Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation:

Mitsein (being-with), Ethics and Responsibility

Sarah Sorial

A thesis submitted to the School of Philosophy in the University of New

South Wales in the fulfilment of the award of Doctor of Philosophy.

2005
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my supervisor, Rosalyn Diprose for her encouragement, support and
generosity in the writing of this thesis. I would especially like to thank her for her
unwavering confidence and interest in the project and in my ability to put it all together.
Thanks also to the School of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales for the
resources and the space to complete this thesis.

To my friends - Wojciech Nadachowski, Ann Murphy, Dave Cranmer, Toni Hurley, Mai
Paola, Isis Ibrahim, Daniel Nourry, Greg Leaney, Mary Symons and Chelsea Friend –
thankyou for your friendship, humour and inspiration. I would especially like to thank
Ann Murphy for proof reading the manuscript, Anthony Sorial for his computer expertise
and Lydia Sorial for always being the calm voice of reason. I would also like to express
my thanks to my family - Venice, Sobhi, Lydia and Anthony - for their unceasing
patience, unconditional generosity and love. It is to them that I dedicate this work.

Some of the material in chapters four and five has been published in the following
journals: “Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of Dasein’s Embodiment: An
Ethics of Touch and Spacing” appeared in Philosophy Today, Vol. 48 no. 2, Summer
2004 and “Heidegger and the Ontology of Freedom” in International Philosophical
Quarterly (forthcoming, June 2006).

iii
 Abstract

The argument of this thesis is that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute another

form of solipsism and is not incongruent with Heidegger’s account of Mitsein (being-

with). By demonstrating how individuation is bound up with Mitsein I will also argue

that this concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived here as responsibility for

one’s Being/existence that nevertheless implicates others. By tracing the trajectory of

Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time to the later text, Time and Being, I want to

suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to Dasein as an individual contains

an ethical moment. Ethics, not conceived of as a series of proscriptions, in terms of the

Kantian Categorical Imperative for example. Nor ethics conceived in terms of an

obligation to and responsibility for another, as in Levinasian ethics, but an ethics in terms

of responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence. The

ethical moment in Heidegger, I argue, is not one as ambitious as changing the world or

assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of

changing oneself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in response to the call of

Being. I will show how, given that Dasein is always Mitsein, others are situated in such

an ethics.

Central to the thesis is an examination of the relation between indivduation and Mitsein.

While Heidegger is always careful to distinguish his form of individuation from other

accounts of individuation or solipsism, such as those of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant

or Edmund Husserl’s, Heidegger’s conception of solipsism and its relation to his account

vi
of Mitsein remains somewhat obscure. As a consequence, there are several problems that

this concept raises, all of which have been the subject of much debate. At the centre of

this debate is the apparent tension between the concept of individuation and the notion

that ontologically, Dasein is also a Mitsein. This tension has led to a number of

interpretations, which either argue that the concept of individuation is inconsistent with

the notion of Mitsein, or that it constitutes yet another instance of Cartesian subjectivity

and that as a consequence, it is inherently unethical.

This thesis contributes to this debate by submitting that the concept of individuation,

while primary or central to Heidegger’s ontology, is not in tension with his account of

Mitsein. I use Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular to argue for this claim.

I suggest that it is precisely this concept of individuation that can inform an ethics and

theory of political action on account of the emphasis on individual responsibility. The

second part of my argument, also made with the aid of Nancy, is that this can inform an

ethics and a theory of political action, not at level of making moral judgements, or

yielding standards of right and wrong, but at the level of individual and by implication,

collective responsibility for one’s own existence. Given that there is no real separation

between the ontic and ontological levels in Heidegger’s work, a taking responsibility at

the level of one’s own Being will invariably play itself out ontically in factical life in

terms of moral responsibility and judgement.

I explore the concrete political implications of this through an examination of

Heidegger’s account of freedom. I argue that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the

vi
ontology of self-presence and his alternative conception of it provides us with a way of

thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set of rights, but as a mode of being-in-the-

world and as the basis for collective political action. I use the work of Hannah Arendt to

develop a theory of political action, freedom and judgment from this revisionary

conception of freedom.

vi
 Contents

Acknowledgments iii

Abstract vi

Introduction 1

1. Heidegger and the Problem of Individuation 12

2. Individuation, Mitsein and Jean-Luc Nancy’s Logic

of the Singular 70

3. Ontology and the Question of the Ethico-Political 122

4. Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the Question of

Dasein’s Embodiment: An ethics of touch and spacing 177

5. Freedom and Collective Responsibility: Heidegger,

Arendt and Political Action 220

Conclusion 266

List of References 272

ii
ii
 Introduction

The argument of this thesis is that Heideggerian individuation does not constitute another

form of solipsism and is not incongruent with Heidegger’s account of Mitsein (being-

with). By demonstrating how individuation is bound up with Mitsein, I will argue that

this concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived here as responsibility for one’s

Being/existence. By tracing the trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time

to the later text, Time and Being,1 I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its

relation to Dasein as an individual contains an ethical moment. Ethics, not conceived of

as a series of proscriptions, in terms of the Kantian Categorical Imperative for example.

Nor ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and responsibility for another, as in

Levinasian ethics; but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more

specifically, for one’s own existence. The ethical moment in Heidegger, I argue, is not

one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on

behalf of others. It is, rather, a question of changing oneself. It is a question of assuming

responsibility in response to the call of Being; a call that has already claimed Dasein in

some way. To be, I will argue, is to be responsible for the conduct of oneself.

1
The primary focus in this thesis is on Being and Time, however, I also refer to other texts such as Time
and Being, “The Letter on Humanism,” Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, The Basic Problems of
Phenomenology to substantiate this reading. While I concede that Heidegger’s work undergoes various
shifts in emphasis, most notably, the shift from a preoccupation with Dasein to that of Being, I am reading
him as having a single preoccupation, in line with his idea, expressed in the Nietzsche lectures that each
thinker pursues a single trajectory. This preoccupation, on my reading, is the question of Being, as accessed
through Dasein.

1
Heidegger and individuation

Heidegger’s notion of individuation, also referred to as his existential solipsism, is a

recurring one in his work. While he is always careful to distinguish it from other accounts

of individuation or solipsism, such as those of Rene Descartes, Immanuel Kant or

Edmund Husserl’s, Heidegger’s formulation and its relation to his account of Mitsein

remains somewhat obscure.2 For example, in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics

he writes:

In becoming finite … there occurs an individuation of man with respect to his

Dasein. Individuation – this does not mean that man clings to his frail little ego
that puffs itself up against something or other which it takes to be the world. This
individuation is rather that solitariness in which each human being first of all
enters into a nearness to what is essential in all things, a nearness to world. What
is this solitude, where each human being will be as though unique?3

In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, he reiterates that his formulation of

individuation is not another form of solipsism because it is concomitantly being-with-

others:

Existence as together and with one another is founded on the genuine

individuation of the individual, determined by enpresenting in the sense of the

2
While individuation is a recurring theme in Heidegger’s work, the concept is replaced with an
authoritarian claim in 1933 that one decisive individual should decide on behalf of the German people as a
whole. In an appeal to German students on 3 November 1933, Heidegger invests Hitler with supreme moral
authority, claiming that one should not guide one’s life by moral maxims, because “the Fuhrer himself and
alone is present and future Germany and its law.” In “Aufruf an die Deutschen Studenten” of 3 November
1933, Freiburger Studentenzeitung, vol. 8, no. 1, 1933, p.1. Reprinted in Herman Philipse, “Heidegger and
Ethics” Inquiry, 42, p.439. I will address this tension between individuation and the fate of the Volk under a
dictator in chapter five
3
Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude trans. William
McNeill and Nicolas Walker. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995, p.6. Hereafter
cited as FCM.

2
 instant. Individuation does not mean clinging obstinately to one’s own private
wishes but being free for the factical possibilities of current existence.4

In Being and Time, the concept of individuation initially emerges in the discussion of

“mineness” and is fleshed out in terms of the mood of anxiety, authenticity and being-

toward-death. In experiencing the mood of anxiety, Heidegger writes:

Anxiety individualises Dasein for its ownmost being-in-the-world, which as

something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities …
anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing
which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individuation.5

The experience of authenticity is described as one where Dasein isolates itself from the

world of the ‘they,’ the only public or social world described in Being and Time. The

experience of being-toward-death discloses to Dasein the extent to which it is solitary,

non-relational, and that ultimately, each Dasein dies alone, irrespective of how many

people are by its side.

Despite these assertions and qualifications that individuation is not intended as a

reproduction of individuation in the Cartesian, Husserlian or Kantian sense of the term,

there are several problems that this concept raises, all of which have been the subject of

much debate. At the centre of this debate is the apparent tension between the concept of

individuation and the notion that ontologically, Dasein is also a Mitsein. This tension has

led to a number of interpretations, which either argue that the concept of individuation is

4
Martin Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. Albert Hofstadter, Bloomington &
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1998, p.288. Hereafter cited as BBP.
5
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Oxford & Cambridge:
Blackwell, 1962, p. 187-8; 232. Hereafter cited as BT.

3
incongruent with the notion of Mitsein, or that it constitutes yet another instance of

Cartesian subjectivity and that as a consequence, it is inherently unethical. Others have

argued that the concept of Mitsein, while being underdeveloped, is not only central to

Heidegger’s ontology, but can be used as the basis upon which to construct an ethics.

Alternatively, it is argued that while Heidegger’s work is not explicitly ethical, it

nevertheless challenges the way in which we relate to one another, thereby rendering

ethics, conceived in terms of an obligation toward others, possible.

For Hubert Dreyfus, for example, Heideggerian individuation is inconsistent with his

conception of das Man, rendering the idea ‘incoherent,’ ‘confused’ and

‘incomprehensible.’6 For Jacques Taminiaux, it represents the culmination of the modern

metaphysics of subjectivity, where Dasein’s relation to itself is described in terms of a

solipsistic closure.7 For Patricia Huntington, while there are resonances of “receptivity

and solicitude for others” evident in Heidegger’s notion of care, “we also hear a deeper,

masculine, and even heroic undertone resonate in his descriptions of authentic resolve …

for all the talk of overcoming abstractions and giving up myths of mastery, Being and

Time remains shot through with an ethos of stoic resolve reminiscent of the masculinist

posture.”8

6
Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p. 151.
7
Jacques Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. Michael Gendra Suny:
Albany,1991, p.xix.
8
Patricia J. Huntington, Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray.
Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998, p. 5-6.

4
The consequence of this, as Emmanuel Levinas for example argues, is that Heidegger’s

conception of individuation, insofar as it constitutes a preoccupation with one’s own

being, constitutes an ethical closure.9 For Herman Philipse, there are several reasons as to

why Heidegger’s thinking is inherently unethical. Firstly, there is the tension between the

account of individual authenticity and the idea of Mitsein. Secondly, there is Heidegger’s

replacement of his individualist decisionism with an authoritarian variety, where one

decisive individual decides on behalf of the German people as a whole. Thirdly, and

related to the previous point, there is the problematic, if not paradoxical account of

individual authenticity and the idea of a Volk, in which the destiny of the individual is

tied to the destiny of a nation or of a people as a form of collective authenticity. These

points, coupled with his agreement with Hitler that “the individual, wherever he stands,

does not count”10 and various claims about ethics and morality in general, suggest that

Heidegger’s career as a moral philosopher was not very promising. Nor is the attempt to

use his work to inform a ethics or theory of political action.11

Other interpretations, such as that of Frederick Olafson use Heidegger’s notion of Mitsein

to develop a justification for moral commitments towards others that overcomes the

traditional dilemma of moral heteronomy versus moral autonomy (Philipse 1999: 445).

The problem however is that while Heidegger did emphasise that being-with is a

fundamental or ontological characteristic of human life, he never showed what Olafson

9
Emmanuel Levinas, “Is Ontology Fundamental?” trans. Peter Atterton in Philosophy Today, Summer
1989 for example. I address this claim in greater detail in chapter three.
10
Martin Heidegger, Letter of December 20, 1933 to the staff and faculties of Freiburg University, quoted
in Hugo Ott, Martin Heidegger: Unterwegs zu seiner Biographie. Frankfurt & New York: Campus Verlag,
1988, p.229.
11
Herman Philipse, “Heidegger and Ethics” in Inquiry, Vol.42, 1999, p.445.

5
intends to demonstrate. That is, that “our relation to one another can by itself yield

standards of right and wrong.”12 Or, as Philipse points out, he could never positively

answer the question “as to whether this choice that we are called to make is itself subject

to any standard of judgement” (Philipse 1999: 445).

Other interpretations, such as that of Krzysztof Ziarek, argue that while there is no

imperative in Heidegger to respond to the other, or an insistence of an obligation to the

other, by challenging the way in which we have traditionally conceptualised our relation

to the world and to each other, Heidegger’s ontology creates the conditions upon which

we can construct an ethics.13 Ziarek argues that if, as thinkers such as Levinas and

Derrida, Irigaray and Nancy argue, violence and oppression originate in the wake of

thought that effaces alterity, then Heidegger’s ethos of thinking constitutes an

intervention into the “originary moment of violence inherent in thought itself” (Ziarek

1995: 394). Heidegger’s work “… locates the operations of violence and erasure of

alterity on a different level, by re-examining the structural inscription of violence in the

‘metaphysical’ practices of thought” (Ziarek 1995: 394).

This thesis contributes to this debate by submitting that the concept of individuation,

while primary or central to Heidegger’s ontology, is not in tension with his account of

Mitsein. I use Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular to argue for this

12
Frederick Olafson, Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics: a study of Mitsein, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press,1998, p.3.
13
Krzysztof Ziarek, “The Ethos of Everydayness: Heidegger on poetry and language” in Man and World,
1995; 28(4) p. 394

6
claim.14 I suggest that it is precisely this concept of individuation that can inform an

ethics and theory of political action on account of the emphasis on individual

responsibility. The second part of my argument, also made with the aid of Nancy, is that

this can inform an ethics and a theory of political action, not at level of making moral

judgements, or yielding standards of right and wrong, but at the level of individual and by

implication, collective responsibility for one’s own existence. Given that there is no real

separation between the ontic and ontological levels in Heidegger’s work, a taking

responsibility at the level of one’s own Being will invariably play itself out ontically in

factical life in terms of moral responsibility and judgement.15

The structure of my argument is as follows: the first chapter examines the way in which

the problem of solipsism emerges in the philosophical tradition, Heidegger’s critique of

it, as expressed in the “Age of the World as Picture” and how his conception of the

subject differs from that of Cartesian subjectivity. I examine the ontological structure of

Heidegger’s Dasein, primarily in terms of Heidegger’s claims that Dasein is also

ontologically a Mitsein. I then examine the possible tension that arises between this

account of Mitsein and the radical individuation that Heidegger endorses in the

discussion of anxiety, authenticity and death. Finally, I examine the tension between

14
I am in debted to François Raffoul for drawing attention to the possibility of reading Heidegger in this
way in his comprehensive book dealing with this issue, Heidegger and the Subject, trans. David Pettigrew
and Gregory Recco, Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1998.
15
I examine this in greater detail in chapter three and again in chapter five in terms of Hannah Arendt’s
theory of political action and freedom as intersubjective. See also Heidegger’s interview, “Only a God can
Save us now” in Der Spiegel, trans. Maria P. Alter & John Caputo, in Philosophy Today, XX (4/4), 1976.
Heidegger answers the question about his concern for political situations by claiming: “at the time I was
completely taken up with the questions that are developed in Being and Time (1927) and in the writings and
lectures of the following years. These are the fundamental questions of thinking which in an indirect way
affect even national and social questions.” p.269.

7
individuation and the form of authentic Mitsein in terms of the destiny or fate of the Volk

in section 74 of Being and Time.

In the second chapter, I suggest that it is possible to reconcile this tension between

Mitsein, authenticity and individuation, by drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical

logic of the singular. I should point out that Jean-Luc Nancy raises a similar concern to

that of the commentators previously referred to insofar as he argues that while Heidegger

did attempt to show that being-toward-death is only possible because Dasein is not a

subject in the Cartesian or liberal sense of the term, when it came to the question of

community, Heidegger went astray. As a consequence, Dasein’s being toward death was

never really implicated in its being-with.16 While I use Nancy’s logic of the singular to

defend Heidegger’s notion of individuation as consistent with Mitsein, I argue that

Dasein’s individuation in the face of its being toward death is not problematic or

inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein.

The third chapter addresses the question of whether an ethics of responsibility or theory

of political action can be constructed on this concept of individuation. This is necessary

on account of Heidegger’s claims made in both Being and Time and the “Letter on

Humanism,” that his preoccupation with ontology precludes an examination of ethics,

and that ontology has little to do with ethics and action. My discussion in this chapter is

framed in the context of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger. I exclusively examine

Levinas’ claim that Heidegger’s ontology closes the ethical relation to the other on

16
Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural trans. Robert D. Richardson & Anne E. O’Byrne, Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2000.p.14. Hereafter cited as BSP.

8
account of its preoccupation with one’s own Being, and the role the understanding plays.

In this chapter, I argue against Levinas’ claim that for Heidegger, the relation I have with

Being by virtue of the ontological difference takes priority over the relation I have to the

other. On the contrary, I want to suggest that it is only by virtue of Being that I can have

an ethical relation to the other in the first place. A conclusion that interestingly enough,

Levinas reaches in his final engagement with Heidegger.

I suggest that the ethical moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned by the

call of Being to take responsibility for its own Being. Based on the argument developed

in chapters one and two that Dasein is also a Mitsein despite its individuation, its

responsibility for its own Being necessarily entails a responsibility for the other. The

consequence of my argument is that ontology and ethics – conceived as responsibility for

the conduct of oneself – are not as mutually exclusive as Levinas contends.

Chapter four builds upon the notion of individuation as responsibility for self and

responsibility for others by arguing for an ethics based on the concepts of spacing and

distance. With Jean-Luc Nancy, I develop an account of ethics based on the concepts of

touch and spacing, from out of a discussion of Heidegger and the question of

embodiment. I argue against the claim that Heidegger’s work constitutes a disavowal of

corporeality and suggest that while the body is not directly addressed in Heidegger’s

work, it is consistently evoked in other ways. My argument suggests that rather than

abandon the body, Heidegger inadvertently creates a space for it; a space that opens,

9
rather than closes ethical obligation. I do this primarily through an examination of

Heidegger’s reconfiguration of the relation between space and time.

The fifth chapter examines Heidegger’s account of freedom. Here, I examine Heidegger’s

later formulation of freedom as expressed in The Essence of Human Freedom and

examine why it remains of value in a perusal of an ontological interrogation of freedom. I

argue against the claim that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the subject unravels

Dasein’s ontological structure as explicated in Being and Time. By reading the later

formulation of freedom against the earlier, the second section of this chapter traces the

parallels and similarities between the two conceptions of freedom in order to show the

way in which Heidegger’s thinking remains consistent. The final section fills out the

contours of Heidegger’s indeterminate conception of freedom. I argue against the claim

that Heideggerian freedom constitutes a disavowal of community or Mitsein, by

demonstrating how Heidegger reconciles the rift between freedom and fraternity. This

final chapter draws out the political implications of this with specific reference to Hannah

Arendt’s conception of political action as based on an ontological conception of freedom.

Rather than downplay the notion of individuation on account of criticisms that suggest

that it is inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein, and that it is unethical insofar as it

constitutes a preoccupation with one’s own Being, this thesis will argue that it is

precisely because of this concept that Heideggerian ontology can inform an ethics and a

theory of political action. The ethical moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is

summoned to take responsibility for its existence. To be, for Heidegger, is to be

10
responsible for how one conducts oneself, to claim one’s actions as one’s own and to

claim responsibility for the consequences of those actions.17

17
The ethics that announces itself here is ironically, one that Heidegger failed to heed.

11
Chapter One
Heidegger and the problem of individuation

The argument of this thesis is that Heidegger’s concept of individuation is fundamentally

different from the type of solipsism Heidegger sought to evade and that it is consistent

with the account of Mitsein. Moreover, I argue that it contains an ethics of responsibility

for one’s own existence, and for that of the other as a necessary implication. This chapter

is intended to set up the problematic of individuation as it emerges in Heidegger’s

thinking, with the primary focus being on the earlier texts Being and Time, Fundamental

Concepts of Metaphysics and Basic Problems of Phenomenology.1 The first section

examines the way in which the problem of solipsism emerges in the philosophical

tradition, Heidegger’s critique of it in terms of the problem of mediation, the problem of

other minds and the problem of alienation or nihilism as expressed in both Being and

Time and the “Age of the World as Picture.” The second section examines the ontological

structure of Dasein, primarily in terms of Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is also

ontologically a Mitsein. In the final section, I examine the possible tension that arises

between this account of Mitsein and the individuation that Heidegger endorses in the

discussion of anxiety, authenticity and death, and between individuation and the form of

authentic Mitsein in terms of the destiny or fate of the Volk in section 74 of Being and

Time.

1
The reason why I have chosen to focus exclusively on these texts and not on the later ones, despite the
fact that I read the later work as consistent with the earlier work is that the earlier texts focus on the analytic
of Dasein as a way into the question of Being, while the later texts shift the emphasis from Dasein to the
relation Dasein has with its own Being. In this sense, the later work reiterates the theme of individuation,
insofar as it concerns the exclusive relation between Dasein and its Being, or concerns the preoccupation
Dasein has with its Being.

12
i. Philosophy and the problem of solipsism.

This section explores the way in which the problem of solipsism emerges in the

philosophical tradition by way of Rene Descartes. I have chosen Descartes as my point of

departure because he is Heidegger’s primary interlocutor. As Heidegger writes: “… the

aim of the existential analytic can be made plainer by considering Descartes, who is

credited with providing the point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry by his

discovery of the ‘cogito sum’” (BT46/71). In what way then, is Descartes responsible for

the rise of solipsism and what are the problems associated with a conception of the

subject as individual? The answer lies in the consequences of Descartes’ method of

radical doubt, employed in his attempt to establish a secure foundation for knowledge.

As Edmund Husserl points out, this demand for a systematic account of knowledge gives

rise to a philosophy oriented toward the subject itself.2 The turn toward the subject is

made at two levels. The first involves that the philosopher must withdraw into himself

and attempt to overthrow and rebuild all the sciences that he has, until then, been

accepting by doubting their validity. It suggests, as Husserl points out that “philosophy –

wisdom – is the philosopher’s quite personal affair. It must arise as his wisdom, as his

self-acquired knowledge tending toward universality, a knowledge for which he can

answer from the beginning, and at each step, by virtue of his own absolute insights” (CM

2). The second level is the reduction of everything to the pure ego: “the mediator keeps

only himself, qua pure ego of his cogitations, as having an absolutely indubitable

2
Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations: An Introduction to Phenomenology trans. Dorion Cairns. The
Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973, p. 2. Hereafter cited as CM.

13
existence, as something that would exist even though this world were non-existent” (CM

3).

The method of radical doubt gives rise to both dualism and solipsism. That is, that the

mind and body are two distinct and independent substances, which can interact with each

other; and solipsism because what we are logically left with is a solitary ego existing

independently of not only its own body, but others as well. The problem here is not so

much that there really isn’t a world, but that the subject is a self-enclosed consciousness,

cut off and in logical isolation from the world. As Husserl argues, “thus reduced, the ego

carries on a kind of solipsistic philosophizing. He seeks apodictically certain ways by

which, within his own pure inwardness, an Objective outwardness can be deduced” (CM

3).

There are primarily three problems with Descartes’ account that Heidegger either

explicitly or implicitly addresses. The first is the problem of mediation. That is, of how a

subject can take leave of this inner sphere of ownness in order to procure knowledge of

the outside world. Heidegger writes:

The more unequivocally one maintains that knowing is proximally and really
‘inside’ … the problem [arises] of how this knowing subject comes out of its
inner ‘sphere’ into one which is ‘other and external,’ of how knowing can have
any object at all, and of how one must think of the object itself so that eventually
the subject knows it without needing to venture a leap into another sphere. (BT
60/87)

14
While it is possible to argue in response that this sphere of immanence is not to be

interpreted as a ‘box’ or ‘cabinet’ in which representations are stored, this does not, for

Heidegger, answer the central question of how knowledge, in terms of both its acquisition

and communication, makes its way out of this sphere of immanence and achieves

transcendence (BT 60-1/87). Part of the problem here lies in the way in which we

conceptualise the mind and its relation to the outside. The problem seemingly emerges

because we think of the mind as invisible, private and inaccessible to the outside world.

The second problematic consequence of Descartes’ method of doubt is the problem of

other minds – of how a subject can encounter another subject as a subject rather than as

an object of its representation. If, as Descartes maintains, the mind is what is inaccessible

and invisible, then it follows that I alone am able to grasp it. On this account, I cannot

reach other lives and other thought processes. Because I am unable to access the psychic

or mind of the other directly, it follows that I can only seize the other’s mind indirectly,

as it is mediated by bodily experiences. So while I can see others in the flesh, I can never

know what the other is thinking, or that their experiences of colour, and sound for

example, are the same as mine. If this is the case, then how is it possible to suppose that

there is someone who experiences his or her body as I experience mine?3

The third problem is that this conception of the subject fails to disclose Dasein

ontologically, which in turns, leads to alienation and nihilism. For Heidegger, by positing

the subject as detached from the world, and by conceiving the world as something that

3
For a further discussion on the problem of solipsism as arising from the way we conceive of the mind, see
M.C.Dillon, Merleau-Ponty’s Ontology, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1997, p. 113-4
and chapters 1 & 7.

15
can be known by the subject in isolation from a concrete engagement with it obscures or

conceals ontological Being: “One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an ‘I’

or subject as that which is proximally given we shall completely miss the phenomenal

content of Dasein” (BT 46/72) and “when … we come to the question of man’s Being,

this is not something we can simply compute by adding together those kinds of Being

whose nature has yet to be determined” (BT 46/74).

A related problem is the conception of the world that this leaves us with. In the “Age of

the World Picture”4 and his lectures on Nietzsche, Heidegger examines the effects this

conception of subjectivity has in terms of alienation and nihilism.5 He argues that what

has characterised modernity since the Renaissance is not that it merely substitutes one

world view in the place of another, but rather that the modern world defines itself by an

attempt to “conquer the world as image” (AWP 129). To conceive of the world as such

an “image” or “picture” means that Man must embark on a project of conquest; of

objectifying or representing the world by imposing his own meaning upon it.

4
Martin Heidegger, “The Age of the World Picture” in Question Concerning Technology. Trans. W.Lovitt.
Harper and Row, 1977. Hereafter cited as AWP.
5
It should be noted that this problem of alienation had already been raised by Husserl and Hegel.
According to Hegel, there are five specific problems that arise from conceiving of the world and others as
objective realities. Firstly, it creates a split between reason and passion. Once men identify themselves as
spiritual beings, they contrast themselves with their own bodies. Alienated from the natural world, people
conceive of themselves as immaterial souls, and become embarrassed by their ‘animal functions.’ They
come to perceive their senses and passion as enemies that must be controlled by their reason. Secondly, it
not only alienates man from his body, but also from others. Consequently, it renders the subject as alienated
from a sense of community. Thirdly, men become alienated insofar as they feel inessential to the way
things are. To conceive ourselves as mere spectators of an objective reality is to deny that we have any
responsibility for the articulation of that reality. While we can understand the world as a series of causal
laws, we do not understand it as our world, invested with the meanings we give it; it is not a world that
matters to us, as such. Finally, as alienated, we cannot be free. See David Cooper, Existentialism: A
Reconstruction, 2nd Edition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999 p. 22 and Edmund Husserl, The crisis of
the European sciences and transcendental phenomenology: an introduction to phenomenological
philosophy, trans. David Carr, Evanston: Northwesstern University Press, 1970.

16
More specifically, Heidegger characterises modernity as the age of science and

technology, an age where art moves into the sphere of aesthetics, meaning that art has

become commodified: a mere object for the expression of human activity. It is an age

where human activity, however barbarous, is conceived and legitimised as a part of

culture and where there exists a demise of the gods (AWP 116). The phenomenon

underlying these characteristics is that rather than cultivate a relation to the world that

enables Man to be immediately responsive, open and receptive to whatever experience is

being presented, be it technology, art or science, Man seeks to master and control the

revealing of Being that presents itself. Man attempts to reveal Being, rather than allow

Being to reveal itself to Man (AWP 131).

Heidegger traces the development of the philosophical subject to the Pre-Socratics,

particularly to the thought of Protagoras. But the subject announced there was a radically

different conception of subjectivity than that found in the modern world. For Protagoras,

“Man is the measure of all things, of things that are, and of things that are not, that they

are not.”6 While Heidegger remarks that this statement shares close affinities with

Descartes' thinking, the fundamental difference is that what is being presented to this

Greek subject is presented in a realm of “unconcealment in which Being comes to

presence” (Nietzsche IV: 93). What Heidegger means by this is that by lingering in the

realm of the unconcealed, the subject belongs in a fixed radius of things present to him,

as opposed to an origin around which the world orbits. In the Greek notion of

subjectivity: “there is no trace here of the thought that the being as such has to be

6
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Volume IV: Nihilism. Trans. Frank A. Capuzzi, New York: Harper & Row
Publishers, 1991, p.91.

17
oriented toward the self-posited ego as subject, that the subject is the judge of all beings

and their Being, and that by virtue of this judgeship the subject may with absolute

certitude decide about the objectivity of objects” (Nietzsche IV: 95).

For Heidegger, the interpretation of subjectivity in modernity differs because this notion

of unconcealment is forgotten. For the modern subject, Being becomes accessible when

the ‘I’ as subject represents an object, or when an object is “brought forth” by a subject

and becomes fixed in its place. Such bringing forth confirms and affirms the place of the

subject. Through the power of representation, the subject becomes the “reference point of

beings as such” (AWP 128).

By drawing this difference between the Greek and modern conceptions of subjectivity,

Heidegger seeks to explore the way in which we have arrived at the positing of the

‘subject’ in modernity and how this subject has acquired this power of representation. He

asks, “Whence does that dominance of the subjective come that guides modern humanity

and its understanding of the world?” (Nietzsche IV: 96). What differs is that the

traditional guiding question of metaphysics, “What is being,” is transformed at the

beginning of modern metaphysics into a question of method: “the path along which the

absolutely certain and secure is sought by man himself for man himself, the path by

which the essence of truth is circumscribed. The question ‘what is the being’? is

transformed into a question about the absolute, unshakable ground of truth” (Nietzsche

IV: 97).

18
Heidegger takes the practice of modern science as paradigmatic of the modern emphasis

on method, security in repeatable results, and the attainment of certainty. For Heidegger,

the specific scientific method that is refined in modernity serves to objectify the world:

“the objectifying of whatever is, is accomplished in a setting – before, a representing ,

that aims at bringing each particular being before it in such a way that man who

calculates can be sure, and that means, be certain, of that being” (AWP 127). (emphasis

added). This methodological approach signals an epoch where science and art are no

longer conceived as a ‘bringing forth’ or Techne. This refers to the manner in which

through art and handicraft, Man participated in conjunction with other contributing

elements of nature to bring forth a thing into being.7 In becoming concerned with the

attainment of certainty, Man distances himself from Being, no longer receiving that

which is “represented” with openness, but by seeking to control and fix it.

Heidegger sees this phenomenon as the logic of the history of the West, which begins

with Greek philosophy, is carried through by Christian theology and ratified in the

thought of Descartes, who continues and transforms subjectivist philosophy. Heidegger

isolates Descartes' statement, “I think therefore I am” as the beginning of modern

philosophy. In the Cogito: “all consciousness of things and of being as a whole is referred

back to the self-consciousness of the human subject as the unshakable ground of all

certainty. The reality of the real is defined in later times as objectivity, as something that

is conceived by and for the subject as what is thrown and stands over against it”

(Nietzsche IV: 86). Taking its cue from Descartes, “the whole of modern metaphysics

7
Heidegger. "The Question Concerning Technology" in Question Concerning Technology and other
essays, trans. William Lovit, New York: Harper & Row, 1977, p.7-8.

19
taken together, Nietzsche included, maintains itself within the interpretation of what is to

be and of truth that was prepared by Descartes” (AWP 127).

For Heidegger, in modernity Man therefore, “… becomes that being upon which all that

is, is grounded as regards the manner of its being and its truth. Man becomes the

relational center of that which is as such” (AWP 128). Once Man has assumed this

position of subject, his relation to the world must necessarily change. This change takes

the form of a reconfiguration of the world in the form of an object, or a picture:

world picture, when understood essentially, does not mean a picture of the world
but the world conceived and grasped as a picture. What is, in its entirety, is now
taken in such a way that it first is in being and only is in being to the extent that it
is set up by man, who represents and sets forth … The Being of whatever is, is
sought and found in the representation of the latter. (AWP 130) (emphasis added)

To be a subject in modernity Man attempts to determine meaning, as opposed to allowing

meaning to reveal itself to him: Being is found in “Man's setting forth.”

Taking this as a representational model, Heidegger conceives the modern experience in

terms of Greek tragedy because the subjectivist position that Man occupies means that

the world becomes for Man, something to be conquered, mastered and controlled: “man

brings into play his unlimited power for the calculating, planning and molding of all

things … it is one of the pathways upon which the modern age rages toward fulfillment

of its essence, with a velocity unknown to the participants” (AWP 135). The consequence

of this is that “man has fallen out of being without knowing it.” After the age of the

20
Greeks, “the light of the [human] clearing was diminished by the blazing fire of

arrogance, which only calculated the measure from the entity.”8 The tragedy is that this

hubris of Man, this “insurrection” against Being, invites its nemesis: nihilism.

There are then, three problems that arise as a consequence of conceiving the subject as a

detached and disengaged spectator of a world unfolding before it. The problem of

mediation, the problem of other minds – that is, of how a subject can encounter another

subject precisely as a subject rather than as an object of its representation – and the

problem of nihilism. It is primarily the problem of others and the nature of our

intersubjective relations that will be of central concern in this thesis. The problems of

mediation and nihilism will remain peripheral to the central theme of solipsism or

individuation.

The first question that presents itself is whether Heidegger’s account of Dasein as

ontologically being-in-the-world and being-with-others overcomes solipsism given that

there is a radical sense of individuation that permeates Heidegger’s text. My way into this

question is via Heidegger’s critique of Husserl’s notion that our intersubjective relations

are founded on the experience of empathy. Husserl offers a formulation of

intersubjectivity as a way of responding to the problem of other minds in Cartesian

Meditations. In the fifth meditation, Husserl argues that in reducing the I to an absolute

transcendental ego by the phenomenological epoché, the I does not become a solus ipse.

In experiencing the world, I also experience others as also existing, on the one hand, as

8
Heidegger cited in Michael Zimmerman, Heidegger’s Confrontation with modernity: technology, politics
and art, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990, p.95.

21
objects in my world, but at the same time, as subjects in the world, experiencing the same

world that I experience. Moreover, others experience me at the same time as I experience

the world and others in it:

… within myself, within the limits of my transcendentally reduced pure conscious

life, I experience the world (including others) – and according to its experiential
sense, not as … my private synthetic formation but as other than mine alone, as an
intersubjective world, actually there for everyone else, accessible in respect of its
objects to everyone. And yet each has his experiences, his appearances and
appearance-unities, his world-phenomenon; whereas the experienced world exists
in itself, over against all experiencing subjects and their world phenomena. (CM
91)

The first step in the argument is thus identifying that we experience others as subjects,

who experience the world in the same way I do. But in what way then, do I relate or

encounter the other as a subject? What is the basis of my encounter with the other?

Husserl writes:

the ‘other’, according to his own constituted sense, points to me myself; the other
is a ‘mirroring’ of my own self and yet not the mirroring proper, an analogue of
my own self and yet again not an analogue in the usual sense. Accordingly …
how can my ego, within his peculiar ownness, constitute under the name,
‘experience of something other’, precisely something other? (CM 94)

For Husserl, the other is given to me by necessity and not by choice, as an actuality that I

have to acknowledge. In my own experience, I experience not only myself, but others and

this is not the same as my experience of objects. The experience of others occurs in a

particular form, the form of “experiencing someone else” (CM 148). The basis of this

experience is the concept of ‘mirroring’ or ‘pairing,’ where the other is both analogous to

myself and not analogous. The reason being that while I can recognise the other as a

22
subject because the other seems to experience the world in the same way I do, there is

also a certain gap or an emptiness in my experience of the other. For Husserl, other

humans are only given to me through ‘indications’ or ‘appresentations,’ which have their

own form of verification, since the experience of the other is not given in its original state

(CM 114).

The character of the existent ‘other’ has its basis in this kind of verifiable
accessibility of what is not originally accessible. Whatever can become presented,
and evidently verified, originally – is something I am; or else it belongs to me as
something peculiarly my own. Whatever, by virtue thereof, in that founded
manner which characterizes a primordially unfulfillable experience – an
experience that does not give something itself originally but that consistently
verifies something indicated – is ‘other.’ (CM 114)

The other is thus a phenomenological modification of myself, grasped within my

‘ownness” on the basis of something like analogy.

In seeking to explain the experience one subject has of another, Husserl uses the notion of

empathy to illustrate these concepts of mirroring or pairing as the basis for the experience

of the other. For Heidegger, Husserl nevertheless fails in giving an adequate account of

intersubjective relations for two reasons: firstly, because he fails to explain why we feel

empathy in the first place, and secondly, because relations with others are reduced to the

sphere of the subject’s “ownness” thereby reproducing solipsism.

Empathy, for Husserl, refers to the way in which I can read into another’s actions an

expression of an inner state that is similar to my own. For example, I can see and

recognize that another person is grieving over the death of a loved one because I have had

23
a similar experience and it provoked a similar response, but I cannot live the other’s

experience of grief. As Edith Stein points out in her 1917 publication on Husserl and the

problem of empathy, we can never obtain an orientation from which one can perceive the

other’s pain, joy or embarrassment directly. I can live in the other’s experience on

account of it being analogous to my own, but I do not undergo that experience in myself

in an original fashion. Empathy is a non-primordial experience, which reveals a

primordial experience:

The subject of the empathised experience, however, is not the subject

empathizing, but another … These two subjects are separate and not joined
together, as previously, by a consciousness of sameness or a continuity of
experience. And while I am living in the other’s joy, I do not feel primordial joy.
It does not issue live from my ‘I.’9

I cannot therefore, experience the other’s pain in full bodily presence. Rather, it is given

to me in the same way objects are given to me in memory, in a kind of representation or

as a kind of perception: “empathy is a kind of act of perceiving” (Stein 1964: 11).

Further, as Dermot Moran points out, it is by virtue of my own experiences that I

understand there are other viewpoints on similar experiences. When I experience another

person, I apperceive them as having the kind of experiences I would have if I were in his

or her place. On the basis of these kinds of ‘paring’ experiences, I experience the other

person as a body like myself; as a sensuous, living and animate body that is an expression

of a person’s psychic self.10 And in the end, it all ultimately comes back to the subject.

While we are factically and concretely intersubjective, in the sense that others give me

9
Edith Stein, On the Problem of Empathy. Trans. Waltraut Stein, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1964, p.
11.
10
Dermot Moran, Introduction to Phenomenology. London & New York: Routledge, 2000, p. 177.

24
my name, teach me a language, and inculcate me into a world of shared social and

cultural meanings, this is only possible because as an ego, I am able to make sense of

these directions and this socialisation (Moran 2000: 177). The understanding of the

mental life of the other lies in one’s own self-understanding:

‘In’ myself I experience and know the other; in me he becomes constituted –

appresentatively mirrored, not constituted as the original. Hence it can very well
be said, in a broadened sense, that the ego acquires – that I, as the one who
meditatingly explcaites, acquire by ‘self-explication’ every transcendency …
everything I, qua transcendental ego, know as existing in consequence of myself,
and explicate as constituted in myself, must belong to me as part of my own
essence. (CM 149)

Consequently, it is arguable that Husserl does not overcome solipsism, given that

everything is reduced to one’s sphere of ownness. Further, the concepts of ‘pairing’ or

‘mirroring’ and empathy, still does not answer the more fundamental question of what it

is that enables us to experience empathy in the first place. This is precisely the criticism

that Heidegger directs at Husserl. For Heidegger, Husserl has failed to address the

ontological dimension to intersubjective relations – this being that we are only able to

experience empathy for another not because of an ability to recognise the behaviour of

the other as mirroring my own, but by virtue of the fact that we are ontologically being-

with-others, and it is on this basis that we can empathise or understand the other.11

11
For an analysis of Heidegger and the problem of empathy, see Lawrence Hatab, “The ecstatic nature of
empathy: A Heideggerian opening for ethics” in Journal of Philosophical Research, Volume XXVI, 2001.
Hatab argues that Heidegger does not in fact, downplay or disregard the role of empathy, but that it is a
genuine possibility in human experience; that it should not be understood as a subjective phenomenon; that
it is natural in a way that can trump psychological egoism and open up alternatives to ethical egoism; that
the role of empathy demonstrates the limits of rationality in ethics and the structural defects in utilitarian
and deontological theories. For these reasons, Hatab concludes that while empathy is not sufficient for an
ethics, it may be a necessary condition for human moral development. p. 359.

25
The question thus arises as to whether Heidegger’s account of Dasein overcomes

solipsism, given the centrality of the notion of individuation. The problem emerges in

several ways: in the account of mineness, anxiety, authenticity, being toward death and in

section 74, where he describes authentic being-with in terms of a destiny or fate of a

nation or peoples. At stake here is not only the coherency of Heidegger’s account, but its

potential for an ethics or theory of political action.

By showing the way in which the Heideggerian subject (Dasein) differs from its

Cartesian predecessor and the way in which Mitsein is part of Dasein’s ontological

structure, this thesis argues that the type of individuation that emerges in Being and Time

is fundamentally different to the metaphysical solipsism Heidegger sought to evade. The

value of Heidegger’s analytic, I argue, is that it demonstrates that the solipsistic ego of

metaphysics is both an ontological and logical impossibility. In doing so, it opens up a

space for a conception of ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more

specifically, for one’s own existence. This argument is further developed in the second

chapter where I will argue that while Heidegger is emphatic in stating that Dasein is

individuated in authenticity and death, in terms of being completely alone, cut off and

isolated, Dasein’s isolation is that which opens it up to a relation with the other. That is,

individuation is only possible because it is concomitant with being-with and, as such, is

not inconsistent with the account of Mitsein.

26
ii. Heidegger’s solution to the problem of solipsism: the analytic of Dasein

To understand the way in which the problem of individuation emerges in Being and

Time, it is first necessary to address the general objectivities and structure of this text.

Heidegger’s thought is aimed at redressing the forgetfulness of Being that he identifies as

endemic to the philosophical tradition since Aristotle, and the nihilism that it brings it in

its wake. In the previous section, I outlined the way in which he makes a connection

between the rise of nihilism, the forgetting of Being and the Cartesian conception of

subjectivity as immanent, self-contained and self-certain. Part of the solution to this

dilemma is a reconceptualisation of the subject in terms of Dasein: a subject that is

immersed in the world, already understands how it functions, and has a serious

investment in it:

We must keep in mind that knowing is grounded beforehand in a Being-already-

alongside-the-world, which is essentially constitutive for Dasein’s Being.
Proximally, this Being-already-alongside is not just a fixed staring at something
that is purely present-at-hand. Being-in-the-world as concern, is fascinated by the
world with which it is concerned. (BT 61/88)

There are two parts to Being and Time which cannot be separated: the question of Being

and the analytic of Dasein. As previously pointed out, Heidegger project is to determine

the meaning of Being, which he believes has been forgotten for a number of reasons:

namely, because it is deemed the most universal of concepts, it is considered the

emptiest; because it is it is indefinable, and because it is self-evident. Heidegger rejects

27
each of these claims.12 While he concedes that Being is elusive, self-evident and

universal, this does not mean that we cannot determine its meaning. Being is elusive

because it is not an entity, a concept, or spirit. Moreover, it is not reducible to entities, but

it is that with which we are all marked. So if we are going to understand the problem of

Being, we must allow it to exhibit or manifest itself in a way that is essentially its own. If

we are to gain access to Being, we must first give a proper explication of the

entity/Dasein in which Being is going to manifest itself.

But why is Dasein chosen as the exemplary being and in what sense does it have priority?

There are three related reasons as to why Dasein has been chosen as the entity that

exhibits Being. Firstly, it is the only entity capable of asking about Being. For Heidegger,

to ask a question is to already have some sense of that which is asked about. Because

Dasein can ask about the question of Being, it must already have a sense of it. Further

proof of this sense of Being is found in Dasein’s everyday statements, such as “the sky is

blue” and “I am happy,” all of which point to the fact that Dasein already lives with a

vague and indeterminate understanding of Being: “we do not know what ‘Being’ means.

But even if we ask ‘What is Being,’ we keep within an understanding of the ‘is,’ though

we are unable to fix conceptually what that ‘is’ signifies. We do not even know the

12
In response, Heidegger suggests that just because being is the most universal concept, by no means
suggests that it is clear or needs no further discussion. Rather, it is the darkest question of all, one that
needs clarification. Secondly, the fact that it is indefinable means that it needs further interrogation.
Thirdly, Heidegger does not deny that Being is self-evident. He argues that we have a vague and
indeterminate understanding of being, demonstrated by our most banal statements such as the “sky is blue”
and “I am merry.” However, the very fact that we already live with an understanding of being (or what he
refers to as a pre-ontological understanding) demands that we need to raise the question again. An
examination of these various prejudices in relation to the question of Being indicates that we not only lack
an answer as to the meaning of Being, but that we don’t even know how to formulate the question. See BT
3-4/22-23.

28
horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed. But this vague average

understanding of Being is still a fact” (BT 5/24).

Moreover, Heidegger argues that questioning constitutes who we are as subjects. He

writes: ‘looking at something, understanding and conceiving it, choosing, access to it –

all these ways of behaviour are constitutive for our inquiry” (BT 7/26). These modes of

questioning are ones that belong to us, which is why we the inquirers are the only entities

capable of carrying out this investigation.

Secondly, Dasein is the only entity that has ontological priority, insofar as it is both ontic

and ontological: “understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s

Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological” (BT 12/32). Ontic here

refers to the level of everyday and our everyday understanding of existence. It includes

such aspects as Dasein’s faciticty, the particular, concrete, inescapably contingent, yet

worldly involved aspect of human existence. That is, Dasein’s body, its history, culture,

family, upbringing, education and so forth. Interestingly, Heidegger includes such

disciplines as ethics, politics, anthropology, history, mathematics and sociology, because

these disciplines study Dasein in its ontic dimension only – as entities rather than as the

beings that pose the question of the meaning of Being. Ontology on the other hand, is an

inquiry explicitly devoted to the meaning of Being.13

13
Heidegger gives various formulations of this distinction throughout his work. Arguably, the clearest and
most explicit formulation can be found in FCM, where he reiterates and elaborates that firstly, we fail to
make the distinction between Being and beings precisely where we continually make use of it, specifically,
whenever we say ‘is;’ secondly, that the distinction is obscure; thirdly, that we are already “moving within
the distinction as it occurs. It is not we who make it, rather it happens to us as the fundamental occurrence

29
Dasein is ontically distinct because in its very being, Being is an issue for it. That is,

because it is able to ask the question, because it cares about its Being in one way or

another, it is also ontological. Which means that Dasein has priority because it already

has a relationship to its own Being. Dasein is ontically distinctive in that it is ontological.

The kind of Being towards which Dasein comports itself is existence. This means that the

meaning of Being is disclosed in existence, in the strong sense of the word. That is, it is

disclosed in space and time, in Dasein’s being-there, in its practical involvement in the

world of things, in the concrete and practical choices it makes in relation to its existence.

All of which points to a fundamental difference between Heidegger and the tradition of

subjectivity that precedes him: Being is disclosed in existence rather than in

consciousness.

Thirdly, we care about existence in some way insofar as the world matters to us, in both

an implicit and explicit sense.14 This concern of humans for their being is called existenz:

“We shall call the very Being to which Dasein can relate in one way or another, and

somehow always relate, existence” (BT 12/33) and “Dasein always understands itself in

terms of its existence, in terms of its possibility to be itself or not to be itself” (BT 12/33).

of our Dasein.” Fourthly, that this distinction does not happen from time, or arbitrarily, but fundamentally;
and finally, that it is understood at all times, but is not explicitly articulated. See p.357.
14
For a further discussion on the idea that we are beings for whom things matter to us, and the relation to
Kierkegaard, see Charles Guignon, “Philosophy and Authenticity: Heidegger’s search for a ground of
philosophising” in in Essays in Honour of Hubert L.Dreyfus, Mark A. Wrathall and Jeff Malpas (eds.),
Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. Guignon points out that the “theoretical attitude” is untenable because
as Kierkegaard and Heidegger argue, only a being who cares about something has the ability to pick things
out from the field of experience in order to get an understanding of the world. See, in particular, pp. 79 &
83.

30
Therefore, the question of being can only be answered through a clarification of the

Being of the creature to which Being is disclosed: “Dasein possesses an understanding of

the Being of all beings unlike itself” (BT 13/34). But this understanding is grounded in its

existence: “Dasein possess – in a manner constitutive of its understanding of existence –

an understanding of the Being of all beings unlike itself” (BT 13/34). For this reason,

ontology must be conducted as an existential analytic.15

Given the emphasis on the analytic of Dasein as the way into the question of Being, it

could be all too easy to conclude that the human subject remains the primary point of

access, and that consequently, Dasein is no different to either the Cartesian or

transcendental ego, both of which derive an understanding of the world on the basis of an

understanding of self, and both of which reduce all knowledge and understanding of the

other to the sphere of ownness. But what separates Heidegger from this egoism and what

is crucial for the purpose of the problem of individuation, is the way in which Heidegger

conceives of the human subject: as a being without self-mastery and self-determination in

the traditional or liberal sense of the term, because it is thrown into a world not of its

making. Commenting on the project of Being and Time, Heidegger writes:

One need only observe the simple fact that in Being and Time the problem is set
up outside the sphere of subjectivism – that the entire anthropological problematic
is kept at a distance … for it to become strikingly clear that the ‘Being’ into which

15
For a further discussion on the nature of subjectivity in Heidegger see Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc
Nancy, “’Eating Well,’ or the Calculation of the Subject: An interview with Jacques Derrida” in Who
Comes After the Subject?, Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor and Jean-Luc Nancy (eds), London and New
York: Routledge, 1991. Derrida argues that while this conception of the subject is not the absolute, origin,
pure will, identity to self, or presence to self of consciousness, and is rather defined as the noncoincidence
with self, the act by which Heidegger “substitutes a certain conception of Dasein for a concept of subject
still too marked by the traits of the being as vorhanden, and hence, by an interpretation of time” means that
he insufficiently questioned the subject’s ontological structure.

31
 Being and Time inquired can no longer remain something that the human subject
posits.16

This is because the human subject here is not defined in terms of a thinking substance or

a transcendental ego that reduces and understands from out of its sphere of ownness, but

is understood in terms of existence:

Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence – in terms of a

possibility of itself: to be itself or not itself … the question of existence never gets
straightened out except through existing itself. The understanding of oneself
which leads along this way we call ‘existentiell’. The question of existence is one
of Dasein’s ontical ‘affairs.’ (BT 12/33)

The characterisation of Dasein in terms of existence intends to capture the sense in which

Dasein is not an isolated, self-contained subject that exists independently of an external

world.17

16
“Letter to Father William. J. Richardson,” in Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, The
Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1963, xviii.
17
Heidegger’s analytic begins in the world of equipment, in order to demonstrate the way in which Dasein
already has a familiarity and primordial understanding of how things function. In describing this world, he
claims that he is not describing the characteristics of equipment objectively, such as substantiality,
materiality, extendedness and so forth. Rather, he wants to describe things in the way in which we
concernfully deal with them. The things we encounter in concernful dealings with things he denotes by
equipment. Equipment is what lies beneath “thinghood” – it is the instrumentality of the things we
encounter. A specific kind of world is uncovered through this primary relationship; it is the world of
“equipmentaility.” This is a whole world, because “strictly taken, there is no such thing as ‘an’ equipment.”
What is disclosed here is firstly, the world of “in-order-to,” or the world of usability: we use a hammer in
order to nail sole to the leather, in order to have a shoe, in order to walk without injuring one’s foot and so
forth; secondly, the world of reference which refers to the way things refer or relate to other things, in a
web of relations or an interconnected whole. The in-order-to refers to another plane, which structures the
in-order-to: the work, the product as the ‘towards-which.” The making of the shoes explains the set up of
the shoemaker’s workshop, the functional meaning of this general set up is prior to any particular object
and its own Being. In turn, this higher plane, which still belongs to the world of beings, points to an even
higher plane, this time, a plane that has to do with being: the “for-the-sake-of”, the existential project in
which the shoe takes place as an element of that project. I examine this in greater detail in chapter 4 in the
context of the question of embodiment. Related to this is also the distinction between ready-to-hand and
present-at-hand. The former refers to the idea that we do not encounter the world theoretically or
thematically, but as ready-to-hand. We only know how to use the hammer in the act of hammering.
Moreover, this activity is not a “blind one” but is one that has “its own kind of sight.” All these dealings
with equipment subordinate “themselves to the manifold assignments of the in-order-to.’ And the sight with

32
In conceiving of Dasein as existence, and existence as the understanding of Being,

Heidegger effectively reformulates the agent of conventional ethics and politics away

from emphasis on self-mastery toward conceiving Dasein’s existence in terms of

possibility. As being-in-the-world, Dasein’s existence/essence is characterised by

projection and anticipation because Dasein exists in terms of its possibilities. Dasein is

already thrown into the midst of its possibilities which it has realised or is about to

realise: “as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call ‘projecting’ …

as long as it is, it is projecting” (BT 145/185). These possibilities are not posited as as

objects of knowledge, but constitute Dasein’s mode of existence. As Heidegger puts it:

Dasein always has understood itself and always will understand itself in terms of
possibilities. Furthermore, the character of understanding as projection is such
that the understanding does not grasp thematically that upon which it projects –
that is to say, possibilities … as projecting, understanding is the kind of Being of
Dasein in which it is its possibilities as possibilities. (BT 145/185)

Dasein is always projected or moving towards a particular possibility, is always being-

after-something which it does not yet have, striving to become something it has not yet

realised. But this is not to suggest that in realising its possibilities, Dasein is complete.

For Heidegger, Dasein is conceived in terms of a constitutive lack, which means that no

matter how many possibilities it actualises, it remains incomplete. For Dasein to be

complete is to cease to be:

which they thus concern themselves is circumspection.” The latter refers to theoretical attitude toward
entities in the world, however, this only occurs in a particular context – contexts such as when a piece of
equipment does not work, or is absent, such that it impedes the progress of a project. See for example,
section 15 of BT.

33
 It is essential to the basic constitution of Dasein that there is constantly something
still to be settled. Such a lack of totality signifies that there is something still
outstanding in one’s potentiality-for-being. But as soon as Dasein ‘exists’ in such
a way that absolutely nothing more is still outstanding in it, then it has already for
this very reason become ‘no-longer-being-there. (BT 236/280-1)

This suggests that the projection of possibilities, rather than their actualisation is what is

of fundamental importance to Heidegger. What I want to argue is that Dasein’s

constitutive lack, which propels it into this dynamic of projection and possibilities, also

suggests that the structure of the subject is open to the world and the other. That is,

Dasein can be conceived in term of openness or a clearing in which disclosure takes

place. Dasein is perpetually projecting itself into this clearing (its future possibilities),

which it can never conquer. Rather each projection merely reproduces the clearing in the

form of other possibilities. Dasein’s movement or projection is not one of self-

constitution or the unfolding of an essence but an experimentation with the possible

identities that it might become and the possible lives that it might lead.18

As such, Dasein is never present to itself because it is always outside of itself, or ahead of

itself:

ontologically, Being towards one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being means that in

each case Dasein is already ahead of itself in its Being. Dasein is always ‘beyond
itself’ not as a way of behaving towards other entities which it is not, but as Being
towards the potentiality-for-Being which it is itself. This structure of Being,
which belongs to the essential ‘is an issue’, we shall denote as Dasein’s ‘being-
ahead-of itself.” (BT 191-2/236)

18
See Charles E. Scott, “Nonbelonging/Authenticity” in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations, John
Sallis (ed.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993 p. 71.

34
To describe Dasein as “ahead of itself” or “beyond itself” or in terms of possibility

suggests that Dasein is displaced in the world in which it finds itself thrown. As ecstatic,

Dasein can only be something when it “looks away from ‘experiences’ and the ‘centre of

its actions’” (BT 119/155). This suggests that the meaning of Being cannot be located by

means of self-reflection:

the self is there for the Dasein itself without reflection and without inner
perception, before all reflection. Reflection, in the sense of a turning back, is only
a mode of self-apprehension, but not the mode of primary self-disclosure … the
Dasein does not need a special kind of observation, nor does it need to conduct a
sort of espionage on the ego in order to have a self; rather, as the Dasein gives
itself over immediately and passionately to the world itself, its own self is
reflected to it from things. (BBP 159)

Thus, Dasein can only find itself “in what it does, uses, expects, avoids – in those things

environmentally ready-to-hand with which it is proximally concerned” (BPP 159).

iii. Dasein as Mitsein v Mineness.

From the above discussion on the structures of Dasein, it became evident that the human

subject Heidegger posits, while remaining central to the analytic, is somewhat different

from both the Cartesian and transcendental subjects. The fundamental difference lies in

Heidegger’s conception of the subject as outside, as transcendent and as being-in-the-

world rather than as interiority or in terms of an ego existing in a sphere of ownness. This

also becomes evident in his discussion that Dasein is ontologically a Mitsein. However,

this is where the analytic encounters the problems I raised in the Introduction. These arise

35
from an apparent tension between the claim that Dasein is a Mitsein and the account of

Dasein’s individuation in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being toward death.

Following the examination of the world and the way in which we are embedded in it,

Heidegger asks the question: what does the structure of being-in-the-world disclose about

the beings, ourselves who are in it? “Who is it that Dasein is in its everydayness?” (BT

114/149). The question as to who Dasein is leads to another structure of Dasein which is

equiprimordial with being-in-the-world. This means that this structure is as essential and

primordial to Dasein as that of being-in-the-world: Being-with and Dasein-with or

Mitsein. In the discussion of being-in-the-world, I demonstrated the way in which there is

never a bare subject without a world. Similarly, there is never an isolated I without

others. The others, for Heidegger, are there with Dasein in its being-in-the-world. They

are not given as objects, but are there with it or along side it. They can never be perceived

as an entity that is ready-to-hand or present-at-hand because like Dasein, the others also

share a concern for their own being. The examination of this mode of being (being-with)

will enable an examination of what Heidegger refers to as the ‘subject’ of everydayness –

that is, “the they” or das Man and in particular, its relation to Dasein as mineness.

In presenting or explicating the subject in its everydayness, Heidegger begins with a

world that is familiar to his readers thus far: the world of work and equipment. In the

description of the world of equipmentality, Heidegger argues that we find we

provisionally encounter others in terms of the web of reference or assignment. For

example, a dressmaker uses specific tool in order to make a dress, for a particular person.

36
In the process of making the dress, the dressmaker comes across others such as suppliers

and producers. When we walk along a particular field, the field shows itself to belong to a

particular person. When we purchase books from a bookshop, we do so from a particular

person. While the others encountered by Dasein appear to be instrumental to Dasein

insofar as they provide Dasein with a particular service, Heidegger is quick to emphasis

that other Daseins are not encountered as ready to hand or present at hand. Daseins are

not things we use and manipulate, or things that we apprehend objectively, but are like

the very Dasein which encounters them, in that they too are being-in-the-world and with

it (BT 118/154).

However, the language of encountering is somewhat misleading because it implies that

Heidegger has started with the premise that Dasein is first my own and isolated, and then

in relation with others. By others, Heidegger does not mean everyone else but me, as if

though I can stand out from the others. Rather, the others are those from whom we cannot

distinguish ourselves from insofar as I too, am another. The ‘with’ here has the same

stylistic significance as the ‘in’ in being-in-the-world. Recall that the ‘in’ signifies

Dasein’s investment and involvement in the world and the fact that it cannot be separated

from these structures; the same can be said for the ‘with’ in being-with.19 It is an

existential structure in the sense that Dasein is only intelligible in relation to others:

19
For a discussion of the significance of the “in” in Heidegger, see Dreyfus, 1999. The word ‘in” is
intended to denote our engagement with the world or our involvement. For example, we are not in the
world in the same way something is in a box. Rather, we are in the world in the same way we can say that
we are in a theatre, or in love, to use two of Dreyfus’ examples; to say that you are in a theatre or in love
expresses the fact that you are involved or invested in something and understand yourself from out of this
involvement. This is precisely what Heidegger is attempting to capture with the phrase – being-in-the-
world; the fact that we have an investment in it, are involved in it and that we can only understand or
interpret ourselves from out of it.

37
 this with is something of the character of Dasein; the ‘too’ means a sameness of
Being as circumspectively concernful being-in-the-world. ‘With’ and ‘too’ are to
be understood existentially, not categorically. By reason of this with-like being-
in-the-world, the world is always the one that I share with Others. The world of
Dasein is a with—world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is Being-with others. Their Being-in-
themselves within-the-world is Dasein-with [Mitdasein]. (BT 118/155)

This is an existential characteristic or attribute of Dasein, which means that it forms part

of its very ontological structure. Even in cases where Dasein is alone, it is still being-

with. This is because one can only experience oneself as alone on the condition that one

is being-with others in the first place, otherwise Dasein’s loneliness or solitude is

rendered meaningless. So being-missing, being-away are referred to as deficient modes

of Dasein-with. It would not be possible to miss someone, if one were not first with them.

It would not be possible to feel to be lonely if one did not have an experience of being-

with-others (BT 120/156-7). The point is that in the same way as being-in-the-world is

primordial, so too is Dasein’s being-with-others.

The conclusion from this analysis thus far is that being with others belongs to the very

Being of Dasein; because Dasein is concerned with its own Being, by logical implication,

this entails a preoccupation with the Being of the other: “as Being-with, Dasein ‘is’

essentially for the sake of others” (BT 123/160). Because this is an existential statement,

insofar as it refers to the structure of Dasein rather than its content, this means that even

in cases where Dasein does not turn to others, supposing it has no need for them or

manages to get along without them, it still remains being-with others. This has a number

of implications or consequences.

38
Firstly, it is by virtue of our ontological constitution as being-with that it is possible to

have any understanding of the other. But this understanding is not one based on

knowledge in the sense that we are able to understand the other by learning of his or her

background, interests, occupation, hobbies and so forth. Rather, it is a more primordial

existential kind of understanding that is the condition for the possibility of knowledge in

the first place. That is, I can know or understand the other in an ontic sense because I am

primordially open to the other at an existential level; that is, at the level of my Being.

Similarly, knowledge of the psychic life of the other, his or her mental states are also only

possible on the basis of this being-with.

Secondly, there is an implicit (or perhaps explicit) critique of Husserl here. Recall that

Husserl characterises intersubjective relations in terms of empathy. However, for

Heidegger, this presupposes an isolated and self-enclosed subject who can only

understand the other on the basis of his or her own self-understanding, with empathy

providing an ontological bridge from one subject to another. In this way, the relation to

the other amounts to a projection from one self onto that of another self. The relation

toward the other is an irreducible relation to Being such that being-with is something that

Dasein is, rather than something it becomes on the basis of an emotion such as empathy.

Heidegger is not suggesting that we are incapable of feeling empathy. His point is that

our relations to others cannot be founded on empathy, or are not reducible to it: “empathy

does not first constitute Being-with; only on the basis of Being-with does ‘empathy’

become possible: it gets its motivation from the unsociability of the dominant modes of

Being-with” (BT 125/162).

39
However, the centrality of the notion of “mineness” and the emphasis on individuation in

the account of anxiety, authenticity and death appears in conflict with the concept of

Being-with. The question becomes whether Heidegger can reconcile the tensions between

Dasein as being-with with Dasein as “mine,” and whether he can reconcile the tension

between being-with and the type of individuation that emerges in his discussion of

authenticity and being-towards-death.

While Heidegger does state that Dasein is concomitantly Being-with, he also makes the

claim that all these modes of Being are based on that fact that Dasein is mine. That is, in

all of Dasein’s ways of being in the world, it remains preoccupied with its own existence:

“Dasein is occupied with its own ability-to-be, and this can-be is understood primarily as

the can-be of the being that in each case I myself am” (BBP 321). The centrality of

facticity to Heidegger’s analytic means that the interrogation of the question of Being is

an interrogation of Dasein: “we are ourselves the entities to be analysed. The Being of

any such entity is in each case mine. These entities, in their Being, comport themselves

towards their Being. As entities with such Being, they are delivered over to their own

Being” (BT 41-2/67). The issue here is that determining the meaning of Being is an

individual endeavour, not a collective or communal one. Being is my responsibility, one

that I must assume on my own because the Being that is at issue is in each case, my

Being.

The notion of “mineness” means that “Dasein is never to be taken ontologically as an

instance or special case of some genus of entities as things that are present-at-hand” (BT

40
42/67-8). The fact that Being is mine means that I cannot be indifferent or ambivalent

towards it; that wittingly or unwittingly, my existence has some kind of meaning because

Dasein exists as a caring being. Secondly, Heidegger argues that “in each case Dasein is

mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the

way in which it is in each case mine” (BT 42/68). Given that for Heidegger, Dasein exists

in terms of its possibilities, Dasein is mine in the sense that I can be in one way or

another. That is, my decision to live authentically or inauthentically is always made on

the premise that Dasein or my Being, is in each case, mine: “because Dasein is in each

case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself;

it can also lose itself and never win itself” (BT 42/68).

Put this way, in positing the concept of mineness as determining Dasein’s various ways

of being-in-the-world, Heidegger appears to be investing the subject/Dasein with an

autonomy and self-determination that goes against both the letter and the motivation of

his analytic. It would seem that the choices Dasein can make on the basis that its Being is

its own are made in isolation from the others with whom it is being-with. More

problematically, Heidegger writes: “in existing, the Dasein thus understands something

like its world, and with the disclosure of its world the Dasein is at the same time unveiled

to its own self for itself” (BPP 216). In formulating Dasein’s relation to the world in this

way, Heidegger problematises his earlier formulation of being-with, where the world was

described as a shared world with a set of shared meanings. Here, it would seem that the

world exists for an individual Dasein and its disclosure discloses Dasein’s Being for

itself.

41
While it may provisionally seem that with the concept of mineness, Heidegger has

invested the human being with an autonomy and self-determination greater than that of

the Kantian subject, as it turns out, the concept of mineness signifies something else

entirely. The who of Dasein, as I will demonstrate in the following chapter, turns out to

be more complicated in the sense that the who of the everyday Dasein turns out to be not

the ‘I myself.’ I am myself insofar as I am not myself. The not-I turns out to be as

structural to Dasein as its mineness.

iv. Dasein, inauthenticity and Individuation.

This problem of individuation, which is foreshadowed in the discussion of ‘mineness,’

emerges in Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic being-with, the two

modes of being that constitute Dasein’s possibilities. Of authentic being-with, he says

very little, and what he does say, in section 74 of Being and Time appears to conflict with

the notion of individuation, as I will show in the final section of this chapter. Heidegger

appears more preoccupied with the totalising tendencies of inauthentic being-with, which

dominate his discussion of Dasein’s engagement with the community of others.

It would appear then, at certain moments in Heidegger’s discussion of the world of the

‘they’ and more particularly, being-towards-death that authentic Dasein can only be

individual Dasein. In this section, I explore the tension between individuation and being-

with. In the following chapter, I suggest that it is possible to reconcile this tension

between Mitsein, authenticity and individuation, as it arises in Being and Time.

42
In what way then, does the problem of individuation emerge in the discussion of

inauthenticity? For Heidegger, in our everyday, inauthentic existence, Dasein is

incessantly concerned with how it is perceived by Others, how it differs from others, and

whether this difference from the other should be retained or eradicated (BT 126/163).

Dasein, in its everyday Being-with-one-another thus stands in constant preoccupation

with Others. As a consequence, in this inauthentic mode, Dasein is not itself, as “its

Being has been taken away by the Others. Dasein’s everyday possibilities of Being are

for the Others to dispose of as they please” (BT 126/164). This inauthentic collective of

Others is referred to as the ‘they’ [das Man]. The answer to the question with which we

began – who is Dasein? – turns out to be das Man. The issue here is that this description,

coupled with the individuation Heidegger endorses as a way out of inauthenticity,

contributes to the impression that all concrete relations with others are inauthentic.

Heidegger describes Dasein’s immersion and the loss of itself in the world of das Man as

a ‘dictatorship,’ in which Dasein suspends its critical capacities and judgement and slides

into what appears to be a world of apathy and anonymity. This inauthentic being-with-

one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely such that it becomes

indistinguishable and inexplicit. In this inconspicuousness, the real dictatorship of das

Man is unfolded. In this immersion, all that is exceptional, unique and different is

subsumed into a totality of ‘sameness’ in which “we take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as

they [man] take pleasure; we read, see and judge about literature and art as they see and

judge; likewise we shrink back from the ‘great mass’ as they shrink back; we find

‘shocking’ what they find shocking” (BT 127/164). Such an inauthentic community is

43
divested of answerability and accountability because responsibility is endlessly passed on

to an indeterminate and unidentifiable ‘they.’

There are three fundamental characteristics of das Man. First, distantiality, which refers

to way in which we are constantly preoccupied with how we differ from others, what

others think of us and so forth. It also refers to the anxiety we may feel over deviating

from norms and socially sanctioned ways of behaving. This eagerness to conform, as I

will demonstrate in the discussion of anxiety, is interpreted as a flight from our

unsettledness in the world. It is a way of coping with the fact that we are not at home in

the world and that it is not as familiar as we would like it to be. The second characteristic

is averageness, which refers to the way das Man “keeps watch over everything

exceptional that thrusts itself to the fore. Every kind of priority gets noiselessly

suppressed. Overnight, everything that is primordial gets glossed over as something that

has long been known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes something to be

manipulated. Every secret loses its force” (BT 127/165). This in turn, reveals the reveals

third aspect: that of levelling level down or delimiting Dasein’s possibilities of existence

and its possibilities of Being.

These three characteristics of distantiality, averageness and levelling down constitute the

phenomenon of ‘publicness.’ This term denotes the manner by which das Man controls

how Dasein and the world get interpreted. It has three important and seemingly

problematic consequences: firstly, it circumscribes Dasein’s possibilities of existence.

While the analysis of inauthentic being-with appears critical in places, it is necessary to

44
point out that Heidegger’s problem with inauthenticity is that it levels off Dasein’s

possibilities of existence. As demonstrated above, to exist for Heidegger, is to actualise

possibilities. While these possibilities will always be circumscribed, to some extent, by

Dasein’s facticity, inauthenticity levels off possibilities that can be actualised. This is not

to suggest that Dasein is incapable of action in its inauthentic mode of being-with; it can

be moved to action by ‘the they,’ however, it does not take a stand as an individual

Dasein.20

Secondly, das Man disburdens Dasein of its responsibility for its existence and its

actions. On account of das Man’s tendency to present every judgement and decision as its

own, it deprives or disburdens Dasein of its answerability. No one has to own up to

anything or claim anything as one’s own, because it is possible to pass it off onto an

unidentifiable and anonymous mass of people. It is always someone else who is

responsible. But as we have seen, as a collective, this someone/the they, is in fact no one,

insofar as it is not an identifiable and distinguished someone: “In Dasein’s everydayness

the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must say that ‘it

was no one’” (BT 127/165).

20
It should be noted that part of the problem of everydayness for Heidegger that does not have direct
bearing on the themes of this thesis is the Husserlian intuition that our everyday understanding of the world
obscures the essence of the thing as it appears to consciousness; hence the reason why the series of
transcendental reductions are necessary. For an excellent discussion on the way Heidegger appropriates this
insight into his analytic, particularly in relation to the idea of Dasein’s historicity and the concept of
destruction, see François Raffoul 1998. In chapter two, Raffoul points out that tradition is inscribed in
Dasein’s average understanding and penetrates every way of Being, as well as every understanding and
behaviour of Dasein: “Dasein has a tendency to interpret itself in an inauthentic manner, that is to say, on
the basis of the world in which it is absorbed. Yet, insofar as it is also proximally an historical Being, its
average and most immediate self-understanding is inscribed in what is handed down by the tradition. Thus
the explication of everydayness in the first section of Being and Time is accompanied by a de-construction
of the layers of the past. Also see BT 2, 21/42.

45
The point here, for the purposes of this thesis, is that das Man disburdens Dasein of its

responsibility for its existence, not necessarily at the level of the ontic choices it is

presented with, although this is arguably, an implication, but at the level of its very

Being. The ethical moment contained in the notion of individuation, I suggest, occurs in

the moment Dasein is summoned from its falling by the call of conscious; a summons

that compels it to assume responsibility. The key point here is that, on Heidegger’s

account, Dasein does not have the choice to disavow its responsibility. Dasein is

compelled to assume responsibility, because responsibility constitutes its very structure

as a human being. Given that Dasein is implicated with others, also at the level of its

ontological structure, this responsibility, as I will demonstrate in the following chapters,

is also a responsibility for others.

The self of the everyday Dasein is thus referred to as the they-self, to be distinguished

from the authentic self.21 As lost in the they, Dasein inhabits a world that is familiar and

comfortable and for which it has no responsibility, given that the they have articulated the

referential context of significance. Dasein is immersed and fascinated by this world; it is

complacent and unquestioning; average and unremarkable. From out of this world, it has

a particular interpretation of its self, but it is a limited understanding: “this very state of

21
For a further discussion on Heidegger and everydayness, see Frank Schalow, “Repeating Heidegger’s
analysis of everydayness: the question of being and the latent concern for materiality” in Philosophy Today,
Fall 2002, Vol.46, Iss.3. Here, Schalow argues that a revision of Heidegger’s analysis of everydayness is
not merely possible, but in fact necessary. Such a revision fulfils an explicit hermeneutical mandate of
retrieving the point of departure for ontological inquiry; that is “of ‘repeating’ the earlier analysis in order
to uncover its presuppositions within a wider historical context.” Our immersion in history means that the
variables which govern our consideration of the phenomenon of everydayness may be significantly
different than those which led Heidegger to undertake his phenomenological analysis in the 1920’s. p. 274.

46
Being, in its everyday kind of Being, is what proximally misses itself and covers itself

up” (BT 130/168).

It is at this point in Heidegger’s analytic that several problems emerge. While the

discussion of inauthentic being-with dominates the account of being-with in general,

Heidegger does argue that firstly, this account is not intended to be a pejorative or

disparaging account of our relations with others. Nor is he passing moral judgement or

engaging in any sort of ethics. Secondly, he argues that Dasein does have authentic

possibilities, but that this possibility necessitates a severance from the world of being-

with, forcing Dasein into a radical individuation. This emerges primarily at the end of the

discussion of inauthentic being-with, where Heidegger appears to be presenting us with a

choice: “As something that understands, Dasein can understand itself in terms of the

‘world’ and Others or in terms of its ownmost potentiality-for-Being.” The latter option is

referred to as “authentic disclosedness” which brings Dasein closer to “truth of existence”

(BT 221/264). Heidegger advises that Dasein should guard and defend itself “against

semblance and disguise” (BT 221/264) and engage in a perpetual uncovering or critique

of that which it encounters in the world.

The problems that this raises are firstly, the manner in which Heidegger sets up the

problematic of authenticity and inauthenticity could infer that the ethical dimension to

Heidegger’s thinking is reducible to an authentic/inauthentic dichotomy. It infers that in

authentic solicitude, Dasein is ethical, while inauthentic solicitude is somehow unethical.

47
Commentators such as Seamus Carey22 and Patricia Huntington23 in particular, come to

this conclusion.

Secondly, Heidegger’s language at times, infers that authentic Dasein can only be

individual Dasein and as a consequence, it is widely contended, by Levinas and

Taminiaux among others, that he may have unwittingly reproduced the solipsism he

sought to evade. The choice as set up by Heidegger implies that Dasein can either

understand itself in terms of itself, in which case, it seems it would have to withdraw

from the world of others, or it can understand itself in terms of others, in which case, it

lives inauthentically and circumscribes its possibilities of existence.

In the remainder of this section, I will argue against the conclusion drawn by Carey and

Huntington that authenticity is ethical. I argue that this type of interpretation does not

account for the ontological dimension to Heidegger’s thinking, in which the structure of

Dasein, as possibility, transcendence and so forth remains essentially unchanged in the

experience of inauthenticity. This means that the account of inauthenticity does not infer

that Dasein is an ego in the traditional sense of the word. Moreover, it is necessary to

clear away this interpretation of authenticity as ontological and hence ethical, in order to

allow analysis of another way that Heidegger’s ontology revises ethics and politics; a

way that retains the notion of individuation, albeit, in a fundamentally different form, in

terms of a responsibility for one’s own existence, or for the conduct of oneself.

22
Seamus Carey, “Cultivating Ethos through the Body” in Human Studies, 23, 2000.
23
Patricia Huntington, Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia, and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger, Irigaray, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1998.

48
For commentators such as Carey and Huntington, Heidegger’s postulation of authentic

and inauthentic modes of being-with can be read in terms of a choice between an ethical

and unethical relation to the other. For Carey, contained in Heidegger’s analytic is an

ethical imperative to lead an authentic existence. The choice between authenticity and

inauthenticity is a process of self-development or a shift “from everyday, ego-driven or

self-interested consciousness to a more open and receptive mode of being that searches

out an experience of ontological depth of one’s own experience and that of others”

(Carey 2000: 25). For Carey, the shift from inauthenticity to authenticity in Being and

Time “is an early indication of Heidegger’s approach to ethics” (Carey 2000: 25).

Inauthenticity is described as a state of consciousness in which people attach to and lose

themselves within objects and people in the external world by perceiving them as mere

objects to satisfy egoistic desire (Carey 2000: 25). Carey makes a further distinction

between the ontic and ontological that reinforces the correlation between ethics and

authenticity. That is, ontology is ethical and authentic and the ontic is inauthentic and

unethical.

Similarly, Huntington argues that Heidegger’s ‘distinction’ between authentic and

inauthentic modes of being refers to ethical and unethical relations with others. She reads

Heidegger’s account of authenticity in terms of a higher state of Being to which Dasein

must aspire: “these comments elevate the authentic subject above ‘that Self which inertly

dissects its ‘inner life’ with fussy curiosity’ and ‘that Self which one has in mind when

one gazes analytically at psychical conditions and what lies behind them’” (Huntington

1998: 23). Huntington is right to point out that Heidegger, as discussed above, does at

49
times, refer to inauthenticity and immersion in the world of das Man in disparaging

terms, which could lead us to infer that he is favouring authenticity over inauthenticity.

However, the move she makes from inauthenticity to a metaphysical conception of the

subject is problematic. Her conclusion is that Heidegger’s thinking fails to develop a

genuine possibility of a theory of social recognition because his analysis of authenticity is

“infused with a Greek sense of an ontologically or naturally grounded elitism: Humans

are distinguished by virtue of pre-given personality traits and abilities, not by the

egalitarian principle that each is capable of cultivating for herself the most supremely

developed self-awareness and critical relation to her life conditions” (Huntington 1998:

31). As a consequence, Huntington argues that Heidegger’s thinking reproduces the

traditional subject of metaphysics: “for all the talk of overcoming abstractions and giving

up myths of mastery, Being and Time remains shot through with an ethos of stoic resolve

reminiscent of the masculinist posture of impartiality” (Huntington 1998: 6).

While Heidegger’s language potentially lends itself to such a conclusion, it would be a

distortion of his thinking to equate ontology with ethics and authenticity and the ontic

with inauthenticity. This largely ignores the subtle interplay between authenticity and

inauthenticity that, as I will argue, echoes the relation between the ontic and ontological,

already discussed. In response to these interpretations, it is first necessary to point out

that Heidegger claims that he is not favouring authentic existence over inauthentic. He

states: “Dasein can fall only because being-in-the-world … is an issue for it. On the other

hand, authentic existence is not something which floats above everydayness;

existentially, it is only a modified way in which such everydayness is seized upon” (BPP

50
28). The point here is that authenticity and inauthenticity are inextricably related, in the

same way the ontic and ontological are. This means that authenticity does not require a

‘shift’ from one mode of being to another, nor is it a higher ethical state to which we

must aspire. Heidegger is explicit in pointing out that he intends no hierarchy; nor does

he privilege authenticity over inauthenticity: “the Dasein’s average understanding of

itself takes the self as in-authentic. This inauthentic self-understanding of the Dasein’s by

no means signifies an ungenuine self-understanding” (BPP 28). Rather, if we are to

understand authenticity in a way that is consistent with the dominant themes in Being and

Time, it is possible to interpret authenticity as a mode of being, a “modification” of

Being, in which Dasein is open to more possibilities of existence and open to its finitude.

To argue that authenticity is a state to which Dasein must aspire is untenable because it

fails to account for Dasein’s perpetual oscillation between authentic and inauthentic

existence and that for the most part, Dasein exists in the world of the ‘everyday’ and will

only ever obtain or experience brief glimpses of authentic existence.

For the most part, this is not a failure or weakness on the part of Dasein, but a fact of its

existence. This does not however infer that Dasein is incapable of an ethical relation to

the other in its inauthentic modes of Being. Its ontological structure as being-in-the-

world, and as open to the other by virtue of its constitution as being-with, remains

unaltered in its inauthentic state. That is, even when inauthentic, Dasein cares about its

Being. In inauthentic existence, Dasein remains being-in-the-world (circumspection) and

being-with (solicitude). It is this correlation between inauthenticity and a metaphysical

51
conception of the subject that I find problematic in Huntington and Carey’s

interpretations.

Inauthentic existence does not alter the basic constitution of Dasein as open, ecstatic and

being-with. Dasein remains the condition for the possibility of authentic and inauthentic

modes of existence. As François Raffoul points out, while indifference to one’s own

Being appears as the defining characteristic of inauthenticity, such indifference is never

absolute. Only a being for whom Being is an issue for it, a being defined in terms of care

for its own Being is capable of indifference (Raffoul 1998: 240). The fundamental

difference between authenticity and inauthenticity is that authentic existence

circumscribes Dasein’s possibilities to be, given the levelling down effects it has on

Dasein, previously examined. As Heidegger states:

Throwness, as a kind of Being, belongs to an entity which in each case is its

possibilities, and is them in such a way that it understands itself in these
possibilities and in terms of them, projecting itself upon them … the self,
however, is proximally and for the most part, inauthentic, the they-self. Being-in-
the-world is always fallen. (BT 181/224)

Despite this state of falling or immersion, which is Dasein’s basic state, Dasein still

projects itself in terms of its possibilities and remains ecstatic. In inauthenticity, Dasein

remains ahead of itself and its Being remains an issue for it. The structure of Dasein as

“ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the world)” as Being-alongside (entities encountered

in the world) remains unaltered. Authenticity and inauthenticity are premised upon this

structure. Heidegger writes:

52
 Dasein can comport itself towards its possibilities, even unwillingly; it can be
inauthentically; and factically it is inauthentically, proximally and for the most
part. The authentic ‘for-the-sake-of-which’ has not been taken hold of; the
projection of one’s own potentiality for-Being has been abandoned to the disposal
of the ‘they’. Thus when we speak of ‘Being-ahead of itself’, the ‘itself’ which we
have in mind is in each case the Self in the sense of the they-self. Even in
inauthenticity Dasein remains essentially ahead of itself, just as Dasein’s fleeing
in the face of itself as it falls, still shows that it has the state-of-Being of an entity
for which its Being is an issue. (BT 193/238)

For this reason, the move made by Carey and Huntington from inauthenticity to an

affirmation to a metaphysical conception of the subject is problematic, as it infers that the

constitution, framework or basic structure of Dasein undergoes a transformation in

inauthenticity, rather than it being one of Dasein’s possibilities. For Heidegger,

inauthenticity can only occur on a prior openness or a general structure of presence to

self. Moreover, while inauthenticity or ‘falling into the world’ can be described as a type

of closure, Heidegger is quite explicit in pointing out that this is not a closure in the

Cartesian sense where the subject closes itself off from the world and others. Rather, for

Heidegger, inauthentic closure is closure to possibilities and potentialities of existence,

both in terms of Being and others. As Heidegger states:

Falling into the world would be phenomenal ‘evidence’ against the existentiality
of Dasein only if Dasein were regarded as an isolated ‘I’ or subject, as a self point
from which it moves away. In that case, the world would be an Object … If,
however, we keep in mind that Dasein’s Being is in the state of Being-in-the-
world … then it becomes manifest that falling, as a kind of Being of this Being-in,
affords us rather the most elemental evidence for Dasein’s existentiality. In
falling, nothing other than our potentiality-for-Being-in-world is the issue, even in
the mode of inauthenticity. (BT 176/220)

53
As Raffoul points out, authentically or inauthentically, it is always a matter of self, the

self that each time I am, the self that each time I have to be and consequently, the self that

I could never lose (Raffoul 1998: 240). Raffoul draws attention to the ontic and

ontological sense in which authenticity and inauthenticity can be understood. The

injunction, “become what you are” can be understood in an ontical sense, in which it

refers to realising one’s possibilities or ‘rising to the occasion.’ However, the ontological

sense in which Heidegger intends to use these terms, manifests the characteristic of a

being that is defined by its possibilities (Raffoul 1998: 240). Raffoul points out that if

Dasein has to become what it is, it is “not because it is primordially present to itself, but

because its mode of presence is that of having-to-be. Having to become what one is

supposes some kind of self-relation and self-presence; it is indeed the primary mode of

Dasein’s self-presence, to the extent that this presence is defined by existentiality, by

having to be” (Raffoul 1998: 241). Given this, it is possible to argue that the closure

involved in fleeing in the face of oneself is but a mode of Dasein’s existential opening,

and that it stands in an essential relation to it. As Heidegger states: “only to the extent that

Dasein has been brought before itself in an ontologically essential manner through

whatever disclosedness belongs to it, can it flee in the face of that in the face of which it

flees” (BT 184/229).

Moreover, and also indicative that Heidegger is not offering a programmatic ethics, he is

emphatic that notions of falling and inauthenticity do not refer to aspects of “human

nature,” “corruption” or an unethical relation to the other. His analysis of authenticity and

inauthenticity precede any analysis of human nature. That is, authenticity and

54
inauthenticity are examined ontologically. As Heidegger states, “falling reveals an

essential ontological structure of Dasein itself. Far from determining its nocturnal side, it

constitutes all Dasein’s days in their everydayness … the problematic of this

Interpretation is prior to any assertion about corruption or incorruption. Falling is

conceived ontologically as a kind of motion” (BT 179-80/224).

It would therefore appear that Heidegger’s account of inauthenticity does not necessarily

revert to an affirmation of the Cartesian subject insofar as inauthenticity is not necessarily

reducible to individualism or solipsism in the traditional sense of the term. If, as

Heidegger makes explicit, being-in-the-world and being-with are the primordial and

ontological structures of Dasein, then it follows that Dasein would remain ecstatic and

open to its possibilities and the other in both its authentic and inauthentic modes.

However, this problem of individuation emerges once again in Heidegger’s analysis of

authenticity and being-with.

In ways outlined above, the choice as set up by Heidegger implies that Dasein can either

understand itself in terms of itself, in which case it would have to withdraw from the

world of others, or it can understand itself in terms of others, in which case, it lives

inauthentically and circumscribes its possibilities for existence. It would appear that

Heidegger has decided on the former. For him, if Dasein is to be ‘authentic’ or open to

the world and its Being, it must sever its ties with the world of the ‘they,’ the only world

of being-with described in Being and Time. While the above discussion deals with the

ethical status of authenticity, this does not yet address the problem of individuation. The

55
latter is what this section addresses. Heidegger concession that authentic being-with is

possible does not however, resolve this seemingly irreconcilable tension between

individualism and being-with that emerges in the discussion of anxiety, being-toward-

death and the account of authentic relations with others in terms of a destiny of the

people.

v. The problem of individuation.

For Heidegger, Dasein always encounters the world with a particular mood (Stimmung)

or state of mind (Befindlichkeit):

to be affected by the unserviceable, resistant, or threatening character of that

which is available, becomes ontologically possible only in so far as being-in as
such has been determined existentially beforehand in such a manner that what it
encounters within-the-world can ‘matter’ to it in this way. The fact that this sort
of thing can matter to it is grounded in one’s state-of-mind/mood. (BT137/176)

By mood, Heidegger does not mean private feelings that we project onto the world.

Moods are public and shared states that characterise or colour our being-with:

a … well-disposed person brings a good mood to a group … or another person is

in a group that in its manner of being dampens and depresses everything; no one
is outgoing. What do we learn from this? Moods are not accompanying
phenomena; rather they are the sort of thing that determines being-with-one-
another in advance … a mood is in each case already there, like an atmosphere, in
which we are steeped and by which we are thoroughly determined.24

The mood of anxiety, for Heidegger is significant because Dasein becomes authentic

when it is anxious; a disposition that reveals the structural unity of Dasein as Care

24
Martin Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe vol. 1 29/30, 100.

56
(Sorge). Anxiety (angst) is best understood in relation to the mood of fear, from which it

is distinguished. Fear refers to a state of mind possessed by Dasein with reference to

something tangible and definite. Anxiety is precisely the opposite, in that anxiousness is

instigated by the disclosure of the indefinite. Heidegger describes anxiety as

characterised by the fact that what threatens is nowhere. Anxiety ‘does not
know’ what that in the face of which it is anxious is … what threatens cannot
bring itself close from a definite direction within what is close by; it is already
‘there’, and yet nowhere; it is so close that it is oppressive and stifles one’s
breath, and yet it is nowhere. (BT 186/231)

Anxiety functions to break the familiarity and complacency of Dasein, forcing it into

what Heidegger refers to as the uncanniness of no longer feeling at home. It thus opens

up Dasein to other possibilities of Being.

However, anxiety also individualises Dasein in wresting it free from the world of das

Man. In anxiety, Dasein comes to the realisation that

the ‘world’ can offer nothing more, and neither can the Dasein-with of Others …
anxiety individualises Dasein for its ownmost Being-in-the-world, which as
something that understands, projects itself essentially upon possibilities …
anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing
which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individuation.
(BT 187-8/232)

In his concluding remarks on anxiety, he again, appears to endorse a type of metaphysical

solipsism. He states that fleeing or falling is not a turning away or a flight from other

entities in the world, but a plunge towards others, an immersion in the world. He

describes it as ‘fleeing’ because in worldly immersion, Dasein flees from its boundless,

57
albeit contingent, potentiality as possibilities of existence. Anxiety is then set up in

opposition to falling or immersion in the world of the ‘they’: “anxiety individualises. This

individuation brings Dasein back from its falling” (BT 191/235). This juxtaposition

between immersion in the world and anxiety suggests that a radical separation of Dasein

and others must occur if Dasein is to be authentic/open to its possibilities.

The question thus becomes one of co-ordinating the tension between the series or pairs of

oppositions Heidegger has set up: the tension between authentic existence and das Man,

anxiety and immersion in worldly activity. Heidegger’s apparent preference for the first

mode of being in the aforementioned oppositions could suggest that there is no

integration of the type of individuation to which anxiety gives rise and being-with-others.

As a consequence, he may have reproduced the traditional problems associated with

solipsism that he sought to overcome. This ambiguity of solipsism and Mitsein is

compounded in Heidegger’s examination of Being-toward-death.

Heidegger defines the existential-ontological conception of death in the following terms:

"death, as the end of Dasein, is Dasein's ownmost possibility - non-relational, certain

and as such indefinite, not to be outstripped" (BT 259/303). For Heidegger, in the same

way that being-in-the-world and being-with are constitutive of Dasein’s ontological

structure, being-toward-death is also integral to Dasein’s Being in that Dasein’s finitude

is constitutive of its very existence. From the moment of birth, death is an impending

possibility of Being that Dasein will inevitably take over; Dasein is already ‘thrown’

towards its end. In this sense, death is certain. It is non-relational, in that it is something

58
peculiar and specific to each Dasein. That is, no one can take Dasein’s place in dying, nor

fathom what this experience feels like for the dying Dasein. The only way we can

experience the death of another is by being 'alongside' the dying person. Death cannot be

outstripped, in the respect that it is impossible to evade it. Heidegger does not however,

intend this to be a bleak or morbid account of Dasein’s existence. The conventionally

morbid connotations associated with death are precisely what he attempts to undermine.

Rather, for Heidegger, authentic being-towards-death opens up Dasein to its boundless

possibilities of Being; a disclosure which is intended to be a liberating and emancipatory

experience.

Heidegger once again presents the inauthentic and authentic as constitutive of Dasein’s

possibilities of being, and once again, inauthentic being-toward-death or our ‘everyday’

conception of death, is mostly discussed in negative terms. In inauthentic being-toward-

death, death is interpreted by the ‘they’ as a ‘mishap’ that is constantly occurring, as

something one hears about through ‘word of mouth,’ but also remains distant, in that

while the ‘they’ know death to be inevitable, at this moment, they are unperturbed by it

(BT 253/296). In this way, Heidegger claims, “dying, which is essentially mine in such a

way that no one can be my representative, is perverted into an event of public occurrence

which the ‘they’ encounters” (BT 254/297). In the world of the ‘they,’ death is not

conceived of as a possibility, or as non-relational; rather, it is an event to be actualised.

The ‘they,’ in consoling the ‘dying’ and those whom she leaves behind, tranquilize death

(BT 254/297).

59
This functions to circumscribe the possibilities open to Dasein in being-toward-death as

the only manner in which we are able to comport ourselves towards death is to evade and

conceal it. Heidegger states that the manner in which das Man tacitly regulate our

comportment towards death suggests that "it is already a matter of public acceptance that

'thinking about death' is a cowardly fear, a sign of insecurity on the part of Dasein, and a

sombre way of fleeing from the world” (BT 254/298). Das Man does not permit us to be

anxious, and thus, authentic, in the face of death: "the 'they' concerns itself with

transforming this anxiety into fear in the face of an oncoming event. In addition, the

anxiety which has been made ambiguous as fear, is passed off as a weakness with which

no self-assured Dasein may have any acquaintance” (BT 254/298). This attitude towards

death alienates Dasein from its possibilities and potentialities for being. Inauthenticity,

characterised by alienation, fear and flight before death is not the only possibility open to

Dasein. Authentic Being-toward-death is also an existentiell and ontological possibility

for Dasein.

In authentic being-toward-death, Dasein does not evade or cover up its "ownmost non-

relational possibility" (BT 260/304). That is, it does not flee before this ultimate

possibility or devise new explanations that would conform to das Man, in at attempt to

understand or cope with the phenomenon of death. In inauthentic existence, Dasein's

possibilities, as we have seen, are severely circumscribed. The world of das Man

functions as a boundary that limits Dasein's potentiality for being in placing a limit on

what Dasein can think, feel, and care about, in its being-in-the-world, and the manner in

which it can comport itself towards death.

60
Authentic being-toward-death, by contrast, is a mode of Being in which Dasein exists in

terms of its possibilities: "we must characterise Being-towards-death as a Being towards

a possibility - indeed, towards a distinctive possibility of Dasein itself"(BT 261/305).

This possibility is distinctive, not in the sense of a possibility that Dasein must actualise,

in the same way that it actualises the possibilities it encounters in the field of what is

ready-to-hand and present-at-hand. In these modes of interaction, the possibilities that

present themselves to Dasein appear as something attainable, controllable or consumable.

For Heidegger, "in concernfully Being out for something possible, there is a tendency to

annihilate the possibility of the possible by making it available to us"(BT 261/305).

However, death is not something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand that presents itself to

Dasein but a "possibility of Dasein's Being." The paradox is that actualising the

possibility of death would mean to bring about one's demise, which in turn, would

"deprive itself of the very ground for an existing Being-towards-death" (BT 261/305).

For Heidegger, death then, is not a possibility that can be actualised, only anticipated. He

states: "Being towards this possibility, as Being-towards-death, is to comport ourselves

towards death that in this Being, and for it, death reveals itself as a possibility. Our

terminology for such Being towards this possibility is 'anticipation' of this possibility"

(BT 262/306). While we come close to actualisation in the process of moving closer to

the possibility of death, the closest we can come still does not constitute actualisation:

"the closest closeness which one may have in Being towards death as a possibility, is as

far as possible from anything actual” (BT 262/306). Death cannot be actualised because it

ceases to be a possibility of Dasein the moment it occurs. This is the paradoxical nature

61
of death for Heidegger: death is the "possibility of the impossibility of any existence at

all” (BT 262/307). In death, Dasein's possibilities of being cease to be. It has nothing to

actualise and can no longer comport itself towards possibilities. As Heidegger states:

Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be ‘actualised’, nothing which

Dasein, as actual, could itself be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every
way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing … the
possibility reveals itself to be such that it knows no measure at all … but signifies
the possibility of the measureless impossibility of existence. (BT 262/307)

However, Dasein is also individuated in resolute Being-toward-death. It is individualised

not only in the sense that Dasein is thrown back on its ownmost potentiality-for-being,

which only it can assume, but in the sense that all its relations with others are unravelled.

Heidegger states that

anticipation allows Dasein to understand that that potentiality-for-being in which

its ownmost Being is an issue, must be taken over by Dasein alone. Death does
not just 'belong' to one's own Dasein in an undifferentiated way; death lays claim
to it as an individual Dasein. The non-relational character of death, as understood
in anticipation, individualises Dasein down to itself. This individualizing is a way
in which the 'there' is disclosed for existence. It makes manifest that all Being-
alongside the things with which we concern ourselves, and all Being-with Others,
will fail us when our ownmost potentiality-for-Being is the issue. Dasein can be
authentically itself only if it makes this possible for itself of its own accord. (BT
263/307)

In the face of death, people have ‘failed’ us and death is something that each Dasein must

face on its own. It is difficult to see from the above paragraph the manner in which

Dasein is to co-ordinate the individuation that emerges in authentic death into its

62
ontological structure as Mitsein.25 Heidegger does state that Dasein’s structure as Being-

with remains in place, but there is something inherently paradoxical about his account.

He states: “Dasein is authentically itself only to the extent that, as concernful Being-

alongside and solicitous Being-with, it projects itself upon its ownmost potentiality-for-

Being rather than upon the possibility of the they-self.” Does this mean as Tina Chanter

argues, that in bringing Dasein face to face with the experience of nothingness, with the

possibility of impossibility, Heidegger does not disrupt Dasein’s self-understanding, but

merely consolidates its resolve? Does this imply that ultimately, Heidegger’s Dasein

stands alone against the world, isolated and torn from others in its finitude? (Chanter

2001: 106). Is this to suggest, as Nancy argues, that while Heidegger did attempt to show

that being-toward-death is only possible because Dasein is not a subject, when it came to

the question of community, Heidegger went astray and that as a consequence, Dasein’s

‘being-toward-death’ was never radically implicated in its being-with – in Mitsein? (BSP

14). I will return to this issue in the following chapter.

25
For a further discussion on the problem of individuation in the context of Being toward death, see Leslie
MacAvoy, “The Heideggerian bias toward death: a critique of the role of being-toward-death in the
disclosure of human finitude” in Metaphilosophy Vol. 27 Nos 1 & 2, January/April, 1996. In this paper,
MacAvoy argues that while there is no doubt that the experience of being toward death discloses one’s
finitude, the concept of death within this context fuels and interpretation of authenticity that is highly
individualistic, even solipsistic and exclusive of being with others. MacAvoy interestingly argues that this
may be rooted in the traditionally masculine concern with death as definitive of life. Any account of death
needs to be mediated through greater attention to the disclosure of human finitude that takes into account
the fact that we are born and that we can bear. The difficulty can thus be alleviated if more attention is
given to the opposite boundary of Dasein’s existence; namely, its birth. Although, in response, Heidegger
does acknowledge the faciticity of birth, both explicitly, in the context of his account of temporality, and
implicitly, in the concept of ‘throwness.’

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vi. Individuation, authenticity and section 74 of Being and Time

In this chapter thus far, I have been exploring the problem of individuation as it occurs in

Heidegger’s Being and Time. I have suggested that Heidegger offers an account of being-

with-others that differs from that of Husserl’s and the tradition that preceded him, insofar

as Dasein is not a transcendental or Cartesian ego and the others it encounters are not

encountered as objects of its perception, but form part of Dasein’s very Being. However,

there is a tension between this account of being-with and the radical individuation

endorsed in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being-toward-death; a tension that

betrays what seems to be, yet another form of metaphysical solipsism. If it is the case that

I am ontologically with others, then how is it also possible that I can be radically

individual in the sense of severing what appeared to be, my ontological ties with others?

Part of the problem here is that while Heidegger does claim that authentic being-with-

others is possible, this account is no where near as detailed as the seemingly disparaging

one he gives of the world of das Man.

He does, however, offer an account of authentic being-with, where the individual’s fate is

tied up with that of a nation or a Volk. But this merely creates more problems than it

solves for three reasons. Firstly, it is not clear what the difference is between das Man

and the Volk. Secondly, it appears at odds with the account of individuation as a taking

responsibility for one’s own existence. How is it possible for an individual to take

responsibility if in the end, to be authentic is to be swept up in the tide of the fate of a

people? Thirdly, it is politically problematic given Heidegger’s involvement in National

Socialism. In this section, I examine Heidegger’s account of authentic being-with offered

64
in section 74 in order to highlight the tension between individuation and community that

emerges once again, but in a slightly different context. I then close this chapter by

considering some of the political implications of reading the fate of the individual as tied

to that of a Volk.

In the previous discussion, it became evident that in elaborating the different aspects of

authenticity, Heidegger again and again stressed the same point: Dasein as immersed in

das Man is dispersed and lost, but is able to become authentic if it takes hold of its

radically individualised self by assuming responsibility for the freedom of making its

individual decisions. This radical individuation is disclosed to Dasein in the experience of

anxiety. Fleeing from angst, we are immersed in das Man; facing it, our radical

individuation and freedom are revealed: “anxiety individualises Dasein and thus discloses

it as ‘solus ipse” (BT 188/232).

These choices that Dasein is forced to make in authenticity are not bound by any values

or norms: “Resoluteness ‘exists’ only as a resolution … But … on what is it to resolve?

Only the resolution itself can give the answer” (BT 298/344). Herman Philipse points out

that by italicising the word ‘only’ Heidegger underscores that authentic decisions are not

bound by any given standard of judgement, even though the possible course of life that

Dasein chooses in a given situation will be pre-structured by a specific cultural tradition

(Philipse 1999: 454). However, in section 74 of Being and Time, Heidegger develops a

notion of authentic being-together that appears incompatible with his notion of individual

authenticity.

65
Heidegger argues in section 74 that while Dasein understands itself in its own superior

power in asserting the power of its finite freedom of choice, there is also a sense of

powerlessness here for two reasons. Firstly, Dasein is powerless because it cannot rely on

the support of das Man to make its choices, and secondly, it is powerless because it is

subjected to fate:

Dasein can be reached by the blows of fate only because in the depths of its Being
Dasein is fate … Existing fatefully in the resoluteness which hands itself down,
Dasein has been disclosed as Being-in-the-world both for the ‘fortunate’
circumstances which ‘come its way’ and for the cruelty of accidents. (BT
384/436)

But, Heidegger goes on to argue, if fateful Dasein, as being in the world exists essentially

as being with others, then its historizing is a co-historizing and is “determinative for it as

a destiny” (BT 384/436). It also means that the individual’s fate is tied to that of a

community:

Destiny is not something that puts itself together out of individual fates, any more
than Being-with-one-another can be conceived as the occurring together of
several subjects. Our fates have already been guided in advance, in our Being
with one another in the same world and in our resoluteness for definite
possibilities. Only in communicating and in struggling does the power of destiny
become free. Dasein’s fateful destiny in and with its ‘generation’ goes to make up
the full authentic historizing of Dasein. (BT384-5/436)

What this suggests is that to speak of an individual fate and of a destiny of the people is

to make the claim that individual decisions do not make a difference to what happens to

us. If this is the case, then how can this be reconciled with the claim that authentic Dasein

is free to choose, without having these choices dictated by norms and values? Philipse

66
suggests as a possible response that it may be the case that we experience these

vicissitudes or fates as something unpredictable and foreign to our individual intensions

(Philipse 1999: 460). This however, is to be expected, given that there are many different

individuals, and individual decisions combined will invariably produce unintended

results, such that they cancel each other out. The problem is that Heidegger explicitly

rejects this pluralistic conception of the ‘destiny’ of a people. Why, then, did he reject it?

And what are the political and ethical implications of this rejection?

According to Philipse, the answer as to why Heidegger rejected this pluralistic

conception of a destiny of a people can be found in the dialectics implied by Heidegger’s

individualism, a dialectics that is triggered as soon as one adopts individualism as a basis

of political philosophy (Philipse 1999: 460). For Philipse, “it is an axiom of political

philosophy that no state can be effective unless there is a robust global consensus on

many norms and values” (Philipse 1999: 460). Assuming for the sake of argument that

individualist decisionism is true, then a problem arises as to how such a political

consensus is to be obtained. This problem cannot be resolved by a democratic system,

because if we leave autonomous and individual Daseins to their own devices, it is highly

unlikely, if not impossible, that a consensus will arise (Philipse 1999: 460).

In order to solve this problem, Philipse argues that we must assume that our free

authentic decisions are somehow ‘guided in advance,’ as Heidegger claims, such that

they are in harmony with one another. They may be guided by some law of historical

development, as German Marxists claimed, or by a mythical entity such as the people

67
(Volk) and its historical destiny as the German romantics claimed. More problematically,

they may be guided in advance by “a powerful dictator who allegedly expresses the will

of the people and imposes this will by force upon dissidents” (Philipse 1999: 460). On

Philipse’s interpretation, Heidegger endorses the mythical solution to this problem in

section 74 while he endorsed the authoritarian solution in 1933, “when he claimed that

one should not guide one’s life by moral maxims and ideas because the ‘Fuhrer himself is

present and future Germany and its law.’ The two solutions reinforce each other, for

Hitler claimed that he was expressing the resolute decisions of authentic Germans and

that he was guided by a German Geschick” (Philipse 1999: 460).

Slavoj Zizek similarly argues that this description of the authentic belonging of a people

in terms of a collective fate is not phenomenologically grounded in an adequate way.

According to Zizek, what Heidegger seems to be missing is simply that “which Hegel

described as ‘objective Spirit,’ the symbolic big Other … which is not yet the

‘impersonal das Man, but also no longer the premodern immersion in a traditional way of

life.”26 This tension between individualism and collective destiny is, for Zizek, at the root

of Heidegger’s ‘Fascist temptation’ and it is here that the politicisation of Being and Time

is at it strongest. Zizek writes: “does not the opposition between the modern anonymous

dispersed society of das Man, with people busy following their everyday preoccupations,

and the People authentically assuming its Destiny, resonate with the decadent modern

‘Americanised’ civilisation of frenetic false activity and the ‘conservative’ response to

it?” (Zizek 1999: 17).

26
Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish Subject: the absent centre of political ontology, London & New York: Verso,
1999, p.17.

68
This chapter has examined the tension that arises between the account of Mitsein and the

individuation Heidegger endorses in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being-

toward-death, and the tension between the paradoxical account of authentic individuation

as being tied to the destiny or fate of the Volk. By drawing on Jean-Luc Nancy’s

paradoxical logic of the singular, the following chapter offers a defence of Heideggerian

individuation.

69
Chapter Two
Individuation, Mitsein, and Jean-Luc Nancy’s logic of the singular

In the previous chapter, I examined the way in which the problem of solipsism

emerges in Western philosophy and some of the problems that this raises. I showed

the way in which Heidegger rethinks the nature of Dasein’s relations with others by

demonstrating that Dasein is fundamentally different from both the Cartesian and

transcendental egos on account of the ontological fact that it is being-with.

However, the extent to which Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein succeeded in

overcoming the problems posed by traditional accounts of solipsism is highly

contentious. As I have pointed out, Being and Time presents the reader with the

problem of how to reconcile Heidegger’s claim that Dasein is ontologically being-

with, with his account of individuation as it emerges in the discussion of anxiety,

authentic being-with and death. This tension between being-with and individuation

has led to a plethora of interpretations, which either attempt to reconcile the tension or

argue that Heidegger’s apparent contradiction or inconsistency implicates him in the

tradition of subjectivity he sought to evade. Heidegger himself appears perturbed by

this when, referring to the unfinished project of Being and Time, he writes: “the

reason for the disruption is that the attempt and the path it chose to confront the

danger of unwillingly becoming merely another entrenchment of subjectivity.”1

In this chapter, I want to offer a defence of Heideggerian individuation by suggesting

that the type of individuation that emerges in Being and Time is fundamentally

different to the metaphysical solipsism Heidegger sought to challenge. I further argue

1
Heidegger, Nietzsche Volume II: The Eternal Recurrence of the Same, trans & ed. David F. Krell,
New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1991 p.194. (emphasis added)

70
that the concept of individuation contains an ethics, conceived in terms of

responsibility for existence, and more specifically, for one’s own existence or for the

conduct of oneself. In the first section of this chapter, I will examine the various

interpretations that have attempted to rescue Heidegger from the charge of

solipsism/individualism, most notably, but not exclusively, those of Herbert Dreyfus

and Frederick Olafson. Dreyfus interprets das Man as constituting the horizon of

meaning within which a community interprets itself. He writes: “all significance and

intelligibility is the product of the one [das Man]” and that it is “the ultimate reality”

the “end of the line of explanations of intelligibility.”2 For Dreyfus, this does not

however, sit comfortably with Heidegger’s conception of authenticity in terms of self-

ownership or individuation, in which Dasein must transcend its immersion in das

Man. This leads Dreyfus to conclude that Heidegger’s account of das Man and self-

ownership is ‘incoherent,’ ‘confused’ and ‘incomprehensible’ (Dreyfus 1991: 133). In

an alternative interpretation, Olafson reads Heidegger’s account as a critique of

modern life and mass society. Individuation, on this interpretation, is an attempt to

overcome or transcend the totalising tendencies of mass culture. I explore the

problems of both these interpretations before examining the criticisms made by

Jacques Taminiaux and Emmanuel Levinas. Both thinkers argue that rather than

overcome the epistemological subject of metaphysics, Heidegger’s ontology merely

reproduces metaphysical solipsism. Consequently, Heideggerian individuation

forecloses a relation to the other.

The second section will examine Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of Mitsein or community

in terms of the paradoxical logic of the singular. In the third section, I use Nancy’s

2
Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, Division 1.
Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991, p.151.

71
concept of the singular to argue that while Heidegger does state that Dasein is

individuated in authenticity and death, in terms of being completely alone, cut off and

isolated, Dasein’s individuation is precisely what opens it up to a relation with the

other. That is, individuation is only possible because it is concomitant with or

indissociable from being-with.3 The value of Heidegger’s analytic, I argue, is that it

demonstrates that the solipsistic ego of metaphysics is both an ontological and logical

impossibility. In doing so, it opens up a space for an ethics of individual responsibility

for the conduct of oneself. This chapter is thus intended to demonstrate the way in

which individuation is not inconsistent with the account of being-with. In the

following chapter I develop the idea of an ethics of responsibility for one’s existence

by way of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger on the question of the understanding.

The ethical and political implications of this will then be examined in chapters four

and five in relation to the concepts of embodiment and freedom.

i. Reconciling das Man and individuation in Being and Time: the contemporary
debate.

The problem of how to reconcile Heidegger’s account of das Man and individuation is

by no means a new one. The tension has been identified by an array of commentators

and thinkers, who either attempt to reconcile the tension or dismiss Heidegger as

irrelevant or inconsistent. The debate between Dreyfus and Olafson is but one

example of the former while the criticisms made by Taminiaux and Levinas are

characteristic of the latter approach to Being and Time.

3
For an excellent discussion on individuation as an opening to the other, see François Raffoul’s paper,
“Otherness and Individuation in Heidegger” in Man and World, Vol. 28, 1995. Raffoul writes: “Now as
ex-istent, Dasein is essentially defined by its openness to beings, thereby making it impossible to
oppose the self’s individuation and its opening to other beings and to others. Here, Being-alone no
longer means being closed upon oneself. The solus ipse, far from signifying the closure of the ego upon
itself that occurs with the reduction-destruction of the world, in fact opens Dasein to the totality of
beings.” p.354.

72
Dreyfus’ commentary on Heidegger’s Being and Time, argues that Heidegger’s

primary objective in Being and Time is to overthrow the Cartesian model of the

subject.4 Dreyfus is right in arguing that Heidegger aims to deconstruct the Cartesian

model of subjectivity and the characteristics associated with it. I have demonstrated

how Heidegger describes Dasein’s comportment in the world in terms of an

engagement with other entities and the way in which this engagement is marked by an

immediacy of understanding and familiarity that are not dependent upon detachment,

reflection or disengagement with the world. I have also examined the way in which

for Heidegger, the world is woven together as a significant whole for Dasein and that

4
Dreyfus identifies five main assumptions inherent in this model that, he argues, Heidegger
challenges. The first is the principle of explicitness, attributed to thinkers from Socrates to Kant to
Habermas. This stipulates that human activity is conducted on the basis of implicit principles that can
be made explicit on reflection. For Heidegger, by contrast, this is both impossible and undesirable. On
Dreyfus’ interpretation, Heidegger’s point is that the everyday skills and practices into which we are
‘thrown’ and socialised provide the conditions necessary for people to understand themselves as
subjects and to make sense of their world. This understanding and these practices can only operate if
they remain in implicit or in the background. While critical reflection is necessary in some situations, it
is always secondary and derivative to the primary mode of ‘coping’ with the world or
practical/immersed engagement. The second aspect of Cartesianism that Heidegger challenges,
according to Dreyfus is mental representation – experience is not that of independent objects, but of
mental objects that are representations of the object in-itself. For Heidegger experience is not always a
relation between a self-contained subject with mental content and an independent object. While
Heidegger does concede that we do experience ourselves at times as conscious subjects relating to
objects by way of intentional states such as beliefs, desires, perceptions and intentions, these intentional
states are, once again, derivative of our basic state or condition of being-in-the-world; a way of being
that cannot be understood in terms of a subject/object relation. According to Dreyfus theoretical holism
is the third object of Heidegger’s critique. This refers to the rules and beliefs that we tacitly
acknowledge and understand in our activity. These, according to thinkers such as Plato, Descartes and
Husserl, belong to a network or a system that underlies every aspect of orderly human activity.
Heidegger, on the other hand, denies the theory that maintains that there must be a theory of every
orderly domain or that there can be a theory of the commonsense world. Instead, he argues that we
need to return to the phenomenon of everyday human activity.4 The fourth presupposition characteristic
identified by Dreyfus in Heidegger’s critique is that of detachment and objectivity. This refers to the
assumptions, inherited from the Greeks, that we can not only obtain theoretical knowledge of every
domain, but that this theoretical and detached viewpoint is superior to the engaged and immersed
viewpoint gained through practical involvement in the world. Heidegger, as we have seen, argues that
we can only have knowledge of things and ourselves through our everyday engagement. Finally,
Dreyfus argues that Heidegger, following Wilhelm Dilthey, emphasises that the meaning and
organisation of a culture must be taken as the basic given in the social sciences and philosophy and
cannot be traced back to the activity of individual subjects. See pp. 5, 154-7 and 305 of Dreyfus’
commentary on Being and Time

73
individual entities are encountered as meaningful as a result of the implicit familiarity

that Dasein has with this structure of significance.5

Dreyfus argues that this inherent sociality of Dasein seemingly challenges the

individualism that is typical of Cartesianism. Heidegger’s account of das Man is

central for Dreyfus as it suggests that the structures of meaning by which we make

sense of the world are always already shared and that Dasein must necessarily

understand itself with reference to this public interpretation of the world. Dasein’s

being-in-the-world consists, for example, in a skilful coping with matters, enacted

through familiarity with and participation in a variety of shared social practices. For

Dreyfus, this involves being familiar with norms of behaviour and conforming to

these norms. Hence, to participate in these practices is to participate in the public

world of das Man. Without this conformity that reflects the phenomenon of

averageness and levelling off, the world would not hang together as a meaningful

whole (Dreyfus 1991: 154-7).

In providing this interpretation of das Man, Dreyfus is setting up inauthenticity as

structural or value-neutral, as if Dasein’s immersion in the world of the ‘they’ is

primordially constitutive of its being-in-the-world. However, as I will argue, the

problem with Dreyfus’ interpretation lies in the way it ignores the individuating

aspect of authenticity as a real possibility of Dasein that is not inconsistent with its

being-with.

5
see BT 67-8. This familiarity that Dasein has with the structure of significance will be further
examined in the final section in relation to the concept of a shared horizon of meaning, including the
meaning of Being.

74
Firstly, Dreyfus elides the role of anxiety in relation to das Man. As I examined in

chapter one, anxiety individualises Dasein and discloses its Being which is otherwise

covered over and concealed by its immersion in das Man. Dreyfus ignores this

dimension of anxiety by arguing that “anxiety reveals that the self has no possibilities

of its own” and that “Heidegger holds that (1) all the for-the-sake-of-whichs are

provided by the culture and are for anyone and (2) Dasein can never take over these

impersonal public possibilities in a way that would make them its own and so give it

an identity” (Dreyfus 1991: 305). What is misleading about the interpretation of

anxiety as that it suggests that anxiety discloses to Dasein that the mode of

authenticity is impossible. As I have demonstrated in chapter one, Heidegger makes

explicit that Dasein does have a possibility that is its own. This possibility is its

potentiality-for-Being. Anxiety, according to Heidegger, throws Dasein back upon

itself, and when it is irresolute, it flees into das Man. But when Dasein resolutely

holds itself open to the disclosure of its Being, it can become authentic: “in anxiety

there lies the possibility of a disclosure which is quite distinctive; for anxiety

individualises. This individualisation brings Dasein back from its falling, and makes

manifest to it that authenticity and inauthenticity are possibilities of its Being” (BT

190-1/235).

Second, insofar as Dreyfus accounts for anxiety, he does so by distinguishing between

a structural account of das Man and a psychological inauthentic falling into the ‘they.’

As MacAvoy points out, Dreyfus argues that the fleeing that occurs in the face of

anxiety is rooted in Dasein’s unsettledness with regard to the meaninglessness of the

public practices in which it is immersed. By fleeing, Dasein seeks to obscure this

disclosure from itself by further immersing itself in the world of the ‘they.’ Dreyfus is

75
suggesting that there is a contradiction between the structural or value neutral account

of das Man and the psychologically motivated account.6

For Dreyfus, Heidegger presents two conflicting accounts of falling and immersion in

das Man. The first describes the ontological structures of Dasien (what he refers to as

the structural account). The second is one that repeatedly characterises these

structures in negative and disparaging terms (inauthenticity in the pejorative sense). If

these structures are inauthentic, then the implication is that they need to be overcome.

However, if they are part of Dasein’s fundamental structure, then the overcoming of

these inauthentic structures is rendered impossible. Furthermore, if this motivational

account of inauthenticity subsumes the structural account, which Dreyfus believes it

does, then Heidegger’s attempt to overcome Cartesianism is threatened (Dreyfus

1991: 226-9). Having distinguished between these two accounts of falling, Dreyfus

finds the resulting tension between the structural and motivational accounts of

inauthenticity incoherent.

Part of the problem with this account lies in the neglect of the ontological and

metaphysical aspects of Heidegger’s project. As MacAvoy argues, there is a repeated

blurring of the ontic and ontological spheres in Dreyfus’ account. While it is true that

we access the ontological through the level of the ontic, the ontological is not

reducible to the ontic (MacAvoy 2001: 456). Rather, Heidegger’s analysis moves

between these two levels on account of his interest in how we obtain philosophical

understanding in the ontological sense from out of our ontic life. For Heidegger, our

6
Leslie MacAvoy, “Overturning Cartesianism and the hermeneutics of suspicion: rethinking Dreyfus
on Heidegger” in Inquiry, Vol. 44, 2001, p.461.

76
analysis must move beyond the ontic if we are to go beyond philosophical

anthropology (BT 46/71-2).

This critique of Dreyfus’ interpretation, namely, that is confuses the ontic and

ontological dimensions in Heidegger’s texts is also made by Olafson. According to

him, Dreyfus’ interpretation of Dasein as being defined by its embeddedness in

‘shared social practices’ and the claim that the mode of comportment he refers to as

‘coping’ is the fundamental source of our intelligibility of our world, is untenable

because it fails to account for the ontological dimension of Dasein. The concept of

‘coping’ for Olafson is a purely ontic one that cannot perform the function Dreyfus

assigns to it.7 As Olafson states: “although Dreyfus evidently wants ‘coping’ to be an

ontological concept and not just the ontic one it sounds like, in order to function as

such it would have to be brought into a much closer relation to Heidegger’s own

terminology” (Olafson 1994: 50).

Using the term ‘coping’ as the key to the disclosure of entities as entities, fails to

evoke an understanding of the fact that the primordial mode in which things in the

world are generally given to us is the mode of the ready-to-hand. As Olafson points

out, the instrumental character of the world as disclosed by the ready-to-hand is not

tied to conventionally defined tasks and techniques evoked by the word ‘coping.’

Furthermore, ‘coping’ as a philosophical term fails to convey the fact that “disclosing

entities as entities is at its most fundamental level no more something that we do, in

7
Frederick Olafson, “Heidegger a la Wittgenstein or ‘Coping’ with Professor Dreyfus” in Inquiry, Vol
37, 1994, p.45.

77
the way we fix a household appliance or balance a check book, than is being-in-the-

world itself as our very emphatically non-optional mode of being” (Olafson 1994: 50).

Moreover, and more importantly for the concerns of this thesis, is Dreyfus’ claim that

where Sartre’s position is an extreme individualism based on a concept of radical

choice, Heidegger’s philosophy is anti-individualistic and portrays human beings as

embedded in a network of “shared social practices” that we acquire through the

traditions and cultures in which we live. As Olafson rightly contends, it is significant

that Heidegger himself does not say anything of this kind in either commenting on

Sartre’s work8 or in Being and Time, where, contrary to Dreyfus’ suggestion, the

theme of individuation and individual decision is marked and notable.

In a more traditional interpretation, Olafson argues that Heidegger’s negative

characterisation of das Man can be explained by interpreting it as a “deformation of

our social being [Mitsein], not its highest achievement as Dreyfus apparently

supposed it to be” (Olafson 1994: 59). Olafson, like Dreyfus, identifies a similar

confusion in Heidegger – a confusion between an innocuous type of social anonymity

(structural) and an objectionable form (pejorative). However, for Olafson, the

objectionable form of social anonymity is the true referent for das Man. Heidegger

uses the expression das Man for a “mode of public-ness that has got altogether out of

hand and leave no room at all for individuality” (Olafson 1994: 57).

8
See for example, “The Lettter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, trans. David Farrell Krell, London:
Routledge and Kegan, 1978, where Heidegger rejects any affinity with Sartre or what Sartre calls
existentialism.

78
However, as Herman Philipse points out, as a critique of Dreyfus, Olafson’s

interpretation is also unconvincing because it too, confuses the ontic and ontological.

For Olafson, a distorted modality of Mitsein would qualify as a contingent ontical

possibility. However, Heidegger does state that das Man is an ontological and

essential structure or an existentiale. Secondly, for Olafson, this form of sociality is

morally reprehensible, yet as I demonstrated in chapter one, Heidegger suggests that

the negative characterisation of das Man is “purely ontological in its aims and … far

removed from any moralising critique of everyday Dasein” (BT 180/224). Moreover,

Heidegger himself emphasises the value neutral and fundamental status of das Man

that Dreyfus ascribes to. He says for example, of the indifference and ambivalence of

everyday existing that “out of this kind of Being – and back into it again – is all

existing, such as it is” (BT 43/69). This is also consistent with Heidegger’s further

claim discussed in chapter one that the ontical possibility of authenticity is an ontical

modification of das Man.

For Dreyfus and Olafson, it would thus seem that the tension between inauthentic

immersion in the world of das Man and authentic individuation render Heidegger’s

account inconsistent and confused. However, both these interpretations are

problematic insofar as they do not adequately account for the distinction between the

ontic and ontology as it operates in Being and Time. Moreover, as Philipse argues,

these conflicts that allegedly arise in Heidegger’s text are brought about because both

Olafson and Dreyfus tacitly assume that for Heidegger, das Man cannot be both a

79
fundamental structure of our daily life in the world and a structure that has to be

evaluated negatively from an ontological point of view.9 According to Philipse:

this tacit assumption fits in with present-day American ideology, according to

which our daily life in the world is fundamentally all right. However, someone
like Heidegger, who was imbued with a traditional and mystical Catholic
mentality of world-abnegation and was writing Sein and Zeit during the
cheerless German interbellum period, may have disagreed with us on this
point. In order to be textually adequate, an historical interpretation of Sein and
Zeit should explain why Heidegger stresses both the fundamental and the
negative nature of das Man. (Philipse 1999: 452)

The tension between das Man and individuation in Being and Time is also

problematic on Jacques Taminiaux and Emmanuel Levinas’ interpretation for

different reasons. The problem for both thinkers lies in the Heideggerian concept of

“mineness,” which Taminiaux argues constitutes the culmination of the modern

metaphysics of subjectivity. Taminiaux writes: “We might … be justified in

anticipating that the aim of the demonstration contains a sort of paroxysm of the

modern metaphysics of subjectivity, a paroxysm to which, however, it is not entirely

reducible.”10 For Taminiaux there appears to a contradiction at the heart of

fundamental ontology: “on the one hand the project offers the most sobering and

unrelenting description of finitude, and on the other hand it turns out to be the last

implementation of the absolute pretensions of metaphysics” (Taminiaux 1991: xix).

9
For a fourth position on the question between Dasein and its relation to others, see Edgar C.
Boedeker, “Individual and Community in Early Heidegger: Situating das Man, the Man-self, and self-
ownership in Dasein’s ontological structure” in Inquiry, Vol. 44, 2001. Boedeker offers an interesting
alternative to these three interpretations by arguing that Dasein’s Being can be understood to have three
different ways of encountering entities, or three perspectives. Each perspective has a corresponding
horizon, which is a set of possibilities by which entities are encountered. Both the perspectives and
their correlating horizons are ‘existentials’, insofar as they are essential structures of Dasein’s Being.
On account of this, no Dasein can ever be without these horizons for as long as it exists. Dasein must
‘enact’ each of these horizonal-perspectival pairs in one of two mutually exclusive ‘existeniell’ modes;
that is, ways that are possible but are not necessary.
10
J. Taminiaux, Heidegger and the Project of Fundamental Ontology, trans. Michael Gendra Suny:
Albany, 1991, xix.

80
For him, the fact that Heidegger argues that the entire history of ontology is contained

in the principle that “the ‘I’ must accompany all my representations” and that

“existence is in the care of oneself – for the Dasein that each and every time is mine”

(Taminiaux 1991: xix) suggests that Heideggerian solipsism merely inherits and

perpetuates the Cartesian heritage. This is because the concepts of care and mineness,

both fundamental to the text, are only concerned with the individual Dasein. The fact

that Dasein is always engaged in the care of itself, and only itself, and that it wills

itself exclusively leads Taminiaux to conclude that “the Dasein in Sein und Zeit is

open only to make room for a circle leading back to itself. Dasein has an authentic

understanding if and only if it wants to be itself” (Taminiaux 1991: xxi). This raises

an important point about the extent to which Dasein is in fact, related to others, and by

implication, raises doubts about the possibility of extrapolating an ethics from

Heidegger’s ontology; a possibility thinkers such as Levinas deny.

Levinas, despite recognising the temporal dimension of Dasein as ecstatic, claims that

Heidegger fails to move beyond a metaphysical conception of the subject which

reduces all otherness to the same. He states:

traditional philosophy, and Bergson and Heidegger too, remained with the
conception of a time either taken to be purely exterior to the subject, a time-
object, or taken to be entirely contained in the subject. But the subject in
question was always a solitary subject. The ego all alone, the monad, already
had a time.11

That is, for Levinas, Heidegger misconceives, or gives insufficient emphasis to the

concept of Mitsein, instead, reducing all the structures of Being to the structures of

11
Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978 p.
94.

81
Dasein. For this reason, Levinas claims that Heidegger reaffirms the primacy of the

subject over otherness or alterity. As Tina Chanter points out, for Levinas, despite

what appears to the dissolution of the subject in the ecstatic structure of temporality,

the ecstasy that temporality appeared to present is merely another way of the subject

imposing its will, shaping and creating its world, imposing its mastery on others,

forcing alterity to conform to itself, and reducing the other to the same (Chanter 2001:

153).

Levinas’ correlation between Heidegger’s individuated Dasein and the solipsism of

western metaphysics can, I suggest, be challenged. In equating authentic Dasein with

the solipsistic ego, Heidegger’s critics imply that the ontological structure of Dasein

as open, ecstatic and being-with undergoes a metamorphosis in the experience of

anxiety, authenticity and being-towards-death. In the next section of this chapter, I

want to suggest, with the aid of Jean-Luc Nancy, that Heidegger’s discussion of

individuation does not evoke such a conception of the ego as closed upon itself.

Rather, the fundamental structure of Dasein as open means that Dasein already has a

relation to the other and by virtue of this openness, its individuation is thus

inseparable from its being-with. Moreover, being-with cannot be eradicated by the

experiences of authenticity and anxiety. I firstly, examine Nancy’s engagement with

Heidegger on the question of Mitsein as it arises in The Inoperative Community and

Being Singular Plural to demonstrate the way in which individuation is not only

different from metaphysical solipsism, but is also reconcilable with Mitsein. My

discussion of Nancy will be framed in terms of the themes of singularity, community

and being-toward-death. In the final section, the discussion focuses exclusively on the

82
parallel Heideggerian themes of mineness, anxiety, authenticity and being-toward-

death as these are the places where the problematic of individuation surfaces.

ii. Mitsein and the paradoxical logic of the singular

In Being Singular Plural and the Inoperative Community, Nancy attempts a revision

of Being and Time, one that posits the concept of Mitsein as central. There are two

reasons in particular behind this revision. The first is the sentiment, expressed in the

opening pages of the text, that the recent events of world history suggest that we do

not know how to live together, that our world is one lacking in sharing and thus,

lacking in meaning, in particular, the meaning of what it means to be-with.

Appropriating the seemingly peripheral concept of Mitsein elaborated by Heidegger

in Being and Time, Nancy argues for an ontology of being-with-one-another, one that

precedes any analysis of ego or subject.12

12
Critchley argues that Being and Time needs to be re-written for Nancy, because of the political fate
of the project of fundamental ontology and the Dasein-analytic; “it must be re-written without the
autarchic telos and tragic-heroic pathos of the thematics of authenticity, where, in paragraph 74,
Mitsein is determined in terms of ‘the people’ and its ‘destiny.’” In “With Being-With? Notes on Jean-
Luc Nancy’s Rewriting of Being and Time” in Simon Critchley, Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity, London
& New York: Verso, 1999, p. 240. If the tragic political pathos of the thematics of authenticity is to be
avoided, then it would seem as if though Being and Time must be revised from the perspective of the
inauthenticity of the Mitsein-analytic. But Critchley implies this involves abandoning the ontology of
authenticity. For Critchley, “Nancy would appear to be claiming … that the genuine philosophical
radicality of Being and Time lies in the existential analytic of inauthenticity. What has to be recovered
from the wreckage of Heidegger’s political commitment is his phenomenology of everyday life, the
sheer banality of our contact with the world and with others, what Nancy calls ‘the extremely humble
layer of our everyday experience.” (p.240/27). While I concur with Critchley that this humble layer of
our contact with others is what Nancy attempts to rescue, there is also a sense in which he does not
abandon Heidegger’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic being-with. For Nancy, there is a
difference between our being-in-common in an ontological sense and community as an essence or a
work. As I read Nancy, it is not so much a discarding of the analytic of authenticity, but a fleshing out
of this underdeveloped trajectory in Heidegger. I return to this problem presented by section 74 of
Being and Time in the third section of this chapter.

83
The second reason is the collapse of communism. Nancy is both sympathetic and

critical of the communist project. While on the one hand, he concedes that there were

fundamental deficiencies in the communist project, he argues that communism was

powerful in two important respects. Firstly, the power of communism lay in the fact

that it was able to say “we.” Secondly, it was able to engage in a making of sense or

meaning based on this “we,” a sense or meaning that would potentially combat the

alienation or nihilism pervading modern existence. Nancy writes: “what Marx

understood by alienation … was ultimately the alienation of sense” (BSP 62). For

Nancy, communism exposes the fact that the question of being-with is the ultimate

ontological question, one that requires a political settlement.13

However, while Nancy is sympathetic to the communist project of making some sort

of sense on the basis of this ability to say “we,” he is critical of the attempt to

construct a community or society, which, as a construction, is necessarily

homogenising.14 Both communism and fascism attempted to construct a society/state

that defined human beings as the producers. More specifically, it defined them as

13
For a further discussion of the relation between politics and community in Nancy’s work, see Simon
Critchley, “Re-tracing the political: politics and community in the work of Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe
and Jean-Luc Nancy” in David Campbell and Michael Dillon (eds), The Political Subject of Violence,
Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press. Here, Critchley argues there is a deeply
Heideggerian analysis of the contemporary world that is informing Nancy’s work, this being the idea
that the present is marked by the installation of the philosophical as the political and the absolute
domination of politics. This means that the political form of contemporary societies is primarily
totalitarian. Totalitarianism is here understood as a political society “governed by a logic of
identification, where all areas of social life represent incarnate power: the proletariat is identified with
the people, the party with the proletariat, the politburo with the party, the leader with the politburo …
totalitarianism is a modern despotism, where the social is represented as something without anything
beyond it, that is to say, without any transcendence. In totalitarianism, power has no outside, it is the
total immanence of the social in the political.” (p.77-8). This is also what Nancy refers to an
“immanentism”. I will examine the relation between the social and the political in the final chapter in
my examination of Arendt’s theory of political action in terms of Heidegger’s conception of
ontological freedom.
14
For a further discussion on the construction of a community, see Dennis A. Foster, “Pleasure and
Community in Cultural Criticism” in Michael Strysick, The Politics of Community, Aurora: The Davis
Group Publishers, 2002, p. 37. Foster argues that for Nancy, while communism as a political reality
disappears, it ironically emerges in new forms. The most threatening social forms that this attempt to
construct community take are those communities that operate, or that are deliberately worked out, such
as religion for example, or any other community that attempts to construct a unified, communal spirit.

84
producers of their own essence in the form of labour or work, which in turn, produces

this essence as community. This type of community is totalitarian or ‘immanent.’ By

immanence, Nancy means a logic in which the community aims to produce its essence

as a work. It creates a work out of itself, and as Lacoue-Labarthe points out,

accomplishes the subjective process par excellence in its process of self-formation

and self-production. Its truth is found in the “fusion of community,” in festival or in

war, or in the identification with the leader who does not represent transcendence, but

is an incarnation of immanentism of a community.15

Interestingly, Nancy argues that with the exception of Heidegger’s analysis of

Mitsein, the question of community as an ontological relation between singularities

that are shared is markedly absent from the conventional metaphysics of the subject,

or what he refers to as the ‘absolute for-itself.’ This does not only refer to a liberal

conception of the subject as detached and isolated, but also refers to the Hegelian

‘total state,’ or to the subject of metaphysics in general. The logic of the absolute, be it

the subject, the state, or the work of art, is that of detachment, distinctness and

closure; of being without relation (IC 4).16

Returning to the problems Nancy identifies in communism, Nancy argues that of

greater concern is the way in which this type of community conceives of the

individual. Not only is s/he the creator of an essence through work or labour, but can

also control nature, human society and humanness itself. In a critique reminiscent to

15
Philip Lacoue-Labarthe, Heidegger, Art and Politics: The Fiction of the Political, trans. Chris
Turner, Oxford: Basil Blackwell Ltd, 1990, p.70.
16
Nancy appears to leave aside the type of authentic community Heidegger describes in section 74 of
Being and Time, where individuals are at the mercy of the fate of a collective, and where, given
Heidegger’s comments in 1933. See for example, n 1 in the Introduction. There is an identification with
a leader, who represents the community as a whole and who steers its destiny. I return to this issue in
the third section of this chapter and again in chapter five.

85
the one made by Heidegger in the “Age of the World Picture,” examined in chapter

one, the subject in this community constructs meaning by imposing its mastery upon

the world, on the basis that it exists in isolation from it and others.

For Nancy, to conceive of a subject as an absolute is a logical impossibility. This is

because the logic of the absolute stipulates that “the absolute must be the absolute of

its own absolutness, or not be at all. In other words: to be absolutely alone, it is not

enough that I be so; I must also be alone being alone – and this of course is

contradictory. The logic of the absolute violates the absolute. It implicates it in a

relation that it refuses and precludes by its very essence” (IC 4). Such an interiority is

impossible because in order to be alone, the subject must first have an experience of

being-with, otherwise, one’s isolation is meaningless. This implies that being in

relation must be prior to or must precede being alone, as the latter experience can only

mean something in relation to the former. For Nancy, the logic of the absolute fails to

recognise that it too, is only possible because of the prior relation we have with

others: “existence is with: otherwise nothing exists” (BSP 4).

The task for Nancy becomes one of rethinking community by reconceptualising the

relation we have with others, because as he writes, “neither ‘personalism’ nor Sartre

ever managed to do anything more than coat the most classical individual-subject with

a moral or psychological paste: they never inclined it, outside itself, over the edge that

opens up its being-in-common” (IC 4). The truth of community, for Nancy, or in

Heideggerian terms, an authentic form of being-with, is one that recedes from fusion

86
or from constituting itself as an essence.17 Such a retreat is intended to open, and keep

open “this strange being-the-one-with-the-other to which we are exposed” (IC xxxix).

For Nancy, we thus need an ontology of being-with one another that would form the

basis of a new ethics or a type of conduct or action.18

How then, are we to re-think this “we”? Nancy’s point of departure is Heidegger’s

ontology of Mitsein, which he reframes in terms of the paradoxical logic of the

singular. In Being Singular Plural and the Inoperative Community, Nancy attempts to

rethink community, not as an immanent and self-enclosed circle of meanings, but as a

sharing of words and senses, voices, subjectivities and bodies.19 For Nancy, the

structure of this community is premised on the paradoxical logic of the singular. This

logic stipulates that each of us is a singular and unique being but that this singularity

can only be expressed and exposed in the context of being-with-others or community.

For this reason, we are fundamentally or ontologically both singular and plural: “the

17
It should be noted that I am interested in Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular for the purposes
of this chapter; namely, to defend Heidegger from the charge of solipsism. As a consequence, a critique
of Nancy lies outside the scope of this thesis. However, I do concur with Robert Bernasconi’s position
in “On Deconstructing Nostalgia for Community with the West: The Debate between Nancy and
Blanchot,” Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 23, 1993 that there is a notable lack of historical
engagement apparent in Nancy’s work. Bernasconi writes:
Aside from Nancy’s general insistence that the West is characterised by a certain nostalgia for
community from its beginnings, he fails to offer a detailed engagement with the history –
thought as ‘Western’ or otherwise – of the concept of community … Elsewhere, in the context
of a discussion of the deconstruction of fascism and democracy, Nancy insists that ‘words and
concepts have a history and can hardly understand then if we do not take that history into
account’. The same must surely also be true of community. It is not hard to find evidence of
the problems that await Nancy simply because he does not attend to this work of
remembering. (p.15-16).
18
I will return to this relation between ontology and the ethico-political in the following chapter.
19
A critique of Nancy’s concept of community can also be found in Jacques Derrida, The Politics of
Friendship, trans. George Collins, London & New York: Verso, 1997. Here, Derrida expresses his
reservations of Nancy’s concept of community in the context of fraternity. Derrida writes: “there is still
perhaps some brotherhood in Bataille, Blanchot and Nancy, and I wonder, in the innermost recess of
my admiring friendship, if it does not deserve a little loosening up and if it should still guide the
thinking of community, be it a community without community or a brotherhood without brotherhood.”
(48n15). There are references to brotherhood in several places in Nancy’s work, most notably, in The
Experience of Freedom (168), The Sense of the World (115), The Inoperative Community (43-44). See
also A.J.P.Thomson, “Against Community: Derrida contra Nancy” in The Politics of Community
(2002) for a further comparison of Derrida and Nancy.

87
singular-plural constitutes the essence of Being, a constitution that undoes or

dislocates every single, substantial essence of Being itself” (BSP 28-9). The

exploration of the notion of singularity here is intended to provide a way of

understanding Heidegger’s idea of individuation as intrinsically linked to being-with.

For Nancy, each Dasein is singular in the sense that we each possess a body and a

face, a voice and a death. Each has a specific pattern of comportment, a silhouette, a

different narrative. Nancy states:

From faces to voices, gestures, attitudes, dress and conduct, whatever the
‘typical’ traits are, everyone distinguishes himself by a sort of sudden and
headlong precipitation where the strangeness of a singularity is concentrated.
Without this precipitation there would be, quite simply, no ‘someone’. And
there would be no more interest or hospitality, desire or disgust, no matter who
or what it might be for. (BSP 8)

However, my singularity, my uniqueness as a comportment towards the world is only

expressed and exposed in my being-with. For Nancy:

We can never simply be ‘the we,’ understood as a unique subject, or

understood as an indistinct ‘we’ that is like a diffuse generality. ‘We’ always
expresses a plurality, expresses ‘our’ being divided and entangled: ‘one’ is not
‘with’ in some general sort of way, but each time according to determined
modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous … What is presented in
this way, each time, is a stage on which several [people] can say ‘I,’ each on
his own account, each in turn. But a ‘we’ is not the adding together or
juxtaposition of these ‘I’s’. A ‘we’, even one that is not articulated, is the
condition for the possibility of each ‘I’. No ‘I’ can designate itself without
there being a space-time of ‘self-referentiality.’ (BSP 65)

88
Singularity refers to a subject’s uniqueness that arises through the ‘we’ but that cannot

be captured, subsumed or understood in the ‘we.’20 A singularity is remarkable and

unique, a point of origin which is marked as different from everything else around it.

However, this difference does not close it off from others or community; singularity

does not isolate the subject in her difference because the singular being is ecstatic

insofar as it only arises as exposed, open and vulnerable to the other, always affected

and invaded by the other.

This openness that lies at the heart of singularity is also what propels the subject into

relations with others. This is why, despite the radical difference expressed by

singularity, there exists something common or universal in its dispersal. While we are

all different in the sense that we have different faces and bodies, mannerisms and

gestures, while we have different possibilities and will pursue different projects, there

remains a commonality about our experiences. Our bodies are all capable of feeling

pain when hurt, we all fall in love and desire, weep and grieve and we all share the

experience of being-toward-death. What is shared here is our singularity, insofar as

this arises through sharing what we have in common.21

20
Although it should be noted that Nancy rejects the notion of alterity. For an excellent discussion on
Nancy’s refusal of alterity, see Bernasconi (1993). In this paper, Bernasconi draws attention to a piece
by Nancy entitled “Beheaded Sun”, in order to examine the implications of effacing alterity. The
implications being, firstly, a thinly veiled racism and secondly, an account of community that remains
tied to the philosophy of immanence that Nancy himself critiques. See pp. 12-4.
21
It should be noted that what is shared here is singularity, rather than experiences, although, as Foster
points out, part of what we share is the fact of coming together that distributes, spaces and places
people such that it is not one’s individuality that emerges, but a sense of “finitude.” See p. 38 of The
Politics of Community (2002). Nancy writes: “sharing comes down to this: what community reveals to
me, in presenting to me my birth and my death, is my existence outside myself … a singular being
appears, as finitude itself: at the end (or at the beginning), with the contact of the skin (or the heart) of
another singular being, at the confines of the same singularity that is, as such, always other, always
shared, always exposed.” (IC 26-8).

89
This sharing of singularities are what constitute the ‘we.’ Singularity refers to both the

uniting and dividing phenomenon of being-with; uniting because it is what we all

share, but also what divides us because there remains something unique and

untransferable about our singularity. While we all share experiences such as being-

toward-death, we experience it differently and uniquely. I cannot feel the way another

experiences their being toward death, nor can I take it away from them by dying in

their place, despite the fact that it is also my ontological fact. Despite this gulf that lies

between myself and the other, it is only in relation to the ‘we,’ to community or to the

other that I can refer to myself as an ‘I.’ It is only in the mode of being-with that my

remarkability or my uniqueness can be inscribed. That is, the singular can only occur

as what remarks itself from the plural. It is from within the framework of the logic of

the singular that Nancy’s concept of community can be understood.

By virtue of this structure of singularity, community is something that inevitably

happens to us, a gift we are given to share and cultivate rather than something we

must either construct or produce: “community, far from being what society has

crushed or lost, is what happens to us” (IC 11). It is important to note that Nancy

makes a distinction between our being-in-common in an ontological sense and the

idea of community as an essence. It is the latter idea of community conceived as an

essence or as a work that has impeded our ability to think of the nature of our

intersubjective relations: “the thinking of community as essence – is in effect, the

closure of the political. Such a thinking constitutes closure because it assigns to

community a common being, whereas community is a matter of something quite

different, namely, of existence inasmuch as it is in common, but without letting itself

be absorbed into a common substance” (IC xxxviii). This would be a ‘we’ constituted

90
through shared experience, rather than one based on fusion or ‘immanentism.’ It is

precisely because we are singular beings that the project of fusion or communion is

problematic for Nancy: “in the work, the properly ‘common’ character of community

disappears, giving way to a unicity and a substantiality … the community that

becomes a single thing (body, mind, fatherland, Leader …) necessarily loses the in of

being-in-common. Or, it loses the with or the together that defines it” (IC xxxviii).22

It should also be noted that the type of community described by Nancy in terms of

fusion resonates with both the inauthentic and authentic collective found in Being and

Time; the former in terms of das Man and the latter in terms of a Volk. Which, in turn

raises the question I referred to in the previous chapter, as to what the difference

between these types of community is, given that both necessitate the immersion of the

individual into a collective. Nancy’s critique of community as communism (and

fascism), in terms of immanence, defined as homogeneity and sameness, is not only a

critique of das Man but also of Volk. In the third section, I demonstrate how mapping

Nancy’s idea of being-with as a sharing of singularity onto Heidegger’s idea of

individuation as being-with, alters or transforms Heidegger’s apparent support of the

idea of Volk.

Once again, appropriating Heidegger’s insight that Mitsein is ontological insofar as it

is constitutive of Dasein, Nancy argues that it is only as being-with or existing in this

22
This is also why Nancy argues for an “unworking” or an interruption of community, conceived in
terms of a fusion. In “Myth Interrupted” in A Finite Thinking, Simon Sparks (ed.), Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 2003, he writes: “there is a voice of interruption, and its schema imprints itself in the
rustling of the community exposed to its own dispersion … community is itself the interruption, for it is
upon this exposure of singular beings that myth is interrupted. But the interruption itself has a singular
voice, a voice or a music that is taken up, held and at the same time exposed in an echo that is not a
repetition … there is a voice of community articulated in the interruption and from the interruption
itself.” (MI 156/62).

91
type of authentic community where singularities mingle and are shared, that we can

respond to the question of the meaning of Being, or to Being as meaning. This means

that the question of Being can only be accessed by way of our being-with others: “the

question of what we still see as a ‘question of social being’ should in fact constitute

the ontological question” (BSP 78). The nature of this relation to the other that

enables us to make sense of Being is exposed in the experience of death.23

While Nancy has a different account of death to that found in Heidegger, insofar as he

wants to emphasise the intersubjective dimension to death rather than the

individualism Heidegger evokes, death remains central for both thinkers, but in

different ways. According to Bernasconi, Nancy problematises the idea of death

according to which one’s death “might be sublated in a future community for the sake

of which one sacrifices oneself” (Bernasconi 1993: 8). This, for Nancy, was the

demand made by Hitler on the German people. This demand is also what led

Heidegger astray. Nancy appropriates much of Heidegger’s analysis of death,

especially the idea that it constitutes an interruption of subjectivity. This, in turn,

enables him to argue against the idea of death as sacrifice for the purpose of

communal fusion. However, he also argues that Heidegger failed to integrate the

analysis of being-toward-death with the account of Mitsein because of the emphasis

on individuation. This failure led Heidegger to take up the question of community in

the problematic form of a discourse on the destiny of a people. Nancy sees his task as

one of performing the integration that led Heidegger down this path (Bernasconi

1993: 9). In the third section I demonstrate the way in which Heidegger’s account of

being-toward-death as individuating is not inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein. I

23
As I will demonstrate in the final section of this chapter, the idea that the meaning of Being is only
accessed by way of our relations with others is also apparent in Heidegger’s work.

92
also suggest that reading both Heidegger’s and Nancy’s account of death together

overcomes or redresses the problems presented by section 74 of Being and Time.

Death, perhaps more than the experiences of time and touch, is singled out as the one

experience that demonstrates a form of intersubjectivity not based on a Hegelian

model of recognition. Death is both a singular and shared experience, in the sense that

finitude and mortality is something that we share, but that we also have to assume

individually. The experience of death, my death, or the death of the other

demonstrates to me that the only thing I can recognise in the death of the other is that

there is nothing recognisable: “The similitude of the like-being is made in the

encounter of ‘being toward the end’, that this end, their end, in each case ‘mine’ (or

‘yours’), assimilates and separates in the same limit, at which or on which they

compare” (IC 33). We are all alike insofar as each of us is exposed to death, but this is

not the same for each of us: “I do not rediscover myself, nor do I recognise myself in

the other: I experience the other’s alterity, or I experience alterity in the other together

with the alteration that “in me” sets my singularity outside me and infinitely delimits

it” (IC 33-4). Death exposes the fact that community is not made up of egos – of

subjects and substances that are immortal – but of I’s, who are others and who are

vulnerable to death, and whose vulnerability and finitude is only exposed to me by

being exposed to others and vise versa: “community does not weave a superior,

immortal, or transmortal life between subjects … but is constitutively … calibrated on

the death of those whom we call … its ‘members’ … But it does not make a work of

this calibration. Community no more makes a work out of death than it is itself a

work” (IC 14).

93
The death through which community arises does not operate in such a way that the

dead pass into a “communal intimacy” and nor does community transfigure the dead

into a substance or subject, along the lines of homeland, native soil or blood, nation or

mystical body. Rather, community is calibrated on death in such a way that death

renders it impossible to make a work of itself. Death discloses the impossibility of

immanence: “a community is not a project of fusion, or in some general way a

productive or operative project – nor is it a project at all … a community is the

presentation to its members of their mortal truth … it is the presentation of the

finitude and the irredeemable excess that make up finite being” (IC 15). Death is thus

an interruption or an “unworking” of community such that communal fusion is

resisted. A community calibrated on death is one where its subjects are faced, or

“exposed” to their finitude or mortality in the presence of others.24

Important to my purposes is the way Nancy’s approach to singularity illustrates the

logical impossibility of solipsism, given that the singular can only exist in relation to

the plural and the way in which singularity can only be expressed and exposed in

community. This, I will argue is not a refutation of Heidegger’s account of Mitsein,

but a reworking of it. In the following section, I want to transpose these arguments

made by Nancy onto Heidegger’s claim that to be authentic, Dasein must sever its ties

with das Man and become individuated. I do this to defend Heidegger from the

charges that his analytic is confused and incoherent, or constitutes another form of

metaphysical solipsism. I use the account of death as the interruption of immanence to

24
For a further discussion on the idea of interruption or fusion, see James Gilbert-Walsh, “Broken
Imperatives: The ethical dimension of Nancy’s thought” in Philosophy and Social Criticism vol 26 no
2, 2000. Gilbert-Walsh examines the idea of interruption in the context of Nancy’s discussion of the
voice and myth. The interruption of immanence occurs in the form of a voice of some sort, one that
cannot be present or represent itself as a determinate figure. At times, Nancy seems to argue that the
voice is a mythic one.

94
reconcile Heidegger’s somewhat paradoxical account of individual authenticity as tied

to the fate of a people. In the following chapter, I develop this argument to show the

way in which Heideggerian individuation contains an ethics of responsibility for one’s

own Being.

iii. Heidegger and the ontology of Mitsein: a defence of Heideggerian

individuation

Recall that Heidegger has left us with the following tension: on the one hand, he

argues that we are ontologically being-with-others, and on the other, he argues that

Dasein is mine, that my being is my responsibility, that to assume it authentically, I

must sever my ties with das Man and most importantly, that I die alone. The figure of

an individual Dasein, standing resolute against the world and others, despite

ontologically being-with others, is one that permeates Being and Time. It is this

problematic that I want to untangle in this section.

I do this by way of three interrelated arguments. Using Nancy’s paradoxical logic of

the singular, I firstly want to argue that Dasein can only stand alone in its authenticity

and its death by virtue of the fact that it is being-with-others in the first place. That is,

Dasein’s mineness or its singularity is only intelligible in the context of being-with as

it is only by virtue of the relation it has with the other, both authentically and

inauthentically, that is can assume responsibility for its existence and its Being. While

Nancy’s concept of singularity differs from Heidegger’s concept of individuation, I

will use it to rework Heidegger’s concept of individuation in such a way that it is

consistent with the notion of Mitsein. Secondly, I want to suggest that while Dasein

is, for the most part, inauthentic, this is but one of many possibilities that it has, rather

95
than a fundamental structure. Mineness, everydayness and falling are part of Dasein’s

ontological constitution, and it is on the basis of this that Dasein has inauthentic and

authentic possibilities. I suggest that the considerable attention paid to Heidegger’s

now famous account of inauthenticity obscures or passes over other places in the text

where he offers a more neutral or less pejorative account of our relations with others,

the way in which we share the world and more importantly, the way we share

meaning. Thirdly, I want to argue that whether we like it not, we die alone,

irrespective of how many people are at our side, and that it is precisely in the

individuation exposed by death that an ethical relation to the other can emerge.

a. The concept of mineness

In the first section of this chapter, I examined the criticism made by Taminiaux that

the concept of mineness reinscribes the ‘I’ of traditional metaphysics and constitutes

an ethical closure because existence is reduced to care of oneself and one’s own

Being. Dasein’s relation to itself and its responsibility for itself is described by

Taminiaux as a solipsistic closure of Dasein upon itself. Other interpretations suggest

that the concept of mineness posits an autonomy and self-determination that is even

greater than that of the Kantian subject.25 What these criticisms tend to overlook is

aspects of the ontological dimension to mineness. In light of the previous arguments

made by Nancy, I argue that mineness is not intended to evoke an isolated ‘I’ or ego,

but is intended to capture the singularity and uniqueness of Dasein’s existence, its

relation to its Being, and most importantly, the responsibility it has for it. What is at

25
This interpretation made by Michael Haar “The Question of Human Freedom in the later Heidegger”
in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989, will be examined and
challenged in greater detail in the fifth chapter.

96
stake for Heidegger in the notion of mineness is the question of Being, not the

question of subjectivity in terms of ego-hood.

The concept of mineness occupies a central place in the analytic of Dasein, forming

the basis upon which the architectonic of Being and Time is constructed. For

Heidegger, the most fundamental aspect to Dasein is that its Being is its own and it is

only on this basis that Dasein can choose and actualise possibilities. Being thus takes

place at the level of the individual in the sense that to be means “to be one’s own”

because the essence of Dasein lies “in the fact that in each case it has its Being to be,

and has it as its own” (BT 12/32).

In what sense, then, is Dasein my own? Firstly, in the sense that my being is

something that belongs exclusively to me, insofar as I own it, and must claim it as my

own. It is my being insofar as I am responsible for it. Heidegger writes: “Dasein is an

entity which is in each case I myself; its Being is in each case mine” (BT 114/150).

Secondly, the fact that Dasein is mine means that I cannot be indifferent or ambivalent

toward it; that wittingly or unwittingly, my existence has some kind of meaning

because I exist as a caring being. Thirdly, and related to the previous point, it is only

on the basis of mineness that I can make choice in the first place in relation to my

existence. Heidegger argues that “in each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or

another. Dasein has always made some sort of decision as to the way in which it is in

each case mine” (BT 42/68).

As I pointed out in the previous chapter, this could suggest that determining the

meaning of Being is an individual endeavour, a responsibility that I have to assume on

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my own, and one that will invariably isolate me from others. However, there are two

aspects to this concept of mineness that separate Heidegger from both the

transcendental and Cartesian egos. The first is that while Dasein is always mine, this

formulation is somewhat provisional, or even misleading, because as Heidegger goes

on to argue, for the most part, Dasein is not-mine, and it is only from out of this loss

of self that paradoxically, it can regain its sense of self and assume responsibility for

its Being. The second difference is that Heidegger intends this to function

ontologically, rather than refer to an ego as such insofar as what is at issue here is

Dasein’s Being rather than Dasein itself.

In relation to the first point, Heidegger does point out that this definition of Dasein as

mine does no more than indicate an ontologically constitutive state. This suggests

meaning that there is more to the phenomena of mineness than an I, a subject, or a

self. While it may provisionally seem that with the concept of mineness, Heidegger

has invested the human being with an autonomy and self-determination greater than

that of the Kantian subject, as it turns out, the concept of mineness signifies

something else entirely. The who of Dasein, as I will demonstrate, turns out to be

more complicated in the sense that the who of the everyday Dasein turns out to be not

the ‘I myself.’ Heidegger writes: “Dasein is in each case mine, and this is its

constitution, but what if this should be the very reason why, proximally and for the

most part, Dasein is not itself” (BT 115-6/151). This suggests that losing the I or

Dasein’s mineness is as structural as possessing an I or as Dasein being ‘mine’.

Again, Heidegger reiterates:

The word ‘I’ is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal

indicator, indicating something which may perhaps reveal itself as its

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 ‘opposite’ in some particular phenomenal context of Being. In that case, the
‘not-I’ is by no means tantamount to an entity which essentially lacks ‘I-hood’
but is rather a definite kind of Being which the ‘I’ itself possess, such as
having lost itself.” (BT 116/151-2)

The problem with this traditional account of subjectivity is that in positing the subject

as the foundation, and reducing it to a particular category or essence, the human

subject is conceived as a present-at-hand entity. Recall that to treat something present

at hand is to perceive it from a theoretical mode of detachment. It is to perceive it as

an object of speculation, while on Nancy’s analysis, it is to perceive of the subject as

without relation. Given Heidegger’s analysis of being-in-the-world and the definition

of Dasein in terms of existence, such a conception of Dasein as present-at-hand is no

longer tenable. Why? Because we can know nothing of the subject by abstracting it

from the world in which it occurs; because we can only know anything about

ourselves in the very act of existing; and because there is something more to being

human than an essence to which we are reduced.26

26
Also see Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism.” Heidegger rejects humanism, and indeed all “isms” on
account of their failure to not only ask about the relation of Being to the essence of man, but also
impede the question itself be neither recognising it or understanding it. Humanism attempts to define
man’s essence by reducing him to a particular category, which is also contingent on a particular age.
During the age of the Roman Republic, the essence of man lay in his rationality, during the
Renaissance, it lay in his romanitatis, for Marx, it was man’s sociality, for Sartre, his existentialism and
for Christianity, it lay in man’s salvation. The problem for Heidegger is that humanism fails to think or
realise the proper dignity of man by making the claim that his essence can be defined or categorised.
He writes: “to that extent, the thinking in Being and Time is against humanism. But this opposition
does not mean that such thinking aligns itself against the humane and advocates the inhumane, that it
promotes the inhumane and depreciates the dignity of man. Humanism is opposed because it does not
set the humanitas of man high enough.” (p.225-6). For Heidegger, there is something more to Dasein
than its rationality, than its romanticism, its sociality, its existentialism, or its salvation, to which
Dasein has, at various stages of thought, been reduced. This something more is that which cannot be
articulated, known or conceptually grasped, despite what appears to be Heidegger’s initial desire to do
so; the something more is Dasein’s relation to its own being; a relation that is both singular and unique.
To forget this relation on account of our preoccupation with reducing beings to a particular category,
label or concept is to perceive of beings as instrumental, objectified and reified. However, the fact that
man is something more is not intended to imply that there is an extra substance added to man, such as a
spirit. What is more remains part of man’s very essence, that being, his existence.

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For this reason, Heidegger writes: “presence-at-hand is the kind of Being which

belongs to entities whose character is not that of Dasein” (BT 155/197). So when he

refers to Dasein in terms of an I or in terms of mineness, Heidegger intends it to

function as a “non-committal formal indicator” one that in fact reveals something that

is its opposite. When Dasein refers to itself as I or uses the locative personal pronoun,

it is to be understood in terms of its existential spatiality, because as we have also

seen, Dasein exists as outside of itself. The “I-here does not mean a certain privileged

point – that of an I-thing – but is to be understood as Being-in in terms of the ‘yonder’

of the world that is ready-to-hand – the ‘yonder’ which is the dwelling place of Dasein

as concern” (BT 155/197).

On account of the fact that Dasein can only find itself from out of the world into

which it is thrown, for the most part, Dasein is not itself in the context of

everydayness. A paradox of sorts thus lies at the heart of mineness, insofar as the not-I

is a definite kind of being which the ‘I’ possess, in the act of having lost itself. So

there are two things to note here. Firstly, Dasein is mine, insofar as I am responsible

for my being. However, a fundamental or structural aspect of it being mine is that it is

also not mine; so I am simultaneously an I and not-I in a way that is different from

Hegelian dialectics.

Mineness therefore incorporates or includes a sense of ‘not-I’ where it flees from its

Being and loses itself in the world. This loss of itself is a very feature of mineness,

such that there can be no concept of mineness without loss, and no loss of self without

mineness: “as an entity which has been delivered over to its Being, it remains also

delivered over to the fact that it must always have found itself, but found itself in a

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way of finding which arises not so much from a direct seeking as rather from a

fleeing” (BT 135/174). Dasein can only find itself, in the sense of taking a stand as an

individual Dasein in the very act of fleeing from itself. This suggests that its sense of

self is only intelligible by virtue of its Being-with-others, either authentically or

inauthentically. Moreover, in the same way that Dasein can lose itself in the world, it

can only ever know itself or find itself from out of the world:

Even one’s own Dasein becomes something that it can itself proximally ‘come
across’ only when it looks away from ‘experiences’ and the ‘centre of its
actions’ or does not as yet ‘see’ them at all. Dasein finds ‘itself’ proximally in
what it does, uses, expects, avoids – in these things environmentally ready-to-
hand with which it is proximally concerned. (BT 119/155)

These passages suggest that the idea of mineness is inseparable from being-with-

others in that mineness only arises by virtue of being-in-the-world. To find oneself

means that Dasein must first be lost in the world, and it is only by virtue of this

immersion and lostness that its singularity arises and can find expression. Dasein’s

mineness does not involve introspection, inversion or withdrawal, but can only be

realised in the very act of existence and exposure in the world and through others.

The concept of mineness does not therefore, reinscribe individuation in terms of an

isolated and non-relational Cartesian subject or transcendental ego because to realise

one’s mineness is wholly dependent on the other with whom Dasein shares its world.

Moreover, Dasein is never entirely itself, as losing itself is as fundamental to it as

finding itself. That is, Dasein can never attain self-certainty as such because it is

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fundamentally other to itself, and will remain so, even in the experience of

authenticity, as I will demonstrate.27

To the extent to which Dasein can only realise itself through the other is once again

evident in a brief, but significant remark on friendship. It is also one of the few

glimpses we get in Being and Time of an authentic mode of being-with. The

discussion of the voice of the friend illustrates two things: firstly, that there is a form

of authentic relations with others that is different to the inauthentic totalising

tendencies of das Man and different to the problematic form of authentic community

in section 74. Secondly, it illustrates the way in which Dasein is also a Mitsein at the

level of its Being. Thirdly, it illustrates the extent to which a taking responsibility for

one’s existence at the level of one’s Being is only possible on the basis of a prior and

primordial relation to the other. The voice of the friend is the metaphor used by

Heidegger to illustrate these points. Realising one’s potentiality for Being is

dependant on communication and discourse with the other, on hearing and listening,

meaning and interpretation, all of which constitute the various ways in which Dasein

is open to the other:

Hearing is constitutive for discourse. And just as linguistic utterance is based

on discourse, so is acoustic perception on hearing. Listening to … is Dasein’s
existential way of being-open as Being-with for Others. Indeed, hearing
constitutes the primary and authentic way in which Dasein is open for its
ownmost potentiality-for-Being – as in hearing the voice of a friend whom
every Dasein carries with it. Dasein hears, because it understands. (BT
163/206)

27
For a different interpretation on the way mineness does not reinscribe the ego but undermines it, see
Jean-Luc Marion, “L’Interloqué” in Who Comes After the Subject? Cadava, Connor & Nancy (eds.),
New York & London: Routledge, 1991. Marion argues that if Being is in each case mine, it is because
Dasein is incapable of attaining Being in any other way than by staging itself in the first person,
exposing itself to the possibility of death: “Being is disclosed to Dasein only as a possibility reserved
for the one who engages himself by naming himself as an irreplaceable first person … Being remains
inaccessible to Dasein as long as it does not risk exposing itself without reserve, without appeal, and
without certainty, as if to the possibility of the impossible.” See p. 237.

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What is of particular importance here is that all these ways of interacting are

contingent not only on a primordial being-with, but on a special and intimate form of

being-with: that of the friend, who significantly, enables Dasein to open itself to its

ownmost potentiality-for-being. Heidegger doesn’t say a great deal about friendship in

Being and Time, and this friend in particular, has no distinguishing attributes, as

Derrida points out. This friend appears to have no face, no figure, no sex, no name. It

is not man or woman, nor is it an ‘I,’ a subject or a person. Rather, it is another Dasein

that each Dasein carries with it, in the form of a voice it hears in itself (BT 165/208).

That Heidegger does not speak of friendship, or the essence of friendship is not

something that should surprise the reader, given that there are many significant

themes that he is reprimanded for not addressing.28 But he does, however, speak of a

particular friend, of someone, of a Dasein in the singular sense, whose voice alone

opens the hearing of Dasein to the call of Being.

The voice is peculiar in the sense that it articulates no content and is not necessarily

reducible to language. That Dasein is affected by a voice not reducible to language

suggests a primordial belonging with the other, an intimacy which functions to open

Dasein up to its potentiality-for-being. As Derrida writes, the inarticulable voice of

the friend defines the figure of an originary or primordial belonging together with the

other in a Mitsein of discourse, of address and response.29 It is a hearing and dialogue

that takes place alongside the anonymous and idle chatter of das Man. Without this

voice of the friend, there would be no potentiality-for-being. Therefore, Heidegger’s

concept of individuation does not isolate it from the world and others, but makes it

28
Most notably, the themes of birth, embodiment, Dasein’s sex, political action. I will return to the
question of Dasein’s embodiment and politics in chapters four and five.
29
“Heidegger’s Ear: Philopolemonolgy (Geschlecht IV)” in Reading Heidegger: Commemorations,
John Sallis (ed.) Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, p.174.

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realise that it is primordially bound to it. The idea that the voice of the friend resides

in Dasein is significant, as it means that despite the individuation evoked by anxiety,

there remains a connection with the other.30

While Dasein is a singular being, in Nancy’s sense of the term, with a distinct body,

face, narrative, Being and death, its difference can only be inscribed by virtue of the

ontological fact that it is also being-with. Dasein’s Being, while its own, is something

that can only be disclosed with and through the other with whom it shares its world

and a referential totality of meaning and interpretation: “any answering counter-

discourse arises proximally and directly from understanding what the discourse is

about, which is already ‘shared’ in Being-with” (BT 164/207).

The second point that demonstrates that the concept of mineness does not reinscribe

individualism in the Cartesian or transcendental sense of the world is that Heidegger

intends the concept to function ontologically, meaning that what is at stake here is not

Dasein as such, but its Being. That is, mineness is not ontic individuality, but refers to

the meaning of Dasein’s Being. As Françoise Raffoul argues, “taking mineness as

one’s theme thus does not necessarily amount to returning to the modern metaphysics

of subjectivity, but might constitute instead an attempt to grasp ontologically what the

tradition had simply presupposed on the model of natural entities” (Raffoul 1998:

209).

30
Although it should be noted that Derrida’s essay goes on to address the problematic formulation of
authentic Mitsein in terms of the destiny of the Volk. Derrida writes: “Struggle, (kampf) is how the
power (Macht) of destiny (Geschickes) is set free. This destiny is here the … historiality of or as being-
with. The historical event … that of which historiality is made, to wit, common or shared historiality
under the form of community and the people (Volk)” p.177. In relation to Derrida’s critique of Nancy,
he argues that Nancy cannot avoid this concept of community as the fate or a destiny of a people on
account of the concept of fraternity. Community as fraternisation must be linked to some form of
naturalised friendship, be it based on family, geography or culture. It is thus based on the exclusion of
other communities.

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For Heidegger, the problem is that this conventional concept of ego-hood is precisely

what covers over the phenomenon of mineness insofar as mineness refers to Being

and not Dasein as such. Consequently, it is this metaphysics of subjectivity that must

be destroyed if any access to Dasein’s mineness/Being is to be gained. After having

pointed out that the Being of the being that we are is “each time mine” (BT 9/29),

Heidegger states: “Being is that which is each time an issue for such an entity” (BT

9/29). What is at issue is not therefore, Dasein’s ego as such, but its Being. Being-

mine therefore points to Being itself, insofar as it is each time at issue in the Being

that I am. The whole of Heidegger’s analytic is governed by this single objective: that

of the elaboration of a fundamental ontology as an existential analytic. In this sense,

then, the analytic of Dasein is almost prolifera to the question of Being (Raffoul 1998:

209).

However, as Raffoul points out, the provisional or preparatory character of the

existential analytic does not mean that once its function has been performed, this

analytic can be discarded and succeeded by an exclusive problematic of the meaning

of Being. What it means is that the existential analytic is fundamental to the

questioning about the meaning of Being since existence is understood in terms of

Being: “Existentiality is a characteristic of Being. Consequently, mineness, as a

fundamental trait belonging to Dasein, is a determination of Being, a character of

Being” (Raffoul 1998: 210). What should be stressed is that it is Being which is mine

and not ‘I-ness’ as such. Mineness is not ontic individuality, but refers to the meaning

of Dasein’s Being.

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This self-belonging does not however, mean that Being is a predicate, or that Being is

something posited, controlled or mastered by Dasein. As Nancy has shown, the

possessive ‘mine’ does not suggest that Dasein is a subject in terms of a substantial

presence of the ego to itself or as a form of the Kantian variety, an ‘I’ that

accompanies all of Dasein’s representations. This notion of mineness as Nancy argues

does not “imply … identity, or autonomy of the ‘ego’, but rather implies the

withdrawal of all substance, in which is hollowed out the infinity of the relation

according to which ‘mineness’ identically means the non-identity of ‘yourness’ and

‘his/her/its-ness’” (EF 67). Mineness thus attempts to capture that ineffable and

unique singular experience of existence; an experience that is both individual because

it is untransferable, and collective, because it is shared.

The sense in which Being as ‘mine’ is something that is shared with other Daseins

also becomes apparent in Heidegger’s discussion of meaning and interpretation. This

analysis, I suggest, undermines the argument that the “mineness” of Dasein impedes a

relation to others and is therefore, inherently unethical. The primary way in which

being-with manifests itself is through communication, interpretation and discourse,

which further suggests that Being is ultimately shared. For Heidegger, to conceive of

understanding and interpretation as something we impose upon an experience is a

misunderstanding of the way in which understanding functions as disclosure. Recall

for Heidegger understanding and interpretation are already contained in the

experience of something. He writes:

In interpreting, we do not … throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing

which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something
within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an
involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this
involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation. (BT 150/191)

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This means that interpretation is always made on the basis of something we have in

advance, a “fore-having.” It is a meaning that is implied in experience: “entities

within-the-world generally are projected upon the world – that is, upon a whole of

significance, to whose reference-relations concern, as Being-in-the-world, has been

tied up in advance” (BT 150/191). Understanding is that intuitive appreciation of the

world that we possess by virtue of our thrownness, and interpretation is the

articulation of this understanding.

What is of particular importance in this discussion is the way in which we can only

have this intuitive understanding of the world because we share a horizon of possible

meanings or a common referential totality. This suggests that meaning in general, and

the meaning of Being in particular, is something that can only take place with and

through the other with whom I share my world: “that which is ‘shared’ is our Being

towards what has been pointed out – a Being in which we see it in common” (BT

155/197). This sharing of Being is once again made manifest in the discussion on

communication: “communication is never anything like a conveying of experiences,

such as opinions or wishes, from the interior of one subject into the interior of

another. Dasein-with is already essentially manifest in a co-state-of-mind and a co-

understanding. In discourse Being-with becomes ‘explicitly’ shared” (BT 162/205).

Again, in the discussion on discourse and language, Heidegger is at pains to

emphasise the fundamental structure of Dasein as being-with. He writes: “Being-with

belongs to Being-in-the-world, which in every case maintains itself in some definite

way of concernful Being-with-one-another” (BT 161/204) (emphasis added). This

being-with-one-another can manifest itself in “assenting or refusing, as demanding or

107
warning, as pronouncing, consulting, or interceding, as ‘making assertions’” (BT

162/205). This discourse is essential in the sense that it helps to constitute the

disclosedness of being-in-the-world. Given that discourse is something we share by

virtue of our being-with, it is only through the other that this disclosedness can occur.

What the above discussion has illustrated is that mineness does not refer to

individuation in the traditional metaphysical sense of the word. Nor does it refer to an

ego that is closed in on itself. Rather, the concept of mineness demonstrates the way

in which Dasein’s singularity can only find expression in its being-with-others.

b. Individuation and the problem of inauthenticity

This however, does not address the tension between inauthenticity and authentic

individuation, where Heidegger argues that to be authentic, Dasein must sever its ties

to the world of das Man. If, as Heidegger has shown, the phenomenon of das Man is

structural, then it implies that it is inescapable. If it is inescapable, then it suggests that

it can never be overcome. The consequence here is that authenticity, as Dreyfus has

argued, is incoherent, unintelligible, or even impossible. The problem, I suggest, is

that Dreyfus conflates the phenomenon of thrownness, falling and everydayness with

inauthenticity.

In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that ‘everydayness’ and being-with are part of

the fundamental structure of Dasein. Within this, Dasein has authentic and inauthentic

modes of solicitude. These are described as the two extremes of being-with, and

Heidegger states that Dasein maintains itself between the two extremes. This suggests

that Dasein is never one or the other insofar as it is never entirely authentic or entirely

108
inauthentic. Rather, it oscillates between the two extremes. If being-with is structural,

it is therefore, inescapable, even in the experience of individuation. Heidegger’s

discussion of inauthentic discourse is simply a variation, not a deformation, of the

mode of being-with:

In falling, nothing other than our potentiality for being-in-the-world is the

issue, even if in the mode of inauthenticity. Dasein can fall only because
Being-in-the-world understandingly with a state-of-mind is an issue for it. On
the other hand, authentic existence is not something which floats above falling
everydayness; existentially, it is only a modified way in which such
everydayness is seized on. (BT 179/224)

This suggests that while everydayness is structural, and hence, inescapable, average

everydayness, characterised by the world of das Man is not. On this account,

inauthenticity is a possibility of Dasein, which it has on the basis of its mineness.

While for the most part, Dasein inhabits the world of “average everydayness”, it does

have an authentic possibility which it realises in taking responsibility for its own

Being as its project.

If it is the case that Being is mine, and that I am also Being-with, then it follows that

the decision to be authentic or inauthentic is one I make on the basis of mineness and

that I remain being-with irrespective of the choices I make:

In each case Dasein is mine to be in one way or another. Dasein has always
made some sort of decision as to the way it is in each case mine. That entity
which in its Being has this very Being as an issue, comports itself towards its
Being as its ownmost possibility. In each case Dasein is its possibility, and it
‘has’ this possibility … And because Dasein is in each case essentially its own
possibility, it can in its very Being, ‘choose’ itself and win itself; it can also
loose itself and never win itself. (BT 43/68)

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Moreover, given the role that responsibility and possibility play in Heidegger’s

analytic, it must be noted that if he appears critical of das Man in places, it is usually

on account of das Man’s levelling or limiting of Dasein’s possibilities:

With Dasein’s lostness in the ‘they’, that factical potentiality-for-Being which

is closest to it (the tasks, rules, and standards, the urgency and extent, of
concernful and solicitous Being-in-the-world) has already been decided upon.
The ‘they’ has always kept Dasein from taking hold of its possibilities of
Being. The ‘they’ even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relieved
Dasein of the burden of explicitly choosing these possibilities. It remains
indefinite who has ‘really’ done the choosing. So Dasien makes no choices,
gets carried along by nobody, and thus ensnares itself in inauthenticity. (BT
268/312)

What seems to characterise inauthenticity is a refusal on the part of Dasein to take

responsibility for its existence and to open itself up to other possibilities. But this

should not be taken only in an ontic sense, as allowing other’s to make decisions for

Dasein, or refusing to make a stand against something for fear of ridicule or concern

for what others might say. It is not merely a question of participating in a protest

because everyone else is going, watching a film because everyone else has seen it, or

finding something shocking because everyone else finds it so. Inauthenticity has an

ontological dimension insofar as it is about a failure to take responsibility for one’s

Being. That is, it is a failure to become what one is, or to take up one’s life as one’s

own project.

To take up one’s life as one’s own project, hence becoming individuated from the

they does not however, mean cutting oneself off from others:

This process can be reversed only if Dasein specifically brings itself back to
itself from its lostness in the ‘they’. But this bringing-back must have that kind
of Being by the neglect if which Dasein has lost itself in inauthenticity. When

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 Dasein thus brings itself back from the ‘they’, the they-self is modified in an
existentiell manner so that it becomes authentic Being-one’s-Self. (BT
268/313)

Inauthenticity is necessary in this sense insofar as Dasein can only become authentic

if it first lost in das Man. The language of authenticity is only intelligible on the basis

of an immersion in das Man and a fleeing from oneself and the responsibility one has

for one’s Being. Secondly, and more importantly, Heidegger describes this as a

modification of das Man rather than a deformation, as Olafson contends. To modify

our engagement and immersion in das Man does not mean that Dasein is to sever its

ties to it; nor does it mean that in the experience of authenticity, we leave inauthentic

relations with others behind once and for all. If authenticity and the individuation that

it invokes is at all possible, which for Heidegger, it clearly is, then this mode of being-

with exists concomitantly with inauthenticity. In fact, it is only possible because of it.

Authenticity is accomplished by “making up for not choosing. But ‘making up’’ for

not choosing signifies choosing to make this choice – deciding for a potentiality-for-

Being, and making this decision from one’s own Self. In choosing to make this

choice, Dasein makes possible, first and foremost, its authentic potentiality-for-Being”

(BT 268/313). In order to compensate for not choosing, Dasein must choose to first

make a choice, to make a stand about something and take responsibility.31 It must first

choose to choose. This decision to make a choice opens up Dasein to the possibility of

an authentic potentiality-for-Being. To recover itself from its lostness in das Man

31
Seee Randall Havas, “The Significance of Authenticity” in Essays in Honour of Hubert L. Dreyfus,
Jeff Malpas & Mark Wrathall (eds.). Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2000. Havas argues that
Heidegger’s notion of individual responsibility is analogous to that of Nietzsche. In the second essay of
On the Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche argues that two conditions must be satisfied for there to be
meaning and understanding; firstly, our behaviour must be “calculable, regular and necessary”, or must
be normative, insofar as one can get it right or wrong; secondly, the individual must take responsibility
for what he or she does. Havas recommends an interpretation of Heidegger along these lines. See
pp.29, 33 & 42.

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Dasein must first find itself (for it is never itself prior to its immersion). To do so, it

must heed the call of conscience. Heidegger describes the call of conscience in these

terms:

If Dasein is to be able to get brought back from this lostness of failing to hear
itself, and if this is to be done through itself, then it must first be able to find
itself – to find itself as something which has failed to hear itself, and which
fails to hear in that it listens away to the ‘they’. This listening-away must get
broken off; in other words, the possibility of another kind of hearing which
will interrupt it, must be given by Dasein itself. The possibility of its thus
getting broken off lies in its being appealed to without mediation. Dasein fails
to hear itself, and listens away to the ‘they’; and this listening away gets
broken by the call if that call, in accordance with its character as such, arouses
another kind of hearing … that which, by calling in this manner, gives us to
understand, is the conscience. (BT 271/316)

The call of conscience, which I examine in greater detail in the following chapter,

summons Dasein back from its falling and opens it up to a different way of hearing

and listening. The call does not speak as such; it asserts nothing, gives no information

and has nothing to tell; but nor does it put Dasein on trial, making it account for its

actions. The call simply summons Dasein to its ownmost possibility or potentiality for

Being. The call breaks off, or interrupts Dasein’s immersion. It does not sever

Dasein’s connection to others or to the everyday. It does however, alter the way in

which Dasein is affected by the ‘they.’ The ‘they’ self collapses for Heidegger insofar

as it becomes insignificant. It still remains intact, but it has lost its appeal. The

fleeting moments when Dasein experiences authenticity, and becomes individuated, it

still remains being-with.32

32
Also see Being and Time pp. 297-8/343-8 where Heidegger reiterates that the world remains intact
but the effect of das Man is modified: “authentic disclosedness modifies with equal primordiality both
the way in which the ‘world’ is discovered … and the way in which the Dasein-with of Others is
disclosed” (BT 297). In authentic existence, the world is not transformed into something else, “nor does
the circle of Others get exchanged for a new one” (BT 297-8).

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While he does offer a few brief sketches of what this authentic relation to the other

looks like as a consequence of the call of conscience – most notably, the idea of

“letting the other be” and more problematically, in section 74 – the way in which

authenticity is intelligible remains somewhat obscure. For example, he writes: “when

the they-self is appealed to, it gets called to the self. But it does not get called to that

self which can become for itself an ‘object’ on which to pass judgement, nor to that

self which inertly dissects its ‘inner life’ with fussy curiosity, nor to that self which

one has in mind when one gazes ‘analytically’ at psychical conditions and what lies

behind them” (BT 273/318).

If all these selves are ‘bracketed,’ abstracted or become insignificant in the experience

of authenticity, then what is left? What does Dasein become in isolation from these

various ways of knowing itself? Heidegger is quick to add that “the appeal to the Self

in the they-self does not force it inwards upon itself, so that it can close itself from the

‘external world’. The call passes over everything like this and disperses it, so as to

appeal solely to that Self which, notwithstanding, is in no other way than Being-in-

the-world” (BT 273/318). While this does not adequately answer the question as to

what the authentic self is, the point remains that authentic existence does not dissolve

Dasein’s relations to the world or others, but interrupts it. Central to this interruption

is the concept of responsibility. If it were necessary to characterise the Heideggerian

authentic, and hence, individual subject by anything, it would be that as authentic, it

must be assume responsibility for the conduct of oneself.

Dasein’s individuation does not therefore, alter its ontological structure as being-in-

the-world and as Mitsein: “this existential ‘solipsism’ is so far from the displacement

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of putting an isolated subject-Thing into the innocuous emptiness of worldless

occurring, that in an extreme sense what it does is precisely to bring Dasein face to

face with its world as world, and thus bring it face to face with its self as Being-in-

the-world” (BT 188/233). Anxiety does not sever Dasein from the world, or from

others such that it becomes an isolated ego, but forces Dasein to realise that its very

singularity binds it to the world. According to Françoise Dastur:

Anxiety isolates Dasein in the sense that it individualises Dasein, that it

accomplishes the existentiell modification by which the self as the They
becomes an ‘authentic’ self. It isolates Dasein … in the sense that it tears
Dasein away from its absorption in the world of concern to throw it toward its
ownmost being-in-the-world; it therefore does not cut Dasein off from the
world but rather makes Dasein realise that it is bound to it. In anxiety, Dasein
does not break with the world, but with the familiarity that characterises
everyday being-in-the-world.33

In anxiety, all things lose their significance because the practical self-understanding

that have supported them have collapsed. In anxiety, I can no longer cope with the

ability to be. If this is the case, then how do I become aware of myself as a self, since

I am no longer reflected back to myself from things? Rather than this individuation

being a reaffirmation of metaphysical subjectivity, the experience of anxiety and the

call of conscience function to displace Dasein, by forcing it out from its complacency

and familiarity with the world. The feeling of no longer being at home in the world

individualises Dasein insofar as it is forced to assume the ultimate responsibility to

become, and to take up its life in such a way that it becomes its own project. In the

experience of angst and the call of conscience, the weight or burden of Dasein’s

responsibility and its existence is realised. As Dastur argues, in saying ‘I’ Dasein is

able to express its own Being, and this is what Heidegger calls existence.

33
Françoise Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, trans. François Raffoul and David Pettigrew,
Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press, 1998 p.25-6.

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Dasein’s having to be at each time mine means there is no model to be conformed to

or essence to be realised.34 It means that at each time the contingency of being thrown

into the world has to be taken up by one’s own self, what Heidegger refers to as “a

facticity of Dasein’s being brought before itself” (BT 135/174).

This self-assumption is what constitutes the singularity and uniqueness of existence,

and where an ethics of responsibility can be situated or located in Heidegger’s

thinking. As Dastur argues, Heidegger’s ‘existential solipsism’ means nothing less

than “I alone am responsible for opening myself to what happens to me” (Dastur,

1996: 45). To charge either nature or others with responsibility for what we are is the

very condition for the possibility of ethics. This taking charge of one’s being-thrown

which is demanded by the character of mineness and authenticity is correlated with a

necessary and symmetrical assumption of being-toward-death: “dying is something

that in each instance each Dasein must take upon itself. By its very essence death,

insofar as it ‘is’ at all, is at each time mine” (Dastur 1996: 45). This experience is an

untransferable one of both existing and dying.

34
See Françoise Dastur, Death: An Essay on Finitude, trans. John Llewelyn, London & Atlantic
Highlands: Athlone, 1996, p.45.

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c. Death, individuation, and the paradox of section 74 of Being and Time.

In Being and Time, Heidegger argues that death individuates Dasein, separates it from

others and interrupts its relations. While he does concede that it is possible to sacrifice

one’s life for the sake of another, this still does not “take the Other’s dying away from

him” (BT 240/284). As I have demonstrated, this raises the question, raised by Nancy,

as to whether this account of individuation in the face of being-toward-death is

inconsistent with the notion of Mitsein. Using Heidegger’s own account of death, in

conjunction with Nancy’s reformulation of death as that which interrupts community

as fusion or as immanence, in this section, I suggest that it is precisely this

individuation or solipsism that opens Dasein to others and that may correct the

paradoxical formulation of authentic individuation in section 74. The experience of

being-toward-death does this in several ways. Firstly, by forcing Dasein to confront

its mortality, death functions to undermine Dasein’s self-hood or subjectivity.

Secondly, while being-toward-death is mine, insofar as no one can experience it for

me, it is also something that I share with others. Being-toward-death, as a collective

experience, is what draws me into relations with others.

In confronting its mortality or finitude, Dasein comes to the realisation that it is

vulnerable to death and that its death is something that exceeds it insofar as it cannot

understand or grasp it, but that it also cannot evade it. By exposing this vulnerability

or fragility to human existence, being-toward-death shatters any illusions to mastery

and control that Dasein may have had. As Nancy states, this experience “sets my

singularity outside me and infinitely delimits it” (IC 33-4).

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Secondly, while being-toward-death belongs exclusively to Dasein, and individuates

it, is also an experience it shares and has in common with other Daseins. The

experience of being alongside a dying person similarly precipitates an alteration in

one’s subjectivity. The experience of being-alongside the dying person, which is the

closest one can come to their experience of death, is one that opens Dasein up to the

other. The experience of sharing someone else’s being toward death is one in which I

experience the other’s singularity; their difference that I cannot assimilate, know or

understand. This experience of the other’s singularity precipitates an alteration in me,

opening me to the realisation that death is something I cannot evade or grasp.35 It thus

undermines my self-hood, subjectivity or my individual resolve and forces me to

confront my mortal openness.

As Derrida writes: “the relation with the other and the relation with death are one and

the same opening.”36 In this way, Dasein’s individuation is indissociable with its

being-with, even in the experience of death. As Raffoul points out, it is possible to

isolate two trajectories in Heidegger’s notions of mineness and death:

I am never the other; I am always with others. The radical individuation of

Dasein would somehow not dissolve the dimension of otherness. In fact, it
appears that the interruption of all relations in death is what first constitutes
the possibility of the opening of any relation to others. It is paradoxically in
the ‘resolute’ anticipation of my death that the dimension of the other and of
an authentic being-together first become possible.37

It is this ontological dimension to Heidegger’s thinking on the notion of mineness and

individuation that tends to be overlooked in the discussion and critique of the notion

35
See also Jacques Derrida, Aporias, trans. Thomas Dutoit, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.
36
Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology trans. Gayatri Spivak, Merryland: John Hopkins University
Press, 1998, p.187.
37
François Raffoul, “Otherness and Individuation in Heidegger” in Man and World vol. 28, 1995,
p.353.

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of individuation. The fundamental structure of Dasein as open to the world and others

remains unaltered in Heidegger’s concept of “mineness”, death and authenticity.

Dasein, it will be recalled, can never be an ego because it is fundamentally split and

dislocated, even in the case of its individuation and its taking responsibility for its

existence. As individuated, Dasein remains vulnerable to the other and affected by it

despite the fact that it is “mine” and its death is my death.

This idea of death as disclosing Dasein’s radical individuation and thereby disrupting

or interrupting its relations with others also corrects the paradoxical account of the

individual as tied to the fate of a Volk in section 74. Recall that Nancy makes a

distinction between two conceptions of community. The first is the idea of community

as immanence, where the political, social and cultural aspects of a community are

fused under an all powerful leader or dictator. The second is the idea of community as

the sharing of singularities. Both Heidegger’s accounts of being-with – the inauthentic

world of das Man and the authentic identification with the destiny of a Volk are

problematic on Nancy’s distinction. As Heidegger has shown, the problem with the

world of das Man is that it attempts to suppress anything that is different and unique,

and constitutes a “leveling down” of Dasein’s possibilities. But the world of authentic

being, as outlined in section 74, also suggests communal fusion insofar as the

individual’s decisions do not count, but are tied to the fate of a people. While it is not

entirely clear what the difference between these two conceptions of being-with are in

Being and Time, it is evident that using Nancy’s arguments on death as an interruption

of relations can be used to correct the idea of community as fusion under a leader. I

return to the political implications of this in the final chapter.

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It therefore appears that Heideggerian individuation is fundamentally different to the

transcendental or Cartesian ego. The fundamental difference lies in the fact that where

the ego is closed in on itself, and in logical isolation from the world and others, the

structure of Dasein’s individuation is premised on the concept of an irreducible tie,

involvement or engagement with the world and others. It is on account of this

connection with the world and to others that Dasein’s individuation or its mineness is

indissociable from its ontological structure as being-with. While Nancy’s notion of

singularity is not the same as Heideggerian individuation, the logic is the same insofar

as individuation only makes sense, or is only expressed and exposed in the context of

being-with others in the first place. In the following chapters I argue that rather than

foreclose a relation to the other, this notion of individuation contains an ethical

moment insofar as it is about a taking responsibility for oneself. If, as I have shown,

Dasein is also a Mitsein, despite its individuation, then its responsibility for self

entails a responsibility for others as a necessary implication.

However, before turning to the project of extrapolating an ethics of responsibility on

the basis of this notion of individuation, the relation between ontology and ethics

needs to be addressed, as does the question of why Heidegger, and not any other

philosopher who explicitly addresses the question of community or sociality is being

used for this purpose. This concern – the use of Heideggerian ontology to argue for an

ethics or theory of political action – is not only raised by Heidegger himself, but is

also raised by thinkers such as Levinas, and echoed by Simon Critchley and Herman

Philipse.

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According to Critchley, while Being and Time constitutes a paradigm shift in the

history of philosophy analogous to that of Descartes or Kant, this is also

“accompanied by the profound need to leave the climate of Heidegger’s thinking for

reasons at once metaphysical, ethical, sociological and political” (Critchley 1999:

247). The reason for this being that Heidegger’s prioritization of the ontological over

the ontic, “however subtly this ontological difference is nuanced, subordinates the

relation to the other to the relation to Being. In other words, although Heidegger

acknowledges that Dasein is Mitsein, this question is only a moment of an existential

analytic whose ambition is the elaboration of the question of the meaning of Being”

(Critchley 1999: 250-1).

In his critique of Frederick Olafson’s book Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics,

Philipse asks why Olafson chose to link his ethical views to Heidegger’s concept of

Mitsein at all. Why, for example, did he not take Aristotle’s notion of suzen as a

starting point, given that this notion was what initially inspired Heidegger in

developing the concept of Mitsein? Or, Philipse asks,

If a source of inspiration had to be found in the existentialist and

phenomenological tradition, why does Emmanuel Levinas not figure in
Olafson’s book, a philosopher who had been convinced by the Second World
War that Heidegger’s philosophy has deeply moral implications, and who, like
Olafson, uses Heideggerian concepts in developing a foundationalist theory of
ethics that stands in sharp opposition to Heidegger’s own views? (Philipse
1999: 441)

It is these questions which the following chapter address: the question of whether

ontology is as fundamental as both Heidegger and Nancy contend, the question of its

ambiguous relation to ethics, given Heidegger’s assertion that ontology has little to do

with ethics, and the question of the value of Heidegger’s thinking for informing an

120
ethics of theory of political action. I answer these questions in the following chapter

by way of Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger on the question of ontology

conceived in terms of understanding and ethical or political action.

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Chapter Three:
Ontology and the question of the ethico-political

In the first and second chapters of this thesis, I argued that Heidegger’s notion of

individuation is not only fundamentally different from both the Cartesian and

transcendental egos, but that it is consistent with the concept of Mitsein. In the first

chapter I examined the ontological structure of Heidegger’s Dasein to demonstrate the

way in which Dasein is also a Mitsein. I suggested that its engagement with others cannot

be reduced to empathy or a process of ‘mirroring’ or ‘pairing’ but relies on the

ontological fact that Dasein is related to others at the level of its Being. I then explored

the problem of individuation as it emerges in Heidegger’s discussion of anxiety,

authenticity and being-toward-death. In the second chapter, I suggested that it is possible

to reconcile this tension between Mitsein, authenticity and individuation, by drawing on

Jean-Luc Nancy’s notion of singularity. In the following sections, I will demonstrate how

the notion of individuation can support an ethics, conceived here as individual

responsibility for one’s existence.

However, before demonstrating the way individuation can accommodate an ethics or

politics, the relation between ontology and ethics needs to be addressed.1 By ontology, I

am referring to Heidegger’s preoccupation with the question of Being. Its relation to

ethics needs to be addressed for a number of reasons.

1
It should also be noted here that I am not equating ontology with individuation. While the two are
connected insofar an Heidegger’s ontology is concerned with individual responsibility at the level of one’s
Being, it is precisely this preoccupation with Being at the alleged expense of the other that attracts
considerable criticism.

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Firstly, Heidegger himself repeatedly claims that ontology cannot articulate or inform an

ethics or praxis. Moreover, he is particularly critical of ethics insofar as it is concerned

with proscriptions on how one ought to live, such as Kant’s formalistic ethics. He is

equally critical of ethics in terms of a rethinking of values, such as Nietzsche’s

transvaluation of values. In the discussion in chapter one, it was noted that in Being and

Time, Heidegger places ethics in the realm of the ontic, while in the Letter on Humanism

he could not be clearer that ontology precedes ethics and action. Here, he states that the

thinking of Being is “neither theoretical nor practical. It comes to pass before this

distinction. Such thinking is, insofar as it is, recollection of Being and nothing else … It

thinks Being. Such thinking has no result. It has no effect. It satisfies its essence in that it

is.”2

This has two related consequences. Firstly, it is possible to infer that the relation between

Dasein and its being takes priority over the concrete relation Dasein has with the other,

thereby rendering ontology apolitical, if not ethically neutral. Secondly, and related to the

first point, does Heidegger’s attempt to think a ‘pure’ Being, or the ‘truth’ of Being,

particularly in his later work, unhinge his finely nuanced formulation of ontological

difference, where Being is inseparable from its appearing in an ontic, factical or concrete

reality?

2
Martin Heidegger, “Lettter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.) Routledge:
London, 2000, p. 236.

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Levinas certainly seems to think so, and this is precisely the criticism that he directs

against privileging ontology in general and hence, Heideggerian ontology in particular.3

For Levinas, despite the novelty and uniqueness of Heideggerian ontology, and its

particular anti-intellectualist manner of conceiving of understanding, Levinas argues that

Heidegger’s prioritisation of the ontological subordinates the primary relation to the other

to that of Being, thereby bypassing, subsuming or effacing the alterity of the other. On

account of Heidegger’s concern with understanding Being from out of Dasein’s being-in-

the-world and being-with-others, Heideggerian ontology reduces Dasein’s relation to the

other to comprehension.4

In this chapter, I want to argue against Levinas’ claim that for Heidegger, the relation I

have with Being by virtue of the ontological difference takes priority over the relation I

have to the other. On the contrary, I want to suggest that it is only by virtue of Being that

I can have an ethical relation to the other in the first place; a conclusion Levinas

eventually reaches in his final engagement with Heidegger. I suggest that the ethical

moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take

responsibility for its Being; because Dasein is also a Mitsein, as previously argued in

chapter two, its responsibility for its own Being necessarily entails a responsibility for the

3
Although it should be noted that Levinas confines his criticism to the relation between ontology and
ethics, and characterises the political in the same way as ontology; that is, politics, like ontology, effaces
the alterity of the other by reducing her to categories of the same. See R. Bernasconi, “The Third Party.
Levinas on the Intersection of the ethical and the political” in Journal of the British Society for
Phenomenology, Vol. 30. No.1, January, 1999, for an account of the political in Levinas as it occurs via a
third person; that is, Bernasconi shows how the third party is the site of the passage of the political in
Levinas’ thought, insofar as justice begins with the third party. There are however, two other thirds in
Levinas’ thinking: there is the third person and the neutral observer whose standpoint corresponds to that of
universal reason.
4
For an excellent and detailed discussion on the relation between Levinas and Heidegger, see Tina Chanter,
2002.

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other. The consequence of my argument is that ontology and ethics are perhaps not as

incongruent as Levinas’ contends. I am not however, making the strong claim that

Levinas is incorrect in his conflation of Heideggerian understanding with comprehension.

As the first section of this chapter demonstrates, I find Levinas’ interpretation and

critique of Heidegger both nuanced and compelling. What I want to suggest is that there

is a possibility that ethics can be accommodated within Heideggerian ontology, provided

that ethics conceived here, by both Levinas and Heidegger is not reduced to the ontic. As

Levinas argues in his tribute to Heidegger, the problem is not so much that Heidegger is

preoccupied with Being at the expense of the other, but rather, the primordial importance

he attaches to one’s own Being. While I am arguing that this is not especially

problematic, I will demonstrate in the final section, the preoccupation with one’s own

Being necessarily entails a preoccupation with that of the other. I do this, ironically, with

the aid of Levinas.5

In the first section, I examine Levinas’ critique of Heideggerian ontology and the model

of the ethical relation he wants to replace it with. I will confine my discussion of Levinas

to three of his papers devoted to Heidegger: “Martin Heidegger and Ontology,” “Is

Ontology Fundamental” and “Dying for …” which reflect not only Levinas’ subtle

appreciation of Heidegger’s thinking, but the various shifts in his attitude; a shift marked

by Heidegger’s unforgivable entanglement in National Socialism. However, by

5
For a further discussion on Heideggerian individuation is relatively unproblematic, see Rudi Visker, The
Inhuman Condition: Looking for Difference after Levinas and Heidegger, Springer, 2004. Visker claims
that he has “no problem with [Heidegger’s] existential solipsism and do not think that he should have
directly developed Mitsein into the starting point of a ‘co-existential analytic’ (Nancy). Indeed, if anything,
it is precisely this refusal to hand over the subject to intersubjectivity that attracts me in his work.” p.15.
Viski does however, find the account of anxiety problematic.

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examining Irigaray’s reading of Levinas on the question of sexual difference, in the

second section I demonstrate the way in which Levinas’ ethics risks reproducing what it

critiques, (namely, effacement of difference, reduction of Other to the Same), and

consequently, risks losing the specificity of the other that it endeavours to cultivate.6 In

the final section, I argue, with Nancy, that ontology is both ethical and political by virtue

of its very essence, and that it can adequately perform the function of constituting an

ethics and politics. I do this by reading Being and Time together with the much later text,

Time and Being to demonstrate that Heidegger’s ontology entails a concession that there

can be no understanding of being because of its very essence - one that conceals itself in

the moment it is given. The interplay between Being’s concealment and unconcealment,

its giving and withdrawing, its call and the response that it evokes, suggests that

Heideggerian ontology contains an ethics of responsibility.7

i. Levinas’ critique of ontology.

While there are several trajectories or aspects to Levinas’ interpretation and critique of

Heidegger, in this chapter/section, I will focus exclusively on the question of

understanding and comprehension. I trace Levinas’ initial interpretation of Heideggerian

understanding as pre-reflective and hence, anti-intellectualist to his later claim that

6
For a further discussion on the relation between Irigaray and Heidegger, especially in relation to
Heidegger’s later work, see Krzysztof Ziarek, “Proximities: Irigaray and Heidegger on difference” in
Continental Philosophy Review, 33, 2000. Ziarek argues that at the centre of Heidegger’s questioning of
Being is not the ontic-ontological difference, but the notion of nearness, elaborated in his critique of the
metaphysical logic of difference and relation. This logic or move from difference to nearness is also echoed
in Irigaray’s work.
7
See also Silvia Benso, “On the way to an ontological ethics: ethical suggestions in reading Heidegger.”
Research in Phenomenology, 24, 1994. Benso argues that the ethical is that through which Dasein is
opened to Being. It is no longer the metaphysical ethics, a system of values or a prescription for behaviour.
Rather, ethics is the place where Being can be encountered.

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Heidegger’s ontological articulation of pre-ontological understanding does violence to

existence.

Levinas’ engagement with Heidegger oscillates between admiration and ambivalence for

both philosophical and political reasons. In his earlier essay “Martin Heidegger and

Ontology,” a primarily exegetical paper, Levinas writes:

For once, Fame has picked one who deserves it and, for that matter, one who is
still living. Anyone who has studied philosophy cannot, when confronted by
Heidegger’s work, fail to recognise how the originality and force of his
achievements, stemming from genius, are combined with an attentive,
painstaking, and close working-out of the argument – with that craftsmanship of
the patient artisan in which phenomenologists take such pride.8

Levinas will later characterise his engagement with Heidegger, in his later tribute to him

in terms of a “narrative of a conflict between youthful admiration, still irresistible today,

inspired by a philosophical intelligence among the greatest and rarest, and the

“irreversible abomination” of National Socialism, “in which this brilliant man had in one

fashion or another – this is of little import! – taken part.”9 His tribute to Heidegger is

qualified by “all the horror which today has come to be associated with the name of

Heidegger – and which has never come to be dissipated” (Levinas 1998: 219).

Despite both Levinas’ admiration and reservations about Heidegger’s thinking and

politics, he offers one of the most careful, forceful and compelling interpretations of his

8
Emmanuel Levinas, “Martin Heidegger and Ontology” in Diacritics 26.1, 1996, p. 11.
9
Emmanuel Levinas, “Dying For …” in Entre Nous: On thinking of the other, trans. M. Smith and B.
Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 219.

127
thinking. As Tina Chanter points out, “Heidegger could not have hoped for a more

careful reader than Levinas … No one … had understood and assimilated Heidegger’s

critique of the traditional conception of time in the way that Levinas had already

managed to do … Levinas does Heidegger more than justice” (Chanter 2001: 171).

Consequently, Levinas’ critique of Heidegger’s ontology as an impediment to our

relations with others deserves serious attention.

In the 1932 essay, “Martin Heidegger and Ontology,” Levinas’ initial access to

Heidegger is by way of the traditional problem of knowledge and Heidegger’s solution to

it. In this essay, Levinas demonstrates the way Heidegger challenged the Neo-Kantian

assumption that philosophy’s central concern was to establish criteria for knowledge and

how that knowledge can be legitimated. For Levinas, this inquiry into knowledge will

invariably fail because of its reliance on a problematic conception of the subject inherited

from Descartes. Recall that Descartes attributed a unique and privileged place to the

subject on the basis of the cogito. The cogito had the unique ability to reflect upon itself

to discover how it could represent objects to itself: “the cogito presided over the subject’s

birth. The cogito was the affirmation of the privileged nature of the subject’s immanent

sphere, of its unique place in existence; hence, the cogito was the specificity of the

subject’s connection with the rest of reality” (Levinas 1996:11). The cogito thus sets up

an opposition between the immanent sphere of the mind and external reality consisting of

objects and others. This, in turn, creates the problem of how this subject can take leave of

itself to procure knowledge of objects.

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Idealism makes sense of this problematic in such a way that the subject itself will

constitute its own object. Here, the thinking substance will not have to reunite with

extended substance, but will recover that extended substance within itself. However, for

Levinas the idea of an enclosed subject, searching “within its own interior for signs of its

conformity with being” (Levinas 1996: 12) is equally problematic for in reducing the

world to itself, the subject leaves no space for the other.

For Levinas, in this earlier paper, Heideggerian ontology provides a way out of the

problems posed by both Descartes and Idealism for two reasons. Firstly, because of the

way in which it conceives of the connection between Being and temporality, and

secondly and more significant for the purposes of this chapter, because of the novel way

in which it conceives of the understanding. Following Heidegger, Levinas suggests that

what is missing from the modern conception of the subject is its relation to temporality.

By treating the subject as a thinking substance, marked from extended substance only by

its capacity to think, and by assigning it the same temporality as objects, philosophy has

placed the subject in a world of objective things. In effect, it treats the subject as if it were

present-at-hand: “for the neo-Kantians, as for Leibniz, time becomes an obscure

perception, alien to the profound nature of the subject; for Kant, it is a phenomenal form

which conceals from the subject precisely its true subjectivity; for Hegel, it is something

into which spirit is thrust, but from which spirit is originally distinct” (Levinas 1996: 13).

Following Heidegger, time for Levinas is not a characteristic of the essence of reality, it

is not something like a property we might have. Rather, “it is the expression of the fact of

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being or, rather, it is that fact of being itself. In a way it is the very dimension in which

the existence of being comes about. To exist is to be ‘temporalized’” (Levinas 1996: 13).

To be and to be temporalised are thus one and the same thing, in the sense that the latter

is an expression of the former. This connection between being/existence and temporality

can only be articulated by way of Heidegger’s particular brand of ontology: “the

ontological analysis of the subject is alone capable of yielding a solution and even a

sphere of investigation to ontology in the general sense that Heidegger seeks” (Levinas

1996: 14). In what way then, does Heideggerian ontology lead us to the meaning of

being? The answer lies in Heidegger’s conception of the understanding.

For Levinas, Heidegger’s thinking differs from that of his predecessors in that it is not

concerned with criteria for knowledge, but with the more fundamental problem of the

meaning of Being. This is meaning that we already possess by virtue of understanding:

“the understanding of being is the determining characteristic and the fundamental fact of

human existence” (Levinas 1996: 15). The condition for the possibility of this entire

project, its viability and coherence ultimately depends on the ontological fact that we

already possess an understanding of Being. Levinas will later chastise Heidegger on the

role understanding plays in his analytic, but for the moment, Levinas finds much to

commend in this interpretation.

What then, does Heidegger mean by understanding? Pre-ontological understanding, that

vague, indeterminate conception we have of being is Heidegger’s point of departure. It is

130
only on the basis of the understanding that Dasein’s structures of possibility, potentiality,

being-in-the-world, and being-with others, are intelligible. Because Dasein understands,

it is able to project itself onto possibility: “as understanding, Dasein projects its Being

upon possibilities. This Being-towards-possibilities which understands is itself a

potentiality-for-Being, and it is so because of the way these possibilities, as disclosed,

exert their counter-thrust upon Dasein” (BT 148/188). Because Dasein understands, it can

enter into a referential totality of involvements and engage with the world of the ready-to-

hand. This is because it already has an implicit understanding of how the world works:

“the ready-to-hand comes explicitly into the sight which understands. All preparing,

putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out, are accomplished in the following

way: we take part in its ‘in-order-to’ that which is circumspectively ready-to-hand, and

we concern ourselves with it in accordance with what becomes visible through this

process” (BT 148/188). The things we encounter in our environments are already

accessible and understood in some way: “That which is disclosed in understanding – that,

which is understood – is already accessible in such a way that its ‘as which’ can be made

to stand out explicitly” (BT 149/189). By virtue of the understanding, Dasein is able to

interpret its world and existence: “in the mere encountering of something, it is understood

in terms of a totality of involvements” (BT 149/189). Understanding therefore lies before,

or has already taken place before we can make an assertion about it or articulate it. For

Heidegger, we never encounter things as if for the first time, despite the fact that we can

express things for the first time. The fundamental point is that understanding of the world

already exists:

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 In interpreting, we do not, so to speak, throw a ‘signification’ over some naked
thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something
within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an
involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this
involvement is one which gets laid out by the interpretation. (BT 150/190-1)

This is because every interpretation is already grounded in a ‘fore-having’: “when

something is understood but is still veiled, it becomes unveiled by an act of appropriation

… in every case, interpretation is something we see in advance – in a fore-conception”

(BT 150/191). This understanding and interpretation is not the apprehension of the world

from a disengaged view-point. The inquiry into Being does not require the subject to

reflect upon itself in order to determine the meaning of Being. Rather, we know we have

a pre-ontological understanding of Being through our most banal statements such as the

“sky is blue” and “I am happy.” The question of Being emerges from out of existence, as

opposed to the theoretical attitude of the subject. Understanding is not therefore, a

faculty, something that I acquire through reflection, but is something I am; and what I am

is inseparable from my understanding. Moreover, as Heidegger points out, “if we are

inquiring about the meaning of Being, our investigation does not then become a ‘deep’

one, nor does it puzzle out what stands behind Being. It asks about Being itself in so far

as Being enters into the intelligibility of Dasein” (BT 152/193).

This then, is what it means to understand existence – it is to live it, and we only know

Being in so far as it manifests itself to us in the act of existence. Levinas’ interpretation

draws attention to the radical difference between understanding existence Heideggerian

style and the philosophical tradition’s conception of knowledge:

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 To describe this intimate relation between existence and its possibilities as an act
of understanding does not amount to affirming in some indirect way that ‘to be
one’s possibilities’ is to know them. For the understanding is not a cognitive
faculty that is imposed on existence in order to allow it to become aware of its
possibilities. The distinction between the knowing subject and the object known –
an inescapable distinction in the phenomenon of knowledge – no longer has
purchase here. Human existence knows itself prior to all introspective reflection,
and indeed, renders the latter possible. (Levinas 1996: 23)

Levinas notes that the fact that we possess an understanding of Being does not

necessarily render inquiry into it pointless because this understanding is not necessarily

explicit or authentic:

For Heidegger, the understanding of being is not a purely theoretical act but, as
we will see, a fundamental event where one’s entire destiny is at issue; and
consequently, the difference between these modes of explicit and implicit
understanding is not simply that between clear and obscure knowledge, but is a
difference which reaches unto the very being of man. The passage from implicit
and inauthentic understanding to explicit and authentic understanding comprises
the fundamental drama of human existence. (Levinas 1996: 16)

Levinas will later come to interpret this move from an implicit, pre-ontological

understanding of Being to an explicit comprehension of it in terms of mastery and

domination. But for the moment, Levinas concludes that:

The originality of the Heideggerian conception of existence, in contrast to the

traditional idea of self-consciousness, is that this self-knowledge, this inner
illumination, this understanding not only refuses the subject/object structure, but
also has nothing to do with theory. It is not a conscious awareness, a pure and
simple registering of that which one is, a registration capable of measuring our
power over ourselves; this understanding is the very dynamism of this existence,
it is the actual power over self. (Levinas 1996: 23)

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The shift in Levinas’ interpretation on the nature of Heideggerian understanding occurs in

a later paper entitled “Is Ontology Fundamental.” Here, Levinas once again gives a

nuanced interpretation of Heidegger’s ontology, this time, paying close attention to the

tool of phenomenology in explicating the question of Being. However, his reading of

Heidegger’s conception of the understanding undergoes a profound change. Levinas

retains his earlier position that Husserlian and Heideggerian ontology is something of a

novelty on account of its rejection of introspection as a way into knowledge of Being.

Rather, contemporary ontology, or the knowledge of Being, presupposes the immersion

of the subject in a material, factical world. It is only from out of this immersion, or by

virtue of it, that it can have any knowledge of Being. On Husserl and Heidegger’s

interpretation, ontology comes to pervade every aspect of factical life. However, for

Levinas, the ontological clarification of pre-ontological existence is no longer

characterised as an attempt to describe the drama of human existence in “all its richness,”

but becomes a project of mastery and domination of it.10

While Levinas maintains that the Heideggerian notion of understanding refutes

intellectualism, the fact that he nevertheless bases existence on a kind of knowing by

seeking to articulate our pre-ontological and affective understanding of Being implicates

him in the tradition he sought to evade. Levinas argues that despite our desire to

understand existence, it will invariably exceed our conceptual categories in the sense that

there will always be a remainder that will evade understanding, even a pre-reflective type

of understanding. Levinas writes: “our consciousness, and therefore our mastery of

10
Levinas’ concerns have also undergone a shift from a preoccupation with epistemology and the problem
of mediation that it creates to the I’s relation to the other.

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reality, do not exhaust our relation to reality, in which we are always present in all the

gravity of our being” (Levinas 1989: 123). By perceiving this ambiguity that

characterises our relation to reality through the lens of Being, Heidegger, according to

Levinas, reduces this element of the unknown to an understanding of it.

Levinas’ critique of ontology turns on the distinction between the verbs to describe our

pre-reflective understanding and to capture it by making it explicit. To describe existence,

or to do phenomenology arguably does not try to exhaust our relation to reality. It is to

concede that consciousness of reality does not necessarily coincide with our engagement

in the world. For Levinas, this is a major Heideggerian insight – that we are responsible

beyond our intentions. Levinas demonstrates the way in which this can be both comic and

tragic. The comedy lies in the fact that our simplest of movements carry with them the

risk of an inevitable awkwardness – our acts leave behind traces that we did not

necessarily intend. Levinas writes: “in putting out my hand to approach a chair, I have

creased the sleeve of my jacket, I have scratched the floor, I have dropped the ash from

my cigarette. In doing that which I wanted to do, I have done so many things that I did

not want to do. The act has not been pure for I have left some traces” (Levinas 1989:

122). In this case, the consequences have been comic, but they could just as easily have

been tragic. To the extent that Oedipus succeeds, he works for his downfall and his traces

will be his loss.

The point, for Levinas, is that there is an element of existence that will evade us, in the

sense that despite the control we think we have over our actions, they are invariably

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accompanied by an element of the uncontrollable. This suggests that we cannot determine

the outcome of the actions to which we are nevertheless responsible; that there is always

an element that exceeds thought and calculation. The problem is that Heidegger wants to

comprehend this fact of being involved by making explicit the structures of Being that

manifest themselves by virtue of our being-in-the-world: “this fact of being involved, this

event in which I find myself engaged, tied as I am to that which ought to be my object by

ties not reducible to thought, this existence is interpreted as comprehension” (Levinas

1989: 122).

The verb to know becomes inexplicitly connected to the verb to exist: “we exist in a

circuit of understanding with reality. Understanding is the very event that existence

articulates. All non-comprehension is only a deficient mode of comprehension” (Levinas

1989: 122). Levinas thus appreciates and values the phenomenological dimension to

Heideggerian ontology where Being manifests itself or emerges in the fact of existence.

However, ontology also effaces this philosophy of existence by reducing this fact of

being involved in the world to understanding of it. The analysis of existence and Dasein

turns out to be nothing but the description “of the essence of truth, the condition of the

very understanding of being” (Levinas 1989: 122).

If existence is reduced to the structures of understanding Being, then it means that being-

with-the-other also rests on the ontological relation. To relate oneself to a being insofar as

it is a being means, for Heidegger, to let the other be. That is, to comprehend it as

independent of the perception which discovers and grasps it. It is by virtue of this

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comprehension that the other is seen as an independent being and not as an object or as

present-at-hand. By contrast, Levinas argues that alterity or uniqueness is expressed in or

as a relation, but cannot be captured or comprehended by that relation, by either

conscious or pre-reflective understanding. Therefore, a feature of the relation is

responsiveness without either letting the other be, or possessing it. For Levinas, letting

the other be amounts to either indifference or non relation. This, as I will go on to

explain, is on account of the affective dimension to the encounter with the other.

Given that ontology is about comprehension, and that the relation with the other rests on

the ontological relation, Heideggerian ontology reduces the other to comprehension:

“comprehension, as construed by Heidegger, rejoins the great tradition of Western

philosophy wherein to comprehend the particular being is already to place oneself beyond

the particular. It is to relate to the particular, which alone exits, by knowledge which is

always knowledge of the universal” (Levinas 1989: 122). For Levinas, the moment we

engage in reflection, we subordinate our relations with others to the structure of Being, to

metaphysics, to ontology. As a consequence, we bypass the other in her specificity,

alterity or particularity and reduce her to Being.

Levinas’ relation to the other, by contrast, differs from that of Heidegger’s in two

fundamental ways: firstly, the encounter with the other is an affective one, operating at

the level of sensibility and responsiveness. Secondly, the relation with the other is

asymmetrical. Levinas’ ethical relation differs from the relation Heidegger describes

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because the responsiveness he evokes is a non-volitional responsiveness, insofar as I am

responsible for the other without expecting anything in return.

Levinas concedes that our relation to the other involves an element of comprehension. I

can understand the other in terms of his or her history, surroundings, habits and so on.

The relation is not however, reducible to such comprehension. Levinas writes: “in our

relation with the other, he or she does not affect us in terms of a concept. The other is a

being and counts as such” (Levinas 1989: 124). In my relation to the other, I am not only

thinking who or what the other is, but that they are, and more specifically, that they are

unique: “I have spoken to the other, that is to say, I have neglected the universal being

that the other incarnates in order to remain with the particular being he or she is”

(Levinas 1989: 125). In Levinas’ conception of the encounter with the other “perception

is not projected towards an horizon, which as the field of my liberty, power and property

presents itself as the familiar basis upon which to grasp the individual. It refers to the

pure individual, to a being as such …” (Levinas 1989: 126).

The other does not affect me as a concept or a universal on account of the radical alterity

expressed by the other’s face. The alterity expressed by the other’s face is precisely why I

cannot understand the other. This is partly because the other affects me at the level of the

sensible, rather than at the level of comprehension or understanding. As Rosalyn Diprose

argues:

It is the other’s alterity that disturbs me, that difference in proximity generated by
his or her own separation, his or her own sensibility. This alterity implies not only
that the other cannot be possessed, but that her or his presence contests my

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 possession (not just my possession of things and ideas but my self-possession).
The other’s strangeness, the feeling that he or she cannot be known, puts my
autonomy into question.11

Diprose further points out that this affective relation to the other is also a teaching

because it opens the I to think beyond itself and beyond what it already knows (Diprose

2002: 136). To look at the other against the horizon of being as Heidegger does is,

according to Levinas, to fail to look to the other in his or her face, where my radical and

infinite responsibility toward the other is invoked. In this relation, the other demands a

response from me. For Levinas, ethical subjectivity “kneels” before the other by

sacrificing its own freedom to the call of the other, its responsibility for the other arising

prior to the responsibility it has for itself: “I can never escape the fact that the other has

demanded a response from me before I affirm my freedom not to respond to his

demand.”12

The responsibility that the face evokes means that the relation to the other is an

asymmetrical one insofar as the non-volitional responsiveness is unconditional. This also

implies a distinction between ethics and politics. Levinas writes, the other “is the richest

and poorest of being: the richest, at an ethical level, in that it always comes before me, its

right-to-be preceding mine; the poorest, at an ontological or political level, in that without

me it can do nothing – it is utterly vulnerable and exposed” (Levinas 1985: 88). On

11
Rosalyn Diprose, Corporeal Generosity: on giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2002, p. 136.
12
Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philip Nemo, trans. Richard Cohen,
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, p. 88. Hereafter cited as EI.

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account of this vulnerability, the relation to the other implies that I am non volitionally

responsible for the other without the expectation of reciprocity.

For Levinas, the encounter with the ethical relation is thus an affective, responsive,

inclination toward others. It is this non-volitional inclining in sensibility that Levinas

thinks Heidegger ignores in his idea of letting the other be. The primacy of ontology for

Heidegger means that, according to Levinas, he affirms the priority of Being over

existents: “it is to subordinate the relation with someone, who is an existent, (the ethical

relation) to a relation with the Being of existents, which, impersonal, permits the

apprehension, the domination of existents (a relationship of knowing), subordinates

justice to freedom.”13 The conclusions Levinas draws from Heidegger in particular and

ontology in general is that “Ontology as first philosophy is a philosophy of power” it is a

“philosophy of injustice” (Levinas 1969: 46) and “Heideggerian ontology, which

subordinates the relationship with the Other to the relation with Being in general, remains

under obedience to the anonymous, and leads inevitably to another power, to imperialist

domination, to tyranny” (Levinas 1969: 47).

John Caputo, following Levinas, take this critique of ontology one step further and argues

that not only does ontology collapse the ethical relation into itself, reducing the radical

alterity of the other to that of Being, but also Heidegger’s understanding of ontology

suppresses ontic plurality and multiplicity.14 In Demythologising Heidegger, Caputo

13
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania:
Duquesne University Press, 1969, p.45.
14
For a critique of the concept of Being as unitary or ‘one’ see Luce Irigaray, The Oblivion of Air, trans.
Mary Beth Mader, London: The Athlone Press, 1999. Begun on the day she learnt of Heidegger’s death in

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identifies a certain logic operating throughout Heidegger’s thinking, from Being and

Time and well into the later works, “Letter on Humanism” and Time and Being. Caputo

refers to this logic as one of essentialism, which is a consequence of the abandonment of

facticity and the preoccupation with Being uncontaminated by beings: “from facticity,

Heidegger’s interests turned more and more toward the search for the Essential Being …

the task of thought was not to cope with the contingencies of changeable, factical life but

to break through to what is originary, incipient and essential.”15 Caputo’s primary

concern is to locate how this logic of the essential informs Heidegger’s views of pain and

suffering, and consequently, why ontology cannot inform or articulate an ethics or any

kind of political action, implicitly or explicitly.

For Caputo, Heidegger’s perusal of Being occurs at the expense of factical life. Drawing

from the Letter on Humanism, Caputo rightly asks, in response to Heidegger’s claim that

metaphysics fails to think Being itself, what it would mean to think being in isolation

from its removal or difference from any mode of being? For Caputo, would not anything

we have to say about Being inevitably be entitative, ontic and based on a transference

from some order of beings? How could Being not bear the traces of some ontico-

historical setting? What form of language would it take? How would it ever be possible

to get so far removed from beings such that Being is attained in its uncontaminated

purity? Caputo asks:

Would that not be as unlikely, as impossible, as the pure epoche for which
Heidegger criticised Husserl on the grounds that the purity of transcendental
consciousness was always already contaminated by the facticity of Dasein? Is not

Freiburg, 1976, and published seven years later, Irigaray argues that there be a thinking of at least two,
rather than one.
15
John Caputo, Demythologising Heidegger Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993.p.118.

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 Heidegger here repeating, reproducing, the same Husserlian and transcendental
gesture? Does not the ‘facticity’ of Dasein – which was brought to bear against
transcendental phenomenology – likewise impede the purity of Being’s
transcendence, of Being’s removal from beings? In general, does not the logic of
facticity always already subvert the logic of purification and non-contamination?
… Is it not one of Heidegger’s most famous teachings, against Husserl, that things
(both Being and human being) are always already contaminated? (Caputo 1993:
121)

While Levinas argues that the thought of Being attempts to reduce an otherwise

incomprehensible existence to knowledge of it, Caputo16 argues that the thought of Being

drives out the philosophy of life, not only through the act of understanding, but by

divesting Being of its very faciticy that renders it intelligible in the first place. This for

Caputo is a logical inconsistency, given that Heidegger has argued, at length, that Being

is always already factically constituted and cannot escape the constraints of this facticity.

The point of Caputo’s criticism is that the preoccupation with Being loses the particular

in terms of concrete reality in its pursuit of a universal Being. Being is perceived as

universal and homogenous, which amounts to impersonal and anonymous. Both the

criticisms by Levinas and Caputo imply that ontology effaces life in some way, by either

attempting to understand it (Levinas) or by severing its connection to it (Caputo).17 Both

also suggest that by conceiving ontology as fundamental perverts an ethical relation to

the other.18

16
Critchley makes similar argument against ontology, but it is directed at Nancy. He argues that ontology
constitutes a neutralising of the ethical relation. See Critchley. 1999, at 248 & 251.
17
For a further discussion of Levinas and Caputo see Seamus Carey, “Embodying Original Ethics: A
response to Levinas and Caputo” in Philosophy Today, Vol. 41: 3, Fall, 1997. Carey argues that despite
both Levinas and Caputo’s aversion to ontology, both rely on ontologies, including an ontology of the
body, in order to make their claim that ethics is prior to ontology. See p.446.
18
See also John Llewelyn, “Ontological Responsibility and the Poetics of Nature” in Research in
Phenomenology, Vol. 19, 1989 for a discussion of Levinas and Heidegger on the question of ethics.
Llewelyn argues that Levinas is too preoccupied with doing justice to the human being that he fails to do
justice to the nonhuman being, while Heidegger’s preoccupation with giving being its due allows both
human and nonhuman being to be given their due. See p. 3.

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We are thus left with two related questions in regard to the relation between ontology and

facticity, or the ontic. Does Heideggerian ontology reduce all existence, and presumably

the other, to comprehension, thereby doing violence to both existence and the other.

Secondly, given that Heidegger has argued that Being is only intelligible in a particular

context, is the pursuit of Being a pursuit of the universal and impersonal?

Before addressing these two questions I want to suggest that the critiques Levinas and

Caputo direct against ontology can also be directed against the ethical relation Levinas

describes. Levinas’ ethics risks reproducing what it critiques because in describing the

ethical relation as pure transcendence and the other as absolutely other, Levinas also risks

neutralises the facticity of the other. Using the paradigms of sexual and racial differences

as two categories of difference, I will suggest, in the next section, that this ethical relation

risks an effacement of the differences it seeks to cultivate. By showing the way in which

Levinas’ ethics may be deficient in some respects as first philosophy, I want to suggest

that ontology can perform the task that Levinas wants ethics to perform. That is, the task

of describing our inclination toward others (hence ethics) without basing this on

knowledge or the effacement of difference. I do this in the third section by examining the

interplay between concealment and unconcealment, the call of Being and the response it

evokes in order to mount two claims. The first is that the type of understanding of Being

Heidegger develops is essentially a concession that there can be no understanding of

Being. The fact that understanding operates at the level of mood and affect and that it is

intelligible in a particular context means that Being can never be understood once and for

all, or pinned down in terms of a concept or category. This is because of the very nature

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of Being as both given to Dasein, but as simultaneously concealed or withdrawn in the

moment it is given. Secondly, I argue that the ethical moment in Heidegger occurs in the

moment Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take responsibility for its own

Being. Because Dasein is also Mitsein, it must also take responsibility for the Being of

the other. While this doesn’t give the other quite the same privileged status that Levinas

envisages, nevertheless it does save Heidegger’s ontology from the charge of

perpetuating violence against the other.

ii. Irigaray and Levinas’ effacement of (sexual/racial) difference.

In the previous section, I examined Levinas’ critique of Heidegger and demonstrated the

way in which for Levinas, ontology, even Heideggerian ontology, effaces the alterity of

the other by reducing her to the anonymous categories of Being. The specificity of the

other, that unknowable and evasive aspect of the other expressed in her face and by her

speech is something that Heidegger bypasses in his pursuit of Being. Alternatively put,

the question of Dasein’s being-with-others is subordinated to the pursuit of the meaning

of Being. Further, the pursuit of Being effaces ontic differences and multiplicity that

exists in concrete relations between Daseins. But could the same be said of the ethical

relation that Levinas describes? Does the ethical relation also depend on an effacement of

ontic difference, given Levinas’ separation between radical and ontic difference?

In her “Questions to Emmanuel Levinas,” Irigaray asks repeatedly: “who is the other, the

Other … how can the other be defined? Levinas speaks of ‘the Other,’ or ‘respect for the

Other,’ of the ‘face of the Other’ etc. But how to define this Other which seems so self-

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evident to him, and which I see as a postulate, the projection or the remnant of a system,

a hermeneutic locus of crystallisation of meaning.”19 Levinas may argue in response that

the Other is not some vague and unidentifiable figure; that it has a face and a determinate

form. The point is that alterity or radical difference is what erupts through such

expression. In Otherwise than Being, Levinas characterises the relation to alterity in

terms of “the widow, the orphan, the stranger;” figures that epitomise the Other or

difference/alterity. These figures are selected to characterise alterity because of the type

of relation they evoke. That is, an asymmetrical obligation to the other that is not based

on any kind of knowledge. The widow, the orphan, and the stranger are not our family,

friends or lovers. While we care about and assume reciprocal obligations towards those

we know based on various levels of intimacy, there is no such knowledge or relation with

the stranger. The “widow, the orphan, the stranger” are anonymous and unidentifiable

characters and it is precisely because of this strangeness and vulnerability that these

figures can call my indifference into question and propel me into an ethical relation with

them.

Nevertheless, Levinas does rely on some factical attributes and his reader’s knowledge of

such attributes to characterise alterity. The characterisation of alterity as feminine being a

case in point. If, for Levinas, alterity is defined as a radical difference expressed by the

other, but not expressed by the other’s facticity, then there seems to be a separation here

between alterity and facticity. What I want to suggest is that Levinas cannot maintain this

distinction between facticity and alterity, because if he wants to describe an ethical

19
Luce Irigaray, “Questions to Emmanuel Levinas: On the Divinity of Love” trans. Margaret Whitford, in
Re-reading Levinas R. Bernasconi & S. Critchley (eds.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, p.
112.

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relation, then it has to be a relation with someone, in the strong sense of the word; that is,

a real person with factical attributes. On one level, he concedes this, characterising

alterity as taking the form of the widow, the orphan and the stranger which implies that

alterity can take certain recognisable forms. If this is the case, then is it possible to add to

this list the sexual other, the racial other, or more specifically, the Other as Woman or as

Palestinian, given that these ‘others’ have also experienced suffering of some kind? If

alterity has to be characterised by a particular form, why not characterise it in terms of

sex or race? Why does the figure of the feminine play a different role in Levinas’ ethical

relation than the widow, the orphan or the stranger? And how might this role undermine

Levinas’ ethical relation?

In his discussion of the concept of dwelling, Levinas does explicitly state that the Other is

the feminine and Woman. Dwelling, or the home for Levinas is the space of refuge,

recollection, and intimacy, where the world is shut out. It is a suspension of the

“immediate reactions the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself, one’s

possibilities …” (Levinas 1969: 154). This intimacy that is found in the home is an

intimacy with someone – specifically the feminine, or Woman: “and the Other whose

presence is discreetly an absence, with which is accomplished the primary hospitable

welcome which describes the field of intimacy, is the Woman. The woman is the

condition for recollection, the interiority of the Home, and inhabitation” (Levinas 1969:

155).

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Woman or the feminine (for they seem to be used interchangeably – a point I will return

to) represents/is a level of intimacy and familiarity that transcends language or the spoken

word. But the feminine is not the other of the ethical relation, meaning that she is not the

same as the widow, orphan and stranger: “the Other who welcomes in intimacy is not the

you [vous] of the face that reveals itself in a dimension of height, but precisely the thou

[tu] of familiarity, a language without teaching, an understanding without words, an

expression in secret. The I-Thou … is the relation not with the interlocutor but with

feminine alterity” (Levians 1969: 155). The woman is the figure who opens up the

dimension of interiority, the dimension of dwelling where the subject (man) can come to

recollect himself, a place where he can seek refuge, where he finds hospitality and a

human welcome. While woman is the precondition of subjectivity, she is not the

other/alterity of the ethical relation to whom this subject is obligated.

The point here is that recollection (subjectivity) presupposes a relation to alterity that

does not question/challenge egoism, whereas the ethical relation by definition, is an

interruption of subjectivity/egoism. But there is no obligation toward the feminine in the

same way there is for the aforementioned others. Despite this, the feminine is the

condition for the possibility for the ethical relation in the first place, by virtue of the fact

that she performs the interruption of subjectivity that enables the ethical relation. This is

problematic, as Irigaray contends, because woman is rendered instrumental in the sense

that the feminine face merely ‘furnishes’ the face to face encounter such that the

masculine can become ethical (Irigaray 1991: 133).

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There is the related problem of a reliance on facticity in characterising the other and a

simultaneous denial of this reliance. Levinas does claim that the feminine does not equate

with real, empirical women: “need one add that there is no question here of defying

ridicule by maintaining the empirical truth or counter truth that every home in fact

presupposes a woman? … The empirical absence of the human being of the ‘feminine

sex’ in a dwelling nowise affects the dimension of femininity which remains open there,

as the very welcome of the dwelling” (Levinas 1969: 158). The feminine does not appear

to signify real women, but is a mode of being or a tendency, which presumably means

that the feminine could be signified by any actual factical entity be it man, woman, child

or animal. But the way in which the feminine operates in Levinas’ work suggests

otherwise. It suggests that no figure can replace that of the feminine precisely because of

what the feminine represents. Or as Claire Katz puts it, “it is not clear that the feminine is

simply a named placeholder, which can be removed and replaced by a term that is less

provocative. The ‘feminine’ satisfies this role precisely because of the meaning that it has

for us.”20

More problematically is that the meaning of the feminine that Levinas relies on is a

meaning constructed and perpetuated by patriarchal culture. It is a meaning that has been

used to justify the oppression of women. Levinas, I suggest, cannot escape the political

implications of this meaning by claiming to operate in a metaphysical rather than a

political register. As Tina Chanter elaborates, it is not possible to simply suspend the

political questions that impose themselves as secondary to the ontological function that

20
Claire E. Katz, Levinas, Judaism, and the feminine: the silent footsteps of Rebecca, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 2003, p. 40.

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terms such as ‘the feminine’ play in Levinas’ philosophy. The reason for this is that

politics and ontology cannot be so easily distinguished. (Chanter 2001: 52). What this

suggests is that the ethical relation Levinas describes depends on ontic differences in

ways that may be problematic.

Irigaray’s claim that “the feminine appears as the underside or reverse side of man’s

aspiration toward the light, as its negative” such that the “feminine is apprehended not in

relation to itself, but from the point of view of man” (Irigaray 1991: 109) not only applies

to his account of dwelling, but also apparent in Levinas’ account of paternity. Once

again, despite the claim that alterity is not reducible to ontic differences, which I am

equating here with facticity, he nevertheless relies on ontic differences or factical

differences in presenting the ethical relation. While I am suggesting that the realm of the

ontic is precisely where the ethical relation should take place, given that this is the only

realm that counts, Levinas’ reliance on figures such as the feminine to characterise the

relation serve to undermine its relevance.

Kelly Oliver suggests that in some sense, Levinas offers an alternative to traditional

accounts of paternity, but also continues them. On one level, his account departs from the

Freudian notion of the father-son relationship as a “virile struggle for recognition in

which the son must kill the father in order to inherit his recognition, designation and

power.”21 According to Oliver, for Levinas “the father chooses the son after he has had

no choice. His love elects this particular child in his uniqueness as the loved one, the one

meant to be. In this regard, Levinas suggests that all love for another person must
21
Kelly Oliver, Family Values: Subjects Between Nature and Culture, New York: Routledge, 1997 p.211.

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approach paternal love insofar as that love elects the loved one from among all others”

(Oliver 1997: 211). This suggests that paternity is no longer based on the law, filiality

and the guilt of patricide, but on a relation of love and reciprocity. However, it is

continuous with the tradition insofar as it is “founded in the masculine identity passed

down from father to son” (Oliver 1997: 212). This identity is one that excludes the body,

which is given to the feminine.

Moreover, as Derrida points out, why the equivalence of the ‘child’ and the ‘son’? Does

this imply that the daughter cannot play an analogous role? For Derrida, “if there were no

differences from this point of view, why should ‘son’ better represent, in advance, this

indifference?”22 Once again, Levinas responds by arguing that the account of paternity

does not correlate with biology. However, this does not change the fact that the ethical

relations he describes are all based in a masculine realm – the realms of the father, the

father-son and the man-God relation, where the feminine is notably absent. More

problematically, as Irigaray points out, it is only in these realms that the ethical relation

occurs, thereby implying that the feminine cannot be ethical.

The ethical relation to which paternity gives rise depends on the exclusion of the

feminine. While Levinas argues that firstly, he is not concerned with real, empirical

women, and secondly, that he is writing in an ethical, rather than political or

philosophical register, it is not entirely possible to discard the meanings and connotations

of the language he employs to characterise the feminine and its function in his work. As

22
Jacques Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics” in Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass, London:
Routledge, 1990, p.39.

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Chanter argues: “by usurping the generosity of the feminine, appropriating it for

paternity, and suggesting that it be a universal model, Levinas never has to confront the

necessity to which his own philosophy has recourse for its very intelligibility” (Chanter

2001: 57). Chanter further writes: “were Levinas to think through the relation that the

feminine has to the political in his work, he would be forced to acknowledge that the one

excludes the other, reciprocally, necessarily, and inevitably” (Chanter 2001: 57). That is,

Levinas disavows responsibility for the fact that the infinite ethical obligation his

thinking calls for, serving as a reminder rather than an ethical program, is one “which a

history of oppression has repeatedly demanded of women” (Chanter 2001: 57). We are

thus left with the following dilemma, according to Chanter: we can either take Levinas at

his word when he suggests that the feminine includes all the possibilities of the

transcendent relation with the other, “in which case we can identify with the ethical

relation of the face-to-face as the mainstay of Levinas’ philosophy, which is nevertheless

figured as masculine by Levinas himself, and in doing so we erase the very significance

of the feminine as alterity” (Chanter 2001: 57). Alternatively, we can identify with the

feminine as the mysterious, ineffable other who brings man to ethics, before withdrawing

from the world of light, knowledge, philosophy,

in which case we repeat the gestures of generosity that have been women’s lot
since time immemorial, and we rejoin a tradition that excludes women from the
serious public realm of politics, which has always been a masculine affair, and
confines us to the private, corporeal, domestic realm, to watch over the children,
to take care of men’s needs, to provide solace and love and sustenance, to give a
break, interrupt monotony, create a delightful lapse in being. (Chanter 2001: 58)23

23
Chanter does go on to argue that there is a way out of this dilemma, which she locates in Levinas’
account of temporality. She argues that the feminine remains the privileged unthought in Levinas’ thinking,
organising his philosophy in such a way that challenges the adequacy of transcendental modes of thinking
what constitutes conditionality. See p. 58.

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The ethical relation described by Levinas is thus made possible by the exclusion of the

feminine. If we grant to Levinas that the feminine can be represented by any entity, then

we are left with the question that has baffled Irigaray – that is, who, exactly, is the other,

and what is the point of the ethical relation if it is not tied to the ontic layer of existence,

or to life as we live it, in some way? It would seem that when it comes to the question of

lived differences, differences such as sexual and racial differences, 24 to the places where

ethics should take place and where it is needed most, Levinas’ conception of ethics

perhaps lets us down a little.25 It would thus appear that on the question of sexual and

racial difference, Levinas’ ethics falls short of ethics, understood as unconditional giving

to and responsibility for the other uncontaminated by ontical or ontological and political

considerations. The reason for this, I suggest, is that it loses its specificity to particular,

concrete situations, to the here and now, to where it matters most.

24
In the same way that the other cannot be signified by woman, it also cannot be represented by the raced
other. See for example, Robert Bernasconi, “One-Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its
Ethics” in Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991. In the
same way that the other cannot be signified by woman, it also cannot be represented by the raced other. See
for example, Robert Bernasconi, “One-Way Traffic: The Ontology of Decolonisation and its Ethics” in
Ontology and Alterity in Merleau-Ponty, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991.
In tracing Levinas’ engagement with Merleau-Ponty, Bernasconi suggests that Levinas’ reading exposes a
tension between his ethics and the idea of history that he hastily dismisses. On the one hand, Levinas
recognises a thinking that acknowledges the “abstract man in man;” on the other, he fails to recognise the
cultural specificity of this generosity. Bernasconi asks: “Is not Levinas clearly attributing to the “West” a
certain superiority? The superiority would seem to lie in its capacity to understand … Levinas seems to be
suggesting that it would lie in its ability to understand other cultures better than they understood
themselves. Could the “end of eurocentrism” be the “ultimate wisdom of Europe”? The ‘generosity’ of
Western thought, which at first sight seems to be an illustration of the one-way direction of ethics in favour
of the Other, ends up turning into a judgment on the relative intellectual powers of different cultures.” See
pp 78-9.
25
See also Critchley’s recent critical response to Levinas’ view of politics in the wake of the war in Iraq.
Critchley remarks that there is a risk that the non-place of the ethical relation to the other becomes the place
of Israel’s borders. For Critchley, Israel appears to have a double function in Levinas’ work, in the sense
that it is both ideal and real – as an ideal, it is the place where ethical responsibility would be incarnated in
social justice, and as a real existing state, it is the place where justice is perennially compromised by
violence. Critchley asks: “might this double function, … with regard to Israel, explain why, in 1982,
Levinas did not feel able to condemn the murder of Palestinians in the camps of Sabra and Shatila? Is that
why Levinas said that in alterity I also find an enemy?” in “Five Problems in Levinas’ View of Politics and
the Sketch of a Solution to them ” in Political Theory, Vol. 32; 2, April, 2004, p. 175.

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iii. The question of ontology as understanding.

The above discussion has left us with a series of questions: does Heideggerian ontology,

as Levinas claims, reduce the relation I have with the other to comprehension, thereby

losing the particular expressed by the other in its pursuit of a universal Being? And if so,

does this mean that ontology is superfluous when it comes to the question of ethical

responsibility and action? In this section, I want to argue that ethics can be

accommodated within Heideggerian ontology by way of three interrelated arguments.

Firstly, by examining the phenomenon of Being, from Being and Time to Time and Being

I suggest that Being is not so much about comprehension as it is about experience. I show

the way in which Heidegger’s account of understanding is essentially a concession that

there can be no comprehension or understanding of existence; only a vigilant and

perennial raising of the question of Being. As Heidegger comes to realise and accept,

particularly in his later work, is the answer, if there is one at all, will invariably evade and

elude us on account of the very nature of Being. Secondly, the fact that Being is only

intelligible in a particular context, experience, or mood, suggests that it cannot be

universal, homogenous, or anonymous. These related claims are intended to foreshadow

the special or peculiar relation between Dasein and its Being; a relation Heidegger comes

to characterise by the term Appropriation. The relation is such that Dasein is passive in

the face of Being, that Being shows itself to Dasein and summons it to take responsibility

for its existence. This responsibility, as I will show with Nancy, is also a taking action. It

is also, I suggest, where an ethics can be located in Heideggerian ontology.

Consequently, I submit, Heideggerian ontology more adequately describes our

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inclinations toward others, hence ethics, without basing this on a kind of knowledge or

comprehension.26

As demonstrated in the first section of this chapter, Heidegger is unequivocal that his

project is one of understanding and conceptually grasping Being as it manifests itself or

appears in the structures of existence. However, Heidegger nowhere gives us an account

of exactly what Being is, other than the fact that we know it is by virtue of the ability to

ask the question in the first place. He does however, tell us what it is not: Being is not an

entity or a concept; it is not a substance or spirit; it is not a person, insofar as it cannot be

reduced to beings, but it is that with which all beings are marked. But we don’t find, in

Heidegger’s oeuvre, an explicit definition as to what Being precisely is. There is no

definition precisely because Being is not a concept or entity that can be defined or

comprehended. Could it be that Being denotes that excess or remainder that evades

comprehension of which Levinas speaks? And could this mean, as Irigaray concludes in

her engagement with Levinas, that Heidegger’s ontology is more ethical than it explicitly

states, because to perceive the other from within Being is to respect the other insofar as

the ineffable expressed by the other is preserved?

26
In this chapter, I focus on the ethical dimension in Heidegger’s thinking primarily using Being and Time
and Time and Being. For other accounts of the ethical possibilities in Heidegger’s later thinking, and its
relation to Levinas, see Silvia Benso, “Of things face-to-face with Levinas face-to-face with Heidegger:
Prolegomena to a metaphysical ethics of things” in Philosophy Today, Spring 1996, Vol. 40, Iss. 1. Benso
argues that there are no things as such for Levinas, or we cannot have an ethical relation to them. Things
are encountered within the economy of the same, within the movement of labour or of enjoyment that takes
its bearings for the same and returns to the same. Or he encounters things as gifts, as the offer that the same
makes to the other to welcome him or her, to cover his/her nakedness, and to enact the ethical relationship.
It is the other however, and not things, who constitutes the principle of donation. For Levinas, things are
the same, or for the other, but not for themselves. For Heidegger, on the other hand, there is a place for
things; things are the place where the Fourfold gather – the mortals, the gods, the earth and the sky.
However, significantly, the intimacy of things and the Fourfold is not fusion, but difference. Benso argues
that in the face of their relation with things, human beings determine the authenticity of their mortality, or
of their being human. See p.132.

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We have seen the way in which understanding functions in Heidegger, and we have also

seen the way in which Levinas finds much to commend in this account. Recall that

understanding is not something Dasein possesses as a faculty, but is something that it is.

But what is at stake in Heidegger’s attempt to articulate this pre-ontological, affective

understanding of existence/Being? Is it, as Levinas suggests, an attempt to reduce this

existence, and by implication, the other, to comprehension? And given Levinas’

reservations about comprehension insofar as comprehension and knowledge constitute

domination, is Heidegger’s project one of mastery and violence? In this section I want to

suggest otherwise by arguing that the very nature of Being precludes or impedes the type

of comprehension Levinas finds problematic. The idea of mastery and domination is one

that goes against both the spirit and letter of Heidegger’s thinking.

So what then, is the nature of Being, such that it defies comprehension? This can be

answered in part by examining what Heidegger means by phenomenology. As early as

Being and Time, Heidegger was of the belief that Being has not only been forgotten

because it is the most universal, the most indefinable, or the most self-evident question,

but because the very nature of Being is such that it hides itself from us, or conceals itself.

Heidegger was of the opinion that his was a phenomenology of the unapparent, where the

true Being of the phenomena is that which does not show itself. As Jean-Luc Marion

points out, Heidegger did not accomplish what he nevertheless attempted because the

“phenomena of Being,” even in the already attenuated form of the ontological difference,

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never shows itself. Secondly, because the phenomenology of the unapparent fails to get

beyond its programmatic status or its contradictory formulation.27

Unlike Husserl, who maintained that ontology is not phenomenology, and in itself,

phenomenology is not and could not be ontology, Heidegger argues that the only way to

ontology is via phenomenology. In section 7 of Being and Time, a reciprocal relation

between ontology and phenomenology is established such that “the task of ontology is to

explain Being itself and to make the Being of entities stand out in full relief …with the

question of the meaning of Being, our investigation comes up against the fundamental

question of philosophy. This is one that must be treated phenomenologically” (BT 27/49-

50). Again, in Basic Problems, Heidegger writes: “The basic components of a priori

knowledge constitute what we call phenomenology. Phenomenology is the name for the

method of ontology, that is, of scientific philosophy. Rightly conceived, phenomenology

is the concept of a method” (BBP 20). The relation between philosophy, ontology and

phenomenology is such that ontology only becomes intelligible or accessible to

philosophy if ontology has the method to reach it. The method that opens ontology to

philosophy is phenomenology. Heidegger writes:

Phenomenological research is the interpretation of beings with regard to their

Being. For such an interpretation, what is put into prepossession is what it has in
advance as its thematic matter: a being or a particular region of Being. This being
is interrogated with regard to its Being, that is, with regard to that with a view to
which what is put into prepossession is interrogated – the very-consideration-of-
the-relation; that with regard to which it is and must be seen is Being. Being is to

27
Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology,
Thomas A. Carlson (trans.), Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1998, p.46.

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 be read upon (the face of) being; that is to say, what phenomenological
interpretation puts into pre-view is Being.28

The “thing itself” to which phenomenology returns is not an essence, a category, a

noema, but rather, beings with a view to Being. In Being and Time Heidegger writes:

“But if we understand ‘phenomenology’ as: to allow the most proper ‘question’ of

thought to express itself, then the title would have to be ‘a path through phenomenology

into the thought of Being.’ This genitive then says that Being as such shows itself at the

same time as what is to be thought, what is in need of thinking that answers to it” (BT

7/26 & 37/61). However, if Being is not immediately intelligible because it is not present

as such, then Heidegger’s phenomenology is somewhat paradoxical. The paradox here is

that unlike Husserlian phenomenology, Heideggerian phenomenology is not concerned

with phenomena that have appeared or are apparent. Rather, it is concerned with the

“mode of exposition” of those phenomena; that is, not of the phenomena, but the manner

in which the phenomena appears to Dasein (Marion 1998: 46). If phenomena here

conceived is not defined in terms of permanent presence under the gaze of consciousness,

then how are we to think it and what are the implications of a phenomenology of the

unapparent, where the true Being of the phenomena is that which does not show itself?

While initially, in Being and Time, Heidegger appears to have repeated the Husserlain

determination of Being on the basis of presence insofar as he writes: “the expression

‘phenomenon’ signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest” (BT 7/27) he

departs from Husserl in two fundamental ways: firstly, the issue here is not one of

28
Martin Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time: Prolegomena, trans. Theodore Kisiel, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1985, p. 306.

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presence but rather, it is a question of the phenomena showing itself on the basis of its

own initiative. Secondly, and by implication, this means that Heideggerian

phenomenology is primarily concerned with that which does not show itself – that which

is unapparent.

In relation to the first point, with respect to the concern about comprehension or

understanding, the phenomena of Being gives itself by itself and on the basis of its own

visibility and is not reduced to presence for a consciousness or a Dasein. As Marion

argues, “Heidegger does not here mention anything like consciousness: not because

nothing is required in order to see that which rises to its proper visibility, but because in a

sense that visibility – whatever its modes may be – is decided beyond any evidence and

therefore and consciousness; visibility is not represented, it presents itself” (Marion 1998:

57).

The fact that Dasein is passive in the face of being, that it is incapable of summoning

Being, but must wait until it is summoned, the fact that Being is given to Dasein suggests

that not only is Dasein divested of any mastery with regard to its own Being, but that

Being is only intelligible insofar as it shows itself to Dasein. The fact that Being

withdraws or conceals itself in the moment it shows itself or is given suggests that there

can be no comprehension of it as such. Being is enigmatic insofar as it will invariably

elude us on account of its very nature. Heidegger writes:

What is it that phenomenology is to “let us see”? What is it that must be called a

“phenomena” in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is
necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is

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 something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is
something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most
part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what
thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning
and ground. (BT 35/59)

What this suggests is that phenomena does not designate a certain object as such but

designates the play of the apparent as it makes itself manifest. That is, it designates the

play of the concealing and unconcealing of the phenomena of Being: “behind the

phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else; on the other hand, what is

to become a phenomenon can be hidden. And just because the phenomena are proximally

and for the most part not given, there is need for phenomenology. Covered-up-ness is the

counter-concept to ‘phenomenon’” (BT 36/60).

Which leaves us with a paradox of sorts. Heidegger, it would appear, needs to decide

between phenomenology, and therefore, the apparent, or the unapparent, in which case,

he has to concede to the impossibility of phenomenology. I am not however, as

concerned with the paradoxical formulation of phenomenology as I am interested in what

it signifies. Phenomenology must direct itself at that which does not show itself because

Being does not appear, is not perceivable and hence, not immediately intelligible. Marion

writes: “Being is never perceived within the horizon of presence as a perfectly obedient

and lawful phenomenon” (Marion 1998: 60). According to Heidegger, “this being itself is

nothing of a being. Likewise what belongs to the Being of a being remains in obscurity”

(BBP 58). Being is thus a phenomena which is not exhausted in presence, since by its

very definition, it only is insofar as it refuses such a presence.

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The implication of this is firstly, that there will never be a full or complete disclosure of

Being, thereby impeding any definitive understanding of it. While Being will manifest

itself in the various structures of existence outlined in Being and Time, this does not mean

that we can pin it down once and for all. Being, by its very nature, is elusive,

withdrawing from presence in the moment it manifests itself as present. While Heidegger

does harbour aspirations of discerning the meaning of Being as such in Being and Time,

the later text, Time and Being concedes that any meaning or understanding of Being is

impossible. Rather, Being is something that must be experienced as a relation.

Moreover, as conceded in Being and Time, an ontological failure is inscribed in the very

structure of Dasein on account of this idea of pre-ontological understanding. The

difficulty with this idea of pre-understanding lies in the fact that it is not a full

understanding. It is not conscious or theorised knowledge, nor is it cognitive or reflective

knowledge. Rather, it is ingrained, practical, often unconscious interpretation of the

world around Dasein. This has an important consequence. Since we tend to understand

our Being from the perspective of a particular horizon, within the immanence of a certain

world, we tend to interpret ourselves in world terms: “in understanding its own being,

Dasein tends to understand its own Being in terms of that being to which it is essentially,

continually, and most closely related – the ‘world’” (BT 13/32). We thus tend to forget

that we ex-sist, that we can choose what we make of our Being. Therefore, the very

reason why Dasein is the prior being (because it interprets itself on the background of its

world) is also the reason why it cannot fully understand the structures of its Being. This

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theoretical and ontological failure is inscribed in the very structure of Dasein.29 The

consequence of this is that we are ontically closest to ourselves and ontologically farthest.

Hence, contrary to Levinas’ criticism, Heidegger’s emphasis on understanding Being is

not about definitive comprehension and possession of Being.

However, as Françoise Dastur points out, it is possible to chastise Heidegger for having

placed too much emphasis on self-affection up until 1929 and of thus defining Being as

the self-projection of Dasein.30 But this emphasis shifts after 1929, where the focus is no

longer the projection of Dasein. Heidegger speaks of the failure of Being and Time in his

1946 “Letter on Humanism” in relation to the non-publication of the third division.

However, this failure was not entirely negative, because the issue was not to abandon the

attempt to think the relation between Being and time, but to think this relation on a

different basis than that of Dasein’s projection. This is precisely what is attempted in

Time and Being insofar as the primary focus here is not on Dasein as the site or place

where Being is going to manifest itself. Dasein is no longer the clearing but becomes a

determination of Being itself. The play of concealment and unconcealment, already in

place in Being and Time is elaborated in the later text Time and Being in terms of

Ereignis, which is a new conception of Being, considered no longer as the ground of

beings but as the unfolding of the clearing from an abyssal withdrawal and

29
Also see Visker, 2004. Visker claims that we are perhaps too familiar with Heidegger’s famous statement
that “the essence of Dasein lies in its existence” (BT 42/67), and thus forget that what is implied here is not
only that the privileged of Dasein is to exist ontologically, but it also means that if Dasein in its factical
existence ‘covers over’ this privileged, this covering up should be understood out of the very structure of
that existence itself: “and, the source of this self-alienation which makes Dasein opaque to itself lies, not
outside of Dasein, but in its very heart.” pp.53-4.
30
Françoise Dastur, “The Call of Conscience: The Most Intimate Alterity” in Heidegger and Practical
Philosophy, F. Raffoul & D. Pettigrew (eds.), Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, p.90.

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concealment.31 Man is no longer the thrown basis of this clearing, but stands in it, is

subjected to it and is indebted to it for its own Being. Dasein is now written as Da-sein in

order to indicate that the ‘there’ of Being can no longer be understood as the Being that

Dasein projects through self-projection and as self-affection, but as the call of Being itself

to man, a call to which man corresponds through thought (Dastur 1998: 34). According to

Dastur, “It is this non-coincidence of the Being of man and of Being as such which

explains that the forgetting of Being is not so much the fault of metaphysical thinking as

what constitutes the very ‘ownness’ of Being, which withdraws, that is to say, forgets

itself by making the clearing possible” (Dastur 1998: 64).

The relation between Dasein and Being is a reciprocal one, characterised as ereignis.

Dastur draws attention the fact that ereignis in Germans literally means to eye, and in the

context in which it used by Heidegger, it signifies bringing to ownness by making visible

(Dastur 1998:64). Ereignis does not have the structure of a self-hood but can only be

thought as a sending, or a giving, where in the very moment of giving it holds itself back

and withdraws. Heidegger wriites: “a giving which gives only its gift, but in the giving

holds itself back and withdraws, such a giving we call sending. According to the meaning

of giving which is to be thought in this way, Being – that which It gives – is what is sent”

(TB 8) Because Being is not extant or simply temporal, and because time is neither

temporal not extant we can say of them not they are but that there is Being and that there

is time – in German, “is gibt” – “it gives.” Dastur writes:

31
Francoise Dastur, Heidegger and the Question of Time, F. Raffoul & D. Pettigrew (eds.) New Jersey:
Humanities Press, 1998, p. 64.

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 This unconcealment of beings is itself made possible by a second ‘letting,’ which
is the gift of the unfolding of presence, that is, of Being itself. Being, when no
longer thought of as the ground of beings, that is, when thought of in what is
proper to it, is the gift of the unfolding of presence. This gift remains unthought in
the … “there is indeed Being’ of Parmenides. But this unthought does not achieve
conceptual clarity in Heidegger’s thought, since this givenness is a sending, that
is, a gift without a ‘subject’ who gives. (Dastur 1998: 66)

The implications of this in terms of the criticisms Levinas directs against Heidegger’s

conception of understanding is that there can be no understanding of Being on account of

its very nature. The closest we come to Being is in terms of an experience of it. Above

and beyond that, there appears to be very little that is intelligible in the sense that it

cannot be articulated as such. The point, it would seem for Heidegger, is that the raising

of the question is of more importance than the answer.

iv. Heidegger and an ethics of responsibility.

In what way then, can an ethics be accommodated within ontology, given that Heidegger

has explicitly argued that ontology has nothing to do with ethics? By tracing the

trajectory of Heidegger’s thinking from Being and Time to the later text, Time and Being,

I want to suggest that the meditation on Being and its relation to man/Dasein contains an

ethical moment, or opens to an ethics. By ethics I do not mean a series of proscriptions or

blueprint for praxis. Nor is it an ethics conceived in terms of an obligation to and

responsibility for another, although this is arguably (and as I will argue in the following

chapter), a consequence; but an ethics in terms of responsibility for existence, and more

specifically, for one’s own existence. No one can decide for us how to exist, and no one

can assume the responsibility of my being on my behalf. I have to decide to be, and to be

open to the sense/being. The ethical moment in Heidegger is not one as ambitious as

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changing the world or assuming infinite and numerous obligations on behalf of others. It

is, rather, a question of changing yourself. It is a question of assuming responsibility in

response to the call of Being, which has already claimed us in some way.32 Being has

claimed us insofar as it summons us to take responsibility for it.

In Being and Time, Heidegger describes the call as an “appeal to Dasein” one that calls it

to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self. It does this by “summoning it to its

ownmost Being-guilty” (BT 271/316). The call of conscience is described as a voice,

coming from both beyond Dasein and from within it, and summons it to take

responsibility from its immersion and lostness in the world of das Man. The “voice is

taken rather as a giving-to-understand. In the tendency to disclosure which belongs to the

call, lies the momentum of a push – of an abrupt arousal. The call is from afar unto afar.

It reaches him who wants to be brought back” (BT 271/316). The call “forces the Dasein

which has been appealed to and summoned, into the reticence of itself” (BT 273/317).

Recall from the previous chapter, I suggested that if Heidegger at times, describes the

world of das Man in disparaging terms, it is on account of its ability to divest Dasein of

its responsibility and answerability for its actions. I have demonstrated the way in which

das Man can disburden Dasein of its responsibility for its existence and its actions. No

one has to own up to anything or claim anything as one’s own, because it is possible to

pass it off onto an unidentifiable and anonymous mass of people. It is always someone

else who is responsible. But as we have seen, as a collective, this someone/the they, is in

32
I am indebted to the 29th session of the Collegium Phaenomenologicum, 2004 for helping me develop
this idea.

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fact no one, insofar as it is not an identifiable and distinguished someone: “In Dasein’s

everydayness the agency through which most things come about is one of which we must

say that ‘it was no one’” (BT 127/165). As lost in das Man, Dasein inhabits a world that

is familiar and comfortable and for which it has no responsibility, given that das Man

have articulated the referential context of significance. Dasein is immersed and fascinated

by this world; it is complacent and unquestioning; average and unremarkable. From out

of this world, it has a particular interpretation of its self, but it is a limited understanding:

“this very state of Being, in its everyday kind of Being, is what proximally misses itself

and covers itself up” (BT 130/168).

The call of conscience functions to bring Dasein back from its falling and lostness in the

world of das Man: “Conscience summons Dasein’s self from its lostness in the ‘they.’

The Self to which the appeal is made remains definite” (BT 274/318). The call does not

arise by virtue of our volition, but comes from outside us, against our will: “the call is

precisely something which we ourselves have neither planned nor prepared for nor

voluntary performed, nor have we ever done so. ‘It’ calls, against our expectations and

even against our will. One the other hand, the call undoubtedly does not come from

someone else who is with me in the world. The call comes from me and yet from beyond

me” (BT 275/320). The call is what summons Dasein from its lostness in the world of the

they, the call of conscience address Dasein as “guilty” insofar as it has failed to take

responsibility for itself and its Being. Being-guilty discloses to Dasein that it is

responsible for its Being. But this responsibility is not to be conceived in terms of

accountability or freedom of the will. Rather, responsibility constitutes the essence of

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Dasein and defines man’s relation to Being. The very concept of Dasein means to be a

responsibility of and for oneself.33

The idea of responsibility is one that occurs again and again throughout Heidegger’s

work. In The Basic Problems of Phenomenology he writes: “only in responsibility does

the self first reveal itself” (BBP 194); in The Essence of Human Freedom: “responsibility

for oneself then designates the fundamental modality for being which determines all

comportment of the human being, the specific and distinctive human action, ethical

praxis” (EHF 263). This suggests that Being is given in such a way that I have to take it

over and be responsible for it. Heidegger describes this as the “ultimate demand that

[man] takes upon itself again, explicitly and expressly, its own Dasein and be responsible

for it” (FCM 254). On account of this, there is no agency in the response and no free will.

The moment Dasein is summoned by the call it is compelled to responsibility. As

François Raffoul argues: “In this ‘having to be’, I am called to be, and to make this being

my own. Dasein can only be as called. Indeed, I do not posit myself as a transcendental

subject but am called to be the being that I am” (Raffoul 2002: 208). The call thus

summons Dasein to be responsible. What is it that Dasein is responsible for? As Raffoul

has shown, it is the very finitude implied in Dasein’s birth, its thrownness that it is

responsible for: “what Dasein has to be, and what it has to be responsible for, is then

precisely its very facticity, its being thrown as such. What I have to make my own is this

what can never belong to me, what evades me, what will always have escaped me”

(Raffoul 2002: 208).

33
See François Raffoul, “Heidegger and the Origins of Responsibility” in Heidegger and Practical
Philosophy, François Raffoul & David Pettigrew, Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002, p.
208.

166
This taking responsibility for one’s own Being is also a taking action insofar as Dasein

has to act or conduct itself. As Nancy points out, in Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism”

the question of humanism is the question of what man is, insofar as he has to act or

conduct himself. But what man is insofar as he has to act is not a specific aspect of his

being; rather, it is his very Being itself. “If Dasein – according to the opening

formulations of Being and Time – is the being for which ‘in its very Being, that Being is

an issue for it’ (BT 12/32), it is because this ‘is at issue’ does not bring into play an

interest that is merely theoretical or speculative. Rather, it destroys the supposed

autonomy of such an interest.”34 The ethical moment here is a making of sense, or

meaning. In the case of Dasein, it is a matter of giving sense to the fact of Being. This

making of sense is not theoretical or practical because the understanding of Being as

sense is identical to the action of sense, or action as sense: to be is to make sense. Making

is not producing – it is acting or conducting oneself.

While in the “Letter,” Heidegger appears to confine action to thinking, to an activity that

we would be inclined to call abstract or speculative, in reality, thinking is the name for

action, because sense is at issue in action: “thinking (and/or poetry) is not an exceptional

form of action, it is not the ‘intellectual conduct’ to be preferred to others, but it is what,

in all action, brings into play the sense (of Being) without which there would be no

action” (Nancy 2002: 67). Thinking is not an exceptional form of action. Nor is it

intellectual conduct to be preferred to all others, but is what, in all action, brings into play

the sense of Being without which there would be no action in the first place: “if action is

34
Jean-Luc Nancy, “Heidegger’s Originary Ethics” in Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (above, n.36) p.
67.

167
an ‘accomplishing,’ it is because Being itself accomplishes itself in it as the sense which

it is. But Being is itself nothing other than the gift of the desire of/for sense. So making

sense is not of sense’s making; it is making Being be, or letting it be ” (Nancy 2002: 69).

Letting be is not however, passivity in the sense of leaving something alone, not caring,

or apathy, but is action itself. It is the essence of action insofar as action is the essence of

Being. For this reason, “ontology is from the outset, within or beyond itself, Being’s

conduct of sense, or the conduct of the sense of Being, according to the strongest value of

the expression” (Nancy 2002: 69). The very fact of Being thus has the structure of a

making sense.

This then, can partially answer Caputo’s concern that Heideggerian ontology elides the

question of ethical and political considerations on account of its abandonment of

facticity. Recall that for Caputo, Heidegger’s perusal of Being occurs at the expense of

factical life. But if ontology, as I have been arguing with Nancy is about making sense

and conducting oneself, and a taking responsibility for one’s Being, then it follows that it

cannot be a responsibility that is removed from factical life, or the concrete everyday.

The point of the later work, as I have suggested, is not to think Being in isolation from

beings, but to think it in terms of the relation Dasein has to Being rather than in terms of

Dasein itself. By Heidegger’s own admission, to think Being in isolation from Beings is

impossible.

The second point that supports this argument is that ontology is only possible or even

intelligible on the basis of a factical immersion in existence, or the concrete everyday.

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There are places in Being and Time where Heidegger appears to demarcate the ontic from

ontology, claiming that ethics, politics, anthropology and so forth are ontic sciences

which therefore lie outside the scope of his enquiry into the question of Being: “the

possibility of ontology, of philosophy as a science, stands and falls with the possibility of

a sufficiently clear accomplishment of this differentiation between being and beings and

accordingly with the possibility of negotiating the passage from the ontical consideration

of beings to the ontological thematization of being” (BPP 227). In Being and Time he

describes his ontological inquiry as being “more primordial, as over against the ontical

inquiry of the positive sciences” (BT 11/31) and again in Metaphysical Foundations of

Logic, he writes: “Being is earlier than, is that which is essentially ‘earlier,’ it belongs to

what is prior, in the language of later ontology: a priori. All ontological questioning is

inquiry into and definition of the ‘a priori’” (MLF 146).

If close attention is paid to Heidegger’s terminology here – differentiation between the

ontic and ontology, a passage between beings (ontic) and being (ontological), ontology as

primordial and a priori – it is possible to conclude that ontology is prioritised, and that the

level of the ontic is useful in so far as it gives us access to ontology. Because ethics and

politics have been relegated, (or demoted) to the ontic, then Heidegger’s ontology, as

allegedly removed from the everyday as it is, could offer little in the way of an ethics or

politics. There are however, other passages where he argues that ontology is not possible

without a prior immersion in facticity or the ontic – the concrete, everyday where Dasein

exists.

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As Robert Bernasconi argues, Heidegger is unable to maintain the purity of his

distinction between the ontic and ontological upon which the project of fundamental

ontology seems to depend because an understanding of Being presupposes the factical

existence of Dasein to which this understanding belongs.35 In section 63 of Being and

Time, Heidegger concedes that philosophy falls victim to its own facticity as the

existential interpretation is guided by an idea of existence, which has been presupposed.

He asks: “where does this interpretation gets its clue, if not from an idea of existence in

general which has been ‘pre-supposed’? How have the steps in the analysis in authentic

everydayness been regulated, if not by the concept of existence which we have posited?

(BT 315/363).

In other places, it is clear that there can be no demarcation between the ontic and

ontological. Heidegger writes: “In the question of the meaning of Being there is no

‘circular reasoning’ but rather a remarkable ‘relatedness backward or forward’ which

what we are asking about (Being) bears to the inquiry itself as a mode of Being of an

entity” (BT 8/28). This ‘backward and forward’ relation is the relation between the

beings (ontic) and being (ontology). Each informs the other, such that there can be no

ontology without a prior ontic immersion in the world, and the ontic, particularly the

sciences, can only make sense and can only be grounded if they are ontologically

interrogated. Heidegger is particularly critical of the tendency to dissolve one into the

other:

35
Robert Bernasconi, “The Double Concept of Philosophy and the Place of Ethics in Being and Time” in
Research in Phenomenology; 18, 1985, p.49.

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 Philosophical inquiry remains exposed to a double danger, to which it has
succumbed over and over again in its history until now. Either everything ontical
is dissolved into the ontological (Hegel), without insight into the ground of
possibility of ontology itself; or else the ontological is denied altogether and
explained away ontically, without any understanding of the ontological
presuppositions which every ontical explanation already harbours as such within
itself. (BPP 327)

Again, in Basic Problems, Heidegger writes: “there exists no comportment to beings that

would not understand being” (BPP 327). That is, Dasein has the potential to understand

ontological Being only by virtue of its factical existence as being-in-the-world. In fact, its

very understanding of Being can only occur against the background of this factical

existence: “no understanding of being is possible that would not root in a comportment

toward beings” (BPP 327). The ontic and ontological are not superimposed layers, but

simultaneously co-exist and relate in the manner of a “backwards and forwards”:

“understanding of being and comportment to beings do not come together only afterward

and by chance; always already latently present in the Dasein’s existence, they unfold as

summoned from the ecstatic-horizonal constitution of temporality and as made possible

by it in their belonging together” (BPP 327).36

Ontology is not therefore a priori in the sense that our knowledge or understanding of it

somehow precedes beings or existence; rather, ontology is always already bound up and

implicated with our factical life: “in the order of conceptualisation, then, being is not the

earlier but the last of all … nor does its priority mean being is something existing on hand

earlier, as a being in a certain sense, before other beings. What is prior thus belongs

36
For a discussion on the relation between the ontic and ontology in relation to Heidegger’s philosophy of
technology, see Andrew Feenberg, “The ontic and ontological in Heidegger’s philosophy of technology:
response to Thomas” in Inquiry, 43, 2000.

171
neither to the order of conceptualisation nor to the order of being on hand; it is neither

logically nor ontically earlier, neither of the two” (MFL 146). While the term ‘Being’ is

undoubtedly an elusive term, given that Heidegger has stated it is neither a concept nor an

entity, it cannot be seen, touched, or conceptualised, he is quite clear in Being and Time

that “Being is always the Being of an entity” (BT 9/29). Being is always tied to an

individual Dasein and thus always has a relation to the factical, without which it would

not be. If the ontic and ontological are intertwined in this way, then ethics and politics are

not confined to ontic considerations. But if this is the case, then the shape of ethics and

politics would necessarily be altered by Heidegger’s approach to ontology.

The ethics that announces itself here is not one of values or ideals floating above

concrete, everyday existence. Rather, it is an ethics that refers to existence, where

existence is a making of sense. Such an ethics “engages itself according to the theme of a

total and joint responsibility toward sense and toward existence … discreetly explicit,

like that of ethics itself, this motif tends toward nothing less than ‘Being’s Being-

responsible towards itself, proper Being-its-self’ (Nancy 2002: 71). Further, this Being-

responsible for oneself implies a responsibility for others: “the latter, in principle, has

nothing solipsistic or egoistic about it but on the contrary contains the possibility and the

necessity of Being responsible toward others” (Nancy 2002: 71).

This responsibility for others as a necessary implication of the responsibility for self is

identified by Levinas in his late essay “Dying For …”.37 Here, Levinas now

37
Emmanuel Levinas, “Dying for …” in Entre Nous: On thinking of the other, trans. M. Smith and B.
Harshav, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

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acknowledges that there is a place for the other in ontology, and a genuine account of

being-with, but this he claims, is lost sight of in Heidegger’s analysis of death. The

problem for Levinas in this later essay is no longer Heidegger’s preoccupation with

Being, but the primordial importance he attaches to one’s own Being. For Levinas,

Heidegger’s meditation on Being in the guise of the human being-there did not leave us

without ambiguities. The point, it would seem, is that Heideggerian ontology could have

gone in at least one of two possible directions. Levinas argues that Heidegger’s adventure

of Being went in the direction of “an inalienable belonging to self, a being proper.” It

constituted an “authenticity altered by nothing – neither support nor help nor influence –

conquering but disdaining the exchange in which a will awaits the consent of a stranger –

the virility of a free ability-to- be, like a will of race or sword?” But this is not the

necessary consequence of ontology. Ontology and ethics, alternatively, need not be

incongruent because the preoccupation with Being could signify otherwise. Levinas asks

if being-there could signify “non-indifference, obsession by the other, a search and a vow

of peace? Of a peace that would be, not the silence of non-interference in which the

freedom of the artistic act takes pleasure, and in which the beautiful creates silence,

maintains silence, and protects it, but rather a peace in which the eyes of the other are

sought, in which his look awakens responsibility?” (Levinas 1998: 207-8).

This is a genuine possibility in Heidegger on account of the dimension of Mitsein. As

Levinas concedes, the concern -for-being of the human being-there also bears “the

concern for the other man, the care of one for the other. It is not added onto being-there,

but is a constitutive articulation of that Dasein” (Levinas 1998: 212). This concern

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articulates itself as a concern for the “other man, a care for his food, drink, clothing,

health and shelter” (Levinas 1998: 212). Interestingly, Levinas argues that this care for

the other is not lost sight of or belied in the experience of solitude, or deficient modes of

being-with; indifference or idleness, for example: “Thus, being-there, in which being is

always at stake, would appear to be, in its very authenticity, being-for-the-other. The

there of being-there is world, which is not the point of geometrical space, but the

concreteness of a populated place in which people are with one another and for one

another. The existential of Miteinandersein is a being-together with others in a

reciprocity of relationship” (Levinas 1998: 212-3). The problem for Levinas is not that

ontology is unethical, but lies in where Heidegger takes it; namely, the dissolution of all

relations in the face of being-toward-death.

To Heidegger’s analysis of being-toward-death, Levinas adds “dying for another” and

“dying together.” As an alternative to death undoing all of Dasein’s relations to another,

Levinas interprets death as exposing the humanity in being-there; a humanity that would

“awaken” the guise of responsibility for the other man; the human in which the

“for the other” goes beyond the simple Fursorge exercising itself in a world
where others, gathered round about things, are what they do; the human in which
worry over death of the other comes before care for self. The humanness of dying
for the other would be the very meaning of love in its responsibility for one’s
fellowman and, perhaps, the primordial inflection of the affective as such.
(Levinas 1998: 216)

There is not an outright rejection of Heidegger here, but a series of confessions that the

ontological difference is not in fact, empty, that the “ethics of sacrifice does not succeed

in shaking the rigour of being and the ontology of the authentic,” that a dying for another

174
does not challenge the ultimate fact that “everyone dies for himself” and that Heidegger’s

thinking makes possible a beyond ontology. Interestingly, in this final engagement with

Heidegger, Levinas concedes that ontology does not necessarily preclude the other. As

Chanter points out, “To philosophise, Levinas has taught us, is to reduce the other to the

same, to being,” but in this paper, Levinas has “also shown us that it is to discover, in

being, the other” (Chanter 2001: 188).

In this chapter, I have argued that Heideggerian ontology and ethics are not as

incongruent as thinkers such as Levinas and Caputo claim. Levinas has claimed that

Heideggerian ontology, despite its anti-intellectualist manner of conceiving of the

understanding, reduces existence to comprehension, while Caputo has argued that the

preoccupation with Being leaves real beings by the wayside. I have argued in response

that ontology is both ethical and political by virtue of its very essence and can perform

the function of articulating an ethics in terms of an ethics of responsibility for one’s own

Being. By reading Being and Time together with the later text Time and Being, I

demonstrated the way in which Heidegger’s ontology entails a concession that there can

be no understanding of Being by virtue of its very essence; one that conceals itself in the

moment it is given. The interplay between being’s concealment and unconcealment, its

giving and withdrawal, its call and the response it evokes, suggests that Heideggerain

ontology contains an ethics of responsibility, primarily for one’s own Being, and for that

of the other as a necessary implication. The responsibility arises from Heidegger’s

concept of individuation. I suggest therefore, that the notion of individuation is not an

impediment to the ethical relation, but the condition for its possibility.

175
In the following section of this thesis, I argue that the notion of individuation can form

the basis of an account of ethics, conceived in terms of embodiment, and a politics,

conceived from out of Heidegger’s conception of freedom. This is intended to show the

way in which the idea of an ethics in terms of a responsibility for one’s own existence is

firstly, not empty because it offers no account of collective morality or moral

proscriptions and secondly, does not impede or preclude relations with others.

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Chapter Four

Heidegger, Jean-Luc Nancy and the question of Dasein’s

embodiment: an ethics of touch and spacing.

How can one get hold of the body? I am already speechless.1

This thesis has thus far argued that Heidegger’s notion of individuation fundamentally

differs from both the Cartesian and transcendental account of the subject as a

solipsistic ego. I have shown the way in which Heidegger’s project is to demonstrate

that the conception of the subject elaborated by metaphysics not only severs the

subject from the world but also constitutes a disavowal of Dasein’s relationality and

dependence on the other. For Heidegger, Dasein is here [being-there], it is being-in-

the-world in terms of fallenness and thrownness. It is characterised by motion and

projection, anticipation and ek-staticity. It is ontologically being-with others and

endowed with the possibility of care.

I have argued that this notion of individuation is not inconsistent with the account of

Mitsein, despite this being an underdeveloped trajectory in Heidegger’s thinking. The

implication here is that Dasein’s concern and responsibility for its Being necessarily

entails a responsibility for the other. By re-reading Heidegger through the lenses of

Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular, I came to the conclusion that

while for Heidegger Dasein is individuated in authenticity and being-toward-death, in

terms of Being, this individuation is precisely what opens it up to relations with

others. That is, individuation is only possible or intelligible because it is concomitant

with or indissociable from being-with.

1
Jean-Luc Nancy, “Corpus” in The Birth to Presence, trans. Brian Holmes et al, Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1993, p.190. Cited as Corpus throughout.

177
The previous chapter explored the relation between ontology and ethics by way of

Levinas’ encounter with Heidegger. This was necessary on account of both

Heidegger’s comments that ethics is superfluous to ontology and Levinas’ arguments

that privileging ontology forecloses the ethical relation to the other. I argued, with

Nancy, that ontology grounds both the ethical and political. I did this by reading

Being and Time together with the much later text, Time and Being to demonstrate that

Heidegger’s ontology entails a concession that there can be no understanding of Being

because of its very essence, one that conceals itself in the moment it is given. In this

chapter, I develop an account of ethics in terms of the concepts of touch and spacing,

by examining the underdeveloped account of embodiment in Heidegger’s thinking. In

the following chapter I develop an account of political action from Heidegger’s

revisionary notion of freedom.

Despite Heidegger’s radical reconfiguration of the metaphysical subject in terms of a

Mitsein, there remains something missing from his description of Dasein. This

partially arises as a consequence of the lack of sustained engagement with or silence

on the question of Dasein’s embodiment. While Being and Time claims to be an

existential analytic of the human subject, in which Dasein is ontologically being-in-

the-world, it is difficult to find ourselves within it. Given Heidegger’s stated aims, we

would not be too demanding in expecting an account of lived experience and

materiality, of grief and sorrow, of love and desire.2 But as John Caputo points out,

“curiously, everybody in Being and Time is healthy, hale and whole; they are either

resolute, or irresolute, self-possessed or dissipated, and they even die, but their bodies,

if they have bodies, seem never to grow ill or lame, diseased or disabled, and when

2
John Caputo, “The Absence of Monica: Heidegger, Derrida, and Augustine’s Confessions” in Nancy
J. Holland and Patricia Huntington (eds), Feminist Interpretations of Martin Heidegger, Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001, 151-2; 159, 161.

178
some Stimmung or other becomes too much for them, if it does, they never break out

in tears” (Caputo 2001: 154).

Moreover, Heidegger’s comments made in Metaphysical Foundations of Logic further

obscure his position on the question of Dasein’s embodiment. In giving his reasons

for using the term ‘Dasein’ instead of man he writes: “the peculiar neutrality of the

term Dasein is essential, because the interpretation of this must be carried out prior to

every factual concretion. This neutrality also indicates that Dasein is neither of the

two sexes” (MFL 136). Heidegger goes on to argue that Dasein has the possibility for

being factially dispersed into a body and hence, a sexuality, the implication here being

that Dasein can exist prior to its corporeality and sexuality. As Derrida points out,

“the consequence could be drawn that sexual difference is not an essential trait, that it

does not belong to the existential structure of Dasein. Being-there, being there, the

there of being as such, bears no sexual mark.”3 It would thus seem that embodiment,

or at least embodied differences and corporeal desires are not ontological and

therefore, lie outside the ambit of Heidegger’s concerns.4 Derrida further writes: “was

not the existential analytic of Dasein near enough to a fundamental anthropology to

have given rise to so many misunderstandings and mistakes regarding its pretended

‘realite-humaine’ … yet even in the analysis of being-in-the-world and being-with-

3
Jacques Derrida, “Geschlect: sexual difference, ontological difference” in Research in
Phenomenology vol.13, 1983, p .67.
4
For another interpretation of sexual difference as ontological difference, see David Farrell Krell’s
commentary on Irigaray’s engagement with Heidegger in the Forgetting of Air. Krell points out that
the task for Irigaray is to not merely draw a parallel between ontological and sexual difference; rather,
the task would be to think sexuality and being, or sexuality and the granting, in one and the same
breath. He writes: “if the sexed body is the site of both the granting and the oblivion of air, it is also the
portal of the il y a, the Es gibt, the “There is/It gives” of clearing and propriation. The sexed body is …
precisely what stirs in Ereignis, bestirring itself as the incursion of an irreducible otherness into
presence and propriation.” In Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life Philosophy, Indiana University Press,
1992.

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others, or of care either in its self or as Fursorge, it would be vain, it seems, to search

even for an outline of a discourse on desire and sexuality” (Derrida 1983: 67).

As a consequence, it is possible to wonder, with Caputo, whether in the progression of

Being and Time, Heidegger “reads the life out of Dasein.”5 Similarly, thinkers as

diverse as Sartre6 and Levinas,7 Tina Chanter8 and Patricia Huntington9 also argue that

Heidegger’s analytic of the human subject misses its mark because of its failure to

account for the multifarious effects of the human body.10 The fact of the matter is that

we cannot leave our bodies behind in our pursuit of the meaning of Being, particularly

when the pursuit engages phenomenology as a tool in the explication of Being.

Moreover, not only are embodied beings marked by race and sex, but these contingent

features matter insofar as they are noticed and taken into account in our everyday life.

For Caputo and Levinas in particular, this omission renders Heidegger’s thinking

explicitly and overtly unethical. If the body, and more specifically, the body in pain,

or the body marked by sex and racial differences is what moves us to act ethically on

Levinas’ and Caputo’s accounts, then Heidegger’s neglect of embodiment constitutes

an ethical closure.11

5
John Caputo, Demythologising Heidegger, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, p.125. See
also Caputo, “Thinking, Poetry and Pain” in Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII,
Supplement, 1989 for an account of Heidegger, the human body and pain, pp. 158, 161.
6
See Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: an essay on phenomenological ontology, Hazel E.
Barnes (trans), London: Methuen, 1957, 323.
7
See Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis, The Hague: Nijhoff, 1978,
p.97.
8
See Tina Chanter, Time, Death and the Feminine: Levinas with Heidegger, Stanford (Great Britain):
Stanford University Press, 2001, for a critique of Heidegger’s alleged disavowal of the body and its
implications for feminist theory, 83-5.
9
See Patricia Huntington, Ecstatic Subjects, Utopia and Recognition: Kristeva, Heidegger and
Irigaray, Albany New York: State University of New York Press, 1998, p.74-5.
10
See Caputo 1993, p.129. Also see John Protevi, “The ‘Sense’ of ‘sight’: Heidegger and Merleau-
Ponty on the meaning of bodily and existential sight” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 28, 1998 for
a critique of Heidegger’s conception of sight as having nothing to do with seeing in the corporeal sense
of the term.
11
For a detailed account of the way in which a body in pain creates the space for obligation see
Caputo’s insightful appropriation of Levinas, in Caputo, 1993.

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Or does it? In this chapter, I want to again raise the question anew of Heidegger’s

position on embodiment and the possibility of ethics, by suggesting that these

criticisms, which maintain that Heidegger is guilty of reproducing the metaphysical

subject because of his refusal to address the question of Dasein’s embodiment, stem

from a particularly limited conception of the body or what constitutes a discourse on

it.12 The fact that the body is not directly addressed in Heidegger’s work does not

mean that it is not consistently invoked in other ways (Levin 1999: 125). My

argument suggests that rather than abandon the body in Being and Time, Heidegger

inadvertently creates a space for it; a space that opens, rather than closes ethical

obligation.13

Jean-Luc Nancy is helpful for the purposes of extrapolating an ethics of embodiment

from Heidegger’s thinking.14 In this chapter, I want to pursue two arguments in

particular that Nancy makes. The first is the inadequacy of language/discourse when it

comes to the question of embodiment. For Nancy, generating a discourse on the body

falls into the dynamic it seeks to evade because it ends up reproducing the body as an

object of knowledge, rather than as an expression of meaning. Nancy conversely

conceives of the body as meaning rather than as having meaning. The second is his

12
For a detailed account of the inadequacies of what constitutes a “discourse on the body” see David
Michael Levin, “The ontological dimension of embodiment: Heidegger’s thinking of Being” in Welton
Donn (ed), The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Malden, Mass: Blackwell, 1999, p.125.
13
For other interpretations of Heidegger’s alleged neglect of Dasein’s embodiment see Seamus Carey,
“Cultivating Ethos through the Body” in Human Studies 23, 2000, pp.29-33, and “Embodying Original
Ethics: A Response to the Levinasian Critique of Heidegger” in Philosophy Today 41 (3). pp.449-451.
Carey develops Heidegger’s account of embodiment through the work of Merleau-Ponty.
Also see Richard R. Askay, “Heidegger, the body, and the French philosophers” in Continental
Philosophy Review 32, 1999, pp.32-3.
14
See Rosalyn Diprose, “The Hand that Writes Community in Blood” in Cultural Studies Review
Volume 9, no.1 May, 2003, for a further discussion on the question of embodiment and community in
Jean-Luc Nancy’s work, in particular, her account of community in relation to the Australian
government’s treatment of the refugee body. pp.44-8.

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reconceptualisation of the body in terms of the concepts of touch, spacing and

‘corpus.’

The interplay between the sensibility of touch and spacing, where the sensibility of

touch is what opens up a spacing between bodies or between Daseins as individuals,

is, I will argue, also discernable in Heidegger’s texts. By examining Heidegger’s

radical, albeit sparse analysis of space/place, I suggest that the phenomenology of

lived space found in Being and Time and of practical activities involving the human

body - activities of the hands such as touching and grasping, handling and holding,

writing and caressing - all presuppose the body, or, as Levin points out, are not

intelligible without a presupposition of the body.15 Given Heidegger’s dissatisfaction

with the way in which the body has been conceptualised in philosophy, expressed in

Being and Time,16 his Nietzsche lectures,17 and the “Letter on Humanism,”18 and in

light of Nancy’s arguments, I want to explore whether Heidegger’s silence on the

question of embodiment can be read as an attempt to allow the body to emerge from

its objectification in more subtle and implicit ways; ways that share close affinities

with Nancy’s development of a notion of corpus.

i. Philosophy and the body.

In his essay “Corpus,” Nancy argues that “there has never been any body in

philosophy,” (Corpus 193) only an objectified body caught in the structure of sign and

signification, meaning that the body is merely a sign, a thing or an object, to which
15
See both Levin 1999 and David Farrell Krell, Archeticture: ecstasies of space, time, and the human
body, Albany NY: State University of New York Press, 1997.
16
See BT 23/46.
17
Martin Heidegger, Nietzsche, Vol. 1, The Will to Power as Art, trans. David Farrell Krell, New York:
Harper and Row, 1997, p.209.
18
Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” in Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed), London:
Routledge, 2000, p.228.

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meaning is then attached. While we have seen a proliferation of the possible meanings

that have been attached to this sign we call the body, we have failed to understand the

body as an expression of meaning, or the body as the site of singularity, uniqueness

and alterity. Instead, we have attempted to understand it through a series of ever

changing, though equally problematic metaphors. The body has been conceptualised

as a cave where images and representations are formed and projected, or as a machine

controlled and directed to move by the mind or consciousness. In religious discourse,

it is a prison cell to which we are condemned, a body plagued by desires, which must

be overcome. Occasionally in art, it is a beautiful body or a glorified body.19 All of

this suggests that the structure or framework of sign/signification born of Plato’s cave,

in which the body functions as a sign or an object to which meaning or signification is

ascribed has merely been perpetuated by philosophical discourse/Western culture.

Nancy writes:

from the body-cave to the glorious body, signs have become inverted, just as
they have been turned around and displaced over and over again, in
hylemorphism, in the sinner-body, in the body-machine or in the “body
proper” of phenomenology. But the philosophico-theological corpus of bodies
is still supported by the spine of mimesis, of representation, and of the sign.
(Corpus 192)

Heidegger expresses a similar dissatisfaction with the way in which the body has been

conceptualised in Western philosophy. In the Zollikon Seminars, he states: “the

French psychologists also misinterpret everything as an expression of something

interior instead of seeing the phenomenon of the body in the context by which men

are in relationship to each other”20 and “as to the French authors, I am always still

19
See Krell, 1997, p.4.
20
Martin Heidegger, Zollikon Seminars: protocols, conversations, letters, Medard Boss (ed), Evanston,
lll: Northwestern University Press, 2001, p.117.

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disturbed by the misinterpretation of being-in-the-world where it is either conceived

as being present-at-hand or else as intentionality of subjective consciousness.”21 In his

Nietzsche lectures, Heidegger writes: “Most of what we know from the natural

sciences about the body and the way it embodies are specifications based on the

established misinterpretation of the body as a mere natural body.”22 He further

contends that “bodily being does not mean that the soul is burdened by a hulk we call

the body … we do not ‘have’ a body; rather, we ‘are’ bodily.” and “every feeling … is

an embodiment attuned in this or that way, a mood that embodies in this or that

way.”23 Like Nancy, Heidegger appears uneasy about the way in which we think the

body as an appendage to the mind. Our bodies are not something we may or may not

have, but are something that we are. Similarly the meaning that our body expresses is

not something we have, in the sense of attaching or ascribing meaning to the body, but

bodies are meaningful in and of themselves. Interestingly, Heidegger argues that the

body is the context for our relations with others. A point I return to in the final section

of this chapter.

The point, it would seem, for Nancy and perhaps implicitly for Heidegger, is that

irrespective of the perspective used, “dualism of body and soul, monism of the flesh,

symbolic deciphering of bodies” (Corpus 192), the body, as conceived in philosophy,

remains an instrument, mechanism or object that we ascribe meaning to rather than an

expression of its own meaning. That is, the body is not conceived of as meaning, but

meaning is something that “rushes” into the body, presents itself to it, makes itself

known to it, or wants to articulate itself there. Consequently, in philosophy: “the body

21
Zollikon Seminars, p.339.
22
Nietzsche Volume I, pp.98-9.
23
Nietzsche Volume I, p.100.

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remains the dark reserve of sense, and the dark sign of this reserve. But in this way,

the body is absolutely trapped by the sign and by sense” (Corpus 193). But what does

it mean to conceive of a body as meaning rather than as having meaning? In what way

does a body express meaning? And why, for Nancy, is philosophy’s conceptualisation

of the body ethically problematic?

ii. The triadic relation between the body, community and meaning: an ethics of
touch and spacing.

In his essay “Corpus” and Being Singular Plural,24 Nancy develops the relation

between embodiment, meaning and ethical obligation in terms of the concepts of

touch and spacing. Nancy posits the uniqueness of the body at the origin of meaning

and at the origin of ethics by not only conceiving the body as meaning as opposed to

having meaning, but by thinking it in terms of community or being-with. For Nancy,

the body is able to express meaning because of its singularity, uniqueness or radical

alterity it. However, this singularity is only expressed and exposed in its being-with or

in the context of community.

The body as meaning then, is at the centre of being-with. As we have seen in chapter

two, Nancy develops Heidegger’s idea of being-with as constitutive of Dasein’s

ontological structure into the paradoxical logic of “being singular plural.” He states:

“the singular-plural constitutes the essence of Being, a constitution that undoes or

dislocates every single, substantial essence of Being itself” (BSP 28-9). Each Dasein

is singular in the sense that we each possess a body and face, a voice and a death.

24
Jean-Luc Nancy, Being Singular Plural, Robert D. Richardson & Anne E. O’Byrne (trans), Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2000.

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Each of us has a specific pattern of comportment, a silhouette, and a different

narrative:

from faces to voices, gestures, attitudes, dress and conduct, whatever the
‘typical’ traits are, everyone distinguishes himself by a sort of sudden and
headlong precipitation where the strangeness of a singularity is concentrated.
Without this precipitation there would be, quite simply, no ‘someone.’ And
there would be no more interest or hospitality, desire or disgust, no matter who
or what it might be for. (BSP 8)

However, my singularity and my uniqueness as a comportment towards the world is

only expressed and exposed in my being-with. For Nancy:

We can never simply be ‘the we,’ understood as a unique subject, or

understood as an indistinct ‘we’ that is like a diffuse generality. ‘We’ always
expresses a plurality, expresses ‘our’ being divided and entangled: ‘one’ is not
‘with’ in some general sort of way, but each time according to determined
modes that are themselves multiple and simultaneous. (BSP 65)

Singularity, as we have seen, refers to a subject’s uniqueness, her difference that

cannot be captured, subsumed or understood. A singularity is remarkable and unique,

a point of origin which is marked as different in itself rather than in relation to

everything else around it. However, this difference does not close it off from others or

community. Singularity does not isolate the subject in her difference because the

singular being is ecstatic – it is exposed, open and vulnerable to the other, always

affected, touched and invaded by the other. This openness that lies at the heart of

singularity is one that propels the subject into relations with others and entangles it

with others. This is why, as Georges van den Abbeele argues, despite the radical

difference of singularity, there exists something common or universal in its dispersal

insofar as singularities are shared. 25 Singularities for Nancy are outside themselves,

insofar as there is always an excess; this excess is what is exposed to others and

25
Georges van den Abbeele, “Singular Remarks” in Paragraph, Volume 16:2, 1993, p.184.

186
shared with them. Reciprocally, it is only in the mode of being-with that my

remarkableness or my uniqueness can be inscribed. That is, the singular can only arise

on account of its exposure to others.

However, this community of which Nancy writes is not an immanent self-enclosed

circle of meanings, in which subjects are fused into a collective. Rather, it is a

community that remains porous and malleable, where singularities touch and are

touched. Singularity, conceived of as open and in terms of an excess on account of

existing outside itself, or as ecstatic, is communal insofar as it only exists as shared.

What is shared here is the excess that singularities express:

there is nothing behind singularity – but there is, outside it and in it, the
immaterial and material space that distributes it and shares it out as
singularity, distributes and shares the confines of other singularities, or even
more exactly distributes and shares the confines of singularity – which it to say
of alterity – between it and itself.” (IC 27)

The body, as an expression of meaning by virtue of its singularity or alterity, is the

site where both ethics and community take place. Paramount to this is the sensibility

of touch:

A singular being does not emerge or rise up against the background of a

chaotic, undifferentiated identity of beings or against the background of their
unitary assumption, or that of a becoming, or that of a will. A singular being
appears, as finitude itself: at the end (or at the beginning), with the contact of
the skin (or the heart) of another singular being, at the confines of the same
singularity that is, always other, always shared, always exposed. (IC 28)

As open or ecstatic, my body expresses meaning, a meaning that touches the other, in

the same way that the other’s body expresses a meaning that touches me. Nancy

writes: “The absoluteness [l’absoluite] of [the body’s] sense, and the absoluteness of

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sense … is not kept ‘within’ it, since it is itself nothing but the being-exposed, the

being-touched of this ‘inside’” (Corpus 204). This meaning/signification that a body

expresses by virtue of its uniqueness is what creates a network of connections

between one body and another, or it is the thread that connects one body to another. I

am able to respond to the body of the other and be affected by that body because of

the meaning it expresses, or because it is meaning. The other’s body expresses

meaning by virtue of its unique face and voice, its familiar pattern of gestures,

mannerisms and traits, or its particular relation to me. It should be noted that the body

is an expression of meaning by virtue of it being a body; that is, the body is meaning.

Nancy singles out the sensibility of touch as the way in which bodies/singularities

express their meaning to suggest that the power of the body to mean subtends

language. He states: “at the body, there is the sense of touch, the touch of the thing,

which touches ‘itself’ without an ‘itself’ where it can get at itself, and which is

touched and moved in this unbound sense of touch, and so separated from itself,

shared out of itself” (Corpus 203).

However, as Derrida points out, the figure of touch in Nancy’s work is also a slippery

concept because Nancy blurs or confuses the line between the thematic meaning of

touch and its operative function. That is, the line between the proper or literal sense of

touch and all its “tropic turns of phrase.”26 That is, there are times when he uses the

figure of touch in a literal sense, and other times he means touching metaphorically,

such as when he suggests that there is in fact, no such thing as touching. What then,

are we to make of this figure of touch discernable not only in “Corpus,” but as a

26
Jacques Derrida, “Le toucher Touch/to touch him” in Paragraph, Volume 16:2, 1993, p.132.

188
recurrent figure in Nancy’s oeuvre? How does Nancy use this concept as an

alternative to thinking the body by generating a discourse on it? What does it mean to

reconceptualise reading and writing as matters of tact? How does this create a space

for an ethics that respects the singularity of the other? What is the relation between

touch and spacing, touch and distance? Derrida asks, in relation to Nancy’s writing:

Is it touching upon something or is it touching upon touching itself, there

where, having more or less surreptitiously drawn our attention to the
irreducible figure of touching, this writing makes us put our finger on
language, touching itself by touching us and making us notice what is going
on with touching, to be sure in a manner that is as obscure as it is aporetic, but
above all, in a touching manner to the point where all affect, all desire, all
fascination, all experience of the other seems to be involved? (Derrida 1993:
123)

For Derrida, the figure of touch takes on an aporetic structure in Nancy’s texts in

accordance with the law of tact: a law that dictates or commands us to touch without

touching. To not touch the other is to lack tact, but to touch her, and touch her too

much, is also tactless. We are thus divided by this contradictory injunction: “to touch

without touching, to press without pressing, always more, always too much, never

enough” (Derrida 1993: 124). This implies that the figure of touch is not necessarily

reducible to physical contact. Rather, there is something intangible about ‘tacticity’.

Derrida uses the metaphor/trope of eyes touching or kissing to illustrate the

intangibility of touch. He asks: can it ever happen that eyes can press against each

other, touch each other in the same way lips can given that there are similarities in

their surfaces? What does it mean to touch eyes? To touch another’s eyes in a physical

and tangible sense is certainly possible. I can touch the other’s eyes with my fingers,

my lips, or even with my lashes and eyelids by coming near to the other. But this,

while not impossible, rarely happens. Eyes can however, touch/meet by looking at

each other, a meeting that enables me to see “both your look and your eyes, love in

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fascination, and your eyes are not only seeing, but visible” (Derrida 1993: 122). This

enables me to touch the eyes of the other with my own eyes in such a way that I can

see while losing my sight. That is, I see the other without fixing her, reducing her to

an object status as vision has a tendency to do.

Derrida’s trope of eyes touching through sight collapses the distinction between vision

and touch. It captures the tension between the need to intangibly touch the other and

maintain a respectful distance from her. The intangible touch is not one that does

violence to the other by violating her corporeal boundaries. Rather, it is a reciprocal

touch that gives me access to the other’s limit, the borders of her body. This access is

at once transgressive, one that exceeds the border because “it breaks with immediacy,

with the immediate given associated with touch” (Derrida 1993: 141), while

remaining at the limit of the border. To touch the other is to interrupt a logic that

attempts to know the other by subsuming her into categories of the same, a logic that

attempts to fix the other, confer an identity on her, an identity that renders her body

either meaningful or worthless. To touch the other, in both a tangible and intangible

sense, is to be exposed to the other’s singularity, to be affected by it and to respond to

it, but not to subsume it or annihilate it. As Nancy states, the touch opens up an

irreducible and inassimilable strangeness of the other (BSP 29). In this way, the figure

of the touch, because it opens me up to the strangeness of the other, her uniqueness or

singularity, also creates a space for ethical obligation.

The touch creates a space for ethical obligation by virtue of the spacing it opens up.

The tension between the figures of touch and spacing suggests that the uniqueness that

can only be expressed in community is also one that presents a limit to community. It

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is a limit in the sense that while my singular being is intertwined with that of the other

such that uniqueness is always bound up with multiplicity, there is a sense in which

this closeness to the other opens up a space or a distance between my body and the

body of the other. Nancy writes: “from one singular to the other, there is contiguity

but not continuity. There is proximity, but only to the extent that extreme closeness

emphasises the distancing it opens up. All of being is in touch with all of being, but

the law of touch is separation” (BSP 5). This distance is insurmountable because

irrespective of how close I am to the other, her body signifies a limit that I cannot

cross. The other’s body signifies her singularity or uniqueness that I cannot access, a

meaning I cannot capture. Nancy writes: “it is a matter of one or the other, one and the

other, one with the other, but by no means the one in the other, which would be

something other than one or the other (another essence, another diffuse or infuse

generality)” (BSP 6). While I can touch this origin (the other’s singularity), be

exposed to it, stand before it, it will evade my grasp, vanish the moment I touch it and

conceal itself from me:

‘Strangeness’ refers to the fact that each singularity is another access to the
world. At the point where we would expect ‘something’, a substance or a
procedure, a principle or an end, a signification, there is nothing but the
manner, the turn of the other access, which conceals itself in the very gesture
wherein it offers itself to us … In the singularity that he exposes, each child
that is born has already concealed the access that he is ‘for himself’ and in
which he will conceal himself ‘within himself.’ (BSP 14)

Ethical obligation on this model of touch and spacing implies that the unethical is the

attempt to appropriate the other and therefore, close down distance and the exposure

and expression of singularity. The attempt to appropriate the other’s origin by

traversing the space that the touch opens up transforms the curiosity we have of the

other’s strangeness into a “destructive rage” in which the other’s singularity is either

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adopted or rejected. This constitutes an ethical closure because in abolishing the limit

that the other’s body represents, we transform the ‘other’ into an ‘Other’, and fix the

other as either divine, worthy of glorification, or as evil, an Other that must be

excluded or exterminated. The desire to fix the other is a “desire for murder …for an

increase of cruelty and horror … it is mutilation, carving up, relentlessness,

meticulous execution, the joy of agony” (BSP 21). We are able to inflict cruelty on the

Other because it no longer constitutes a point of origin, or a uniqueness.

This suggests that the law of an ethical touch is separation, space and distance because

the moment I physically touch the body of the other, I am made aware of its

separateness, its uniqueness, and the limit it presents to what I can know. The attempt

to conquer this space that the touch creates is also the attempt to conquer the alterity

of the other:

Bodies run the risk of resisting one another in an impenetrable fashion, but
they also run the risk of meeting and dissolving into one another. This double
risk comes down to the same thing: abolishing the limit, the touch, the
absolute, becoming substance, becoming God, becoming the Subject of
speculative subjectivity. This is no longer the ab-solute, but saturated totality.
But as long as there is something, there is also something else, other bodies
whose limits expose them to each other’s touch, between repulsion and
dissolution. (Corpus 206)

The other’s body thus represents a limit to what I can know because of the way in

which it opens up a space or distance that needs to be maintained rather than

traversed, irrespective of how close I am to the other. This space means that “two

bodies cannot occupy the same space simultaneously. Not you at the same time in the

space where I speak, in the place where you listen” (Corpus 189). My body is an

expression of my singularity, my finitude and my specific being-in-the-world. I

cannot speak for the other, nor listen for or on behalf of the other.

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For this reason, language fails us when it comes to the question of embodiment. The

body of the other is not something that we can capture by language, nor is it

something that can be made to conform to our conceptual categories. If I were to

generate a discourse on the body, I would become the condition for the possibility of

this discourse, or its point of utterance. Whom I am talking about becomes the object

of my discourse. This is why “I will never be able to speak from where you listen, nor

will you be able to listen from where I speak” (Corpus 189). The insurmountable

distance between myself and the other means that I will never be able to understand

the other’s embodied existence. To speak on her behalf would constitute an ethical

closure or would be an injustice to the other because I would have to subsume the

other into my own categories in an attempt to understand her.

This raises the problem, for Nancy, and implicitly for Heidegger, of how to think the

body or our embodiment without reducing the body to an object of

discourse/knowledge, given that any attempt to think/speak/write the body falls into

the same dynamic it seeks to evade. That is, it reduces the body to an object of

knowledge. As Nancy states, we are caught in a double bind, or a failure, because

“when one puts the body on the program, on whatever program, one has already set it

aside” (Corpus 190). Could this problematic Nancy identifies in discourses on the

body also have plagued Heidegger, rendering him silent or speechless on the question

of Dasein’s embodiment? Could this be a possible explanation as to why Heidegger

deflects, avoids and evades the question of embodiment at the moments where his

thinking inevitably begins to touch on this contentious issue?27 For Nancy, given this

27
For example, in Being and Time, he says: “This ‘bodily nature’ hides a whole problematic of its own,
though we shall not treat it here.” BT 143. Thirty-seven years later in a reply to Eugen Fink, he once
again claims that the body cannot be thought through ontologically and remarks that the “body

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difficulty in thinking the body, and given the centrality of the body for ethics, it

becomes all the more pressing to find alternative ways of conceptualising the body in

such a way that does not reduce it to an object of discourse.

For Nancy, it is not a question of producing more discourse on the body, but to stop

discoursing altogether, to “cut into discourse” and learn how to touch instead. We

need to stop talking because there is essentially nothing to say about the body. The

body is not an object of knowledge, but an experience in and of itself. For Nancy,

bodies are there – given – as weight, resistance and extension. These attributes are

first and foremost experiences that come prior to any knowledge we may procure on

the subject of embodiment. Bodies resist both knowledge and ignorance. They are

simply given, to be touched and to touch. The body offers itself as a weighty mass, a

mass “without anything to articulate, without anything to discourse about, without

anything to add to them” (Corpus 197). The body is simply there, “given, abandoned

… simply posited, weighed, weighty … existence does not presuppose itself and does

not presuppose anything: it is posited, imposed, weighed, laid down, exposed”

(Corpus 200). The body is weight and mass, density and substance; a substance that

touches on other substances, a mass that weighs against other bodies, one that touches

other bodies.

To further this project of finding alternative ways of conceptualising the body, Nancy

introduces the idea of a “corpus.” This is a way of cataloguing the different modes of

the body and its ways of being in the world, such that the body implicitly emerges. A

corpus is a reconceptualisation of reading and writing as matters of tact, as different

phenomenon is the most difficult problem” in Heidegger, Heraclitus Seminar, trans. Charles H. Seibert
Northwestern University press, 1992 p.146.

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ways of touching and being touched. A corpus is a “catalog, the recitation of an

empirical logos that, without transcendental reason, would be a gleaned list, random

in its order or in its degree of completion” (Corpus 189). It is an attempt to capture “a

body touched, touching, and the tract of this tact” (Corpus 189). In this way, Nancy

negotiates the tension between the need to recreate the body in discourse and the

problems associated with representing something that is otherwise unrepresentable.28

This discussion of Nancy reveals the following: firstly, the ethical and ontological

problem of discoursing on the body, given that this reproduces the body as an object

of knowledge, and fails to examine the body in its ontological condition as being-

with. Secondly, it fleshes out an understanding of the relation between the body,

meaning and ethical obligation. As we saw, Nancy puts the uniqueness of the body at

the origin of meaning and at the origin of ethics. However, the body as an expression

of meaning can only emerge in the context of being-with-others or community. This

relation between the body and community gives rise to an ethical obligation based on

the tension between touch and spacing. The relation developed between embodiment,

meaning and ethical obligation based on touch and spacing is intended to frame my

discussion of Heidegger, ethics and embodiment. Nancy’s arguments provide a way

of understanding Heidegger’s apparent silence on the body as such. If Heidegger’s

ontology opens a place for the body and ethics, this cannot be achieved through an

account of the body as an empirical object. Rather, I argue that through his account of

temporality spatiality and being-with-others, a place for the body is created, insofar as

the body subtlety emerges from its objectification.

28
See Shapiro “Jean-Luc Nancy and the Corpus of Philosophy” in Thinking Bodies, Edited by Juliet
Flower MacCannell and Laura Zakarin, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994 p.61 for a detailed
discussion of corpus as a way of representing the unrepresentable, and see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
“Response to Jean-Luc Nancy” in Thinking Bodies, for a critique of the paradoxical nature of a corpus.
pp.33, 35, 36.

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iii. Retrieving Dasein’s body

In the previous section, Heidegger’s dissatisfaction with the way in which the body

has been conceptualised in philosophy was briefly noted. For Heidegger, the problem

lies in the fact that the body is treated as an object, thing or substance, or in his

terminology as something “present-at-hand.” By conceiving of Dasein as if it were an

entity amongst other entities in the world, the ontological dimension of Dasein

becomes obscured. That is, the way in which the world matters to Dasein, and the

way in which it cares about not only its own existence, but also the world and the

others it encounters is obscured. It is this relation between meaning, Dasein and

being-in-the-world as being-with that I want to reconstruct in this section. I do this

through an account of Heidegger’s analysis of the relation between temporality and

spatiality, Dasein’s relation to equipment, and its being-with.

A fundamental aspect of Heidegger’s ‘destruction’ of the metaphysical tradition is the

consistent preoccupation with demonstrating that Dasein is not an object, a thing or a

substance that is “present-at-hand;” nor is it an self-given ‘I’ or ego, that must mediate

a relation to the world and others. Rather, the fundamental or ontological structure of

Dasein is being-in-the-world and being-with-others. Dasein’s interaction in the world

is characterised by touching and handling, grasping and holding. Its engagement

begins at the level of the corporeal, without which, the ontology of Being and Time

would make little sense.29

29
See Levin 1999.

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The disavowal of the body by traditional metaphysics, epitomised in the thought of

Descartes, is particularly contentious for Heidegger, because it distorts the way in

which Dasein engages in the world or the way in which “one feels one’s way by

touch” (BT 97/130). For Heidegger, the only way we can know anything about the

world is through the sensibility of touch. He writes, “the kind of dealing which is

closest to us is … not a bare perceptual cognition, but rather that kind of concern

which manipulates things and puts them to use; and this has its own kind of

‘knowledge’” (BT 67/95). To illustrate, Heidegger draws on examples from the world

of equipment. In Being and Time, he argues that “the less we just stare at the hammer-

Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our

relationship to it become” (BT 69/98). Dasein does not procure knowledge by

standing back from the object in question and apprehending it theoretically or

speculatively. Rather, it can only come to have knowledge of its world by an engaged

and active immersion in it. Such an engaged immersion presupposes Dasein’s

embodiment.

This is reiterated, perhaps more emphatically, in Heidegger’s later lecture course

“What is Called Thinking?”30 Here, Heidegger explores what it means to think and

how we learn to think by using the metaphor of building. What thinking and building

share, according to Heidegger, is that they both are crafts or handicrafts, which

literally means “the strength and skill in our hands” (WCT 16). To learn how to build

a cabinet, the apprentice does not merely gather knowledge about the things he or she

will build. Rather, the apprentice will only learn by answering and responding to

30
Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? trans. J. Glenn Gray, New York: Harper and Row,
1968. Hereafter cited as WCT.

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different types of wood, to shapes and textures. It is only possible to learn by touching

and handling, by using and manipulating. Such learning presupposes embodiment and

indicates that our way of learning is in terms of an embodied comportment toward the

world.

Similarly, we do not learn to think by abstracting or disengaging from our bodies or

the world. Thinking, like building, also requires the strength of our hands, insofar as

our gestures are threaded through our language, thought and expression. In relation to

the hands, Heidegger writes:

The hand is a peculiar thing. In the common view, the hand is part of our
bodily organism. But the hand’s essence can never be determined, or
explained, by its being an organ which can grasp … But the craft of the hand
is richer than we commonly imagine. The hand does not only grasp and catch,
or push and pull. The hand reaches and extends, receives and welcomes – and
not just things: the hand extends itself and receives its own welcome in the
hand of others. The hand holds. The hand carries. The hand designs and signs,
presumably because man is a sign … The hands gestures run everywhere
through language, in their most perfect purity precisely when man speaks by
keeping silent. And only when man speaks does he think – not the other way
around, as metaphysics still believes. (WCT 16)

The hand exemplifies not only the way we are connected to others and the way in

which we express our thoughts, but the way in which it is an extending toward

another, an expression of welcoming in the form of being-touched. If we can only

think by speaking, and the gestures of our hands are interwoven in our speech, then it

follows that thinking is intimately connected to our embodiment:

Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the
element of thinking, every bearing of the hand bears itself in that element. All
the work of the hand iss rooted in thinking. Therefore, thinking itself is man’s
simplest, and for that reason hardest, handiwork, if it would be accomplished
at its proper time. (WCT 16-17)

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For traditional metaphysics, thinking takes place in the mind, which is distinct from

the body. By implication, this suggests that the body cannot think. As Levin points

out, we have a tendency to think the body in such a way that discussions about seeing

and hearing, posture and gesture, standing and falling do not constitute a discussion of

the body. This, however, for Levin is a serious mistake on the part of philosophy

because it implies that what Heidegger says about ‘thinking’ is somehow separate or

unconnected from our experience as embodied beings. Without what Heidegger

means by ‘thinking,’ Levin argues: “thinking remains imprisoned in the metaphysical

dualisms of philosophy and life, mind and body, thought and action, theory and

praxis, thinking and experiencing, reason and feeling, the intelligible and the

sensuous” (Levin 1999: 127).

By contrast, Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s engagement with equipment suggests

that the space of human experience is not the space of objects ‘outside’ the subject, or

objects intuited by our outer sense. Rather, human being is the outside in the sense

that it is always being in the world (Krell 1997: 53). As Krell points out, Dasein does

not exist in terms of an “inner sense,” trapped in a body which functions as a window

to the outside. Its relation to the world is one of use, of getting in hand, of touch, of

approach and withdrawal, of nearing and passing away, distancing and un-distancing

(Krell 1997: 53). Its relation to the world is thus one of a meaningful spacing. This

becomes apparent in Heidegger’s discussion of the relation between temporality and

spatiality. The following analysis will introduce the concept of embodiment in the

relation between spatiality and temporality and spacing and meaning.

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iv. Temporality and spatiality.

My point of departure in this section is the claim, made by some philosophers

working in the area of sexual difference, that any reconfiguration of our ethical

relations to others, and the sexual other in particular, must begin with a

reconfiguration of the relation between space and time. In An Ethics of Sexual

Difference, Luce Irigaray calls for a revolution in thought and ethics, a revolution that

would create a space for the marginalised other. For this to succeed she argues that we

need to reinterpret “everything concerning the relations between the subject and

discourse, the subject and the world.”31 Fundamental to this is a reconsideration of the

problematic of space and time. This relation is problematic and its reconfiguration

necessary because in traditional metaphysics, time has been the domain of internal

consciousness, and is associated with the mind, while space, which is traditionally

subordinated to time, is associated with the body. As Irigaray points out, “time

becomes the interiority of the subject itself, and space, its exteriority … the subject,

the master of time, becomes the axis of the world’s ordering” (Irigaray 1993: 9). The

problem this poses is that the master of time/world is traditionally associated with the

masculine, while the feminine is experienced as space. So if we want to create a space

for the body in general, and the sexed body in particular, the categories of space and

time, or the alleged hierarchy between them, needs to be dismantled.

This reconfiguration of space and time opens onto an ethics insofar as part of what

constitutes ethics is a concern with one’s body, with how that body is constituted in a

spatio-temporal location and of how these locations can be reconfigured, recreated or

31
Luce Irigaray, An Ethics of Sexual Difference, trans. Carolyn Burke & Gillian C. Gill, Ithica, N.Y:
Cornell University Press, 1993, p.6.

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opened up to include excluded bodies. As Rosalyn Diprose argues, “taking up a

position, presenting oneself, therefore requires a non-thematic awareness of

temporality and location. And the intrinsic reference point for temporality, spatial

orientation and, therefore, difference is one’s own body. That location and position

are concepts easily interchangeable, illustrates the co-incidence of embodiment and

ethics which necessarily come together by virtue of our spatio-temporal being-in-the-

world.”32 In this section, I want to suggest that Heidegger’s seemingly

underdeveloped account of embodiment is only possible on account of his inadvertent

formulation of temporality on the basis of spatiality. The consequence of this, I

suggest, is that Dasein can only be conceived as outside. For it to be conceived as

such depends on a subtle and at times unacknowledged place of Dasein’s

embodiment. This inversion of the traditional priority of time over space takes place

in Heidegger’s engagement with Kant.

The central question of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason is to explore how synthetic a

priori judgments are possible. For Kant, such knowledge is possible on the basis of

the original synthetic unity of the pure productive power of the imagination, which

has its basis in temporality. On Heidegger’s interpretation, temporality is the basic

constitution of Dasein and an understanding of Being in general is only possible on

the basis of Dasein’s temporality.33 Space and time constitute the two elements of the

Transcendental Aesthetic and are the principles to which all objects of experience

must conform. That is, space and time are the horizon within which we encounter

things. Time is, however, accorded priority over space.

32
Rosalyn Diprose, The Bodies of Women: ethics, embodiment and sexual difference, London & New
York: Routledge, 1994, p.65.
33
Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics, trans. Richard Taft, Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1997 p.424-5. Hereafter cited as KPM.

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In order to encounter beings other than ourselves, we must have outer intuition, or an

experience of the outside. Space is the pure form of outer intuition. In order to

experience the outside, we must first be able to experience ourselves, or to be self-

aware. This for Kant, is not spatial, but occurs as a sequence of states, representations,

volitions and moods, all of which contain a temporal dimension. This suggests that

time is crucial and is both the formal condition of the physical and the pure form of

inner intuition. Kant writes: “time is the formal a priori condition of all appearances

whatsoever.” It follows from this, Heidegger argues, that “time has a pre-eminence

over space” (KPM 48-9). However, it is not immediately apparent for Heidegger why

this should be the case: “already in the Transcendental Aesthetic there comes to light

a peculiar priority of time over space. And in subsequent and more decisive sections

of the Critique time emerges again and again at the centre piece of the transcendental,

viz. ontological, problematic” (KPM 111-2). On account of the fact that both the

external world and the internal world are dependent on the temporality of the

perceiver, time is the formal condition of outer, spatial appearances, and therefore has

priority over space (KPM 148). Heidegger reproduces this priority of time over space

to some extent. However, this prioritisation is one that he later comes to refute

because of the way in which it conceives of space as extension. In Kant and the

Problem of Metaphysics, Heidegger notes that “space as pure intuition is squeezed out

of a possibly central ontological function”(KPM 47).

Does this suggest that Heidegger recognises the central ontological function of space

in his own work, or does he merely reproduce this Kantian ambiguity and like Kant,

subordinate space to time? By interpreting being in terms of temporality, it could be

inferred that he does - that space is reduced to time or that it is secondary to it. Given

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the somewhat underdeveloped account of spatiality, compared to the rigorous analysis

of temporality, and some references that allude to the primacy of time, it is possible to

arrive at such a conclusion. Heidegger does state, “temporality is the meaning of the

Being of care. Dasein’s constitution and its ways to be are possible ontologically only

on the basis of temporality, regardless of whether this entity occurs ‘in time’ or not.

Hence Dasein’s specific spatiality must be grounded in temporality” (BT 367/418). A

few paragraphs later, he reiterates: “because Dasein as temporality is ecstatico-

horizonal in its Being, it can take along with it a space for which it has made room”

(BT 369/421).

These comments seem to affirm the priority of time over space. While Heidegger is

careful to avoid using spatial metaphors to describe temporality in order to avoid

describing Being in terms of presence, his critique of Kant suggests that it is not

apparent for him why temporality is given priority over space. Moreover, the spatial

metaphors used by Heidegger to describe temporality - despite his initial desire to

steer clear of them - and the radical account of spatiality in the first division of Being

and Time suggests Heidegger has departed from the traditional account of time taking

priority over space.34

34
For a further discussion on Heidegger’s inversion of the priority of time over space, and its relation
to other thinkers such as Kant and Foucault, see Steven Crocker, “The fission of time: on the
distinction between intratemporality and the event of time in Kant, Heidegger and Foucault” in
International Studies in Philosophy 29: 2. Crocker argues that Foucault repeats the central insights of
Heidegger’s reading of Kant in the 1929 text, and support the Heideggerian thesis that subjective time
is a “recoil” from the radical possibilities opened by the Copernican Revolution. This brought Kant to
the brink of an ecstatic experience of finitude that he failed to take, and instead, led him to ground
metaphysics in one of the extant faculties of the subject. Kant, according to Foucault’s appropriation of
Heidegger both presupposed and evaded the question of the unity, synthesis and event of finitude. In
his reading of Kant, Crocker shows how Heidegger attempts to ‘retreive’ this lost, ecstatic experience
of finitude on which Kant’s revolution rests. See pp.8-9. For a discussion of Foucault, see pp. 6-8.

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In this radical and perhaps inadvertent departure from traditional metaphysics,

Heidegger offers a very different way of discoursing on the body; one, I argue, that

potentially avoids the pitfalls of objectifying the body by making it the object of

discourse, even phenomenological discourse. Heidegger’s analysis of the relation

between space, time and meaning in our being-with-others and being-in-the-world

allows the body to emerge from its objectification in more subtle ways; ways that

share close affinities with Nancy’s concept of a corpus.

Heidegger’s problem with the traditional Aristotelian conception of time - which

conceives time as the measure of change or motion in the world of entities and in

terms of a series of “nows” - is that time was treated as an object in the world rather

than as co-complicit with Being. He states: “Thus entities within-the-world become

accessible as ‘being in time.’ We call the temporal attribute of entities within-the-

world ‘within-time-ness.’ The kind of time which is first found ontically in within-

time-ness, becomes the basis upon which the ordinary traditional conception of time

takes form” (BT 333/382). The problem for Heidegger is that this conception of time

treats Dasein as if it were an entity among others in the world. It posits Dasein “in

time” in the same way as it posits other objects. This conceals the ontological

dimension of Dasein and misconstrues the nature of time. It not only conceives of

time as infinite, but in assuming that the human being is an object amongst others, it

fails to account for the phenomenal dimension of time. Moreover, in conceiving of

time as a series of “nows” it circumscribes the subject’s possibilities of Being. The

fact that Dasein is neither a thing, a substance, nor an object means that its temporality

must be different to that of objects. Dasein cannot simply be posited “in time” in the

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same way other entities can. For Dasein to be included in this structure of time means

that it can have no possibilities. As he states:

It is held that time presents itself proximally as an uninterrupted sequence of

“nows”. Every “now”, moreover, is already either a “just-now” or a
“forthwith”. If in characterising time we stick primarily and exclusively to
such a sequence, then in principle neither beginning nor end can be found in it
… in this way of thinking time through to the end, one must always think more
time; from this one infers that time is infinite. (BT 424/476)

To think in terms of “nows,” is to conceive of Dasein as a set of actualities, which

implies that Dasein can have no possibilities because it cannot project itself into a

future.

As I have demonstrated in chapter three, Heidegger wants to move away from the

traditional conception of being as presence. To do this, he chooses Dasein’s

everydayness as the access to Dasien, which allows it to show itself in the way it is.

The second section repeats the existential analytic in order to reveal the sense of

Dasein’s Being as temporality. As John Protevi argues, “Heidegger’s task is to

explain time as the horizon of the understanding of being from temporality as the

sense of the being of the entity that has understanding of being as part of its being.”35

To do this, Heidegger believes it necessary to delimit temporality from the vulgar

understanding of time: “this task as a whole requires that the conception of time thus

obtained shall be distinguished from the way in which it is ordinarily understood” (BT

17/39). The vulgar conception of time is one which interprets time on the basis of the

implicit “worldly” sense of Being as presence. Protevi argues that “vulgar time lends

itself to interpretation via the image of the unrolling of an infinite series of nows

35
John Protevi, Time and Exteriority: Aristotle, Heidegger, Derrida, London and Toronto: Bucknell
University Press, 1994, p.113.

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analogous to the spatial unfolding of the infinite points of a line. The vulgarity of

vulgar time consists in its readiness to adopt such a spatial image, which lies ready for

use in a language, which thanks to Dasein’s fallenness, is dominated by ‘spatial

representations’” (Protevi 1994: 369). Dasein’s temporality must be protected from

such “vulgarity; original time must not be interpreted in spatial terms” (Protevi 1994:

113). Heidegger’s initial project, it would seem, is to provide an account of

temporality devoid of ‘spatial representations’ in order to frame the question of Being.

The extent to which Heidegger succeeds in doing so is questionable. The discussion

of equipmentality is a case in point.

In section 69 of Being and Time, the way in which significance holds together, or the

referential context of the in-order-to and for-the-sake-of structures that Heidegger has

earlier explicated in the discussion of being-in-the-world, are grounded in temporality.

In the first division of Being and Time, Heidegger began his analysis of being-in-the-

world through an examination of the world of equipmentality. A certain series of

structures was disclosed from out of the world of equipment. The first structure was

that of the “in-order-to,” or the world of usability. This refers to the world of reference

insofar as things always refer or relate to other things, in a web of relations or an

interconnected whole. As Heidegger demonstrates, the ink-stand, pen, ink, paper,

blotting pad, lamp, furniture, windows, and room never show themselves for what

they are in themselves, so as to add up a sum of objects that fill up a room. Before any

item stands out as such, Dasein has discovered the room in terms of an intelligible

totality (BT 83/114). The way this discloses itself to us is not as an objective ordering;

rather, it shows itself to us in an unobtrusive and unthought way.

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This unity of significance is grounded in temporality in the second division of Being

and Time and characterised by the metaphor of horizon: “the existential-temporal

condition for the possibility of the world lies in the fact that temporality, as an

ecstatical unity, has something like a horizon” (BT 365/416). Horizon is that which

provides the direction for Dasein’s ecstatic unfolding: “ecstases are not simply

raptures in which one gets carried away. Rather, there belongs to each ecstasies a

‘whither’ to which one is carried away. This ‘whither’ of the ecstasies we call the

horizonal schema” (BT 365/416). The structure of sense or intelligibility that is

inherent in the world and which unveils itself to us in our being-in-the-world is

temporal insofar as “the horizon of temporality as a whole determines that upon-

which factically existing entities are essentially disclosed” (BT 365/416). That is,

Dasein’s projections are to be understood as being in ecstatic movement, unfolding

against a horizon of temporality: “factical Dasien, understanding itself and its world

ecstatically in the unity of the ‘there’ comes back from these horizons to the entities

encountered within them. Coming back to these entities understandingly is the

existential sense of letting them be encountered by making them present” (BT

366/417).

Of particular interest here are the seemingly inevitable spatial metaphors used to

characterise temporality. As Protevi argues, there is an exteriority that inhabits or

haunts the account of temporality, despite Heidegger’s initial desire to avoid spatial

representations of it. The idea of a rebounding vectoral sense, the “coming back” used

to describe Dasein’s temporality, was previously used to describe its spatiality in

terms of its ‘here’ and its ‘there.’ In section 23, Heidegger writes: “Dasein, in

accordance with its spatiality, is proximally not here, but there, from which ‘there’ it

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comes back to its ‘here’” (BT 107/141). Comparing this passage with the previous

one characterising temporality, we can, Protevi suggests, “clearly see the

spatial/temporal undecidable economy of ‘coming-back,’ its irreducible possibility of

iteration in both spatial and temporal contexts. The ‘coming-back’ corresponds to one

of the features of Dasein’s spatiality … the ‘whither’ and ‘upon-which’ we noticed in

the descriptions of the temporal schemata install a directionality, and hence exteriority

and difference, at the heart of temporality” (Protevi; 1994: 142).

If close attention is paid to the spatial metaphors used to describe time, we could,

tentatively, argue that the meaning of time is in fact space. Heidegger writes that

Dasein is “stretched” between birth and death: “the motility of existence is not the

motion of something present-at-hand … the specific motility in which Dasein is

stretched along and stretches itself along we call its historizing” (BT 427375). As

“outside itself,” Dasein’s temporality is a spacing.

To describe Dasein as “stretched out” and projected is to imply that space is as

important to it as time, or perhaps the condition for the possibility of time. Dasein

must first have space if it is to project onto its possibilities; that is, in ecstatic

temporality, Dasein stands out in the spaces of the world. It also suggests that unlike

Kant, temporality is not specific to internal consciousness, but is already and always

outside. As Krell argues, “it is impossible to say whether time or space commands the

scene. There is every indication that when the fundamental life-and-death possibilities

of human existence come into play the presumed priority of time over space no longer

makes any sense, if indeed it ever did” (Krell 1997: 54).

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Dasein is interpreted on the basis of temporality because this structure renders its

existence meaningful. Does this suggest that temporality assumes primary importance,

given that Dasein is time? If this is the case, then where does this leave its spatiality or

its relation to space? While time assumes primary importance in the second division

of Being and Time, Heidegger does offer an account of spatiality in the first division,

an analysis that as Krell points out, constitutes the most radial rethinking of space

since Galileo and Newton (Krell 1997: 52). For Heidegger, existential spatiality, the

space of human experience, is not pure extensio; that is, it is not the space of objects

‘outside’ the subject, or objects intuited by our outer sense. Rather, human being is the

outside in the sense that it is always being in the world. Dasein does not exist in terms

of an “inner sense,” trapped in a body that functions as a window to the outside. Its

relation to the world is one of use, of getting in hand, of touch, of approach and

withdrawal, of nearing and passing away, distancing and un-distancing.

v. Spatiality and meaning.

In exploring the manner in which entities subsist in space and Dasein’s relation to

them, Heidegger begins his analysis in the world of equipment, or the function of the

ready-to-hand. His discussion here indicates that Dasein’s relation to space/place is

not only one of meaning, but one of touching and manipulating, handling and holding,

all of which presuppose Dasein’s embodiment. Heidegger’s discussion of the world of

equipment in terms of the ready-to-hand demonstrates that these entities do not exist

randomly in space, but have a place; they are “essentially fitted up and installed, set-

up and put to rights” (BT 102/136). Equipment is thus ordered and always exists in a

particular context: “such a place and such a multiplicity of places are not to be

interpreted as the ‘where’ of some random Being-present-at-hand of Things. In each

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case the place is the definite ‘there’ or ‘yonder’ of an item of equipment which

belongs somewhere” (BT 102/136). The distance of things is not measured in terms of

what is farthest or closest to us, but measured in terms of proximity, which refers to

the level of use of the equipment to Dasein. Things are arranged on my desk in a

particular order, pen, notepad, and computer. Each has its place on the space that is

the desk; each, while equidistant from the other objects and myself, has a different

proximity depending on its relation to me:

What is available in our everyday dealings has the character of nearness. To

be exact, this nearness of equipment has already been intimated in the term
“availableness” which expresses the being of equipment. Every entity that is
“to hand” has a different nearness, which is not to be ascertained by measuring
distances. This nearness regulates itself in terms of circumspective
“calculative” manipulating and using. (BT 102/135)

‘Nearness’ and ‘proximity’ are not distances that can be calculated. Rather, the

meaning each object has in relation to Dasein is what determines its proximity.

Dasein’s relation to place is not only one of meaning, but one of touching and

manipulating, handling and holding. Such a relation to space/place presupposes

Dasein’s embodiment.

Dasein’s ontological structure as being-in means that it deals with other entities

“concernfully” and with “familiarity.” Dasein’s spatiality is one where it is actively

engaged in the world/space in which it is thrown. In the above description, Heidegger

captures the tension between Dasein’s active and passive relation to the world. As

Edward Casey argues, Heidegger captures the tension of being-in a world that Dasein

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has not created - a public shared world - in which it nevertheless has to make a

difference in the way in which its being-in-the-world is shaped.36

Heidegger refers to this concernful interaction in/with space as “de-severance” and

“directionality,” not unlike Nancy’s account of spacing and touch. This is important,

as it not only illustrates Dasein’s relation to meaning, but also makes apparent the

importance of embodiment in Dasein’s relation to space. De-severance does not refer

to the manner in which an object may be remote or close to Dasein in a physical,

tangible sense. Rather, the phenomena of “de-severance” refers to a mode of Being

(an existentiale) in which distance or remoteness is eradicated, such that entities and

the world itself are brought closer to Dasein:

Proximally and for the most part, de-severing is a circumspective bringing-

close – bringing something close in the sense of procuring it, putting it in
readiness, having it to hand. But certain ways in which entities are discovered
in a purely cognitive manner also have the character of bringing them close. In
Dasein there lies an essential tendency towards closeness. All the ways in
which we speed things up, as we are more or less compelled to do today, push
us on towards the conquest of remoteness. (BT 105/139)

The radio, television, and internet are illustrative of this attempt to conquer space by

bringing the world to Dasein. I can watch, read, and listen to events as they unfold in

a different place, on the other side of the world. These places and events are brought

closer to me, in the sense that they inhabit my world/space/place in a tangible sense.

De-severance thus opens up a nearness or remoteness, accessibility or inaccessibility

of equipment, objects and the world. De-severance is a paradoxical phenomenon

because it renders space as at once extended and brought close, in the sense that

remote places and spaces are brought close to Dasein. The concept of spacing that
36
Edward Casey, The Fate of Place: A Philosophical History, Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997, p.249.

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emerges in the phenomenon of de-severance is premised on the fact that Dasein cares

about its world; that is, its relation is one of meaning, care, and hence ethics.

De-severance thus refers to Dasein’s relation to space, a relation that makes apparent

the existential dimension inherent to space. For Heidegger, the manner in which

Dasein talks of space illustrates that Dasein has its own language that is intelligible to

it and others. We do not always measure space in precise terms, but use expressions

such as “over yonder” a “good walk,” “a stone’s throw” or “as long as it takes to

smoke a pipe” to express spatial distance (BT 106/140). This metaphorical way in

which we engage with space illustrates the manner in which Dasein makes the world

meaningful, and the way in which the world matters to it: “these measure express not

only that they are not intended to ‘measure’ anything but also that remoteness here

estimated belongs to some entity to which one goes with concernful circumspection”

(BT 106/140). Dasein’s relation to the world and to space is always one of meaning

because the world matters to Dasein: “as Dasein goes along its ways, it does not

measure off a stretch of space as a Corporeal Thing which is present-at-hand; it does

not ‘devour in kilometres;’ bringing-close or de-severance is always a kind of

concernful Being towards what is brought close and de-severed” (BT 106/140).

In defining Dasein’s relation to space in terms of de-severance, Heidegger begins to

gesture toward a subtle and implicit account of corporeality. To have things close to

us, we need to reach out for the object, touch, grasp, or look at it. An object or entity

can only be close if an embodied Dasein renders it so or engages with it. While this

embodied engagement is not made explicit, it is presupposed because if Dasein is to

procure something, or make something meaningful, it needs to touch it, see it, or

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listen to it. Bringing something close through a process of de-severance is thus

intimately bound to Dasein’s lived body. In his analysis of the hand in What is Called

Thinking? this account of touch is elaborated, as I have shown, in terms of the other.

The hand is what reaches and extends, not only toward objects, but also toward other

people. The hand, and more specifically, the hand shake, is the gesture of welcome

and invitation.

Heidegger isolates seeing and hearing as the two senses that demonstrate the

corporeal dimension to de-severance. For Heidegger, seeing and hearing are

“distance-senses not because they are far-reaching, but because it is in them that

Dasein as de-severant mainly dwells” (BT 107/141). They are the two senses that

enable Dasein to conquer distance, to bring something close within its specific

environment in such a way that renders it meaningful. For example, the spectacles

resting on my nose that are close to me “distantially” are environmentally more

remote from me than the painting on the other side of the room. The spectacles, while

close, are only instrumental in rendering the painting meaningful by bringing it close

in terms of de-severance. Similarly, a telephone, while close to my ear is more distant

to me than the voice from another place that it brings close to me. The street upon

which I walk seems as if though “it is the closest and Realist of all that is ready-to-

hand, and it slides itself, as it were, along certain positions of one’s body – the soles

of one’s feet” (BT 107/141). But the street is more remote than the friend whom I

encounter on the street; that is, the friend is closer than the street because she is more

meaningful to me than the street with which I have primary contact. In this way,

spatiality is always bound up with meaning and corporeality: “circumspective concern

decides as to the closeness and farness of what is potentially ready-to-hand

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environmentally” (BT 107/141). The body, it would appear, is presupposed in this de-

severance; for Dasein to meet a friend, to listen to a voice, to immerse itself in a

painting means it has to have a body.

Heidegger’s account of equipment, being-with and spatiality suggests, as Levin

argues, that the ontology of Being and Time is not possible except for embodied

beings. That is, beings that are endowed with eyes and ears, arms and hands, throat

and lips (Levin 1999: 129). As Heidegger states: “bringing-close is not oriented

towards the I-Thing encumbered with a body, but towards concernful Being-in-the-

world – that is, towards whatever is proximally encountered in such Being. It follows,

moreover, that Dasein’s spatiality is not to be defined by citing the position at which

some corporeal Thing is present-at-hand” (BT 107/142). This suggests that being-in-

the-world is not to exist as a mind encumbered with a body. The body is not an

appendage or an object that has meaning imposed upon it. Rather, to be in the world is

to have a bodily comportment towards the world, it is to be affected by the world at

the level of the corporeal, which is first and foremost an expression of meaning.

Heidegger, like Nancy, it would appear, is critiquing the conception of the body as an

object that has meaning rather than as an expression of meaning in and of itself.37

This presupposition of embodiment is also apparent in Heidegger’s discussion of

being-with. We have seen the way in which Dasein is ontologically being-with for

Heidegger and how this has been appropriated and radicalised by Nancy into the logic

of being-singular plural. That is, our singularity and uniqueness is only expressed and

exposed in the context of community or being-with. By implication, it suggests that

37
For a discussion on Heidegger and the question of human desire, see Ben Vedder, “Heidegger on
desire” in Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 31, 1998.

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meaning is something that emerges in our interactions with others. A similar triadic

relation between meaning, embodiment and community emerges in Heidegger’s

discussion of being-with and spatiality. In his account of being-with, Heidegger is at

pains to emphasise the way in which people or other Daseins are not encountered as

present-at-hand in the same way the world of equipment is; rather, we encounter

others as lived bodies in situation, or ‘environmentally.’

These bodies express a particular meaning by virtue of this situation. The people we

encounter matter to us because their bodies express a certain meaning – they are the

bookshop owners from whom Dasein buys its books, the person who owns the boat

anchored by the shore, the person who owns the field upon which Dasein walks, or

they are people closer to Dasein – its colleagues and family, friends and lovers (BT

118/154). However, this is not to say that these bodies are instrumental in the sense

that they are only meaningful to Dasein in so far as they provide a particular service to

it. As Heidegger makes quite explicit, others are “neither present-at-hand nor ready-

to-hand; on the contrary, they are like the very Dasein which frees them, in that they

are there too, and there with it” (BT 118/154). We meet others “at work” or in their

being-in-the-world, we see others “standing around,” but do not apprehend them as a

present-at-hand, but always apprehend them in their existential mode of Being (BT

118/154).

So while the world is mine, it is also one that is shared by other Daseins, and the

equipment that is there for me to use is also there for others in the same way. To say

that others are not encountered in the same way as other objects suggests that the

others one encounters are expressions of meaning by virtue of their singularity; a

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singularity expressed by their embodiment. This meaning however, can only be

expressed to others with whom Dasein shares its world. It therefore becomes apparent

that in Heidegger’s analysis of being-with the body is always presupposed. When we

encounter people, we encounter them as embodied beings, beings with a body that

expresses a particular meaning in the context of community. As I earlier pointed out,

Heidegger argues that the body is the point of contact between one person and

another. Drawing from the earlier discussion of Nancy, we can extrapolate that this

meaning that the body of the other expresses is one that extends towards me, as in

Heidegger’s figure of the hand extending and touching another in a gesture of

welcome, and imposes an obligation on me to respond to the other. However,

Heidegger, like Nancy, is at pains to emphasise that the space that the touch creates is

one that needs to be maintained for the ethical relation.

In his brief account of authentic being-with, he states that we should not “leap in” for

the other, but “leap ahead,” not in such a way that appropriates the other’s ability to

‘care’ or her potentiality-for-being, but in such a way that “helps the Other to become

transparent to [her] self in [her] care and to become free for it” (BT 122/159). Leaping

in for the other eradicates the spacing/distantiality between my body and that of the

other. It would mean subsuming the other into my categories, or conferring an identity

upon her. Leaping ahead however, maintains a spacing in which the other is left free

“to be” to pursue her projects. This “letting be” is not, however, a form of apathy or

indifference toward the other. It is not a “letting be” of the other in the face of her

oppression; rather, it is assisting the other to become free to pursue her projects.

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If we recall, Nancy argues that producing more discourse on the body merely

perpetuates a logic that conceives of the body as an empirical object of discourse

rather than an expression of meaning, and that the meaning expressed by the body is

one that touches the other in both a tangible and intangible sense. Transposing these

arguments onto Heidegger, it is possible to claim that implicit in Heidegger’s account

of spatiality is a body that is inscribed with meaning, a meaning that comes before or

prior to an articulation or a discourse on the body; a meaning that is tactilely created

and reproduced in Dasein’s relation to spatiality and spacing, and its engagement with

objects and others in that space. As Casey points out, while it appears that Heidegger

neglected the role of the body in his analysis of space, it is precisely this deliberate

refusal to invoke the body, along with consciousness, that led to Heidegger’s radical

account of spatiality, and inadvertently, created a space for the body. For Casey, both

mind and body are suspended in order to explore what happens in the space between

them. (Casey 1997: 244). While the body is suspended in this analysis, it remains the

condition for the possibility of Heidegger’s existential analytic. That is, the body,

while apparently absent, is always presupposed.

The criticisms of Heidegger with which this chapter began claimed that Heidegger’s

silence on the question of Dasein’s embodiment not only reproduces the allegedly

disembodied subject of metaphysics, but also constitutes an ethical closure. By tracing

the way in which the body implicitly emerges from its objectification in Heidegger’s

work, I argued that the fact that the body is not directly addressed by Heidegger does

not mean that it is not consistently invoked in other ways. Using the arguments

presented by Nancy, this chapter challenges the view that the solution to the

traditional disavowal of the body in metaphysics is to generate and proliferate

217
discourses on it. The ethical relation that Nancy develops is not one based on

language, but is one based on the concepts of touch and the spacing that this creates.

These concepts are also discernable in Heidegger’s thinking, and provide a way of

understanding Heidegger’s apparent silence on the body. In the opening section of his

essay “Corpus” Nancy writes: “How can one get hold of the body?” then, “I am

already speechless” (Corpus 190). Perhaps what we need in cultivating an ethical

relation to the other is to stop discoursing on the body, to concede that we cannot

capture it by language because of its ineffable and elusive nature, and to grant a place

for this silence; a space where the body, in its singularity, alterity, even its

strangeness, is left free “to be.”

Taking Heidegger’s concept of individuation as my point of departure, the first

section of this thesis has submitted three related arguments: firstly that the notion of

individuation as described by Heidegger, where Dasein is seemingly isolated from the

world of das Man and forced to confront its finitude on its own, fundamentally differs

from both the Cartesian and transcendental egos as described by Descartes and

Husserl respectively; secondly, I have argued that this individuation, rather than being

incongruent with the account of Mitsein, is in fact only possible on the basis of

Mitsein; thirdly, that this notion of individuation contains an ethical moment insofar

as it summons Dasein to take responsibility for its own Being. As I pointed out in

chapter three, the ethics that announces itself in Heidegger’s work is not an ethics that

requires Dasein to assume responsibility for and obligations to others; nor is it a

question of changing the world. The point I made was that the value of Heidegger’s

analytic in terms of ethics is the imperative to take responsibility for oneself; the

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question here is one of changing oneself. This compulsion to take responsibility for

oneself occurs at the level of ontology insofar as to be means to take responsibility.

In the second section of this thesis, I have argued that this preoccupation with one’s

own Being does not necessarily preclude a responsibility for the other with whom

Dasien shares its world. While this is underdeveloped in Heidegger, in the second

section, I want to explore how this concept of individuation plays itself out in terms of

ethical obligations in relation to others and political action.

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Chapter Five
Freedom and collective responsibility: Heidegger, Arendt and political
action.

This thesis has thus made three interrelated arguments: firstly, that Heideggerian

individuation does not constitute solipsism in the Cartesian or transcendental sense of the

word. Secondly, that this notion of individuation is not inconsistent with his account of

Mitsein. Thirdly, that the concept of individuation contains an ethical moment, insofar as

this means a taking responsibility for one’s own existence. To be, as I have argued in

chapter three, is to be responsible. I suggested that what we are ultimately responsible for

is the making sense of our existence. This entails an element of action on our part, as to

be is also to conduct oneself and to be responsible for this conduct. I concluded from this

that Heidegger’s ontology can lend itself to ethical and political considerations.

By reading Heidegger through Jean-Luc Nancy’s paradoxical logic of the singular, the

previous chapter has demonstrated the ethical implications of Heidegger’s thinking

through an account of embodiment and the concepts of touch and spacing. In this chapter,

I explore the political implications through the concept of freedom. I argue that

Heidegger’s divorce of freedom from the ontology of self-presence provides us with a

way of thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set of rights that are conferred by

virtue of certain characteristics - rights that enable some people to speak, and rights

whose absence condemns others to silence. Rather, freedom becomes the very essence of

existence, and by implication, community.

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However, in the same way that Heidegger does not directly address the issue of Dasein’s

embodiment, his work also lacks a discussion of the existential dimension of the political.

Arguably, the political world is made apparent in the phenomenon of publicness.

However, by assigning this phenomenon to the existential mode of inauthenticity,

Heidegger fails to do it justice. As Klaus Herd argues, Being and Time fails to explain

how a public world is conceivable as the shared living space of authentic intersubjective

existence.1 Herd asks: in Heidegger’s terminology, what would the authenticity of being-

with consist in, if the world of this being-with is a public, political world? (Herd 1996:

38). I have examined the way in which Heideggerian ontology is primarily about

individual responsibility, which is inherently ethical, in the sense that while we may not

be able to change the world, we can take responsibility for ourselves at the ontological

level of our Being. While an account of collective responsibility appears to be absent

from his thinking, I want to suggest in this final chapter that the intersubjective

dimension of freedom and collective responsibility is offered as a sketch in Heidegger,

and that this can be further fleshed out in terms of Hannah Arendt’s thinking on freedom,

intersubjectivity and political action.

My point of departure in this chapter is Jean-Luc Nancy’s observation, made in the

Experience of Freedom, on the paradoxical nature of the liberal conception of freedom.

He argues that while this agency and self-determination with which we have been

endowed has led to the unfolding of human emancipation, it has also been responsible for

1
Klaus Held, “Authentic Existence and the Political World” in Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 26, 1996
p.38.

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countless atrocities, many of which have been committed in freedom’s name.2 He writes:

“all liberations (national, social, moral, sexual, aesthetic) are ambiguous, and also arise

from manipulations … Freedom Manipulated (by powers of capital): this could be the

title of our half-century” (EF 164). For Nancy, the entanglement of freedom in wars,

totalitarian regimes, colonialism and various forms of imperialism is partially a

consequence of a separation that has occurred between individual rights and community

and between the practice of morality, politics, ethics and the ontological question of

human freedom:

A divorce has taken place between, on the one hand, a set of determinations that
are relatively precise in their pragmatic definitions and that are freedoms – a
collection of rights and exemptions; … and on the other hand, an ‘Idea’ of
freedom, called for or promised – yet we hardly know what this idea represents or
presents of the ‘essence’ of ‘human beings,’ and we request that it not be
examined, specified, questioned, or above all implemented, so certain are we that
this would result in Chaos or Terror. (EF 2)

In this chapter, I want to suggest that Heidegger’s conception of freedom, elaborated in

piecemeal fashion in Being and Time, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology,

Metaphysical Foundations of Logic and culminating in The Essence of Human Freedom

provides a way of rethinking our conception of freedom, not as a set of specific

determinations and rights, but as the very condition for the possibility of both existence

and community.

2
See Peter Fenves, “From Empiricism to the experience of freedom” in Paragraph, Vol. 16:2, 1993 for a
discussion on Nancy’s conception of freedom as removed from subjection to necessity, determinacy and
inevitability. Fenves argues that Heidegger’s analysis of existence leaves room for such a conception of
freedom. Nancy fills this out in EF. See pp. 159, 160 & 165.

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In this elaboration, it is possible to trace the way Heidegger distances his thinking of

freedom from the ontology of self-presence. However this development, according to

some commentators, is problematic. Instead of interpreting Heidegger’s elaboration of

freedom in the 1930 lectures on Kant, entitled the Essence of Human Freedom, as a

deepening of the trajectories he created in Being and Time, Heidegger’s formulation of

freedom in these lectures constitutes, for some, a radical shift in Heidegger’s thinking.

For Michel Haar,3 Kathleen Wright,4 and Emmanuel Levinas,5 in particular, freedom

ceases to be an attribute of Dasein in this work and instead, becomes empty rhetoric,

devoid of any real content. Haar and Wright respectively argue that the shift or turn in

Heidegger’s later thinking on freedom reflects an absence of the notions of “mineness”

and “Mitsein” that were central to Dasein’s ontological structure in Being and Time. Haar

argues that in displacing the subject from the centre, Heidegger separates the concept of

freedom from its traditional relation to responsibility and autonomy, agency and self-

determination, while Wright and Levinas argue that Heidegger’s later conception of

freedom reflects an absence of consideration of human solidarity, friendship and love.

Moreover, these criticisms suggest that Heidegger’s conception of freedom leaves

unanswered the question of whether human liberty is possible, and if so, how that liberty

is to be defined.

3
Michael Haar, “The Question of Human Freedom in the later Heidegger” in The Southern Journal of
Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989.
4
Kathleen Wright, “Comments on Michael Haar’s paper ‘The Question of Human Freedom in the Later
Heidegger’” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. XXVIII, Supplement, 1989.
5
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania:
Duquesne University Press, 1969.

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The first section of this chapter will examine Heidegger’s later formulation of freedom as

expressed in The Essence of Human Freedom and examine why it remains of value for an

ontological interrogation of freedom. It will then argue against the first of the

aforementioned claims that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the the subject

unravels Dasein’s ontological structure as explicated in Being and Time. By reading the

later formulation of freedom against the earlier, the second section traces the parallels and

similarities between the two conceptions of freedom in order to show the way in which

Heidegger’s thinking on freedom remains consistent. The final section fills out the

contours of Heidegger’s somewhat indeterminate conception of freedom, by drawing on

the work of Hannah Arendt. In this section, I return to the problem I raised in the first

chapter, of how to reconcile Heidegger’s account of individuation with section 74 of

Being and Time, where he argues that authenticity is tied to the fate or destiny of a people

or nation. I use Arendt to argue for an account of both individual and collective

responsibility and political action that emerges from Heidegger’s conception of freedom.

i. Freedom in the Essence of Human Freedom

The Essence of Human Freedom is an extension of Heidegger’s engagement with Kant in

particular, and a continuation of his deconstruction of the metaphysical tradition in

general. It remains consistent with the trajectories Heidegger created in the earlier work,

Being and Time. It is consistent in the sense that Heidegger remains concerned with the

ontological/ontic distinction and continues to argue for the priority of the latter over the

former as a way into the question of Being. In the Essence of Human Freedom, he argues

that freedom is that which potentially returns philosophy to Dasein’s worldly

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comportment. He states: “if we really inquire into the essence of freedom, we stand

within this question concerning beings as such. Accordingly, the question concerning the

essence of human freedom is necessarily built into the question of what beings as such

properly are” (EHF 23).

For Heidegger, Kant is a central figure in the history of the problem of freedom because

“Kant brings the problem of freedom for the first time explicitly into a radical connection

with the fundamental problems of metaphysics” (EHF 134). While there are several

problems that Heidegger identifies in Kant’s account of freedom, in this chapter, I want

to focus specifically on the relation between freedom and causality or the connection

between freedom and the will (EHF 134). The central problem for Heidegger in this text

is that Kant conceives of freedom from the perspective of causality or will rather than

possibility. In doing so, Kant treats the human subject (Dasein) as something present-at-

hand and consequently, fails to treat the concept of freedom “primordially and in its own

terms” (EHF 134). Heidegger argues that “Kant’s orientation of causation to being-

present, which he equates with actuality and existence as such, means that he sees

freedom and being-free within the horizon of being-present. Since he fails to pose the

question concerning the particular way of beings which are free, he does not unfold the

metaphysical problem of freedom in a primordial way” (EHF 134).

To understand the problem Heidegger has with Kant’s formulation of freedom in terms of

causality, a brief digression into Kant is necessary.6 The relation between freedom and

the will initially finds expression in Kant’s third antinomy in the Critique of Pure

6
The following exposition of Kant follows Heidegger’s interpretation, as found in the Kant lectures/EHF.

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Reason.7 Here, Kant formulates a solution of sorts to the problem of free will and

determinism: that is, the claim that there is no such thing as free will, and hence no

freedom, because everything in the world takes place in accordance with the laws of

nature. Against this, Kant argues that causality in accordance with the laws of nature is

not the only causality from which the appearance of the world derives. Rather, there is

another causality: that of freedom.

In arguing for this position of a causality of freedom in terms of the will, Kant begins by

assuming - for the sake of argument - that there is no other causality than that found in

7
For a discussion on the history of the concept of the will see Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind:
Willing, New York & London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978. Here, Arendt points out that the problem
of the will and its connection to freedom lies in the fact that the faculty of the will was unknown to the
Greeks and was only later discovered in the first century of the Christian era. The difficulty arose out of the
following dilemma: how to reconcile faith in an all powerful and omniscient God with the claims of free
will, with which humans are endowed. This problematic survives into the modern age, where it meets with
the same argumentation as before. Either free will is found to clash with the law of causality or, later, it
clashed with the laws of history, whose meaningfulness depends on progress or a necessary development of
the World spirit. The first question facing thinkers, according to Arendt, was whether the will did in fact
exist. John Stuart Mill for example writes: “our internal consciousness tells us that we have a power, which
the whole outward experience of the human race tells us that we never use.” Or, as Nietzsche points out,
“the entire doctrine of the Will the most fateful falsification in psychology hitherto … essentially invented
for the sake of punishment.” According to Arendt, what aroused the philosopher’s mistrust of this faculty
was its inevitable connection to freedom. An act is free insofar as we are aware that we could have left
undone what we actually did; something that is not true of desire or of appetites, where bodily needs and
the necessities of the life process, or the sheer force of wanting something close at hand may, supersede any
consideration of either will or reason. Which leads Arendt to suggest that “willing, it appears, has an
infinitely greater freedom than thinking, which even in its freest, most speculative form cannot escape the
law of non-contradiction. This undeniable fact has never been felt to be an unmixed blessing. By men of
thought, more often than not, it has been felt to be a curse,” p.5. Throughout the medieval era the suspicion
persisted as to whether the willing faculty in fact existed or was contrived. Part of this lay in the reluctance
to grant human beings, unprotected by a divinity, complete power over their own destinies, hence
burdening them with an enormous responsibility for things whose very existence would exclusively depend
on them. So great, in Kant’s words, was the embarrassment of “speculative reason in dealing with the
question of the freedom of the will … a power of spontaneously beginning a series of successive things or
states.” This is to be distinguished from the faculty of choice between two or more given objects or
possibilities. According to Arendt, it was not until the final stage of the modern age that the will was
substituted for reason as man’s highest mental faculty. “This coincided with the last era of authentic
metaphysical thought; at the turn of the nineteenth century, still in the vain of the metaphysics that had
started with Parmenides’ equation of Being and Thinking, suddenly, right after Kant, it became fashionable
to equate Willing and Being,” p.20.

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the laws of nature. If this is the case, then everything that takes place does so on the

presupposition that it follows from a preceding state in accordance with the law of nature.

But the preceding state must itself be something, which has taken place, because if it had

always existed, its consequence would also have always existed, and would not have only

just arisen. The conclusion to be drawn here is that “if therefore, everything takes place

solely in accordance with laws of nature, there will always be only a relative and never a

first beginning, and consequently, no completeness of the series on the side of the causes

that arise the one from the other.”8 This however, is precisely the law of nature; that

nothing takes place without a cause determining it a priori. This, for Kant, is self-

contradictory, because if freedom were determined in accordance with the laws of nature,

then it would not be freedom, but would be nature under another name. It cannot

therefore be regarded as the sole kind of causality.

For this reason, we must assume a causality through which something takes place that is

not itself determined in accordance with necessary laws, that is, by another cause. We

must assume a cause which begins a series of appearances itself: “this is transcendental

freedom, without which, even in the [ordinary] course of nature, the series of appearances

on the side of the causes can never be complete” (CPR A446/B474).

This concept of freedom in its practical, rather than transcendental form emerges once

again in the In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.9 Kant argues that the will

8
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith, London: MacMillan, 1929,
A446/B474. Hereafter cited as CPR.
9
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998. Hereafter cited as GMM.

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is a kind of causality of rational beings and freedom is one of the properties of the will. It

enables the will to be efficient independently of alien causes determining it. This is in

contrast to natural necessity, which is the property of causality of all non-rational beings.

Kant thus distinguishes between two types of freedom: negative freedom, which is an

independence from both nature and God, and positive freedom, which is the ability to

determine one’s own action, or to give oneself the law for one’s action: “natural necessity

was a heteronomy of efficient causes, since every effect was possible only in accordance

with the law that something else determines the efficient cause to causality; what, then,

can freedom of the will be other than autonomy, that is, the will’s property of being a law

to itself?” (GMM 52). Positive freedom is further broken down into two categories: the

cosmological or transcendental and the practical. The transcendental conception of

positive freedom is “absolute self-activity” and the practical is the “power of self

determination” (GMM 52).

As I have pointed out, Kant describes the transcendental conception of positive freedom

as “the power of beginning a state spontaneously. Such causality will not, therefore, itself

stand under another cause determining it in time, as required by the law of nature.

Freedom in this sense is a pure transcendental idea” (CPR A 533/B 561). Freedom is thus

the power of the self-origination of a state – to give or offer freely, spontaneously, and to

originate from the self. By contrast, practical freedom is defined as “the will’s

independence of coercion through sensuous impulses” (CPR A534/B 562). While this

sounds like the negative conception of freedom in the sense that it refers to an

independence from sensibility, Kant defines the practical conception of freedom in terms

of self-determination. He writes: “the human will is free because sensibility does not

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necessitate its action. There is in man a power of self-determination, independent of any

coercion through sensuous impulses” (CPR A 534/B 562). Will in this sense does not

refer to arbitrariness and lack of discipline, but to self-determination, which suggests that

in the negative formulation of freedom, a positive conception is implied. Kant grounds

these two conceptions of freedom in causality, such that freedom becomes a property of

causality. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant writes: “As will is a

kind of causality of living beings so far as they are rational, freedom would be that

property of this causality by which it can be effective independently of external causes

determining it, just as natural necessity is the property of the causality of all non-rational

beings by which they are determined in their activity by the influence of external causes”

(GMM 17). Freedom of the will is referred to as autonomy, the “property of the will to be

a law to itself” (GMM 102).

There are then, two conceptions of freedom: freedom in terms of absolute spontaneity

and freedom as autonomy or self-determination. These two conceptions of freedom are

related in the sense that autonomy is a kind of absolute spontaneity, or it is only on the

basis of absolute spontaneity that autonomy possible. That is, absolute spontaneity is the

condition for the possibility of autonomy. As Kant states in the Critique, “it should

especially be noted that the practical concept of freedom is based on this transcendental

idea, and that the latter harbours the real source of difficulty which has always beset the

question of the possibility of freedom” (CPR A 533/B 561). This however, raises a

problem for Heidegger. If absolute spontaneity means to originate “from itself,” or to

initiate a series of events “from itself,” then it follows that absolute spontaneity is

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interwoven with causality in the sense that it is the “causality of a cause.” This raises the

question of the causation of a cause, or the that and how a cause is a cause.

For Kant, all experience or all theoretical knowledge of what is presented to us as nature

is subject to the law of causality. Kant describes this as follows: “everything that

happens, that is, begins to be, presupposes something upon which it follows according to

a rule” (CPR A 189). Moreover, “the causality of the cause of that which happens or

comes into being, and … in accordance with the principle of the understanding it must in

its turn require a cause” (CPR A 532/B 560). This means that every causation of a cause

follows on from some prior cause; alternatively, it suggests that nothing in nature is the

cause of itself.

On the other hand, the self-origination of a state or a series of events is a radically

different causation than the causality of nature. For Kant, absolute spontaneity is the

causality of freedom. However, the causality of absolute spontaneity is something we do

not encounter in experience because freedom as absolute spontaneity is transcendental. If,

as Kant argues, practical freedom is grounded in transcendental freedom as a distinctive

kind of causality, then positive or practical freedom, as grounded in absolute spontaneity

(transcendental freedom) also contains the problem of causality.10

10
See Henry E. Allison, Idealism and Freedom: Essays on Kant’s theoretical and practical philosophy,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 for a discussion on Kant’s theory of freedom and its relation
to his transcendental idealism and practical philosophy.

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It is this idea of freedom as grounded in causation, and the conception of the human

subject this implies that Heidegger wants to problematise in his engagement with Kant.

The agency with which the Kantian self is endowed suggests that Kant understands the

self as a self-determining end. To be a self-determining end is to have the capacity to

choose one’s ends. As Kant writes: “rational nature is distinguished from others in that it

proposes an end to itself … Now this end can never be other than the subject of all

possible ends themselves, because this is at the same time the subject of a possible will

which is absolutely good; for the latter cannot be made secondary to any other object

without contradiction” (GMM 56). While Heidegger concurs with Kant that the self has

the capacity to choose, the Kantian idea that the self is an end in itself that comes prior to

the choices it makes will fall under criticism.

For Heidegger, there is an element of causality in freedom, but not in the way Kant

proposes. This is because for Heidegger, “freedom is not some particular thing among

and alongside other things, but is superordinate and governing in relation to the whole”

(EHF 93). Heidegger, it would seem, inverts the order of priority: freedom is not

grounded in causality, but causality itself is grounded in freedom because for him,

freedom, in its essence, is more primordial than Dasein.11 The human subject does not

control her freedom in the sense that acts originate primarily from her, but only

administers this freedom in the sense that she can only let-be the freedom that is accorded

11
Also see Heidegger, Schelling’s Treatise on the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. Joan Stambaugh,
Athens: Ohio University Press, 1985. Heidegger reiterates: “for freedom is here, not the property of man,
but the other way around: Man is at best the property of freedom. Freedom is the encompassing and
penetrating nature, in which man becomes man only when he is anchored there. That means the nature of
man is grounded in freedom. But freedom itself is a determination of true Being in general which
transcends all human beings. Insofar as man is as man, he must participate in this determination of Being,
and man is, insofar as he brings about this participation in freedom” (Heidegger 1985: 9).

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to her. Dasein’s freedom is not, then, an attribute of an autonomous will; rather it is the

basis or the ground of Dasien’s capacity to choose its being-in-the-world. Unlike the

Kantian self, Dasein’s freedom is only realised in its transcendence (being-for) rather

than its immanence (being-in-itself).

Heidegger describes his reformulation of freedom in this way:

Human freedom now no longer means freedom as a property of man, but man as a
possibility of freedom: Human freedom is the freedom that breaks through in man
and takes him up unto itself, thus making man possible. If freedom is the ground
of the possibility of existence, the root of being and time and thus the ground of
the possibility of understanding being in its whole breadth and fullness, then man,
as grounded in his existence upon and in this freedom is the site where beings in
the whole become revealed, i.e. he is that particular being through which beings
as such announce themselves. (EHF 93-4)

Freedom is no longer something Dasein ‘possesses’ or has. It is no longer attributable to a

subject and no longer something promised or refused to a Dasein on the basis of some

consideration or by virtue of its possession of the faculty of reason (EF 20). Rather,

freedom is something that Dasein is, or is constitutive of its very Being. It is, as Nancy

writes, a fundamental modality of Being, one that does not “proceed existence, or

succeed it, but is at stake in it” (EF 20). Freedom becomes the condition for the

possibility of existence, and Dasein’s existence is grounded on and in this freedom.

Dasein becomes the manager of freedom or its distributor, rather than its master. In this

conceptualisation of freedom, Heidegger’s Dasein is decentered and displaced as an agent

of moral choice. Dasein exists in a relationship to freedom, or alternatively, Dasein is

given freedom as a gift to cultivate. There is, it would seem, an implicit sense of

guardianship assigned to Dasein in its relation to freedom (Schalow 2002: 33).

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This conception of freedom constitutes a marked or distinctive shift from the modern,

voluntaristic sense of the will.12 However, it also raises several problems. What is

politically and ethically at stake in this removal of freedom from the idea of a self-

determining subject? Is it to suggest that Dasein is passive in the face of this freedom, or

that its agency to exercise moral choice and to engage in decision-making is taken from

it? And if so, does this mean that it is no longer responsible for the choices it makes?

Haar identifies and distinguishes between two conceptions of freedom that emerge in

Heidegger’s later work: one is what he deems the essence of human freedom, part of

which is freedom of choice, self-determination and autonomy, and the other is the

freedom of Being, the latter being the condition for the possibility of the former (Haar

1989: 2). Haar argues that the essence of human freedom, if it is legitimate to speak of

such a freedom, is inconsistent with the essence of the freedom of Being (Haar 1989: 2).

For Haar, in rendering the freedom of Being the condition for the possibility for human

freedom, and in arguing that the former works through the latter, Heidegger, by

implication, renders human beings ‘morally’ and ‘intellectually’ irresponsible for what

they receive from Being; that is, we become mere puppets or playthings of Being, and

our liberty becomes a subjective illusion. Haar asks: “does this mean that [Dasein] is

wholly determined in [its] world by the destiny of Being, and merely passive when [it]

accomplishes and brings to speech what is dictated to [it] within the framework of [its]

12
For a discussion on how this conception of freedom is related to the concepts of violence and power, see
Fred Dallmayr, ‘Heidegger on Macht and Machenschaft” in Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 34, 2001.
Dallmayr points out that this conception of freedom is intended to be beyond both power and violence. For
Heidegger, power relies on violence as its chief method and instrument. When violence and brutality
become predominant, everything becomes geared toward the “unconditional annihilation of opposing
forces” such that nothing can grow, especially the care of Being. See p.257.

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age? Is [Dasein] ‘enacted’? Is [it] ‘prethought’? Are these two the same thing? Does the

transposing of freedom into the register of the Lichtung and of epochal truth have as its

consequence the possibly abusive identification of freedom in thinking and liberty in

action?” (Haar 1989: 2).

On Haar’s interpretation, if freedom is thought in terms of the freedom of Being then

human freedom as such is diminished. Human freedom becomes merely the freedom “to

let” the freedom of Being “be.” Dasein becomes the site or the occasion that is necessary

for and required by the freedom of Being (Sein). The consequence of this is that human

individuation and together with it, human freedom vanish in this “free sacrifice of the

ego” (Haar 1989: 2). Haar refers to this as a “non-human” freedom, which in using

human freedom, shrinks its power markedly. With this ‘turn’ in Heidegger’s work, an

inversion occurs; an inversion of the subjectivism, anthropomorphism and of the quest –

undertaken in Being and Time – for absolute self-possibilisation. According to Haar, “in

opposition to existentialism the new Heideggerian thesis states: man is not the possibility

of freedom; it is rather the freedom of Being that makes man possible” (Haar 1989 p.2).

This according to Haar, is in marked contrast to Heidegger’s conception of freedom in

Being and Time. Haar argues that in Being and Time, liberty was nothing other than the

free disposition of the “own-most” possibility, which is the anticipation of possibility.

Liberty was found in the movement of self-appropriation and the hierarchical

organisation of Dasein’s possibilities, beginning with the fundamental possible of being-

towards-death. Haar argues: “Heidegger still thought of possibilities that Dasein gives

itself, in terms of transcendental ‘conditions of possibility” (Haar 1989: 3). As Heidegger

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states in Being and Time: “In Being ahead-of itself as Being for the own most being-able-

to-be rests the condition of the ontological-existential possibility of Being-free-for

authentic possibilities” (BT 193/237). “Freedom towards death” is a conquest of

authenticity, or a taking over of Dasein of its own possibilities. Haar concludes that the

freedom found in Being and Time, was “the positing of an absolute autonomy even

greater than the autonomy of the moral subject in Kant” (Haar 1989: 2). For Haar, with

the eradication of this idea of freedom in the later work, Heidegger eradicates the concept

of Jemeinigkeit or “mineness” that was central to Dasein’s ontological structure in Being

and Time.

For Wright, the problem with Heidegger’s thinking on human freedom after Being and

Time is not so much due to obliterating the element of “mineness,” but more due to the

eradication of the notion of Mitsein, or being-with, and with it, human solidarity,

friendship and love. According to Wright, Heidegger’s later conception of freedom does

not admit the possibility of the “conversation that we [that is, we humans together] are”

(Wright 1989: 18). Similarly, Levinas argues that Heidegger subordinates the relation we

have with others to the relation Dasein has to Being, thus separating freedom from ethics.

For Levinas, “in subordinating every relation with existents to the relation with Being the

Heideggerain ontology affirms the primacy of freedom over ethics … the freedom

involved in the essence of truth is not for Heidegger a principle of free will. Freedom

comes from an obedience to Being: it is not man that possess freedom; it is freedom that

possess man” (Levinas 1969: 45).

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What these criticisms suggest is that Dasein’s ontological structure as mine, being-in-the-

world and being-with is undermined in Heidegger’s later work, rendering his notion of

freedom politically and ethically dubious, if not completely devoid of any content. What I

want to suggest is that firstly, these objections are based on a misunderstanding of the

type of subject and its relation to freedom explicated in Being and Time, and that

secondly, Heidegger’s later elaboration on freedom remains consistent with that found in

Being and Time. Moreover, with Nancy, I argue that the displacement of the subject in

both Being and Time and the Essence of Human Freedom, which allows Heidegger to

think of freedom removed from the ontology of traditional subjectivity, opens up a space

from which we can think freedom in terms of community and human solidarity.

ii. Freedom in Being and Time.

Haar is right to argue that freedom in Being and Time remained inextricably bound to the

concepts of ‘mineness,’ possibility and choice. It will be recalled that for Heidegger in

Being and Time, all determinations of Being are inscribed in the fundamental

determination of being “mine”: “the Being of any such entity is in each case mine …

because Dasein has in each case mineness, one must always use a personal pronoun when

one addresses it” (BT 42/67). This suggests that it is Being itself that is mine and

reciprocally, I am only myself through Being. As ‘mine,’ I am able, to some extent, to

exercise choice in how I am to comport myself towards my being as possibility; as ‘mine’

I can also choose to live authentically or inauthentically. Freedom, as intrinsic to the

structure of ‘mineness,’ thus provides Heidegger with a powerful resource for expressing

the comportment of Dasein to its own possibilities. In Being and Time, Dasein is

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characterised as “being-free for its ownmost potentiality-for-being” (BT 191/236).

Dasein’s “being toward a potentiality-for-being is itself determined by freedom” (BT

193/237).

Anticipation as authentic being-towards-death is described as a matter of “becoming free

for one’s own death as sheer possibility” (BT 264/308). Further, “anxiety reveals in

Dasein its being toward its ownmost potentiality-for-being, that is, its being free for the

freedom of choosing and grasping itself” (BT 264/308). Dasein is also free not to choose;

it can let its choices/possibilities be determined or made by das Man. Heidegger states:

In Being-ahead-of oneself as Being towards one’s ownmost potentiality-for-

Being, lies the existential-ontological condition for the possibility of Being-free
for authentic existentiell possibilities. For the sake of its potentiality-for-Being,
any Dasein is as it factically is. But to the extent that this Being towards its
potentiality-for-Being is itself characterised by freedom, Dasein can comport
itself towards its possibilities, even unwillingly; it can be inauthentically; and
factically it is inauthentically, proximally and for the most part. (BT 193/237)

Freedom as ‘mine’ is thus also tied to the concepts of possibility and choice. It will also

be recalled that for Heidegger, as being-in-the-world, Dasein’s existence/essence is

characterised by projection or transcendence, anticipation and openness, because Dasein

exists in terms of its possibilities. Dasein is already thrown into the midst of possibilities

which it has either realised or is about to realise: “as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the

kind of Being which we call ‘projecting’ … as long as it is … it is projecting” (BT

145/185). These possibilities are modes of Dasein’s existence because to exist is to seize

one’s possibilities. For Heidegger, Dasein is always projected or moving towards a

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particular possibility, is always being-after-something which it does not yet have, striving

to become something it has not yet realised.

But this is not to suggest that in realising its possibilities, Dasein is complete, as notions

of freedom as self-possession imply, or as Kant’s notion of the self as an end in itself

suggests. For Heidegger, Dasein is conceived in terms of a constitutive lack, which

means that no matter how many possibilities it actualises, it remains incomplete. For

Dasein to be complete is to cease to be; to become “no-longer-being-there” (BT

236/280). This suggests that the projection of possibilities, rather than their actualisation

is what is of fundamental importance to Heidegger. Dasein’s movement or projection is

not one of self-constitution or the unfolding of an essence but rather an experimentation

with the possible modes of Being open to Dasein. This being-towards a possibility of

existence constitutes Dasein’s freedom, in the sense that this transcendence or “self-

surpassing” is freedom. It also indicates the way in which freedom for Heidegger is

conceived in terms of possibility rather than causality.

This connection between transcendence, as possibility and freedom is made explicit in

The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, which can be read as a fleshing out of the

concepts developed in Being and Time. Here, Heidegger argues that Dasein’s

transcendence - its comportment toward the possibilities that present themselves to it -

and freedom are one and the same thing: “insofar as transcendence, being-in-the-world,

constitutes the basic structure of Dasein, being-in-the-world must also be primordially

bound up with or derived from the basic feature of Dasein’s existence, namely freedom

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… Dasein’s transcendence and freedom are identical! Freedom provides itself with

intrinsic possibility; a being is, as free, necessarily in itself transcending” (MFL 185). If

transcendence is constitutive of Dasein’s very being, and transcendence and freedom are

identical, then it follows that freedom is something that Dasein is rather than something it

possesses as an attribute or a property. The positing of freedom at the very heart of

existence, and thereby conceiving of it in terms of possibility rather than causality, has

further implications for the model of subjectivity (Dasein) Heidegger elucidates.

In contrast to Kant, the self for Heidegger in Being and Time does not exist prior to its

ends; rather, it is given or revealed only in choosing an end that is not itself. As

Heidegger argues: “insofar as transcendence, being-in-the-world, constitutes the basic

constitution of Dasein, being-in-the-world must also be primordially bound up with or

derived from the basic feature of Dasein’s existence, namely, freedom. Only where there

is freedom is there a purposive for-the-sake-of, and only here is there world” (MFL 185).

Freedom is thus the condition for the possibility of Dasein’s existence because it is by

virtue of this freedom that Dasein can purposively pursue its projects and actualise its

possibilities. However, just as in the Essence of Human Freedom, Dasein does not

possess this freedom as a property, attribute or will. It does not wield freedom as a power

of the autonomous will, because as we will see, the Dasein of Being and Time is never in

control of its freedom and is never autonomous. It would seem therefore the later idea of

freedom is already in place in Being and Time.

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This freedom that Dasein is, is ultimately realised in its authentic being-towards-death,

where Dasein projects itself onto nothingness, and in doing so, comes to the realisation

that death is something it cannot evade, grasp or understand. This realisation subverts or

displaces Dasein’s self-hood or its subjectivity. As Frank Schalow points out, to be free

toward death is to accept the inevitability of one’s end and to also delimit the range of

possibilities in which one can experience life. Resolute being-toward-death distinguishes

a vacillation between the finality of an end and the novelty of a beginning; “the

resignation before a closure and the renewal within an openness” (Schalow 2002: 33).

Again, this is not to suggest that Dasein is the master of this freedom that it is, or that it

belongs to Dasein as a property or power that it wields in determining its possibilities.

Dasein remains powerless in the face of its freedom, merely participating in the process

of concealment and unconceament. This power can be distributed and localised within

the possibilities the self experiences, but will always exceed the exercise of will that

Dasein displays (Schalow 2002: 33). As a consequence, Dasein always remains

powerless before its thrown potentiality to be.

This therefore suggests that authentic Dasein receives freedom only in so far as it

exercises its power to choose within the larger expanse of unconcealment. In Being and

Time, as in the later work, The Essence of Human Freedom, there is an implicit sense of

guardianship assigned to Dasein as the benefactor of freedom. Freedom in both

Heidegger’s earlier and later work is not an attribute that Dasein possesses. Rather, it is

something that it is, in the sense that it is the ground of Dasein’s existence. In the same

way that Dasein is never in control of its existence, and always exists as fragmented and

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dispersed in both its temporality and its possibilities, its existence as freedom is also

uncontrolled and dispersed. At best, Dasein can manage this freedom, cultivate it, but

never control it.

Moreover, it is necessary to make explicit that these possibilities are not something that

the Dasein of Being and Time gives itself, in the way Haar suggests. While it would seem

that Dasein has an element of self-determination, in that it has the freedom to choose

itself in authentic existence, or lose itself in the world of the ‘they,’ it is necessary to

point out that this freedom is not infinite and boundless; rather Heideggerian freedom is

always qualified by contingency. As Slavoj Zizek points out, Heidegger is acutely aware

of how our everyday life is grounded on fragile decisions, of how we are perpetually

thrown into a contingent situation. But this does not mean that we become determined by

the situation, “caught in it like an animal” (Zizek 1999: 16). Heideggerian freedom is

freedom wherein the subject makes sense of, or co-ordinates the situation in which she

finds herself thrown. Therefore, while freedom lies at the heart of projection, in that very

projection, there lies a counter freedom. Dasein’s freedom is not boundless and infinite;

nor is Dasein an autonomous, self-determining subject as Haar contends. The decisions

that it makes are always contingent upon Dasein’s specific historical/social/cultural

matrix. Dasein is always bound by the corresponding referential totality in which it finds

itself thrown. As Heidegger states: “from the world, Dasein takes its possibilities, and

does so, to a large extent, in accordance with the way things have been interpreted by the

‘they.’” This interpretation has already restricted the possible options of choice to what

lies within the range of possibilities” (BT 195/239). Hence contrary to Heidegger’s critics

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and to Kant’s idea of freedom, Dasein’s freedom is implicated in its ontological structure

as Mitsein.

Unlike Kant, being-with for Heidegger is not a mediating moment in which Dasein’s self

is given. For Kant, the proof of the Categorical Imperative starts with the assumption that

every rational being exists as an end in itself. However, because every other rational

being thinks of its existence in this way, the same rational grounds that hold for me hold

for every other rational being as well. As a consequence, the direct experience of the self

as an end in possession of dignity is then transposed onto the other.13 For Heidegger, this

transfer of the experience of self onto the other by way of analogy is unnecessary. The

basic constitution of Dasein is being-with others, which means that the choices Dasein

makes in the realm of freedom are also made simultaneously in relation to the other. As

Peg Birmingham argues, “rather than marking the self as an autonomous end-in-itself,

Dasein’s purposiveness marks its heteronomy, its responsibility to the other as end. In

other words, Dasein’s capacity to choose, its ‘I am able,’ marks the moment of

obligation” (Birmingham1992: 114).

In Being and Time, the concept of freedom is thus tied to the structures of ‘mineness,’

possibility, choice and Mitsein but without compromising Heidegger’s elaboration in the

Essence of Human Freedom. In the latter conception of freedom, Heidegger removes

freedom from the Kantian realm of causality, where freedom is an attribute of a self that

exists as an end in itself. Instead, he argues that freedom is no longer a property or

13
see Peg Birmingham, “Ever Respectfully Mine: Heidegger on Agency and Responsibility” in A.B.
Dallery & C.E. Scott, (eds) Ethics and Danger: Essays on Heidegger and Continental Thought, Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1992, p. 114.

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attribute of Dasein, but the ground of its existence in the sense that its existence is

founded in and upon this freedom; a freedom it does not control, but which works

through Dasein, or takes possession of it. Both accounts of human freedom remove

freedom from the ontology of a self-present subject by removing it from its subjection to

necessity, determinacy, and inevitability.

However, this does not mean that freedom becomes indeterminate, indifferent or

arbitrary. It does not render Dasein completely powerless and at its mercy, its puppet or

plaything, and consequently, irresponsible for the decisions that it makes. Instead, it

indicates the way in which Heidegger’s conception of freedom is both passive and active.

It is passive in the sense that Dasein receives freedom or freedom works through it, but

active in the sense that Dasein is responsible for the way in which it distributes this

freedom. As Heidegger, states, responsibility represents the very essence of the human

being: “responsibility for oneself then designates the fundamental modality of being

which determines all comportment of the human being, the specific and distinctive

human action, ethical praxis” (EHF 263).

What then, are the ethical implications of Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the

ontology of the subject as self-present? What is at stake in conceptualising freedom as the

ground or condition for the possibility of existence? What does it mean for Dasein to

exist in relation to the freedom of Being, or to be the site or occasion where this freedom

manifests itself? And how can Dasein’s relation to Being be reconciled to its relations

with others? The final section will fill out the indeterminate contours of this description

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of freedom by drawing on Hannah Arendt’s account of freedom, political action and

collective responsibility. By showing the way in which this conception of freedom

reconciles the rift between freedom and fraternity, a rift that Nancy posits at the heart of

freedom’s entanglement in both wars and liberations, I argue against the contention that

Heidegger’s conception of freedom constitutes a disavowal of community, or that the

account of individuation is at odds with the account of community in section 74 of Being

and Time.

iii. Freedom, collective responsibility and political action

In the economy of freedom Heidegger develops from Being and Time to the Essence of

Human Freedom, Heidegger not only displaces the subject as an agent of moral choice,

but allows for a plurality of participants. If freedom belongs to no one as a right, the

implication is that it becomes something that is shared by a political community.14

In the Experience of Freedom, Jean-Luc Nancy, drawing on Heidegger’s conception of

being-with, argues that the concept of an autonomous subject as an end in itself that then

mediates a relation to the other is both a logical and ontological impossibility. For both

Heidegger and Nancy, Dasein is already in relation by virtue of its very constitution as

being-in-the-world and being-with. Nancy, drawing on Heidegger, argues that Dasein is

not a subject in possession of freedom which must be circumscribed if it is to enter into

relations with others. Nor is this to suggest that Dasein is thrown into relations first, then
14
Frank Schalow puts the point this way: “because freedom arises in conjunction with being, the discharge
of the power to be free occurs through the nexus of relationships, including Dasein’s being-with Others
which comprises its worldly existence. Dasein receives the power of freedom through its readiness to
reciprocate for this gift of being – the openness I already am – through the self’s willingness to safeguard
freedom for the benefit of others” (Schalow 2002: 33).

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endowed with freedom; rather, being-with (existence) and being free occur

simultaneously. As he states: “the linking or interlacing of relations doubtless does not

precede freedom, but is contemporaneous and co-extensive with it, in the same way that

being-in-common is contemporaneous with singular existence and co-extensive with its

own spatiality” (EF 66).

There are three interrelated and overlapping trajectories Nancy pursues in his elaboration

of Heideggerian freedom. Firstly, freedom is the site or space upon which community is

founded; secondly, it is what gives the relation, or it is that which connects one Dasein to

another; thirdly, it forms the basis of political community. For Nancy, Heidegger’s

gesture of denying that freedom belongs exclusively to the subject is simultaneously a

gesture of giving freedom back to community. If we recall, Heidegger argues that

freedom is more primordial than Dasein, it is “superordinate” and governs in “relation to

the whole.” This means, for Nancy, that freedom becomes the site or the space where

community takes place or where singularities/Daseins mingle and are shared. Freedom,

on this interpretation, becomes the “play of the interval,” offering or constituting the

space of play where each singularity or Dasein takes place as shared (EF 66). As Nancy

writes, freedom is the “possibility of an irreducible singularity occurring. One that is not

free in the sense of being endowed with a power of autonomy … but that is already free

in the sense that it occurs in the free space and spacing of time, where only the singular

one time is possible” (EF 68).

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Freedom, as the condition for the possibility of community, is what gives the relation one

singularity has with another. As Nancy states: “freedom is relation, or at least, in the

relation, or like the relation” (EF 69). Freedom gives relations in the sense that rather

than conceive of the other as circumscribing my freedom, it is by virtue of the other that I

am free in the first place. Nancy describes this relation as one where the other discretely

inhabits my existence because the other is “originary for my existence” (EF 69). At the

same time, it is also the existence of the other “insisting” on my identity and constituting

or de-constituting it as this identity (EF 69). In this sense, I am only free by virtue of the

relation that freedom makes possible, or alternatively, it is only by virtue of the my

relation with the other that I am free. Nancy writes: “Freedom is what throws the subject

into the space of the sharing of being. Freedom is the specific logic of the access to the

self outside of itself in a spacing, each time singular, of being” (EF 69).

There is however, one final problem that I want to raise here in relation to section 74 and

the problem of freedom and community that emerges there. In chapter one, when

examining the points where the conflict between the concept of individuation and

intersubjectivity arise, I pointed out that there appears to be a conflict between the

account of authenticity in terms of individuation and section 74, where Heidegger

attempts to reconcile individuation and Mitsein. Related to this is the account of freedom,

individuation and moral norms.

This problem is identified by Karl Lowith and Herman Philipse, who argue that the

authentic mode of existence consists in deciding to be free and in ‘choosing to choose’

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oneself. The Self that is summoned by the call of conscience is one characterised by this

freedom of choice. Authentic Dasein, as I have demonstrated, does not flee from freedom

and responsibility into the inauthenticity of das Man, but actualises freedom by

projecting its individual course of life by resolute decisions. In this section on

resoluteness, as in the conclusion to inauthenticity, Heidegger stresses again that

authentic Dasein in its resolute choices is not bound by values or norms. He writes:

“resoluteness ‘exists’ only as a resolution … But … on what is it to resolve? Only the

resolution itself can give the answer” (BT 60/ 298). The conclusion to be reached here is

that this choice that we are called to make is not subject to any standard of judgement and

is therefore, according to Lowith, empty because it is “a pure resolve whose aim is

undefined.15 Authentic Dasein resolves itself, but on nothing in particular. The

indeterminacy of Heideggerian resolve leads to ethical “decisionism” – a type of political

thought formulated by Carl Schmitt in the 1920’s and taken up by Germany’s

neoconservatives during that period. Decisionism refers to the idea that there is no

predetermined, objective criterion for making moral judgements on actions. In the

absence of such a criteria, an action is evaluated not by its content, but by the force of

will with which the decision to act was made. As such, human actions are not subject to

moral judgment but wilfully and arbitrarily legitimate themselves. Moreover, human

agents are neither good nor evil but precede this distinction, as their actions effectively

create their own arbitrary norms.16 For Philipse, this decisionist ontology of authentic

Dasein as freedom to choose explains why Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein cannot

15
Karl Lowith, My Life in Germany before and after 1933, trans. Elizabeth King, Chicago: University of
Illinois Press, 1994 p. 30.
16
See Mark Tanzer, “Heidegger on Freedom and Practical Judgement” in Journal of Philosophical
Research, Vol. XXVI, 2001. pp. 344-5.

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contain, even implicitly, moral norms or values. If authentic Dasein accepts moral norms,

“allegedly it accepts them because it freely decides to do so, and not because its

ontological constitution somehow contains or implies them” (Philipse 1999: 455).

There are two problems that thus emerge from the doctrine of decisionism: firstly, if each

individual is free to choose which moral norms to accept, then how are individuals to

accept the same moral values? Secondly, how is this individualism, characterised by the

freedom to choose, connected to the collectivist conception of the “full authentic

happening” of Dasein as stated in section 74 of Being and Time? An outline of

Heidegger’s argument in this section is necessary to clarify this point and the problem

that it potentially presents.

Heidegger begins his argument by reiterating his conception of individuation, and hence

authenticity as having chosen to make a choice: “Dasein understands itself in its own

superior power” (BT 384/436) if it asserts “the power of its finite freedom … which ‘is’

only in its having to make a choice” (BT 384/436). This power, however, is also a form

of powerlessness because individual and authentic Dasein cannot rely on the support of

das Man to make these choices (BT 385/436). The second stage of this argument is that

“Dasein, as being-in-the-world, exists essentially in Being-with-Others” (BT 384/436).

Hence, “Dasein’s historising is a co-historising and is determinative for it as a destiny; it

is the historising of the community, of a people.” Destiny is not however, the confluence

of the fates of several individuals, “any more than Being-with-one-another can be

conceived as the occurring together of several subjects” (BT 384/436). The conclusion

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Heidegger reaches is this: “hence, our individual fates have already been guided in

advance in our Being with one another in the same world and in our resoluteness for

definite possibilities. Only in communication and in struggling does the power of destiny

become free. Dasein’s fateful destiny in and with its ‘generation’ goes to make up the full

authentic historizing of Dasein” (BT 384/436).

There are two related problems here that require attention. The first is the idea that the

freedom to choose is an arbitrary one, given that authentic Dasein cannot be bound by the

norms and morals of the community or society to which it belongs. The second is the

paradoxical account of individual authenticity as being tied to the fate of a people. How is

it possible for one to take responsibility for one’s existence if in the end, it makes no

difference what one chooses because the individual’s existence is bound by the destiny of

a Volk? How is section 74 consistent with the notion of individual choice and

responsibility?

In relation to the first point, I want to suggest that the freedom to choose does not imply

moral decisionism on Heidegger’s account. Dasein is characterised as the freedom to

choose, but this does not mean the individual can make arbitrary, if not immoral or

unethical decisions or choices. 17 As Heidegger asserts, his notion of freedom is different

17
See also Tanzer, 2001 for an discussion of decisionism. Tanzer argues that Heidegger’s critics come to
the conclusion that Heidegger’s notion of human action is reduced to pure, radical decision without moral
constraints on account of a misunderstanding of his conception of freedom. Tanzer argues that a proper
understanding of Dasein’s freedom, or the freedom that Dasein is, allows for an indeterminate yet violable
criterion for assessing human actions. See pp. 344-345.

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from the existentialist notion of freedom as arbitrary.18 As he states: “it is misguided to

think that one understands freedom most purely in its essence if one isolates it as a free-

floating arbitrariness” (MFL 196). Freedom for Heidegger does not mean that one does

whatever one wants. It means that one must act in accordance with certain restrictions.

These restrictions are to be found in the central notion of responsibility. As I explained in

the second section, the freedom to choose is a freedom to choose responsibly. This

concept of responsibility entails a practical criterion that, though indeterminate, is able to

pass judgment on actions.19

Secondly, as I suggested in the second section, Heideggerian freedom is not arbitrary

because it is always contingent on, and limited by, a particular cultural, social and

political situation. More importantly, and as Heidegger seeks to demonstrate in section

74, the decisions that an individual makes will be limited by the particular history that he

or she has inherited and this is what Heidegger means by fate: “this is how we designate

Dasein’s primordial historizing, which lies in authentic resoluteness and in which Dasein

hands itself down to itself, free for death, in a possibility which it has inherited and yet

has chosen” (BT 384/435). Because Dasein is also a Mitsein, it necessarily belongs to a

18
Although the claim that the existentialist notion of freedom is arbitrary is also somewhat misleading,
given that Sartre does claim, in the spirit of the Kantian categorical imperative, that whatever the subject
wills is only legitimate if he or she could will it for everyone. Sartre writes: “when we say that man is
responsible for himself, we do not mean that he is responsible only for his own individuality, but that he is
responsible for all men … when we say that man chooses himself … we also mean that in choosing for
himself he chooses for all men.” In Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism and Humanism, trans. P. Raireb,
Rethuen, 1948.
19
Interestingly, Tanzer points out that although the moral law can never be satisfied, it does not disappear;
rather, it constantly imposes the demand, always unsatisfied, that we attempt to live up to its indeterminate
proscriptions: “we are always guilty before the law, but this does not mean that it can be ignored. Instead,
we are enjoined to always hold ourselves to a standard that is beyond our powers … the indeterminacy of
the law does not destroy practical judgment, but instead ensures that it is always possible to do better, and
demands that we always attempt to do so” (Tanzer 2001: 354).

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political community and has a shared social and political history. Insofar as this history is

the same for all Daseins, their possibilities are fated to be limited in the same way. Fate,

in this context, does not mean that the individual is powerless in actualising his or her

freedom. Nor does it mean that a leader or a dictator must choose for an individual.

Dasein remains responsible for taking over that fate, or its historical inheritance – its

“having-been” – and transforming it into something for “its time.” Heidegger writes:

Only an entity which, in its Being, is essentially futural so that it is free for its
death and can let itself be thrown back upon its factical ‘there’ by shattering itself
against death – that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordially
in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has
inherited, take over its own thrownness and be in the moment of vision for ‘its
time’. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite, makes possible
something like a fate – that is to say, authentic historicality. (BT 385/437)

This seemingly paradoxical attempt to integrate the discussion of individuation and

individual responsibility for existence with an account of authentic being-with needs to

be read against both the notion that Dasein is also Mitsein and Heidegger’s reservations

regarding liberalism. Given, as I have argued throughout, that Dasein is also Mitsein, it

follows that the responsibility it must assume for itself is also a responsibility for others.

Transposed in a political context, it means that Dasein’s responsibility for its having-

been, which it must integrate with its vision for the future, is a collective effort, rather

than an individual one. While Heidegger strongly endorses individualism, this is, at a

philosophical level, different from the individualism of the Cartesian, Kantian or

Husserlian egos. At a political level, it fundamentally differs from liberal individualism.

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As Heidegger notes, ‘liberalism,’ despite the diversity and variety is seems to endorse, is

composed of isolated individuals, each pursuing his or her own interests and desires.

Nowhere in this ideology, Heidegger notes in Beiträge, is there any room for ek-stasis or

self-transcendence, for a “reaching out into an uncharted domain under whose auspices

the fixed human entity would become questionable.” Human self assurance or self

certainty constitutes the “innermost character of ‘liberalism.”20

This suggests that Heideggerian individuation in a political context does not mean

submitting to all powerful leader who decides on one’s behalf. Instead, it means

assuming responsibility for a shared vision of a future based on a nation’s collective past.

It means acting, not in the interests of oneself, but for the interests of others with whom

one shares one’s world. While Heidegger does not express his political sentiments in this

way, they are, I suggest in the following and final section, an implication of his ontology

of freedom.

iv. Freedom, Individuation and political community: Heidegger and Arendt.

In this final section, I demonstrate the way in which this notion of individuation and the

account of freedom can form the basis of political community. A freedom that gives both

existence and a relation to others can be likened to what Hannah Arendt tried to represent

as the anteriority of public freedom to private or interior freedom. Freedom, before it was

20
Martin Heidegger, Beiträge zur Philosophie (Vom Ereignis), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrman
Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65; Frankfurt-Main: Klostermann, 1989, p.53.

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conceived of as attribute or quality of the will, was the free status of man and that

allowed him to move and to meet other people.

Hannah Arendt’s work repeatedly draws attention to the difficulty we have in thinking of

freedom as a worldly, concrete reality, one that manifests itself in collective action. The

problem, according to Arendt, is that our philosophical tradition remains imbued with

early Greek philosophical and early Christain prejudices against such a freedom,

conceived in terms of collective action. Early Greek philosophy rejected the freedom

found in the political sphere in favour of the contemplative life, while early Christianity

located freedom in the overcoming of the interior struggle one had with oneself:

Our philosophical tradition is almost unanimous in holding that freedom begins

where men have left the realm of political life inhabited by the many, and that it is
not experienced in association with others but in intercourse with oneself –
whether in the form of an inner dialogue which, since Socrates, we call thinking,
or in a conflict with myself, the inner strife between what I would and what I do,
whose murderous dialectics disclosed first to Paul and then to Augustine the
equivocalities and impotence of the human heart.21

Arendt claims that these two conceptions of freedom, as essentially an inner phenomenon

or as a freedom of the will, replace the idea of freedom as it was originally experienced,

as a “worldly, tangible, reality” (BPF 148). She claims this is a development that has

“fatal consequences” for political theory (BPF 162). This motivates Arendt to think of

freedom in Heideggerian terms as a mode of being in the world rather than in terms of the

capacity of the subject. As I have demonstrated, Heidegger affects a break with the idea

of freedom as the ground of the will, and as I will demonstrate in this final section,
21
Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, New York: Penguin, 1993 p.157 hereafter cited as BPF.

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provides a way of thinking of freedom as a mode of being-in-the-world and as the basis

for collective political action. While Heidegger did not flesh out what the political

conceptions of this account of freedom as a mode of being rather than as a property of the

subject, it is possible to read Arendt as appropriating his ontological approach in the

attempt to elaborate the phenomena of political freedom, action and judgement. How

then, are the notions of individuation, responsibility, and freedom transposed into the

realm of the political, and more specifically, to a theory of political action?

According to Arendt, in spite of the great influence that the concept of an inner, non-

political freedom has exerted on a tradition of philosophical thought, we would not know

of this alleged inner freedom if man had not first experienced freedom as a worldly and

tangible reality. We first become aware of the concept of freedom in our interactions with

others, and not with the interactions we have with ourselves. Arendt writes: “before it

became an attribute of thought or a quality of the will, freedom was understood to be the

free man’s status, which enabled him to move, to get away from home, to go out into the

world and meet other people in deed and word” (BPF 148). While such a freedom had to

follow from a prior liberation from the necessities of life, political freedom did not

automatically follow the liberation from natural desires. In addition to mere liberation,

freedom needed the company of others who lived together in the same state, it needed a

common public space in which to meet, a politically organised world “into which each of

the free men could insert himself by word and deed” (BPF 148). In thinking of freedom

in terms of political action, Arendt challenges liberal assumptions about the nature of

politics, political institutions and the subjects of liberal democracies.

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Arendt argues that the essence of politics is action rather than laws and institutions. The

latter belong to the sphere of administration and merely supply the framework for action.

The activities of debate, deliberation and participation in decision making are the

fundamental tenants of political action. Further, if politics is about action as opposed to

the effective and efficient functioning of institutions, then the liberal conception of

citizenship must also change. To be a citizen is to participate in political life and

dialogue. One’s responsibilities as a citizen do not end with the cast of a vote, and in the

case where they do, such an individual cease to be a genuine member of that

community.22

At the centre of this political theory is the concept of freedom. Not freedom in terms of a

will or causality, but in terms of a mode of being, or in terms of a concrete, tangible

political reality. In “What is Freedom,” she writes:

The field where freedom has always been known, not as a problem, to be sure, but
as a fact of everyday life, is the political realm … for action and politics, among
all the capabilities and potentialities of human life, are the only things we could
not even conceive without at least assuming freedom exists … Freedom,
moreover, is not only one among the many problems and phenomena of the
political realm properly speaking, such as justice, or power, or equality; freedom
… is actually the reason that men live in political organization at all. Without it,
political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’etre of politics is
freedom, and its field of experience is action. (BPF 147)

Freedom is thus out there in the world, as a concrete and tangible reality. Freedom is

something that we are insofar as we are born free, and in this way, it is constitutive of our

22
See chapter two of Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Second Edition, Chicago & London:
University of Chicago Press, 1998. Hereafter cited as HC.

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facticity. Freedom for Arendt is not a property of the will, but a mode of being in the

world. And because we are free, we need to live in political organization, where we can

deliberate, argue, share perspectives and together, construct a shared social reality where

our freedom, reciprocally, finds expression. In this way, freedom and politics are two

sides to the same coin, and together find expression in action.

Action, insofar as it is free, is not under the command of the intellect or the will. While it

needs both for the execution of a goal, its source is entirely different. The source is

referred to as a principle. These, for Arendt, do not operate in the person in the same way

motives do, but inspire from the outside in the sense that the principle is only realised,

and by implication, the goal, once the act is being performed: “for unlike the judgment of

the intellect which precedes action, and unlike the command of the will which initiates it,

the inspiring principle becomes fully manifest only in the performing act itself” (BPF

152).

Further, a principle differs from both judgment and will because the validity of a

principle is universal. Unlike judgment, which can lose its validity, and the will, which

can exhaust itself, a principle that inspires action, and is reciprocally realised in the

performance of the action itself, loses nothing in strength or validity in its execution: “in

distinction from its goal, the principle of an action can be repeated time and again, it is

inexhaustible, and in distinction from its motive, the validity of a principle is universal, it

is not bound to any particular person to any particular group” (BPF 152). These

principles manifest themselves through action and exist for as long as the action lasts.

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The principles Arendt is referring to are honour, glory or love of equality. To illustrate

with an example, the principle of love of equality can inspire us to fight against instances

of inequality, but without action of some sort, this principle is empty political rhetoric. It

is not until we perform some action, such as taking to the streets in protest, lobbying

politicians, writing to papers, and generally making ourselves heard, that this principle

manifests itself in a concrete and tangible way. While our goal may never be achieved, in

the sense that the inequality persists despite our efforts, the point is that we acted on a

principle, and in doing so, realised this principle momentarily in our political lives. What

enables us to act is the fact that we are free, and in acting, we reciprocally realise our

freedom:

Freedom appears in the world whenever such principles are actualised; the
appearance of freedom, like the manifestation of principles, coincides with the
performing act. Men are free – as distinguished from their possessing the gift for
freedom – as long as they act, neither before or after; for to be free and to act are
the same. (BPF 152-3)

To act is to therefore realise a principle, and in realising a principle through action,

freedom appears in the world. But to act in this way requires the presence of others; to act

is to do so in concert. Action, for it to be recognised as such, requires an audience. Arendt

uses the metaphor of virtuosity or the performing arts to explain her theory of

action/freedom as acting together:

The performing arts … have a strong affinity with politics. Performing artists –
dancers, play-actors, musicians and the like – need an audience to show their
virtuosity, just as acting men need the presence of others before whom they can
appear; both need a publicly organised space for their ‘work,’ and both depend
upon others for the performance itself. (BPF 154)

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The idea of politics as a performance, requiring both a theatre or political space and an

audience, is realised in the Greek polis. The rational underlying the concept of a polis

was to establish, and keep in existence, a space where freedom as performance could

appear. In the realm of the polis, freedom is experienced as a mode of being, as a

worldly, tangible reality. It is realised in “words which can be heard, in deeds which can

be seen, and in events which are talked about … whatever occurs in this space of

appearances is political by definition” (BPF 155). It should be noted however that

freedom only appears in the realm of the political, rather than in the private sphere of the

home or in the form of an administrative or representative government.

In The Human Condition, Arendt argues in favour of a distinction between the private,

social and public spheres; while she concedes that political freedom is meaningless where

humanity remains enslaved to nature, she argues that as long as biological necessity

forms an irreducible dimension to the human condition, freedom is only possible through

the separation of activities relating to the life process and those relating to politics. The

attempt to redress the “social question,” as Marxists, following the French Revolution

attempted to do, through political means, merely serves to place all aspects of human

existence under necessity. For Arendt, this goal – of liberating humanity from biological

necessity once and for all, makes natural need the sole content of revolutionary politics,

and it leads not from necessity to freedom, but from necessity to violence. According to

her, the attempt to liberate humanity from biological need and social inequality is

responsible for returning men to the “state of nature” (Villa 1996: 30).

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Similarly, administration does not qualify as political action on account of it being

framed in terms of a means and ends. The bureaucrat or administrator is only concerned

with finding the most efficient means to reach an already determined end. Free or plural

action is impossible in this conception of politics because politics is reduced to the

management of the “national household.” Representative government, which

characterises liberal democracies are also merely concerned with administration and does

not allow for the articulation of popular, plural opinion or for the performance of “noble

actions.” In the cases where the representative government does not function effectively,

it becomes oligarchy: “what we today call democracy is a form of government where the

few rule, at least supposedly, in the interest of the many” 23

For Arendt, genuine political action is never a means to life, but the embodiment or

expression of a meaningful life. However, as Villa points out, given all the various

exclusions, what form can such action take? In what sense can political action be said to

transcend necessity and instrumentality? (Villa 1996: 30). Arendt’s answer to this

question is that the general mode of human activity that is able to break free of the life of

process is speech. Genuine political action is nothing other than a certain kind of talk; it

is a conversation or argument about public matters.

Speech and action are what distinguish us from other forms of life. It renders man a

political animal because it enables him to transcend biological life and instrumental work

Through speech and action, the distinct uniqueness of man is manifested: “speech and

23
Hannah Arendt, On Revolution, Lond: Faber, 1963, p.269.

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action reveal this unique distinctness. Through them, men distinguish themselves instead

of being merely distinct; they are the modes in which humans appear to each other, not

indeed as physical objects, but qua men. This appearance as distinguished from mere

bodily existence, rests on initiative, but it is an initiative from which no human being can

refrain and still be human” (HC 176). A life without speech and action is one that has

ceased to be human as it is no longer lived among men.

The reason for this is linked to the interrelated themes of freedom and natality.24 Speech

is fundamental in realising and acting upon our freedom as “with word and deed we

insert ourselves into the human world, and this insertion is like a second birth, in which

we confirm and take upon ourselves the naked fact of our original physical appearance”

(HC 176-7). But this manner of inserting ourselves into the world is not enforced upon us

by necessity, like labour; nor is it prompted by utility, like work. Rather, speech is

“stimulated by the presence of others whose company we may wish to join, but it is never

conditioned by them; its impulse springs from the beginning which came into the world

when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new on our own

initiative” (HC 177). This is ultimately what it means to act; to take an initiative, to begin

something new, to set something into motion, to be creative and spontaneous: “with the

creation of man, the principle of beginning came into the world itself, … which is another

way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when man was created, but not

before” (HC 177). That is, natality and freedom are not merely characteristics of the

human condition, but constitute its very essence, insofar as we are beings “whose essence

24
It should be noted that the themes Arendt pursues share close affinities with those of Nancy’s.

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is beginning.” Man is able to act spontaneously and freely on account of his uniqueness

and distinctness as a person. With each birth, something new comes into the world, and

the public space is where this finds expression: “if action as beginning corresponds to the

human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness and is the

actualisation of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a distinct and unique

being among equals” (HC 178).

It is only in action and speech that this uniqueness can manifest itself: “in acting and

speaking, men show who they are, reveal actively their unique personal identities and

thus make their appearance in the human world, while their physical identities appear

without any activity of their own in the unique shape of the body and the sound of the

voice” (HC 179). This is because speech and action give men/women a means of

distinguishing themselves, rather than merely being distinct. They are the modes in which

we appear to each other as subjects, rather than as objects, and it is speech and action that

render our life a human life, one with meaning: “a life without speech and without action

… is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer

lived among men” (HC 176). It is through speech and action that we make our presence

felt in the world, or that we “insert” ourselves into it. This insertion into the world

through speech and action is likened to a second birth because the impulse to act “springs

from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we

respond by beginning something new on our own initiative” (HC 177). To act is to

therefore begin, to initiate, to set something into motion, and the reason for this is

ontological insofar as to be for man is to act. This is related to the facticity of freedom, or

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the Heideggerian idea that freedom is something that we are rather than something we

possess, because we can only act in such a way because we are ontologically free: “with

the creation of man, the principle of creation came into the world itself, which, of course,

is only another way of saying that the principle of freedom was created when man was

created and not before” (HC 177). There, is therefore, a relation between freedom - our

ability to act in the world or to begin something new - and our paradoxical constitution as

beings that are singular and plural.

Speech and action are only possible on the basis that man is unique, or for my purposes in

this thesis, individual, ontologically free, and also sharing the world with others. Arendt

writes:

… with each birth something uniquely new comes into the world. With respect to
this somebody who is unique it can be truly said that nobody was there before. If
action as beginning corresponds to the fact of birth, if it is the actualisation of the
human condition of natality, then speech corresponds to the fact of distinctness
and is the actualisation of the human condition of plurality, that is, of living as a
distinct and unique being among equals. (HC 178)

Action thus corresponds to natality and speech corresponds to the fact that we are unique

individuals who live among others, because to speak, is to speak to or address someone

else. It refers to dialogue and exchange with others and forms the basis of collaborative

political action.

For Arendt, speech and action are related insofar as the human act must at the same time,

contain an answer to the question “who are you?” Each act must be accompanied by an

actor, by a person who must be identifiable as the one responsible for that act: “without

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the accompaniment of speech … action would not only lose its revelatory character, but,

and by the same token, it would lose its subject” (HC 178). For this reason, speech and

action are central to each other, as without speech, action would not be action because

there would no longer be an actor; simultaneously, the actor is only possible if he is at the

same time the speaker of the words: “the action he begins is humanely disclosed by the

world, and though his deed can be perceived in its brute physical appearance without

verbal accompaniment, it becomes relevant only through the spoken word in which he

identifies himself as the actor, announcing what he does, has done, and intends to do”

(HC 179). This does not however, mean that the actor can do whatever he or she likes;

the fact that the actor is identified as such through speech means that one must also be

responsible for the way in which one acts or conducts oneself.

Speech and action only find expression in the context of intersubjectivity. We only use

speech and action in the context of human togetherness. However, the act here is not lost

in a collectivity – there has to be a disclosure of the agent in the act, otherwise, action

loses its specific character and becomes one form of achievement among others. Action

must be able to disclose the “who” – the unique and distinct identity of the agent: “action

without a name, a ‘who’ attached to it, is meaningless” (HC 179). To be free for Arendt is

to not only participate in political life, but to also be responsible for one’s participation

and conduct. One cannot disavow responsibility for the act because the agent, as

identifiable, must claim it. The freedom that she is referring to is not the freedom as

conceived by liberal political theory, where the subject is free by virtue of certain rights

that are conferred on it by virtue of attributes such as rationality or citizenship. Rather it

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is freedom that human subjects are by virtue of their ability to speak and act, or to

conduct themselves.

This conception of political action is consistent with and elaborates the basis of the

ontological conception of human freedom as outlined by Heidegger. Freedom here is not

something we have like a property, but is something we are. As I have demonstrated

throughout this thesis, what we are is existence. In this way, freedom is existence. It is

something tangible, concrete, something that appears to us. As Arendt has shown, the

place where it appears is the space of political action. Which is to suggest that Arendt’s

motivation is partly ontological insofar as she wants to recover a particular way of being

in the world.

In this chapter, I have demonstrated the way in which Heidegger’s thinking can lend

itself to political considerations. Freedom conceived as something that we are rather than

as something we possess means that it is an inescapable aspect of humanity. This does

not however, render it meaningless or render us passive in the face of it.25 Rather, this

freedom, as Arendt has shown, only appears in the context of action, and more

25
See for example, Merleau-Ponty’s critique of Sartre on the question of human freedom as ontological.
Merleau-Ponty argues in response that such a conception of freedom rules it out altogether. If it is the case
that our freedom is the same in all our actions, our passions, and if it is not to be measured in terms of our
conduct, then it follows that that the slave is as free living in fear and servitude as by escaping from it. If
this is the case, then we cannot argue that there is such a thing as free action, because freedom lies before
all actions. Freedom cannot appear as such, from out of the action, which implies that it is everywhere,
insofar as it is something that we are, as part of our ontological constitution, but it is also nowhere because
it cannot find expression or a place in our concrete lives. The second consequence of this is that the idea of
action disappears, and with it, the idea of choice. To choose is to choose something, to act in the concrete
world. But a freedom which has no need to be exercised because it is already given, or already acquired
could not commit itself in such a way that it had to act or choose. It doesn’t have to commit itself because it
knows that the following instant will find it, come what may, just as free and indeterminate.

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specifically, political action. It is here that the themes I have been pursuing come

together: individuation, responsibility, intersubjectivity, ethics and political action.

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Conclusion

This thesis has argued that Heidegger’s concept of individuation is not another form of

metaphysical solipsism, is not inconsistent with his notion of Mitsein and is not

inherently unethical. Rather than downplay the notion of individuation in Heidegger’s

work, I have argued throughout that this notion of individuation contains an ethical

moment insofar as it is about taking responsibility for one’s existence. As I have argued,

to be for Heidegger, is to be responsible for the conduct of oneself.

The first chapter demonstrated the way in which Heidegger’s notion of individuation

substantially differs from the form of individuation or metaphysical solipsism found in

Descartes, Kant and even Husserl. I did this by drawing attention to the way the concept

of individuation is only intelligible in relation to the concept of Mitsein. My point of

departure in this chapter was the way in which the problem of individuation arises in

philosophy, primarily by way of Descartes and Husserl, and Heidegger’s critique of it.

However, as I pointed out, Heidegger’s rethinking of this notion is not without its

problems. While Heidegger does point out that he does not intend the account of

individuation to exclude our ontological relations with others, it nevertheless does not

address the tension that arises between the concept of Mitsein and the individuation that

emerges in the discussion of anxiety, authenticity and being-toward-death and the tension

between the paradoxical account of authentic individuation as being tied to the destiny or

fate of the Volk.

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This tension between being-with and individuation, as I pointed out in the second

chapter, has led to a plethora of interpretations, which either attempt to reconcile the

tension or argue that Heidegger’s inconsistency implicates him in the tradition of

subjectivity he sought to evade. In this chapter, I examined the various interpretations

that have attempted to rescue Heidegger from the charge of solipsism/individualism, most

notably, those of Herbert Dreyfus and Frederick Olafson. I then explored some of the

problems with both these interpretations before examining the criticisms made by

Jacques Taminiaux and Emmanuel Levinas. Both thinkers argue that rather than

overcome the epistemological subject of metaphysics, Heidegger’s ontology merely

reproduces metaphysical solipsism. Consequently, Heideggerian individuation forecloses

a relation to the other.

I then examined Jean-Luc Nancy’s account of Mitsein or community in terms of the

paradoxical logic of the singular. I used Nancy’s concept of the singular to argue that

while Heidegger does state that Dasein is individuated in authenticity and death, in terms

of being completely alone, cut off and isolated, Dasein’s individuation is precisely what

opens it up to a relation with the other. That is, individuation is only possible because it is

concomitant with being-with. The value of Heidegger’s analytic, I argued, is that it

demonstrates that the solipsistic ego of metaphysics is both an ontological and logical

impossibility. In doing so, it opens up a space for an ethics of individual responsibility for

the conduct of oneself. This chapter concluded that individuation is not inconsistent with

the account of being-with.

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Before turning to an examination of the way in which Heidegger’s thinking can inform

ethical and political action, it was necessary to explore the relation between ontology and

ethics and politics. This was necessary for primarily two reasons. Firstly, on account of

Heidegger’s claims that ontology cannot articulate or inform an ethics or praxis and

secondly, on account of Levinas’ claims that Heidegger’s prioritisation of the ontological

subordinates the primary relation to the other to that of Being, thereby bypassing,

subsuming or effacing the alterity of the other. On account of Heidegger’s concern with

understanding Being from out of Dasein’s being-in-the-world and being-with-others,

Heideggerian ontology reduces Dasein’s relation to the other to comprehension.

In this chapter, I argued against Levinas’ claim that for Heidegger, the relation I have

with Being by virtue of the ontological difference takes priority over the relation I have to

the other. On the contrary, I suggested that it is only by virtue of Being that I can have an

ethical relation to the other in the first place; a conclusion Levinas eventually reaches in

his final engagement with Heidegger. I demonstrated the way in which the ethical

moment in Heidegger occurs when Dasein is summoned by the call of Being to take

responsibility for its Being; because Dasein is also a Mitsein, as previously argued in

chapter two, its responsibility for its own being necessarily entails a responsibility for the

other. The consequence of this argument is that ontology and ethics are perhaps not as

incongruent as Levinas’ contends.

Having established that individuation is consistent with the notion of Mitsein and that

ontology does not efface ethical and political considerations, the second half of this thesis

268
attempted to put Heidegger to work in an ethical and political sense. I demonstrated the

possible ethical implications to his thinking through an account of embodiment and the

political implications through Heidegger’s account of freedom. In chapter four, I argued

against criticisms which maintain that Heidegger is guilty of reproducing the

metaphysical subject because of his refusal to address the question of Dasein’s

embodiment. I suggested that the fact that the body is not directly addressed in

Heidegger’s work does not mean that it is not consistently invoked in other ways. My

argument suggests that rather than abandon the body in Being and Time, Heidegger

inadvertently creates a space for it; a space that opens, rather than closes ethical

obligation.

To do this, I used two specific arguments made by Jean-Luc Nancy: the first is the

inadequacy of language/discourse when it comes to the question of embodiment. For

Nancy, to generate a discourse on the body falls into the dynamic it seeks to evade

because it ends up reproducing the body as an object of knowledge, rather than as an

expression of meaning. Nancy conversely conceives of the body as meaning rather than

as having meaning. The second is his reconceptualisation of the body in terms of the

concepts of touch, spacing and ‘corpus.’

The interplay between the sensibility of touch and spacing, where the sensibility of touch

is what opens up a spacing between bodies or between Dasein’s as individuals, is, I

argued, also discernable in Heidegger’s texts. By examining Heidegger’s radical, albeit

sparse analysis of space/place, I suggested that the phenomenology of lived space found

269
in Being and Time and of practical activities involving the human body, activities of the

hands such as touching and grasping, handling and holding, writing and caressing, all

presuppose the body. Given Heidegger’s dissatisfaction with the way in which the body

has been conceptualised in philosophy, I suggested that Heidegger’s silence on the

question of embodiment can be read as an attempt to allow the body to emerge from its

objectification in more subtle and implicit ways; ways that share close affinities with

Nancy’s development of a notion of corpus.

In chapter five, I argued that Heidegger’s ontology of freedom potentially opens to a

theory of political action. Here, I argued that Heidegger’s removal of freedom from the

ontology of self-presence and his alternative conception of it provides us with a way of

thinking freedom not in terms of a specific set or determinations or rights that are

conferred by virtue of certain characteristics. Rather, freedom becomes the very essence

of existence, and by implication, community. While I conceded that this intersubjective

dimension to freedom is only offered as a sketch in Heidegger, I demonstrated the way in

which this can be fleshed out in terms of Hannah Arendt’s thinking on freedom,

intersubjectivity and political action. It is in Heidegger’s theory of freedom, I suggested,

that the concepts of individuation as singularity, Mitsein, and responsibility come

together to inform a theory of political and ethical action.

Our individuality, as I have showed, is only intelligible in the context of our relations to

others with whom we share a world, and a vision for how we want this world to be. As

individuals, we are responsible for not only contributing to this vision, primarily by

means of political action, conceived in terms of deliberation, speech, dialogue, and

270
fighting for the principles we choose to live by, but we must also assume responsibility

for this action. As I have argued throughout, the ethical moment I want to capture in

Heidegger is not one as ambitious as changing the world or assuming obligations on

behalf of others. Rather, it is an ethics of responsibility for one’s own existence; because

this existence is lived among others, it entails a responsibility for others. This collective

responsibility manifests itself in the world of ethical and political action.

271
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