HEIDEGGER ON THE QUESTION ABOUT THE MEANING OF BEING

_____________

A Term Paper

Presented to the Faculty

of the Department of Philosophy

College of Arts and Sciences

University of San Carlos

Cebu City, Philippines

_____________

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Course

Metaphysics

_____________

by

GLENN REY DISMAS ANINO

March 2011
 HEIDEGGER ON THE QUESTION ABOUT THE MEANING OF BEING

The question of Being is at the center of Heidegger’s thought. His philosophical

project starts from the situation where he finds himself in an experience of a certain kind

of confusion and perplexity concerning the matter on what does being actually mean. In

Being and Time, Heidegger begins by remembering Plato's puzzling character of to on -

being or what is: “‘For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you

use the expression “being”. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now

become perplexed.”1 This perplexity refers to the dissatisfaction of the traditional view of

ontology which causes our inability to understand Being. Thus, Heidegger observes that

at present we no longer really know what the expression being mean. How did this

perplexity come about? First, Heidegger goes back to Plato’s ancient question about the

meaning of the expression ‘being’ and relates it to our present understanding. The

conclusion is that in the early period philosophers are occupied in the investigation of the

meaning of Being and after a long time that impulse of wonder and awe has been

forgotten. We have forgotten Being because we no longer bother to have a sense of

wonder and ask the question about Being. “What is Being?... This question has today

been forgotten.”2 There is an experience of forgetfulness of Being [Vergessenheit].

Heidegger’s observation about our forgetfulness has not simply come out from jumping

into conclusion but rather this particular philosopher knows the history of philosophy

itself. The age of forgetfulness can be traced back to its origin in history.

1
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Henceforth
referred to as BT. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), quoted as epigraph in Preface; 19.
2
BT §1, 2; 21.
 The question what is Being has already been raised and preoccupied the ancient

Greek philosophers among the so called Presocratics in the like of Parmenides and

Heraclitus. Starting from them, there was already the initial impulse of the understanding

of Being. However, that initial impulse which is also the genuine questioning about

Being has been lost or forgotten. How did this forgetfulness of Being happen? According

to Heidegger, the forgetfulness of Being started when the Greek philosophers who had

been glorified by the West for over two thousand years approached Being only in the

academic discipline and was heard only in the academic world. These philosophers in

particular are Plato and Aristotle. Heidegger says, “What these two men achieved was to

persist through many alterations and ‘retouching’ down to the ‘logic’ of Hegel.”3 The

words alterations and retouching refer to the series of thinking and rethinking about the

meaning of Being where it only becomes a subject matter, a theme, and only a matter of

speculation among intellectual men. Each philosopher who is interested in metaphysics

ontology makes his own ontological construction. In the parlance of Friedrich Nietzsche,

western rationalization only emphasizes the Apollonian side of culture while it disregards

the Dionysian. Apollonian is the principle of reason, order, and to an extent it is the

principium individuationis (‘principle of individuation’) because reason is structured to

have a distinction. Thus, Apollonian is concerned on science while Dionysian is on art.

Nietzsche’s criticism offers a new image of what it is to be a philosopher, that is, not the

Apollonian academician but Dionysian. So Nietzsche criticizes Plato for the latter’s

condemnation on the role of the poet. Just like Nietzsche, Heidegger also reacts to the

history of the West as the history of rationalization and abstraction and so his later

3
Ibid.
thought has a trace of Nietzschean thought especially in What are Poets for?. However, I

should not go beyond from his metaphysics to aesthetics.

What is clear is that we are suffering from the age of forgetfulness, that is, we no

longer know what Being is. Who should be blame for this forgetfulness of ours? At first,

it is our fault because we no longer take the courage in confronting the question and we

make excuses to escape by hiding behind the unquestioned presuppositions. However,

these presuppositions are actually not our own making but a product of all the layers and

conceptual trappings which have been the product of the history of ontology. In this case,

we can say that it is not only our fault but also from the history of traditional ontology

itself that conditioned us to forget the meaning of Being. This is the contention of

Heidegger as he criticizes the early philosophical tradition in their great regard for reason.

Plato introduces the dualism between appearance and reality which shapes the

thinking of the next generation. This dualism is depicted in one of the most cited chapters

of Plato’s Republic, The Allegory of the Cave. He conceives reality as something which

is unchanging and eternal that cannot be found here but only in the World of Ideas. This

true reality can only be grasped by the rational part of the human soul. On the other hand,

this world is considered as the appearance only. And so Being as unchanging must not be

in time but something outside time and contingency.

Aristotle defines metaphysics or the First Philosophy as “a science which inquires

into the ultimate causes, principles, and reason of all things in the light of human reason

alone.”4 This means that through reason, science has been founded. Though this science,

it shapes and dominates the history of civilization while at the same time science

marginalizes the humanitarian side in the quest for truth and the meaning of our
4
Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 982a.
existence. How did the dream of the Greeks which is science leads us to the estrangement

to ourselves? One great factor was Aristotle who used the method of abstraction in order

to define Being. According to this method, the activity of abstraction happens when “the

intellect denudes the phantasm or the image of its individuating notes and thereby

grasping or apprehending only the essence of the thing. The end result of the activity is

but an abstract idea.” In the degrees of abstraction, metaphysics which is concerned on

Being is the most abstract of all. That is why human nature is rationality in order to grasp

those ideas.

Rene Descartes introduces to the West the dualism between mind and body. Just

like Aristotle before him, he defines man as a “thinking substance” by his statement

“Cogito ergo sum,” I think therefore I am.5 In this case, humans are autonomous

conscious subject in the objective world thereby he is an independent entity. Further,

Leibniz calls Being as Monad, Spinoza refers it as a Substance, and finally Hegel

considers Being as the Geist. The meaning of Being becomes “trivialized” so much so

that when one is asked what does Being mean, one simply employs any of those

ontological structures to answer what has been asked.

In such case, Heidegger provides two dogmas that has been developed that cause

this age of forgetfulness. The first is that “the question about the meaning of Being is

superfluous.”6 This means that there is no need to ask about it in the sense that there are

already constructions of meaning that have been made by intellectual philosophers. The

second dogma is that “there is a sense of neglect on the inquiry about the meaning.” 7
5
Rene Descartes, Key Philosophical Writings, (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition Limited,
1997),
Principle 7, p. 279.
6
BT §1, 2; 21.
7
Ibid.
There is a neglect because the inquiry itself is done only by those intellectuals who are

only few in the society. The inquiry about the meaning of Being is not applicable to the

common people who have not been educated. In that case, people will just rely on what

has been handed down to them by the academician. What is this something that has been

laid down to us throughout history? Heidegger calls that something which contributes to

the two dogmas as presuppositions which consist of three kinds.

The first presupposition is the upholding that “‘Being’ is the most universal

concept.”8 If Being is considered as a universal concept, this indicates that Being is

already apprehended whenever a person thinks of something because the particular

entities are subsumed in the universal abstraction of concept. Let us say the individual

species such as a dog, cat, monkey, and snake. When all of these are grouped together, all

of them can be called as animals. The classification in general is known through

abstraction such as the definition of man as a rational animal as a denominator of what is

common found in Joseph, Peter, and Andrew. How much more if we talk about Being?

Being is all that which one can or cannot think of. And so it is universal and it is put at

the very top of what Stephen Mulhall calls “ontological family tree.”9 With this in mind,

whatever people think and say is Being and so this all-inclusiveness of Being leads a

person not to bother anymore.

The second presupposition maintains that “‘Being’ is indefinable.”10 The

“undefinability” of Being resides in the proposition by which Heidegger maintains.

“‘Being’ cannot indeed be conceived as an entity, nor can it acquire such a character as to
8
BT §1, 3; 22.
9
Stephen Mulhall, Routledge Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time, (New York:
Routledge, 2005), p. 9.
10
BT §1, 4; 23.
have the term “entity” applied to it.”11 In other words, ‘Being’ is not a thing. If that is the

case, the term Being has no particular phenomenon or entity by which one can find a

concrete object of reference in order to define ‘Being.’ As such it cannot be formulated

and defined. The third presupposition is the notion that ‘Being’ is self- evident. 12 When

we say self-evident, it refers to the individual understanding of Being as a result of the

person’s everyday experience. In summary, the three presuppositions propose that it is

acceptable to forget our initial impulse on how to ask the question about the meaning of

‘Being’.

Heidegger is not happy to accept and to live in an age of forgetfulness. Thereby

he criticizes all the three presuppositions by referring to them only as an excuse in not

confronting the question of ‘Being.’ In confronting the first presupposition, Heidegger

says: ‘Being’ is the most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the one which is

clearest or that it needs no further discussion. It is rather the darkest of all.”13 If it is the

darkest of all, then it must be clarified and to do such task is to formulate the question of

‘Being’ once again. In confronting the second presupposition, “The indefinability of

Being, says Heidegger, “does not eliminate the question of its meaning; it demands that

we look that question in the face.”14 In this proposition, it seems that there is an important

question to consider. How can we find out the meaning of ‘Being’ granted that ‘Being’

cannot be defined? This ambiguity can be resolved further as we go through in this work

and arrive at the ontological difference. To look forward, the access to Being is through a

11
Ibid.
12
Ibid.
13
BT §1, 3; 23.
14
Ibid., 4; 23.
special entity that is open to the disclosure of its meaning. But what is that entity with

which we are to begin in order to have access to Being will be discussed later. The point

is that Heidegger does not accept excuse implies by the second presupposition. Again, the

question of Being has to be raised again. Concerning the disagreement against the third

presupposition, Heidegger insists that there is a need to take up the question of Being

again. Though many regarded Being as self evident, as something understood by the

individual experience, it does not guarantee that Being is understood in the deeper sense

because what seems to be obvious to us in our everyday living might lead us astray.

Heidegger argues: The very fact that we already live in an understanding of Being and

that the meaning of Being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle

to raise this question again.”15 This veiled of darkness refers to the trappings that serve as

the masks which cause the hiddeness of Being and to raise the question again means

formulate the question about Being. In this case, I see the passion that is to be found in

the task of Heidegger in his restlessness to unveil the enigma about Being in the sense

that he does not happy to be complacent with what the West has already achieved.

The task that awaits us after the realization that we have forgotten to ask about the

question of Being is “to raise anew the question of the meaning of Being!” 16 This means

that we must recover our sense of forgetfulness so that we may be able to keep in touch to

that which is fundamental in us, that is, Being. Heidegger criticizes the construction of

the meaning of Being started by Plato and Aristotle and down to Hegel up to the present.

Not only because of the inability to answer the meaning but also the forgetfulness that the

question about the meaning of Being is a question at all. With this in mind, it is not just a

15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.
simple question that simply comes out from a vacuum but indeed it is “the fundamental

question.”17 It is a matter of importance. “The question of the meaning of Being must be

formulated.”18 It must be formulated because the discipline of questioning reawakens us

from our deep slumber by being at home at one’s cherished beliefs without

subjecting them into criticisms. What makes us into the state of reawakening

by way of a question is that there is something that has been found anew to

us which has not been realized at the state of our deep slumber. Our

forgetfulness cannot be completely solved but can only be overcome. Questioning thus

is a way of finding something. Heidegger also gives an importance to the

discipline of questioning. “Every inquiry is a seeking [Suchen]. Every seeking

gets before-hand by what is sought. Inquiry is a kind of cognizant seeking for

an entity.”19 This means that when we inquire into something we are aware of

what we are seeking. Inquiry as a cognizant seeking means that there is a

direction of the inquiry. But before an inquiry begins there is already a prior

conception of something to be sought and without such a priority there will

be no questioning at all. That which is to be sought is already in the

consciousness. To make clear about this cognizant seeking, Heidegger

presents in Section 2 about how questioning will lead us into something to be

sought. The act of questioning or inquiring about something is characterized

by four following aspects. First, every question is rooted from the pre-

understanding of what it is aiming to seek about. Second, the inquiry has its

content to be identified specifically. This content is “that which is asked

17
Ibid., §2, 5; 24.
18
Ibid.
19
Ibid.
about” (das Gefragtes). Third, aside from what is asked about, there is “that

which is interrogated” (das Befragte). The fourth is the attainment of the goal

of the questioning that lies in “that which is to be found by the asking” (das

Efragte).

Heidegger illustrates further the three aspects but not on the last aspect. In first

aspect, though the inquirer has already the preliminary conception of that which is asked,

it is not yet clear. To quote Heidegger: “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.”20 It shows that our understanding of

Being is only our experience of everydayness where our understanding is only focused on

how to live as it is emphasized in the word “to be.” For the second aspect, the content

(das Gefragt) is Being itself by which Heidegger classifies into two: a) “that which

determines entities as entities, b) that on the basis of which entities are already

understood.”21 The first classification refers back to Plato’s conception of Being as

eternal and unchanging while the entities are just a mere copy of it. In that case, Being

exists outside time and contingency that can be known only through reason or the rational

part of our soul. The latter classification deviates from what is the former by the

proposition that states “entities are already understood”. Here, entities are no longer

understood that its essence will subsist and be determined by an existent Being outside

time. The entities are considered as they are on how they appear to us accordingly and

nothing can be known beyond space and time. Who begins to understand entities as such?

Was it Kant? As far as I know, it was Kant who made a big deal against the unchallenged

20
Ibid., 5; 25.
21
Ibid., 6; 25-26.
ontology. He is like a philosopher with a hammer as he uses the hammer of critique

which is expressed in his critical philosophy. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason directly

attacks to Plato and most especially to Aristotle’s metaphysics as it is founded “in the

light of human reason alone.” Following Descartes’ analogy of philosophy as a tree

where metaphysics is the root and all the sciences are the branches and have their

nourishments from metaphysics, Kant is revolutionary in attacking the very foundation of

metaphysics in the sense that it would have shaken the very foundation of all sciences.

With that kind criticism, philosophers realize on the experience of standing on the ground

made up of clay. For Kant, metaphysics which deals on the question about God, freedom,

and immortality cannot be subjected to human knowledge. By knowledge, Kant means:

“Concepts without contents are empty. Intuitions without concepts are blind.” For there

to be knowledge at all both sensibility and understanding must go hand in hand and,

without the other, it is impossible to claim that we know of something. Each is necessary

in constituting knowledge for “without sensibility objects would not be given to us,

without the understanding they would not be thought by us.”22 But the question of

metaphysics is a question which we cannot know because the concept of God, freedom,

and immortality cannot be accessed through sensibility. So Kant concludes that “no

matter how deeply we try to know the things in themselves we can only know the things

as they appear to us.” We can only know the phenomena but not the noumena. That is

why in the case of proving God’s existence, ours is only a proof of reason which we can

either prove or disprove. The big term between the two is the term existence. The big

contribution of Kant to Heidegger is the conclusion that “existence is not a real

22
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Pual Guyer and Allen Wood (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), A51=B75.
predicate.”23 This means that we must not consider that something ontically exists in

order to supplicate the term that something exists. Following this line of thought,

Heidegger’s statement that “The ‘Being’ of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity” [Da Sein den

Seiendes ist nicht selbst ein Seiendes]24 is a traced of Kantian criticism against the

ontological proof of God’s existence. When we say that ‘Being’ is not an entity, it means

that ‘Being’ cannot be regarded as an object to be studied or a subject of a predication. As

Heidegger points it out, there is an ontological difference between Being (Sein) and

beings or entities (Seiendes). Heidegger, including us, is after ‘Being’ (Sein) which has

the priority over the entities. This priority as Heidegger calls it is the ontological priority

of the question of Being [Der ontologische Vorrang der Seinsfrage].”25

In this section, Heidegger points out that ontological inquiry about the meaning of

Being is more fundamental than the ontic inquiry by which the positive sciences are

concerned. In order to explicitly present the priority of ontology over the ontical, let us

first deal on how Heidegger passes judgment on the positive sciences. With his criticism

on the ontical inquiry of positive sciences, it is also his undeveloped philosophy of

science. In my reading, Heidegger’s criticism on the ontical inquiry of the positive

sciences was influenced by his mentor, Husserl and at the same time looking forward at

Kuhn’s notion of a scientific progress by means of a revolution. In considering Husserl’s

critique of science for having its own subject matter or domain of investigation where

every science only becomes a science of facts, Heidegger also attacks the

23
Ibid., A592=B619
24
BT §2, 6; 26.
25
Ibid., §3, 8; 28.
foundationalism that is to be found especially in the domain of mathematics and science.

To quote Heidegger,

“The totality of entities can, in accordance with its various domains,

become a field for laying bare and deliminating certain definite areas of
subject-matter. These areas, on their part (for instance, history, Nature,
space, life, Dasein, language, and the like), can serve as objects which
corresponding scientific investigations may take as their respective
themes. Scientific research accomplishes, roughly and naively, the
demarcation and initial fixing of the areas of subject-matter.”26
What Heidegger attacks is the specialization of every science which is only confined on a

limited concept from the specific field of study. When these limited concepts change,

then that is the start of the real improvement of the sciences. And so Heidegger

anticipates the scientific revolution of Thomas Kuhn’s notion of “paradigm shift.” 27 The

former says, “The real ‘movement’ of science takes place when their basic concepts

undergo a more or less radical revision which is transparent to itself.”28 This means that a

true science must be able to articulate its own subject-matter by being critical to its own

accepted notion and the task of philosophy comes in as it tries to help in clarifying the

grounds of knowledge. Heidegger further continues:

26
Ibid., 9; 29.

27
The notion of paradigm shift is similar to Heidegger’s undeveloped philosophy of science.
Heidegger’s major work Being and Time was published in 1927 while Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions was published in 1962. In that long span of years, I think, there is a conjecture whether Kuhn
was able to read Heidegger.
The notion of Kuhn’s paradigm shift attacks the very conventional view of progress in science as
evolutionary where what has been discovered will be accumulated. Kuhn calls this viewpoint as “the
concept of development- by-accumulation.” According to Kuhn, a scientific progress occurs in a different
way whereby one scientific paradigm is questioned, challenged, and replaced by a very different paradigm.
See Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p.
2.

28
BT §3, 9; 29.
 “The level which a science has reached is determined by how far it is
capable of crisis in its basic concepts. In such immanent crises the very
relationship between positively investigative inquiry and those things
themselves that are under interrogation comes to a point where it begins to
totter.”29
The basic concepts of every domain of investigation are called into question and its

legitimation of knowledge becomes in crisis. Thus, Heidegger mentions about the crisis

experienced in the field of mathematics, physics, biology and even theology. Though the

positive sciences deal only with the entities, they are able to stand as a science because its

basic concepts are founded on the ontology of the specific domain of being which is in

itself a priori.

“Basic concepts determine the way in which we get an

understanding beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the
objects a science takes as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided
by this understanding.”30
Ontical sciences survive because it is founded with the ontology of its domain and its

basic concepts are nothing else than “an interpretation of those entities with regard to

their basic state of Being.”31 Positive sciences deals primarily with calculative thinking

but when the moment that it tries to question the meaning of its own ground, it is already

a meditative thinking and that kind of thinking is characterized as ontological. Let us take

for example in the domain of mathematics. There is no problem when we only refer to

the application of its rules but a certain crisis may arrive if the legitimacy of its

foundation is questioned such as the debate between the formalists and intuitionists. What

29
Ibid.
30
Ibid., 10; 30.
31
Ibid.
these two opposing teams dealing about is on the matter of ontological question.

Influenced by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics, Allain Badiou claims in Being and

Event that “mathematics is ontology.”32 In his other works, he mentions:

“We have a complex relation between ontology and science, in my case

ontology and mathematics, in the case of Kant between ontology and
physics. There is a complex relation between ontology and science
because there is an ontological status of science itself.”33
The ontological status of ontical science is grounded when science asked about the mode

of Being as that which determines entities as entities but only in the confined domain of

investigation. Granted the fact that those sciences are founded on ontologies, these

ontologies are lacking if the meaning of Being is not clarified. Thus, Heidegger’s task

comes in as he tries to the last attempt on the reflection of the most fundamental of all

ontologies which he calls the fundamental ontology. And so Heidegger argues:

“Ontological inquiry is indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical

inquiry of the positive sciences. But it remains itself naïve and opaque if in
its researches into the Being of entities it fails to discuss the meaning of
Being in general….The question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the
a priori conditions not only for the possibility of the sciences which
examines entities as entities of such and such type, and, in so doing,
already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for the possibility
of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical sciences and
which provide their foundations.”34
In this way, the three fields can be classified in ascending order: ontical sciences,

ontologies, and fundamental ontology. The latter is the most basic because it seeks to ask

32
Allain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (New York: Continuum, 2006), §4; 9.
33
___________, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, trans. Oliver Feltham &
Justin Clemens (New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 138.
34
BT §4, 11; 31.
the question of Being in general. The ontological priority aims primarily at Being. So the

first question to be raised is “What is ‘Being’”. This question is the question of

metaphysics.

However, there is a problem because the metaphysics that has been known

throughout the history are dominated by the series of theoretical constructions of

meaning. These constructions consist the history of ontology. In this particular case,

when a person is asked about the meaning of Being, he would have to answer from what

he has learned through those ready-made answers to the question of Being. In order not to

succumb to the intellectual answers about Being, Heidegger puts forward in §6 of Being

and Time his via negativa with the task of “destroying the history of ontology.”35

Heidegger comes to the understanding that the Western tradition of metaphysical thought

is primarily dominated by the so called “metaphysics of presence.” Since the days of

Plato and Aristotle, the West considers Being as permanence that subsists in permanence.

They have considered that the expression “to be” as eternal. These two philosophers had

constructed an ultimate ontology where the concepts such as “essence” and “categories”

are beyond time. And so these supernal entities are considered as eternal and unchanging.

The moment that such concepts are in time, then they are always in flux as Heraclitus

would say. Being is considered as the essence and so it is also the nature of an entity. In

that case, the nature of an entity can be categorized. Since Being subsists in permanence

in a way that Being is always is and also makes the thing as it is, Being is always present

and subsist in the eternal “now” which at the same time that Being as presencing takes

cover our human and finite “now.” Thus, Heidegger observes that “our treatment of the

35
Ibid., §6, 19; 41.
meaning of ‘Being’ must enable us to show that the central problematic of all ontology is

rooted in the phenomenon of time.”36

Western religion adopted this notion such as the concept that there is a God whose time is

always present and also science in its notion that there exists an eternal law of science

which governs the working of the whole universe. Starting from the Greek, they use

reason in order to grasp those supernal entities. That is why man is necessarily a rational

animal and the life that is being lived to the fullest is the cultivation of his rationality so

that he can be able to grasp those eternal, unchanging, perfect, and supersensible realities.

Just like as science which employs calculative thinking, Western tradition of

metaphysics as “The First Philosophy” employs another type of thinking which is called

representational thinking [vorstellendes Denken]. The first thing that will come into mind

when the word representation is heard is the magnum opus of Arthur Schopenhauer, The

World as Will and Representation. However, Heidegger goes back to its origin which

was started by the Greek. This type of thinking proposes, first and foremost, an object to

be known while on the other side there is a conscious subject as a knower. To think

through representation is to take the world as a picture (Bild) being place before the

subject. Plato’s notion of the World of Ideas represents Being as an Idea. Since then,

modern science takes necessarily the picturing of the world so that our world can be

easily manipulated and controlled by the use of the formulated laws that is being injected

to reality. Through the rationalization of the West and the notion of man’s nature as

rational, human beings are consumed by intellectual achievement which culminated in

the inquiry concerning science and technology. “Entities are grasped in their Being as

‘presence’, this means that they are understood with regard to a definite modes of time-
36
BT §5, 18; 40.
the Present.”37 In particular, our technology today is the full achievement of what was the

goal of the ancient Greek metaphysics. This does not mean that we must go against such

invention but they must be used with a certain limits. This metaphysics of presence can

also mean the enslavement and the threatening of human being by the availability of

technology to be used and at the same time exalting him as the independent entity that

lords over the earth. Thus, Heidegger comes to this conclusion: In truth, however,

precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself, i.e., his essence.38

These problems are the result of the history of ontology and the task of the

destruction is the way to overcome these problems. In this way, Heidegger wants to

regain the glory that is enjoyed by philosophy before as the “the queen of all sciences” 39

and at the same time to make our way of asking and philosophizing genuine particularly

in the task of asking the meaning of Being. By the term destruction or destroying the

history of ontology, it is not an act of barbarism whereby the destroyer simply destroys

the much labored comprehensive system of thought without any realization that it is no

longer tenable. In other words, one cannot simply destroy the history of ontologies

without any understanding at all. The destroyer must have mastered the history of

ontological constructions and surpasses them in order to have a new dawn that awaits us

that will serve as our fresh beginning. Heidegger’s task of destruction means the end of

Western metaphysics, i.e., Platonism. What awaits us is Nietzsche’s proclamation of the

‘death of God’ as the ‘death of Western metaphysics’ and the experience of being as “the

37
Ibid., §6, 25; 47.
38
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964),
trans. & ed. David Farell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 2008), p. 30
39
Charles Bambach, Heidegger’s Root: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks, (New
York: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 99.
last breath of a vaporizing reality”40 by way of a question: “Do we not feel the breath of

an empty space?”41 The task of the destruction then is not at all a complete negative

because it gives us a new way to the disclosure of Being and the character of the

destroyer as the one who understands the history of ontology is equal to Heidegger

himself.

As it is mentioned in the ontological priority that what we are after is the question

of Being. The task of the destruction of all ontologies as the via negative also left us no

ready-made ontology. When one is asked what is Being, he can neither answer nor he

cannot go back to the intellectual manuals that say something about what Being is in the

sense that they are no longer accepted after the destruction. We are left with nothing

except the experience of the forgetfulness of Being. With this in mind, we are not in the

position to inquire right away into the ontological priority. What is needed is the humility

to accept our sense of forgetfulness of Being. Otherwise, the task of formulating once

again the question about the meaning of Being would be unsuccessful. Since we cannot

start with ontology, Heidegger is still hopeful to try the second best way by what he calls

the ontical priority of the question of Being. This way is also his via positiva.

“The Being of an entities is not itself an entity.”42 Being means the Being of

entities but that Being is not an entity to be predicated or a subject for predication.

However, we have forgotten Being (Sein). I have already mentioned before that the only

access to Being is through being. This way of access to Being is the concerned of the
40
Nietzsche, quoted in Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Indiana:
Indiana University Press, 1993), p. 39.
41
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann
(New York: Random House, 1976), §125.

42
BT §2, 7; 26.
ontical priority. It is a de tour, there is a shift from one route to another route; there is a

shift from the inquiry of Being (Sein) into the inquiry of Being through being (Seiendes).

Instead of inquiring directly to Sein, this de tour is also called a pre-ontology that hopes

that Seiendes will reveal to us Sein. The entites are now put in questioned because our

inquiry start only at where we are, i.e., forgetfulness, or from where and what I am at

present. Thus, we will begin only at what we know about the entities that surround us.

That is why it is ontical. The primary question “What is Being?” have become

reformulated into the question “What is being?” The second question does not also solve

the problem of our inquiry. Indeed, the question “What is being?” is still problematic

because we are surrounded with many entities of which I am it. There is a necessity to

specify what particular being or entity that the disclosure of Being made to possible.

Heidegger once articulates:

“But there are many things which we designate as ‘being’ [“seiend”], and we do

so in various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything

towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; ‘what we are’ is being, and so

is how we are.”43

This indicates that all things that surround us are being such as this pen that I am

holding as write this work, the books that I am reading as my resources, erasers, chairs,

table, and also this paper before me and more than that I myself am a being who is

currently writing and reading. Granted the fact of these things as being, the burden lies on

what particular thing or entity should be chosen for our inquiry hoping that this particular

entity will reveal Being. Once again Heidegger asks, “In which entities is the meaning of

Being to be discerned? From which entities is the disclosure of Being to take place its
43
Ibid., 6-7; 26.
departure?”44 This questioning implies that we must select the best of all entities to be

interrogated to the extent that it will reveal to us the meaning of Being. Accordingly,

there are two questions to consider: 1) what specific entity should be chosen? 2) Whose

concern is the disclosure of Being? Let us begin to answer the second question. The only

entity that is concerned about the disclosure of Being is the inquirer himself with his

capacity to ask himself about himself. Heidegger mentions that inquirer is concerned on

the question of Being when he says, “The very asking of this question is an entity’s mode

of Being.”45 Dogs and cats may play but only human being asks. Hence, our first clue on

what entity to be chosen is ourselves, that is, human being or the being called man. That

man is the entity to be chosen is not enough because it does not guarantee that all men

will have to bother to ask the question about the meaning of Being. Granting the

generalization that humans are capable of questioning as true, the word capability is not

yet done but it is only a possibility to be made; it is a formalistic preconception which

lacks concreteness. Thereby, we are not yet done in answering on what particular entity

because the answer is not just simply man being defined as a rational animal. There must

be even more specific entity and not just simply man. Heidegger coins the term Dasein as

the particular entity to be chosen and this entity is no other than the being that I am. Since

Dasein is the entity being chosen, the question of “what is Being?” is shifted into the

question “What is Dasein?” In this de tour, there is an exceptional relation between Being

in general and the Being of Dasein as the Seinsfrage, the Question of Being, is replaced

by the inquiry about Dasein.

44
Ibid., 7; 26.
45
Ibid., 7; 27.
 The task of inquiring the meaning of Being lies in the individual. It is existential

because the disclosure of Being is not to be decided through the inquiry of things, seeking

answers from our friends, parents, relying on textbooks, and not even the concept of God

but only through asking my true selfhood being emptied with masks of pretensions. I

myself as the inquirer do not let others to ask the meaning of Being for me. The one who

asks the question of Being is the one responsible to answer the question for himself. At

this point, there is a kind of reversion of the inquiry. I am the one who asks about Being

as I raise the question and at the same time I am the one that is being interrogated. The

inquirer inquires into his own being, the being of the inquirer himself. I inquire into the

being that I myself am. As he is mainly influenced by Heidegger’s existential philosophy,

Jean-Paul Sartre writes in Being and Nothingness:

“Every question presupposes a being who questions and a being which is

questioned. . . This question is a kind of expectation, that is, I expect from
this being a revelation of its being or of its way of being.”46
From the passage above, there is an expectation in questioning because it is a kind of

“cognizant seeking”47 and the revelation that Sartre is talking about is the disclosure of

Being to being. The inquirer is an open-ended being in a way that he is the inquirer about

himself. There is no dichotomy between the subject as the inquirer and the object being

inquired. I myself as a subject is at the same time become an object that is to be

interrogated. The object of my own inquiry about the meaning of Being is myself as

Dasein. This task is the reminiscence of the Socratic imperative that says “Know

Thyself” which challenges everyone to ask about himself in his true selfhood.

46
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel
E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1943), p. 35.

47
BT §2, 5; 24.
 Dasein as the chosen entity in revealing Being has therefore an ontical privilege

when it is compared to the other entities. Heidegger asserts something of these privileges

when he says, “Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities.” 48 It is

ontically privilege for three bases. The first is that Dasein understands Being. It is an

entity which does not simply there but the one raises the question of its own being. The

preliminary act of questioning raised by Dasein is its a priori conception of Being.

“Dasein understands itself in its Being.”49 Furthermore, its understanding is not limited

only in its own being but also in that of other entities such as the entities of the world and

the world itself in general.

“Thus Dasein’s understanding of Being pertains with equal primordiality

both to an understanding of something like a ‘world’, and to the
understanding of the Being of those entities which become accessible
within the world.”50
Because of the understanding of its own being, the world, and the worldly entities,

Dasein is capable and will be able to create those ontical sciences. The inquiry into the

being of Dasein is prior to any inquiry. Let us take for example in the case of the world

renowned physicist Albert Einstein. He is able to formulate a new theory in physics

which is known as the theory of relativity. So what? What is the fundamental is not that

of what is being discovered but to reflect about the man behind the discovery on how he

is able to do so. It is because of his own being that understands and is capable of making

the novel theory in physics.

48
Ibid., §4, 12; 32.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid., 13; 33.
 The second ontical privilege of Dasein is its own mode of Being which Heidegger

calls existence [Existenz]. The word existence is equivalent to the Latin word “existere”

which means “to stand out.”51 If this is the basis of what it means to exist, Heidegger

claims that only Dasein exist and the other actual entities such as glass, birds, and fish

cannot be considered to exist. The claim that only Dasein exists changes the traditional

conception of existence as something we simply see, touch, hear, feel, taste, in the world.

The novel conception is that existence is only for Dasein (human existence) in a sense

that once thrown into this world, Dasein is the only one who can stand out his own

existence by the possibilities that is open to him. Only Dasein exists in critical and

reflective manner which other entities cannot be expected to do the same. And

Heidegger’s claim that “Dasein’s essence lies in its existence”52 means that any human

being who recognizes his various possibilities and deliberately carve himself in the

course of his whole life can be considered as Dasein. The authentic individual as Dasein

is the recognition of his own possibilities that he is going to make in his life. These

possibilities can either be recognized or disregarded and it follows the third ontical

privilege of Dasein over other entities.

The third ontical privilege of Dasein is his capacity “to be itself or not itself.”53 In

other words, Dasein is the only being that has the capacity to choose whether he will act

on the various possibilities that he has or he will refuse those possibilities. The choice is

left to human reality whether he is going to be Dasein of das Man. In either case, what is

common is human freedom that is born out of his own emptiness as a being that is ahead

51
I learned the definition from class discussion in Philosophy of Man.
52
BT §9, 42; 67.
53
Ibid., §4, 12; 33.
of itself. Other entities are fixated, already defined as it is, thereby they are not free.

These three ontical privileges, i.e., understanding, existence, and freedom, constitute the

Being of Dasein. To argue that the Being of Dasein has a special connection with Being

in general is to agree with Heidegger that Dasein is ontico-ontologically prior. Dasein is

ontically prior because of all entities it is the one that is chosen and at the same time each

of us has an access to it because “we are it.”54 Likewise, Dasein is ontologically prior.

Though it is farthest from Being in general it will hopefully open the disclosure of Being.

Dasein as the ‘being that I myself am’ is the closest to me in the ontical sense but it is

also the most difficult to know. Thus, there is a need for a kind of method for the basic

and most fundamental understanding of Dasein’ Being. That method we call it

phenomenology.

Phenomenological Analytic of Dasein

The great name behind the method of phenomenology is Heidegger’s mentor,

Edmund Husserl. Why does Heidegger use the phenomenology of Husserl in answering

the question “what is Dasien”? Why is it that the best way is to use the phenomenological

method? In order to arrive at the clearer understanding, let us not make a sudden leap to

answer directly to the question but rather let us explicate the origin of phenomenology in

the thinking of Husserl. Let us focus for a while on how does Husserl view

phenomenology. Edmund Husserl still wants to continue the project of modernity which

is science. However, he tries to have a new way so that his approach may not be led to

the same pitfalls experienced by the modern thinkers before him. He established a new

method which he calls pure phenomenology. According to Husserl, phenomenology is

54
BT §5, 15; 38.
“essentially a new science.”55 He agrees with Aristotle only on a particular ground that

there are essences. The point of their disagreement is on how are essences to be attained.

Aristotle uses the method of abstraction where the essence of a thing is after all an

abstract idea as the end product of the long series of thinking and rethinking. Husserl

rejects the method of Aristotle because for him essences must be concrete and be seen

from the things themselves. Thus, Husserl calls philosophers “to go back to the things

themselves” [Zu den sachen selbst].56 The essence must not be formulated but rather they

must be seen from themselves as what they are through description. The things

themselves show their own essences. The cry for going back to the things themselves is

similar for going back to the idea or eidos (Wesen or essence). The essence is only a

phenomenon because it is only seen on how thing appears to us. Thus it is only

phenomenology, and not noumenology. In order to make the task of going back to the

things themselves possible, Husserl has to access differently and in a novel way. So, the

method must no longer be abstraction for it only allows us to theorize. He uses the

method of intuition. It is the immediate access to the thing itself. When we say immediate

access, the act of seeing is not mediated by something else or there is no medium used

such as using a microscope to magnify microorganisms and telescope to look at the

heavenly bodies from a long distance. Intuition is the direct seeing on something. Further,

the act of direct seeing is of two kinds. The first kind is a way of seeing from a natural

standpoint by the naïve consciousness. For instance, I see a chair but not actually looking

it as a chair or simply I am not paying attention to it. I just simply see. The other kind of

55
Edmund Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, trans.
W.R. Boyce Gibson (New York: Mcmillan, 1931), p. 41.
56
_____________, Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1970), p. 252.
seeing is to see things from a reflective consciousness. It is only at this kind of seeing

where the essence is possible to attain. Thus phenomenology, as a method, aims at the

establishment of certitude by letting the essence to be shown itself from itself

(Wesensschau).

After presenting Husserl’s phenomenology, let us examine Heidegger’s

understanding of phenomenology. The main influence left by Husserl to Heidegger is his

battle-cry: to go back to the things themselves! Heidegger conforms in §7 saying, “To the

things themselves.”57 This means that we must acknowledge what is only given to us

through our immediate intuitive experience of things that surround us and also including

ourselves. At the same time, we must do away all those ready-made theoretical

construction and theories whether they are given scientifically or philosophically. We

must not accept those pre-given answers handed down by the history of ontology. We

must even destroy them. Accordingly, phenomenology is neither guided by history nor it

is a discursive thinking and argumentation to clarify something.

Heidegger’s notion of going back to the things themselves is similar to going back

to the original experience of Being such as the original impulse of questioning that is

experienced originally by the pre-Socratics. In disclosing the path of Being, Heidegger

uses the power of the original experience of the word. For instance, Heidegger mentions

philosophy. He encourages us to listen to the word and its origin. It is from the Greek. In

the same manner, he examines the word phenomenology. Listen! The word is from the

two Greek words: phaenomenon and logos. The Greek word phaenomenon comes from

the verb “to show itself” (phainesthai).58 Thus for Heidegger, the Greek word

57
BT § 7 50; 28.
58
Ibid.,, 51; 28.
phaenomenon (phenomenon) means “that which shows itself in itself, the manifest.” 59

However, an entity itself can show itself in various ways depending on how is our way of

accessing it. An entity sometimes shows itself as what it is not such as in the cases of

mere appearance, semblance, and illusion. According to Heidegger, these are only

secondary to the real meaning of the phenomena. Similarly, Heidegger also does not

accept all kind of phenomenalism including the formal concept of phenomenon such as

the illustration of Kant’s forms of intuition by grasping only the appearance of things but

not as what as they are.

Since the entity does not always show what it is in the phenomenon, Heidegger

wants to make a science of phenomena, that is, phenomenology. In other way of saying

it, Heidegger wants phenomena to be “_____logy.” Thus, he examines the second Greek

word- logos. In the traditional philosophy, the Greek word logos are defined normally by

the West as thought, reason, word, judgment, or concept. According to Heidegger, “those

competing significations are only a semblance.” He translates or interprets logos as

“discourse”- “to make manifest what one is ‘talking about’ in one’s discourse.”60 How

discourse manifests something that is to be seen? Let us take for example in my case of

having a dialogue with a friend. The moment that I talk to my friend about something, I

am actually showing what I am talking about. What I am talking about will be revealed.

Logos as discourse “lets something be seen.”61 In this case, I am reminded of the ethics of

Jurgen Habermas as discourse. In this kind of ethics, every individual is allowed to show

what he wants to show from himself including his own interest and needs. The purpose of

59
Ibid.
60
BT §7, 32; 56.
61
Ibid.
discourse is to bring into light something that is hidden. So for Heidegger,

phenomenology means “to let that which shows itself (phaenomenon) be seen (-

phainesthai) from (apo-) itself in the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” 62 This

formulation is the conformation to the short maxim: “To the things themselves.”63

Furthermore, the phenomenology of Heidegger does not specify what are the objects or

subjects of the research; it is just only on the how but not on the what of the research.

“Phenomenology neither designates the object of its researches, nor characterized the

subject matter thus comprised. The word merely informs us of the “how.”64

Applying phenomenology in the analysis of human existence will lead to the

disclosure of the Being of Dasein. As Heidegger writes, “Only as phenomenology, is

ontology possible.”65 How? This can be done through phenomenological description of

Dasein, that is, to show what is to be seen from Dasein itself. Since the concern of

phenomenology is to bring into light what has been hidden, that which something to be

brought into light and to be seen from Dasein is its own Being. In so far as the concern is

on the disclosure of Being, it is phenomenology. Hence, phenomenology is not to be

taken simply as description because the disclosure of Being also needs Dasein’s openness

to the way of Being. Description must also take the structure of interpretation,

hermenuein. Thus, phenomenology is also a hermeneutic. Heidegger affirms as follows,

“The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of the

62
Ibid., 34; 58.
63
Ibid.
64
Ibid., 35; 59.
65
Ibid., 35; 60.
word, where it designates this of interpreting.” 66 This interpretation is a form of analysis

on the nature of human existence or to the openness of Dasein to Being. In view of that,

the phenomenological analytic of Dasein is also the existential analytic of Dasein and the

hermeneutic analytic of Dasein.

Let us now focus on the phenomenological analytic of Dasein. Where shall we

begin? What circumstance will we start? Concerning about phenomenology as mentioned

above, it is based only from what is given by our direct intuitive experience, it must begin

on the daily concrete situation of human reality which Heidegger calls as “Dasein’s

average everydayness.”67 The term Dasein refers to the human beings as the entity which

“each of us is himself.”68 Heidegger also identifies Dasein as “in each case

mineness”[Jemeinigkeit].69 As the original German word suggests, it is simply Being

(Sein)- there (da) or Being-there. Being-there is similar to Being-in. Being-in what?

Heidegger primarily refers Dasein as Being-in-the-world. Dasein as in each case mine is

my certitude that I am concretely here in the world. That the certitude which I cannot put

to doubt. But what does it mean to be in the world?

The first existential character of Dasein as Being in the world is his own facticity

of being thrown into the world. Dasein is present in a certain situation as like as I am here

in my study room doing a research. The question on how do I get here in this world is not

what matters most. I am simply thrown for no reason. Dasein or human reality’s

existence is a kind of throwness (Geworfenheit). This throwness refers to the contingency

66
Ibid., 37; 62.
67
Ibid., §9, 44; 69.
68
Ibid. §2, 7; 27.
69
Ibid., §9, 42; 68.
of its own existence. Human reality did not choose exactly when and where he is going to

be born, nor did he not choose his own parents. He is just thrown into the world in certain

time and place. Due to the facticity of his own throwness, the basic primordial experience

is the immersion among entities. First and foremost, the world is neither something to be

known nor human reality is a knower nor he has a spectator’s view on it. Heidegger’s

notion of the unitary phenomena of Dasein and the world is his rejection to the notion

that human being is primarily a self conscious subject. If we take human being primarily

as a thinking substance, it would lead to the point of disengagement in the world because

this particular substance can exist independently from the physical world. What

Heidegger rejects is the very notion that thinking is the primordial mark of human

existence. If thinking is primordially our character, then, it would miss the point on how

we actually in fact exist. Once thrown into this world, human reality is not primarily a

thinking being or a Cartesian cogito but rather as something immersed in the world

among other entities. In this case, the world is not a thing to be analyzed and to be

distinguished from human reality but rather as equipment. The world is ready to hand in

the sense that once we are thrown we do not ask scientifically about it but rather we are

just engaged in getting the task done. Thus, the first existential character of Dasein as

Being-in-the-world is throwness, that is, Dasein is already-in-the-world and essentially

immersed and has the sense of being at home on it.

The second existential character of Dasein goes beyond from the first. In the case

of Dasein’s throwness, there are many entities which can also be considered as being-in-

the-word. They are also thrown into the world. Is there any difference between Dasein

and the other entities at all? Heidegger further explains on what does the word “in” found
in the expression Being-in-the-world. The normal understanding of the word “in”

indicates a purely spatial relationship such as the example given by Heidegger like “the

water is ‘in’ the glass, and the garment is ‘in’ the cupboard.”70 These entities including

other entities which just occur in the world only in the spatial sense are what Heidegger

calls Being-present-at-hand. Their sense of ‘Being-in’ is simply occurring with other

entities and nothing more. “They are of such a sort as to belong to entities whose kind of

Being is not of the character of Dasein.”71

Heidegger wants to emphasize that the ‘Being-in’ of Dasein is no longer spatial

but rather a “state of Dasein’s Being.”72 The word ‘in’ derives from the word innam

which means “to reside” or habitare which means “to dwell.”73 In this case, Dasein is

neither simply situated at the world in spatial relation nor the world is just simply his

location but rather the world is his own dwelling and at the same time constantly consider

the world as a place for his own making towards the future. It is existential. This means

that Dasein’s facticity of its being delivered over can never predetermined Dasein’s state

of Being because Dasein understands even his own facticity. He is not simply thrown

alongside with other entities but he also understands that he is thrown into this world.

Dasein can speak for himself that he is. Thus, the second existential character of Dasein

as Being-in-the-world is understanding.

Only Dasein is conscious of his own existence as throwness. Dasein understands

that he is born in a certain condition, i.e., cultural, social economic, environment, etc. At

70
Ibid., §12, 54; 79.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid.
73
Ibid., 54; 80.
the same time, there is a sense of acceptance. In this case, Dasein has already a defined

world but he creates a meaning into the world in so far as he re-interprets those

conditions in terms of its open horizon of the future project that he is going to make.

There is a realization of being-ahead-of-itself in a sense that human existence is an

activity of an endless transcendence. Dasein understands himself in relation to the

temporal horizon of its own being. This sort of understanding is a kind of projection of

something to be made in the future out of the many possibilities. Understanding as mode

of Dasein’s existence is existential before it is philosophical or intellectual. Human

reality is conscious and that consciousness makes him understand. This understanding is

not confined to calculative thinking, analytic, and reflective consciousness. It primarily

refers to those pre-reflective moods of our lived experience such as anguish, fear, concern

and wonder. They are pre-reflective in a sense that they simply come to us without

thinking them. In this case, understanding will also open the possibility of experiencing

suffering as long as human reality is aware of his own experience. Similarly, many

existentialist thinkers would not regard consciousness not as a gift being given to us but

rather it is a kind of condemnation. For example, the condemnation experienced by

Camus’ existential tragic hero, Sisyphus, who ceaselessly rolling the rock going to the

top of the mountain despite the fact that whenever it reaches to the top the rock will

eventually fall down. As Albert Camus would emphatically say, “If this myth is tragic,

that is because its hero is conscious.”74 Thus for Camus, consciousness will lead to the

understanding of the absurdity of life.

In the case of Heidegger, Dasein’s understanding of Being does not only come

from the tragic experience as what Camus says but also from moments of great rejoicing.
74
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Press, 1995), p. 89.
In an important lecture series Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger starts with the

question “why are there beings at all instead of nothing?”75 He also mentions the

concealed power of this questioning that might lead us to the understanding of Being as

we experience the pre-reflective moods such as the experience of great despair, boredom,

and great rejoicing. This question [‘Why is there something rather than nothing’] comes

out in moments of great despair, when all weights tends to dwindle away from things and

the sense of things or its meaning grows dark…. It is present in the moments of heartfelt

joy, when all things are transformed…as if it were easier to grasp that they were not,

rather than they are, and are as they are…. The question will occur to us in a spell of

boredom, when we are equally distant from despair and joy, but when the stubborn

ordinariness of beings lays open a wasteland in which it makes no difference to us

whether beings are or are not.”76 These moods are not psychological state but it is a

concrete lived- experience such as the experience when things do not make sense at all

like doing my best in me in the examination and yet I failed to pass. The experience of

despair, boredom and great rejoicing are the experiences that will lead us to ask the

fundamental and the most originary question that will eventually make us to transcend

from the totality of entities to their ground, that is, Being. If all things are just all right

and we are not aware of it, we do not mind to bother to raise such question. Thus, the

experience of the question ‘why is there something rather than nothing’ is made possible

only when we have an understanding of human existence and at the same time we already

know what we are seeking for, that is, Being, however vaguely. We raise the question

75
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried & Richard Polt (London:
Yale University Press, 2000), p. 1.
76
Ibid., p. 1-2.
only when we experience those moods and the question ‘what is Being?’ will become an

issue for our existence. They come to us as an immediate powerful occurrence.

The experience of despair, boredom, and great rejoicing as a result of

understanding are not an end in themselves but rather they open us to the other

possibilities. Let us say the experience of ‘Angst’- the experience of uneasiness of what is

at present. In this particular experience, there is an experience of freedom. How free is

Dasein? Dasein or human reality is free according to the resoluteness to his decision to

make in the future. “Dasein is free for its own necessity, that its authentic freedom is

revealed in its ability to take up and take over the necessity of its own condition.” 77 This

resoluteness comes from the understanding of the temporality of Dasein’s existence. As

Heidegger says, “time, needs to be, explicated primordially as the horizon for the

understanding of Being, and in terms of temporality as the Being of Dasein, which

understands Being.”78

Dasein understands itself as the being both thrown into the world and projected

against its own end. The freedom of Dasein is expressed in being-ahead-of-itself because

he is able to recognize his project of understanding. In this case, Dasein’s understanding

of his own temporality is also his understanding of a certain certitude to come which is

the understanding that all human existence is a “Being-toward-death.” Heidegger writes,

“Death is a possibility-of-Being which Dasein itself has to take over

in every case. With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost
potentiality-for-Being. This is a possibility in which the issue is nothing
less than Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Its death is the possibility of no

77
Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias, (London: Routledge, 1998), p.
16.

78
BT §5, 17; 39.
 longer being-able-to-be-there. If Dasein stands before itself as this
possibility, it has been fully assigned to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being.
When it stands before itself in this way, all its relations to any other Dasein
have been undone. This ownmost non-relational possibility is at the same
time the uttermost one.”79
Human existence end up in death and death is the ultimate possibility of Dasein.

Understanding that human existence is characterized by finitude and the realization that

we are going to die soon, there is an experience of anguish on how should we act on our

existence. The task is to resolve in order to live our existence authentically. In this case,

we cannot just afford to take things or to consider our existence carelessly. Our

understanding that we are a ‘Being-towards-death’ will lead us to care our existence. To

care is to be concerned with one’s personal life project to be done throughout the course

of life. The existential character of Dasein as understanding will lead the third essential

character which is Discourse (Rede).

As human reality understands his own existence, the speech will become more

meaningful. Conversation with others makes sense because it discloses what Dasein is

talking about, that is, Being. Through language, the truth of Being can be attained.

Language must be neither be taken as simple as we commonly use it in our everyday

communication nor be regarded a script or writings being made by speakers for the

purpose of communication. The basic character of our expression through language is to

externalize what has been the internal in us. This means that language is an activity of

revealing or coming about of something as the result of talking or speaking. Heidegger

speaks of language as follows: “Language is the house of Being in which man exist by

79
Ibid., §50, 250; 294.
dwelling, in that he belongs to the truth of Being, guarding it.”80 It is in language that

each of us finds the house of our existence. This means that we are not the inventor of

language. “Language is the collective historical and linguistic dwelling that man resides

within even before he learns to speak its tongue.”81 In this case, language as the house of

Being needs the role of human reality for he has a great role to play for the disclosure of

Being. In this way, our way of using language is primordially existential, that is, it is

more than communication. Language is about the disclosure of Being.

The call to become Dasein as a call to excellence and authenticity is not easy.

What is easy is to fall. By way of contrast the state of being Dasein is opposite to das

Man. The German word man refers to “one.” It does not refer to anyone in particular, to

any particular authority, to law, to the person speaking, to any group, etc. Das Man, as a

noun, refers to the one who is not Dasein. It is a reference to the unanimity of the group.

Das Man’s self is the anonymous self found in the crowd. Heidegger presents a contrast

between throwness and ambiguity. Ambiguity is attributed to das Man in the sense that

this “one” does not know where to stand as it is manifested in the ambiguity of its own

decision. Understanding is contrasted with curiosity. The inauthentic das Man only asks

about something that is new without having understood on what he just knows. He is just

simply curious to know something. The last is the comparison between the expressions of

language. Das Man is concerned only on idle talk as a result of his own curiosity about

something while Dasein expresses himself in the language through discourse which is

also called a meaningful conversation. It is a conversation that makes sense.

80
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, p. 213.

81
Wei Zhang, Heidegger, Rorty and the Eastern Thinkers: A Hermeneutics of Cross-Cultural
Understanding, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 52.
 Thus for Heidegger, Being will be disclosed to us only when each of us will

become Dasein. “Dasein is also a possibility.” The call to become a Dasein is what

Heidegger is calling to each and every one of us, that is, to reawaken in us that which in

us is authentic. To live authentically is to take hold of ourselves and to behave ourselves

in a certain way. Dasein’s special existence is his capacity of being himself. In the first

person stand point, to live authentically is to be myself, that is, to be ontological. Being

ontological means to ask question about our own existence: who am I? what am I? This

question will lead to the understanding of ourselves and the way of Being.
Conclusion

Thus for Heidegger, the task of inquiring into the meaning of Being must be

formulated in order to overcome the suffering from the age of forgetfulness Being. Since

we cannot go directly to ontology by inquiring into the meaning of Being, let us have a

de tour by inquiring into the entities which we know, that is, the ontical priority. The task

must begin by destroying the history of ontology by attacking primarily the very notion

that man by nature is a rational animal. There must be a transformation of human reality

from being rational to Dasein. Dasein is an entity in which we are it. Human reality are

called first to be Dasein in order to have an understanding of Being. To be Dasein is to

inquire into the being that we are, to our true selfhood being devoid of any pretensions

and masks. Therefore, the task is existential in a sense that everybody is encourage to ask

the self-questioning question: Who am I in my true selfhood? Other people cannot do

such task to give answers for you, for him and for me. Only by living authentically, i.e.,

Being myself or Being one’s own, that human reality is open to the disclosure of the

meaning of Being. The main question is: Are you Dasein? This is not our authority to

judge others whether they are Dasein or not. That is why Heidegger’s Being and Time

does not have a continuation in a sense that if it has another volume then the task of

memorizing again on the definition of Being will repeat itself. What is fundamental in

understanding Being is to be Dasein and it is attainable only when we experience Being

itself.
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