on
mythological sense, 26; in Stranger’s hand, at hand, or in hand, 15
sense, 4, 10–11
Stranger (in the dialogues), 3–4, 8–11, violin, 118, 118n2
14, 20, 28–29, 73 virtue: for Aristotle, difficult because
suicide, 19, 22–23 of many more ways leading to vice,
141; for Socrates, self-sameness, 112
technology, 99, 111, 120–22, 126, voice: of art, 126; of Being, 113, 128–
154–55 29, 135; of conscience, 84, 88–91,
temporality: of Being, Temporalität, 106; of COVID–19 slogans, 137;
28, 28n20; and COVID–19 slogans, of the friend, 113, 113n6; of music,
145; of Dasein, Zeitlichkeit, xii, 27, 123; of the they, 84–85, 114–15. See
75; of guilt, 103; as intertwining also middle voice
of moments, xii, 27, 117; as the
meaning of the Being of Dasein, xi, wash your hands, as COVID–19
27, 75, 145; of music, xii, 131, 135; command, 137–38, 145, 154
as temporalizing out of the future, wholeness, of Dasein: attested
back to the past, and into the present, phenomenally by anxiety, 72; and
97–98 authentic being-toward death, 25; not
Theodorus, 13–14 precluded by future death, x, 13, 18;
theology, 99 synchronic and diachronic, 114
the they, defined in contrast to wonder: as anxiety, 53, 57, 60, 76; as
authenticity, 5 the beginning of philosophy, 54;
thief, guilt of, 95 provoked by art, 140–43; provoked
Thomas Aquinas, 50n8 by myth, 12; as the transcendental
Thrasymachus, 5 reduction, 79, 79n11. See also leisure
thrownness, 90–98 word processor, 148, 155
transcendental reduction, Husserl’s, 8, Wordsworth, William, 157–64
79, 130 worldhood of the world: as correlate of
treatise, Being and Time as Aristotelian, a mood, 48; as essential moment of
1–2 the Being of Dasein, 43; as obtrusive
typewriter, 44, 146–48, 155 in anxiety, 57, 59–60, 68, 152–53;
tyrant, as hero, 6 sense of things fitting together prior
to experience of any individual
uncanniness, defined, 62 things fitting together, 33, 43; versus
unconcealment, significance of as the world in the dark, 74
Heideggerian passive and negative
name for truth, 29, 32, 102, 124 Xanthippe, young wife of Socrates, 23
unsurpassability of death, 17
Urania, 136 Zen, 132–33
 About the Author

Richard Rojcewicz is either author, editor, or translator of seventeen previous

books in Continental philosophy.

187