Ontological Humility: Lord Voldemort and the Philosophers

Chapter Two: Ontological Humility in Heidegger

Chapter Two Ontological Humility in Heidegger The Thrownness of Dasein The essence of art is poetry. The essence of poetry, in turn, is the founding of truth. —Martin Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art” I It might be argued that one can only find the pattern of ontological and epistemological humility or arrogance in the authors discussed in the last chapter if one is looking for it (and, some might argue, not even then). But where does the idea that such a pattern exists come from? As suggested in the Prologue, the basic insight behind the concept of ontological humility can be found in the work of Martin Heidegger. In this chapter we will trace that claim through three areas of Heidegger’s work: his unfinished opus Being and Time (1929) and other texts that are part of the so-called early Heidegger; his readings of ancient Greek philosophical texts over the full length of his career; and the critiques of technological modernity that are the best known and most accessible of his later writings. Despite the earlier/later Heidegger division, we will find he is occupied, if not preoccupied, with ontological humility from the beginning of his philosophical career. As early as a lecture course in 1921–1922, he declares, almost in the spirit of Hume, that “Skepticism . . . is the beginning of philosophy, and as the genuine beginning, it is also the end of philosophy.”1 Before moving into Heidegger’s work in more detail, however, key terms need to be explained, and we need to remind ourselves that ontological humility often doesn’t correspond to being a humble person. 45 46 Ontological Humility To begin with the somewhat cryptic title of this section, “Dasein” (literally, in German, “to be there”2 ), is Heidegger’s term for what the French existentialists call “human existence.” As we shall see, Heidegger is deeply suspicious of the concept of “humanity” and how it has been understood in the philosophical tradition, so he uses the term Dasein to focus, not on humans as a biological species, but as beings who are aware that they exist in a specific time and place, that they are “there” when they could have been in some other place or time—or nowhere at all, since Dasein is also defined as a being who is aware of its own eventual death. His ontology consists, not of minds and bodies (and God), as in Descartes, or of experienced and intellectual worlds, as in Kant, but of beings (entities in the world that are not Dasein), Dasein, and Being, which is transcendent to both. One way to understand the difference between the earlier and later Heidegger is as a shift from a focus on Dasein to a primary interest in Being itself. “Thrownness” is how a specific instance of Dasein (the most correct way to describe an individual person for Heidegger) comes to be in the time and place where it finds itself, or more correctly, the bare fact that it finds itself there. What “throws” Harry Potter into his world as “the boy who lived” is Voldemort’s murder of his parents and his attempt to kill Harry. This “thrownness” then determines everything that happens to him in Rowling’s saga. The importance of time in Being and Time can be seen by understanding this thrownness as the past, beginning with our appearance/birth at a random spot in the world and consisting of everything that we have done or that has happened to us since that moment. Even after the death of the Dark Lord, time is measured for Harry at the end of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by the absence of pain in the scar, which represents how his essential thrownness is marked. The last words in his story are “The scar had not pained Harry for nineteen years. All was well.”3 Dasein beings (things other than Dasein) Being 47 Ontological Humility in Heidegger For Heidegger, Dasein exists as “thrown projection,” that is, our past, our thrownness, is important or meaningful only because of how we project ourselves into a completely open future.4 Our projects, our goals, from the most trivial (don’t forget to buy bread) to the most elevated (make the world a better place) are what give meaning to and define every aspect of our lives. More important, they are what makes us who we are...