Heidegger’s Dasein: An Elementary and Analytical Backgrounder
Dasein (being there) was central to the work, “Being and Time” (1927) by German philosopher, Martin Heidegger. Heidegger was influenced by Edmund Husserl and phenomenology, and scholars often divide Heidegger’s philosophical itinerary into two distinct stages: “The First Heidegger,” the Heidegger of Being and Time, who was studying the human experience and deepened reflection on humanity as being able to consider the question of being, and the “Second Heidegger,” who in later works continued to reflect on the self but in a more direct way, addressing other issues such as Poetry and Technology. Heidegger is a philosopher who uses new words to explore the power of language. Each village has a language, so we have different worldviews.
Heidegger reacted against positivism, relying on neo-Kantianism and phenomenology, enriched by hermeneutics and the tragic experience of freedom. For Wilhelm Dilthey, freedom is the key to human existence, while for Søren Kierkegaard, it is something that can only agonize because we are forced to give up something.
Existence is Dasein (being there) and so the question of being must start with an analytic of Dasein. The analytic of Dasein is a fundamental ontology: being the point of view from which man must understand. From the standpoint of the method used is:
- Phenomenology: analyzing phenomena, aims to reach the essence of things. Looking to get to the essence of what is man: self-care.
- Hermeneutics: will consider the analysis of the human phenomenon must unravel the understanding and interpretation. Arrive at what is being and the sense of being human. Heidegger has a hermeneutic conception of the world.
Dasein is the being that belongs to himself. It needs to clarify the question of being for what it is to exist. The ontological structure of Dasein (existence) is composed of “existentials.” Dasein manifests itself in everyday life as “being-in-the-world.” The being of Dasein is care of itself. The meaning of Dasein is temporality.
The analytic of Dasein is a hermeneutic phenomenology: interpretation of temporal being and sense of being in the world. Dasein relates to humans, as there is proper to it, the one being who must understand himself in the world, existence, being-in-the-world; there is no self apart from its objects. For Heidegger, the existence of these objects is given in the world; there is no existence without the world. This is the fact by which the human being must be understood within that world. Thus, it is impossible to think separately man and the world, because worldliness is a feature of our existence. According to Heidegger, being a man means being in the world, and being dynamic.
Dasein is Being-in-the-World
The world, for Heidegger, signifies the horizon of meaning of life. To exist is to act under a sense. The ultimate meaning of existence is action by the world.
Something makes sense if you’re in the right direction. Life would be impossible without this horizon because it would lose its meaning. What distinguishes humans from other objects in the world is that Man has the ability to change their future, act in accordance with the image of themselves. In the same way, you can act on the tools (objects) that also shape the world. Being is related to their world through understanding. The original relates Dasein (the world) with other Dasein (Mitdasein), with other beings. The world is the condition to display things (tools) for individuals, they may be. The world as all the instruments are first given that things like individual instruments. All the instruments are given only when there is someone who uses them, as soon as Dasein, for which the instruments have their meaning, their usefulness. First, that the whole world as instrumental, is Dasein, there is no world if there is Dasein. Although not vice versa, the world is grounded in Dasein, so that the world is a “character of Dasein itself.”
The instrument does not refer only to the specific use for which it has done, but also people who use the material it is built, and so on. However, the instrument is made for a certain job, not to give us this information, but there are signs that give us that information. We have the world through signs and under them are the world. That is, “as I understand it” does not present us with things without, but with a meaning and functions assigned.
Dasein is Being-in-the-World (Being-in)
Dasein is thrown into the world; their daily existence is factual: unknown where, when, and who their real existence is. Feelings are the fundamental openness of Dasein; it manifests its existence in the world, and the other Dasein. For his part to understand is the project of Dasein and seeks the full opening of Dasein as being in the world. We understand what we have planned. The understanding is the development of its own structure of Dasein’s basic intellectual activity. Understanding moving in a hermeneutical circle. It begins with a forward, but through the interpretation should be fitting the pieces of this project. They understand something when it has been developed in all its parts. They also say that speech is the meaningful articulation of the being’s sensitive understanding in the world and founded the human language. Finally say that in everyday Dasein there lies fallen by having hidden his own being and its meaning, because they live the gossip, the craving for novelty and ambiguity.
Being and Sense of Dasein
Anxiety sensitivity is the key that opens the meaning of being of Dasein. It is the ground state of feeling in the lives and experiences that Dasein’s finitude, that life can end at any time. In anxiety, Dasein is nothing to the impossibility of their existence possible. Shows the daily anguish and helplessness. Another point is that the being of Dasein is care, being projected himself to be himself. Finally, the Dasein is a being for death, temporality is the original sense of Dasein, which therefore is temporal and finite. Man can act on their future (Heidegger prioritizes time). Here’s the idea that Heidegger raises the possibilities: the being of Dasein choose between possibilities.
Temporality is the Sense of Being of Dasein
Temporality is the last stop on the analysis of Dasein in Heidegger. First, the original unity of the essential structure of care is temporary. His timing is not the physical or clock time, the temporality of care is the original outside itself, in and for itself of Dasein. The basis for the decision by which Dasein projects forward and being, ie:
- The future is the primary sense to himself, to the possibility of himself projected as their own. It is the time when the project is based understanding. Understanding opens a way for the future.
- On the way back on what has been. It is the moment when he founded the state of the sensibility, which manifests the analysis of the past a way in the past.
- This is the meaning of human practice happen in the open position by the fundamental decision. It’s time to attend to other Dasein.
That is, the future is the projection we have of ourselves, which makes it the present situation, and the past is something that arises in the future, since you’ve done what you do in the past thinking about the future. The man and his world are something finite, so the timing condition us, and that the end is death, and be aware, this weekend brings us to the anxiety (Angst). This anxiety is the fundamental sensitivity that opens the meaning of being of Dasein, as I said, is where the lives and experiences Dasein’s finitude, that death (the end) may at any time. Heidegger proposes a last minute “destruction” of Western philosophy and culture (technical) and goes in search of the original thought. Since humanism is interpreted as the freedom of man release the bodies to return to the care of “being.” This is a new conception of language. Heidegger proposes a linguistic turn of thought from the language of information to the language of being.