DERRIDA ON THE QUESTION OF BEING

(A discussion on Derrida’s On Spirit: Heidegger and the Question)

Joel C. Sagut

Preliminary remarks

Among the instances where Derrida has clearly endeavored to talk about philosophical
issues, is when he talked about the issue of being particularly in the philosophy of Martin
Heidegger. Derrida’s thoughts about Heidegger’s being is preserved in a book entitled,
Of Spirit.

The book, Of Spirit, reveals Derrida’s reading of Heidegger’s view on Being. Derrida
began the book with an inquiry about the term, avoiding. Hence, he asks, What is
avoiding?1 Derrida mentions of avoiding because he noticed that Heidegger seemed to
display an ambiguous attitude towards the word, spirit. He used it a few times and yet he
placed it in quotation marks: it’s as if saying that he does not really want to use the
term, that is, he avoids the term. However, while Heidegger seemeed to be very cautious
about his employment of the term, spirit, he seemed to have also acknowledged that he
could not really avoid it.

Furthermore, Derrida also noticed that the word spirit is not really a central theme in
Heidegger’s philosophy. He himself says, “spirit, so it seems at least, is not a great word
of Heidegger. It is not his theme. It would seem that he was able, precisely, to avoid it.”2
But despite this, Derrida justifies his attempt to speak about the Spirit in Heidegger’s
philosophy based on three grounds: (1) the term’s significance in clarifying the issues of
language and translations, (2) its significance in politics, and (3) its frequent reference in
many religions.

With these things at hand, Derrida believes that the issue on the spirit remains to be one
of the open questions in Heidgger, and so, he justifies himself in delivering the topic.

On the word Spirit

The first question that Derrida would like to address was obviously, What is spirit? Again
Derrida noted that the question has never been explicitly raised by Heidegger.
Heidegger has no particular work devoted exclusively on the question of the spirit.
Derrida even says, “What is called spirit? What does spirit call up?... – the title of the
book that Heidegger never wrote.”3 But Derrida argues that Heidegger intended to
describe the spirit as that which is “not the thing, spirit is not the body... it is opposed to
a thing, to the metaphysical determination of thing-ness.” 4 How does Heidegger then
speak about the spirit?

The question on spirit rests on the issue about the Dasein. Heidegger thought that the
issue of the Dasein is the only possible means whereby philosophy can recapture its
original vocation to think about Being. When he criticized the entire philosophical
tradition of the West as onto-theological and thus spoke of the destruktion of
metaphysics,5 Heidegger proposed an ontical turn to such an ontological endeavor. The
1
Jacques Derrida, Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 1989), p.1. Henceforth, this book shall be referred to simply as Spirit.
2
Spirit, p.3.
3
Spirit, p.14.
4
Spirit, p.15.
5
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time trans. by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson
(Tubingen: Neomarius Verlag, 1963), p.41.

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ontical turn rests in his attempt to first investigate the nature of the Dasein. He
characterizes the dasein as “an entity which does not just occur among other entities.
Rather, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an
issue for it... understanding of Being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s Being.” 6
Heidegger then says that if philosophy has to be salvaged from its degradation into onto-
theology, then it has to talk about the dasein as the only being that is capable of asking
the Being.7

Heidegger, though he does not intend to echo the Aritotelian hierarchy of beings, also
speaks of the distinctions of beings: non-sentient beings, animals and man. Derrida
himself recalls three theses related to this claim:8 (1) The stone is without a world, (2)
the animal is poor in world, (3) man is world-forming. The world which Heidegger spoke
of here is the spirit, that is the capacity to establish the self as a subject who can
become fully aware of the as such (essence in Scholastic terms) of the entities that one
encounters. When Heidegger says for example that the stone is without a world, he
spoke of this without as a total absence of the awareness of one’s relation to the world
around it. As when a stone is placed within a group of stones, none of these stones could
have that awareness of being-with the other stones. Furthermore, when Heidegger says
that an animal is poor in world, he speaks of the poverty here not in the sense of lack of
perfection or the inadequacy of the stone’s degree of perfection as when compared to
man, but rather also about the lack of the animal’s capacity to ask the question about its
own Being and the Being of the world that it encounters. The difference, which
constitutes the poverty of the animal, then between animals and the person is not about
the quantity of the world, or the awareness that an animal has on the world around it,
but on the quality of such awareness. Animals look at the world in a way that is entirely
other than / different from the way a person would look at the world. Derrida himself
says, “But this lack is not to be evaluated as a quantitative relation to the entities of the
world. It’s not that the animals have lesser relationship, a more limited access to entities,
it has an other relationship.”9 Hence, in a sense, there is also a certain degree of not
having-a-world for animals, even if such without-having a world is not the same as the
stone’s being without a world. Animals precisely are poor in the world because they do
not have the awareness of the entities as such. The question of Being is never available
to animals. Such question can only be made available to man, the Dasein. Heidegger
reiterated the privileged place of the Dasein when he says, “The dasein, cannot at all be
interrogated as such but he question, what is this? We gain access to its being only if we
ask, who is it? The dasein is not constituted by whatness but – if we may coin the
expression – by whoness.”10

Hence, Heidegger’s discussion of the spirit is primarily anchored on his existential (the
detour, the ontical) question on the Dasein. The Dasein is that singular being that asks
its Being and as such resists all forms of “thingfication.” Derrida himself says, “now
precisely, this entity which we are, this “we” which, at the beginning of the existential
analytic, must have no name other than Da-sein, is chosen for the position of exemplary
entity only from the experience of the question, the possiblity of the Fragen...”11

Spirit and Language

6
Being and Time, p.32.
7
Heidegger claims in the Being and Time that the “dasein is an entity which does not
just occur among other entities. Rather, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its
very Being, that Being is an issue for it.” (p. 78)
8
Cf. Spirit, p.48.
9
Spirit, p.49.
10
Martin Heidegger, Basic Problems of Phenomenology (Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press, 1982), p. 120.
11
Spirit, p.17.

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The Dasein then is the only being that is capable of speech, and such capacity is the
Dasein’s primordial means in raising the question about its Being. Hence, language is an
important issue in the unfolding of the spirit in the history of philosophy in the West.
Language becomes the Dasein’s means of articulating its own (particular) relations with
the world. But certainly, since a person’s awareness of the world is always particular, for
the Dasein’s freedom is primarily characterized by minenesss,12 there would also be
variations in the way one’s awareness of the world is articulated in accordance with the
variation of language and cultures of peoples. But what do we say about the variations of
language? Was there a significance in the translations of the words pneuma or spiritus
into the German Geist? Heidegger believes that in every attempt to capture Being in
language, there is always a matter of “hiddenness.” 13 Hahn says, “just as our view of any
phenomenon presumes a point-of-view, and therefore a point-of-blindedness and
disclosedness, so with language.”14 This is what Derrida would call as the differance.
Derrida says, “This does not mean, as he has been taken to say, that there is no
meaning or sense in linguistic acts, only that these are not discoverable as ideally and
immediately coincident with each other but always deffered and in the process of
becoming with respect to different senses and meaning.”15Mike Myers would even also
argue that since Being is not a thing whose existence is complete and objectified, it
always left something unsaid and hidden. Being would always have a ‘reserve’.16

Furthermore, this means that translations cannot really hope to become as faithfaul as it
may want to be. Translations in a sense is always a kind of a mis-appropriation or at
least a re-appropriation of the meaning of the terms involved. Hence, Heidegger
attributes a certain degree of difference, or a falling away, from the original meaning of
the term spirit as it has been translated and transported to many languages in history.
Yet, at the end of the series of these translations, Heidegger found the use of the
German word Geist as something closer to the original meaning than the Greek word,
pneuma and the Latin, spiritus. For Heidegger, these words, though they appeared in the
earlier part of the history of philosophy, were heavily affected by the metaphysics of
Plato and so, they have had also somehow already thingfied the spirit.

Spirit and Politics

Derrida claims that Heiegger affirms the role of spirit in his Rectorship Address in 1933.
In fact, Derrida claims that at this particular moment, Heidegger has already lifted the
quotation marks around the term. Derrida describes the Rectorship Address in these
words, “the splendor of the staging celebrating the quotation marks’ disappearance...
And here, it makes its appearance. It presents itself. Spirit itself, spirit in its spirit and in
its letter...”17

Derrida argues that in the address, Heidegger affirms that which is truly German. In
other words, he affirms the spirit of being a German (Germanism, if we would be allowed
to use the term). The Address, we may be allowed to say, exalts the German culture. It
spells out to the German people who they are: what and where they would like to be and
12
Heidegger says, “mineness belongs to any existent dasein, and belongs to it as the
condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible.” (Being and Time, p.78).
Further, he says, “Dasein is an entity which is in each case I myself; its Being is in each
case mine.” (Being and Time, p.150).
13
Stephen Hahn, On Derrida. (USA: Wadsworth, Thomson Learning, 2002), p. 57.
14
Hahn, p.57.
15
See, Signature Event Context, 19, 21 as quoted in Hahn, p.58.
16
Max A. Myers. ‘Towards what is religious thinking underway?,’ in Deconstruction and
Theology. (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982), p.138.
17
Spirit, p. 31.

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to go. Sadly however, I believe that such affirmation may have also resulted to
exclusions of those who are not really Germans. Hence, those who could not identify with
the German spirit, they become literally excluded. They were expelled out of the
Germany, and many of them were even annihilated.

The Address was a real manifestation of the spirit. Derrida describes the spirit as a
flame: it catches fire and it sets a thing on fire. The German spirit has grown and has
inflammed the people. The people embraced the mission of becoming truly and fully
German. Derrida himself says, “spirit can do nothing other than afffirm itself – and this...
in the movement of authentication which wish themselves to be properly German.”18
Identifying themselves as Germans, the people have taken upon themselves this
spiritual mission of affirming who they are. With that sense of mission, they have
become determined. There is now a kind of force, and even a resolution to persevere in
their mission as a people. With that resolution, the people acquires a degree of firmness
in their decisions.

Spirit and Religion

Heidegger was quite explicit in his rejection of Christian philosophy.19 In fact, a good deal
of his Being and Time are devoted to the discussion of the Dasein as an attempt to
overthrow the onto-theological tradition of the West. Hence, when Heidegger spoke of
the spirit, even with the concious removal of the quotation marks, Heidegger was not
certainly talking about the Christan, Jewish and the Islamic spirit.

Heidegger was primarily enticing the people to journey towards their authenticity, which
lies in the personal and existential exercise of their freedom rather than on their
submissive obedience to their faith. The Dasein is certainly a spiritual being not because
he posseses a rational/human soul, but because the Dasein is constantly aware of his
Being, and seeks to maintain his authentic human existence. Real spirituality is not
found in some beliefs to a higher being, but on the affirmation of one’s existence through
an authentic exercise of one’s freedom.

However, Heidegger warns that the spirit can also be evil. In fact, he explains that the
evil is not matter but spirit. This is perhaps with reference to the spirituality of some
Christians who despise the body and the material things as evil. On the other hand,
Heidegger explains that matter, the body, cannot be evil. Furthermore, Heidegger also
even claims that animals, as not spiritual in the sense of the Dasein as spiritual, “can
never be wicked.”20 Wickedness can only belong to man, the Dasein. Hence, Heidegger
poses this caution on man: “Man on the contrary is that being who can overturn the
elements which compose his essence, overturn the ontological fit of his Dasein and
disjoin it... It is therefore to man that is reserved the dubious privilege of being able to
fall lower than animal, while the animal is not capable of this mal-version of
principles...”21

Conclusion

If we are to retrace Heidegger’s discussion on the issue of spirit, we cannot separate

from it the ontical priority of the queston of Dasein. To reiterate, Heidegger claims that
only the Dasein can become spiritual. Heidegger places this great privilege on man, as

18
Spirit, p. 33.
19
Heidegger in his Introduction to Metaphysics. (London: Yale University Press, 1959),
p.7 even calls Christian metaphysics as a square-circle and a misunderstanding.
20
Spirit, p. 103.
21
Spirit, p.113-114.

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the only being who can be capable of raising the question of its Being. Only man can be
Dasein. Only man can be world-forming.

Yet, Heidegger left us with a warning or a precaution. The dasein may also fall out of its
authenticity and become inauthentic. Heidegger says,

The everyday interpretation of the self however has a tendency to

understand itself in terms of the world with which it is concerned.
When the Dasein has itself in view ontically, it fails to see itself in
relation to the kind of Being of that entity which it is itself... for as
falling, it (Dasein) flees in the face of itself into the ‘they’. When the I
talks in the natural manner, this is performed by the theyself. What
expresses itself in the I is the self which proximally and for the most
part, i am not authentically. When one is absorbed in the everyday
multiplicity and the rapid succession of that with which one is
concerned, the Self becomes the self-forgetful.22

This simply means that the Dasein has to maintain its vigilance towards the question of
being. Otherwise, s/he would fall into inauthenticity. Furthermore, Derrida and Heidegger
warn their readers that the dasein, which we are ourselves, is also the only entity that is
capable of commiting evil. Only the spiritual being, the Dasein, can become wicked. The
kind of choices we make will affect the world around us, and so we have to be very
careful. We need to be very careful because even in times when we think that we are
doing the right thing, we may still unknowingly cause atrocities towards the others.
Hence, we need to be eternally mindful and careful of our faithfulness to our being.
Heidegger claims that we need to remain constantly vigilant of the authenticity of our
finite human existence.

22
Being and Time, p. 150.