In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

163 5 Early Heidegger: Fundamental Ontology This characteristic is not to be understood as merely a way of taking them, as if we were talking such “aspects” into the “entities” which we proximally encounter, or as if some world-stuff which is proximally present-at-hand in itself were “given subjective colouring” in this way. . . . Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are “in-themselves” are defined ontologicol-categorially. (Heidegger, BT 101/71) The most primordial and basic existential truth, for which the problematic of fundamental ontology strives in preparing the question of Being in general, is the disclosedness of the meaning of the Being of care. (Heidegger, BT 364/316) As anyone who has fallen under its spell can attest, Being and Time is an astonishing work.1 The first impression it makes is one of stunning originality ; on further readings one sees that the book is equally a synthesis of ideas taken from a wide range of previous philosophers, primarily Husserl, Kierkegaard, Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. This realization increases the impression the book makes, since its synthesis of these disparate figures is so natural that the seams can only be detected on close inspection. The last three influences listed are the representatives of what I am calling the Kantian Paradigm, so it should come as no surprise that I read Being and Time as the culmination of this movement. Or rather, simultaneously the paradigm’s highest point and its undermining; for although Heidegger’s early work is still working within this system, it also lays the ground for its overcoming in his later work. Heidegger’s Kehre or “turning” from his early to his later phase, which I will discuss in chapter 6, inaugurates a turn away from the Kantian Paradigm in the history of continental philosophy, which is why I describe Heidegger’s early thought as the Transition point in my narrative. The sense that something has been lost permeates Being and Time. Heidegger claims that Dasein, roughly his term for the structured awareness which he considers our defining feature, has become “alienated” so that it “has lost itself, and, in falling, ‘lives’ away from itself ” (Heidegger, BT 223/179). We have become disconnected from the deep structure that defines us—“this alienation closes off from Dasein its authenticity” (222/178), or proper way of living—and the point of the book is to put us back in touch with the meaning of our Being in addition to the meaning of Being per se in order to recover a whole, “true” way of life. The method employed is hermeneutic phenomenology, which depicts human inquiry as locked into “the hermeneutic circle” (Heidegger, BT 27/7). Heidegger responds to Meno’s paradox—that is, the dilemma that inquiry is impossible since a completely ignorant inquirer would not recognize the answer if she came across it, while a knowledgeable inquirer would not need to inquire in the first place—by adapting Plato’s solution of recollection: we have a “pre-ontological” understanding of Being, including our own way of Being, which orients all of our actions and thoughts at all times (32/12). This is a pre-theoretical, unthematic understanding that guides and gets expressed in our behavior, something like Ryle’s concept of intelligence as knowing-how.2 Like Plato’s method of maieutics, though stripped of its metaphysical-mythical trappings, hermeneutic phenomenology works by reminding us of the experience we live in all the time and the wisdom contained therein. Although we are so to speak “primordially” familiar with these phenomena, conscious reflection tends to misconstrue, cover up, or disguise them. “The entity which in every case we ourselves are, is ontologically that which is farthest. . . . The ontology which is directed towards this entity is denied an appropriate basis. . . . The layingbare of Dasein’s primordial Being must rather be wrested from Dasein” (359/311; see also 61/36). And what is it that has covered over and disguised the primal phenomena of our daily life, consigning us to inauthenticity ? In a word, realism. Realism Being and Time as we have it (only one-third of what Heidegger originally planned to write was published) is largely an analysis of realism—its origins , limitations, dangers, and cure. Realism has inflicted philosophical trauma upon humanity for millennia, and it must be dismantled before we can reconnect with our selves to achieve authenticity. Since the book concerns Being, Heidegger gets at the...

Share