Heidegger and the source(s) of intelligibility

Continental Philosophy Review

Volumn 31, Issue 4, 1998, Pages 369-386

  Keller, Pierre ^a   Weberman, David ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN MADISON   (United States)

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Indexed keywords

EID: 54749149395     PISSN: 13872842     EISSN: 15731103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010029807238     Document Type: Review

References (57)

1. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1979). References to this work are indicated by "SZ" and the page number. Pagination of the German edition is included in the margins of both English translations. Our translations follow the translation of Macquarrie and Robinson's Being and Time with some modifications.
2. On the centrality of intelligibility to Heidegger's later occupation with "Ereignis," see Thomas Sheehan, "On Movement and Destruction," The Monist 64 (October 1981), 536f.
3. By "Wittgensteinian," we mean interpretations that stress the linguistic and social dimensions of Dasein. The following works are representative of this interpretation: Karl-Otto Apel, "Wittgenstein und Heidegger. Die Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein und der Sinnlosigkeitsverdacht gegen alle Metaphysik," in Otto Pöggeler (ed.), Heidegger (Königstein: Athenäum, 1984), 358-396;
4. Robert Brandom, "Heidegger's Categories in Being and Time," in Hubert L. Dreyfus and Harrison Hall (eds.), Heidegger. A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 45-64;
5. Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT, 1991);
6. Charles Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1983);
7. John Haugeland, "Heidegger on Being a Person" in Dreyfus and Hall, Heidegger: A Critical Reader, 1-26.
8. Heidegger's "Rede" has been translated as "discourse, " "discursiveness," "talk," and "telling." We shall translate it as "discourse" throughout.
9. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 111.
10. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 115.
11. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 118.
12. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge, 118, 126.
13. For a very helpful discussion of the constitutive view of language in later Heidegger, see Charles Guignon, "Heidegger: Language as the House of Being" in Chip Sills (ed.), The Philosophy of Discourse (Portsmouth, N.H.: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1992), 163-187, esp. 177-183.
14. Heidegger: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs: Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 20 (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979), 365;
15. English trans. by Theodore Kisiel, The History of the Concept of Time (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), 265.
16. Heidegger, Prolegomena, p. 361; English trans., 262.
17. Dreyfus uses different words at different times. "Everyday" is sometimes replaced by the term "average." In place of "social," Dreyfus occasionally says "shared" (terms rarely employed by Heidegger) or "public." Dreyfus sometimes attaches to "practices" (rarely used by Heidegger) the word "background. " For convenience, we stick to the phrase "everyday social practices."
18. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, 154, 161.
19. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, 154f., 161.
20. Dreyfus even goes so far as to identify "being" with "the intelligibility correlative with our everyday background practices." See Being-in-the-World, 10.
21. Frederick Olafson, "Heidegger á la Wittgenstein or 'Coping' with Professor Dreyfus," Inquiry 37 (1994): 45-64, here 55.
22. On the differences between the interpretations of Dreyfus and Olafson, see Taylor Carman, "On Being Social: A Reply to Olafson," Inquiry 37 (1994): 203-223.
23. Olafson, "Heidegger á la Wittgenstein," 55.
24. On "deficient modes," see Klaus Hartmann, "The Logic of Deficient and Eminent Modes in Heidegger," Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 5 (1974): 118-134
25. and David Weberman, The Pragmatic Turn in Early Heidegger, Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1990, 23-29.
26. Olafson, "Heidegger á la Wittgenstein," 59.
27. See Prolegomena, 339f.; English trans. 246.
28. For further passages supporting this interpretation, see Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, 142-146.
29. Olafson misses the constitutive role of das Man when he writes in Heidegger and the Philosophy of Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 146: "[T]he promise of the strong theory of Mitsein to which Heidegger commits himself in Being and Time is simply not realized.... Although it is understood that it is an essential feature of Dasein that the entities it uncovers are, at least in principle, the same entities in the same world that other like entities uncover, ... there is no real account of the way in which my uncovering an entity as an entity depends on someone else's doing so as well." As discussed, the link between my and someone else's uncovering lies in the fact that we usually are das Man and have its understanding.
30. Heidegger's discussion of das Man in 1923, characterizes that notion entirely in negative terms of conformism. See Heidegger, Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizität): Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 63, (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1988), 31f., 85f.
31. On Heidegger's earliest deployment of the concept of das Man in his 1922 report to Paul Natorp, see Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California, 1993), 249f.
32. See SZ 370: In the preceding analyses we have often used the locution "first and for the most part." "First" signifies the way in which Dasein is "manifest" in the being with others of publicness, even if it has also "fundamentally" existentielly "overcome" everydayness. "For the most part" signifies the way in which Dasein shows itself for anyone, not always, but "as a rule."
33. On this distinction, see also Joseph Fell, "The Familiar and the Strange" in Dreyfus and Hall, Heidegger. A Critical Reader, 66
34. and Weberman, The Pragmatic Turn, 64-87.
35. Heidegger often speaks of das Man as something which we can "bring ourselves back from" (Sichzurückholen) (SZ 268) or out of which we can be summoned (sich-aufrufenlassen aus...) (SZ 299), further confirming that Heidegger sees an alternative to the ways of das Man.
36. This interpretation was first developed by Charles Guignon. See his analysis in "Heidegger's 'Authenticity' Revisited," Review of Metaphysics 38 (December, 1984): 321-339, especially 329-330. For evidence in support of this reading, see SZ 268, 299, 308, and 297f.: "To this lostness [in das Man] one's own Dasein can appeal, and this appeal can be understood in the way of resoluteness. But in that case this authentic disclosedness modifies both the way in which the 'world' is disclosed and the way in which the Dasein-with of others is disclosed. The 'world' ... does not become another one 'in its content,' nor does the circle of others get exchanged for a new one; but both ... are now given a definite character in terms of their ownmost potentiality-for-being-them-selves."
37. The point is not that we could ever peel off or set aside everydayness and das Man and find a source of intelligibility that would provide wholly different concepts and practices. Rather we are saying that das Man gives rise to one-sided, distortional and limited levelling tendencies that can be corrected by appeal to other sources of intelligibility.
38. See Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, 353. While Dreyfus acknowledges that Division II of SZ might appear to contradict this assertion, we contend that the limited of everydayness and das Man is already clearly indicated in Division I.
39. Our thanks to Taylor Carman for this point.
40. See SZ 230 where care is described as "the primordial structure of the being of Dasein" ("die ursprüngliche Seinsverfassung des Daseins") and Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, 406ff.
41. Heidegger, Prolegemonena, 421, English trans. xxx.
42. Interpreters differ as to whether Heidegger's analysis of originary temporality provides an account of all modes of existence or only authentic modes. We are inclined to agree with Blattner that originary temporality underlies all instances of care, authentic and inauthentic. See William D. Blattner, "Existential Temporality in Being and Time (Why Heidegger is not a Pragmatist)" in Dreyfus and Hall, Heidegger: A Critical Reader, 99-129.
43. See also SZ 301, 323, 326. We agree with Margot Fleischer's rejection of Heidegger's claim that his Division II discussion of temporality is necessitated by Division I's failure to treat Dasein and its care structure as a totality (Ganzheit). We would argue however (concurring with Dahlstrom's response to Fleischer) that the discussion of temporality does add to Division I by showing how temporality is presupposed by and integral to Heidegger's concept of care. See Margot Fleischer, Die Zeitanalysen in Heideggers "Sein und Zeit." Aporien, Probleme und ein Ausblick (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1991)
44. and Daniel O. Dahlstrom, "Heidegger's Concept of Temporality," Review of Metaphysics 49 (1995): 95-115.
45. Heidegger, Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit: Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1976), 410.
46. See also Prolegomena, 442, English trans. 319.
47. For a probing and original discussion of Heidegger's concept of Gewesenheit and how it replaces the conventional notion of the past, see Thomas Sheehan, "How (Not) to Read Heidegger," American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly LXIX (1995): 275-294.
48. See Pierre Keller, "Heidegger's Critique of the Vulgar Notion of Time," International Journal of Philosophical Studies 4 (1996): 43-66
49. and Sheehan, "How (Not) to Read Heidegger."
50. Heidegger, Logik, 403.
51. See Edmund Husserl, Cartesian Meditations (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1995), §§17-18.
52. Heidegger, Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie: Gesamtausgabe, vol. 24 (Frankfurt a.M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975), 452f.;
53. English trans. by Albert Hofstadter, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 318.
54. Heidegger, Grundprobleme, 456f.; English trans. 321.
55. Heidegger, Grundprobleme 463; English trans. 325.
56. For more discussion of temporality as the source of intelligibility, see Pierre Keller, Husserl, Heidegger and Human Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
57. We would like to thank Taylor Carman, Charles Guignon, Sabina Knight, Robert Scharff and two anonymous referees of this journal for valuable suggestions on earlier drafts.