Abstract
Heidegger’s conception of affectivity, as developed for the most part in Being and Time, is reconstructed here with an emphasis on the temporal character of affectivity. While a good number of philosophers of emotion have borrowed from Heidegger’s approach, few have so far taken the temporal character of findingness [Befindlichkeit] into account. This paper has three main parts. The first part revisits the standard reading of Heideggerian affectivity, the second reconstructs the conception of ‘originary temporality’ at the core of Division II of Being and Time, while the third section undertakes an interpretation of the way Heidegger construes affectivity as various modes of the ‘ecstatic temporalizing of Dasein’. The main orientation of the paper is reconstructive. However, some implications for the philosophical study of emotion will be highlighted in the conclusion.
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Notes
- 1.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-30/facebook-turns-10-the-mark-zuckerberg-interview (last accessed on February 4, 2014).
- 2.
- 3.
All direct quotations from SZ are taken from the Macquarrie and Robinson translation (1962); I will modify some of the translations and indicate it accordingly. Page numbers refer to the original German version as these are also provided in the text of M&Q’s translation.
- 4.
Haugeland’s earlier suggestion was even more forced: sofindingness (2000, 52) – I consent to Haugeland’s later admission that this would overdo it: findingness works well enough.
- 5.
“State-of-mind” is the term Maquarrie and Robinson chose for translating Befindlichkeit in their 1962 translation of Being and Time.
- 6.
“Attunement” is the term Joan Stambaugh employs to translate Befindlichkeit in her 1996 translation of Being and Time.
- 7.
“Attunements are not side-effects, but are something which in advance determine our being with one another. It seems as though an attunement is in each case already there, so to speak, like an atmosphere in which we first immerse ourselves in each case and which then attunes us through and through. It does not merely seem so, it is so; and, faced with this fact, we must dismiss the psychology of feelings, experiences and consciousness. It is a matter of seeing and saying what is happening here.” (1929/1930, 100; Engl. tr. 67).
- 8.
For an insightful elaboration of the complex meaning of thrownness in Heidegger, see Withy 2011.
- 9.
To be more precise, this ‘everyday mode’ of anxiety is not strictly anxiety but rather fear as the inauthentic, ‘fallen’ form of anxiety; see SZ, 189: “And only because anxiety is always latent in Being-in-the-world, can such Being-in-the-world, which is concernful-finding being alongside the “world”, be afraid. Fear is anxiety, fallen into the ‘world’, inauthentic, and, as such, hidden from itself.” (translation modified)
- 10.
“Even if Dasein is ‘assured’ in its belief about its ‘whither’, or if, in a spirit of rational enlightenment, it supposes itself to know about its “whence”, all this counts for nothing as against the phenomenal fact of the case: for the mood brings Dasein before the “that-it-is” of its “there”, which, as such, stares it in the face with the inexorability of an enigma.” (SZ, 136 – translation slightly modified)
- 11.
Cf. Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.43.
- 12.
“Existentially, attunement implies a disclosive submission to the world, out of which we encounter something that matters to us. Indeed from the ontological point of view we must as a general principle leave the primary discovery of the world to ‘bare mood’.” (SZ, 137/8 – translation slightly modified)
- 13.
In the German original, this passage reads thus: „Das Da wird je gleichursprünglich durch Stimmung erschlossen, bzw. verschlossen. Die Gestimmtheit bringt das Dasein vor seine Geworfenheit, so zwar, daß diese gerade nicht als solche erkannt, sondern in dem, »wie einem ist«, weit ursprünglicher erschlossen ist. Das Geworfensein besagt existenzial: sich so oder so befinden. Die Befindlichkeit gründet daher in der Geworfenheit. Stimmung repräsentiert die Weise, in der ich je das geworfene Seiende primär bin.” (SZ, 339/40)
- 14.
This is the passage in full: “It is clear that attunements are not merely something at hand. They themselves are precisely a fundamental manner and fundamental way of being, indeed of being-there [Da-sein], and this always directly includes being with one another. Attunements are ways of the being-there of Da-sein, and thus ways of being-away. An attunement is a way, not merely a form or mode, but a way [Weise] – in the sense of a melody that does not merely hover over the so-called proper being at hand of man, but that sets the tone for such being, i.e., attunes and determines the manner and way [Art und Weise] of his being.“ (GA 29/30, 101, Engl. 67)
- 15.
This is a project that is also thoroughly reflected in Heidegger’s tantalizing interpretation of Kant’s theoretical philosophy, where he undertakes to reconceive Kant’s transcendental unity of apperception in terms of original temporality, paralleling the threefold synthesis outlined in the A deduction of the Critique of Pure Reason – the respective syntheses of apprehension, of reproduction and of recognition – with the explication of the three dimension’s or ecstases of temporality (coming-toward, having-been, and enpresenting); see Käufer 2013 for a helpful discussion.
- 16.
- 17.
I leave out the somewhat complicated role of ‘discourse’ [Rede] here.
- 18.
Heidegger is at pains to distinguish ‘death’ [Tod] as an existentiale from ‘demise’ [Ableben] and ‘perishing’ [Verenden]. Death understood existentially is not the biological event of perishing (an animal’s ‘end of life’) and neither the human (chiefly institutional) event of demise. From this, some authors have concluded that it is conceivable that an instance of Dasein might ‘survive’ its existential death (see SZ, §§ 50–53, and Haugeland 2013 for clarification; see also Blattner 2005, 315). A remarkable (if contestable) discussion of a possible instance of existential death that does not coincide with demise is Jonathan Lear’s narrating the life of Plenty Coups, the last chief of the Crow tribe who physically and ‘spiritually’ survived the total collapse of a cultural framework of intelligibility, i.e. any possible way to be as a Crow (see Lear 2006, and the illuminating discussion in Ratcliffe 2013b). Mulhall 2005b offers a different take on the difficulties inherent in Heidegger’s distinction between death, perishing and demise; and as I understand Mulhall’s overall position on death he would deny the possibility of a human’s ‘life going on’ after existential death. I cannot discuss this here, as this debate is shockingly intricate. I tentatively side with Mulhall, however admitting that I haven’t fully made up my mind about the matter; Carel 2007 also comes down on my side of the divide. Iain Thompson’s 2013 recent encompassing and complexifying interpretation sides roughly with Blattner and Haugeland but tries to bring death and demise closer to one another. His reading, however, is hampered by a shocking misconstrual of ‘Ableben’ (demise) as ‘life’s ending that is consciously experienced’ (see 2013, 265). I think it is obvious from the (German) text in § 49 that the chief contrast between perishing and demise has not the least to do with conscious experience – rather, it seems to reflect the for Heidegger fundamental (i.e., unbridgeable) gulf between Dasein and what ‘merely lives’ (i.e. animals). Confusion is also caused by not paying enough attention to the trivial-seeming fact that Heidegger holds death [Tod] and dying [sterben] terminologically separate (e.g. SZ, 247).
- 19.
This also importantly shows that the ‘Da’ as which Dasein exists (cf. SZ, 132) is in the first instance a temporal dimension, while space, though seemingly on the same constitutional plane as time, is explicable in terms of the temporal activity of ‘taking space’, i.e. acts of orienting-toward that can be shown to be specific concretizations of the interplay of the three temporal dimensions: “Only on the basis of its ecstatic-horizonal temporality is it possible for Dasein to break into space.” (SZ, 369).
- 20.
That what is referred to here is indeed that “silent scream of horror at the depth of our being” that I spoke about earlier is evidenced in by the fact that Heidegger comes explicitly back to the theme of anxiety in the course of his explication of authentic being toward death [Vorlaufen] in SZ, § 53: “That attunement which can hold open the utter and constant threat to itself arising from Dasein’s ownmost individualized being, is anxiety. In this attunement, Dasein finds itself face to face with the “nothing” of the possible impossibility of its existence. Anxiety is anxious about the potentiality-for-being of the entity so destined, and in this way it discloses the uttermost possibility. […] Being-toward-death is essentially anxiety.” (SZ, 265–66 – translation modified)
- 21.
That Dasein’s “end” – another word for existential death – is meant in the precise temporal sense of Dasein’s ‘being over’ is clear from the term Heidegger employed for it in his 1924 manuscript „Der Begriff der Zeit”: Vorbei – as in the following: „Was ist dieses: je den eigenen Tod haben? Es ist ein Vorlaufen des Daseins zu seinem Vorbei als einer in Gewißheit und völliger Unbestimmtheit bevorstehenden äußersten Möglichkeit seiner selbst.” (GA 64, 116)
- 22.
Which is obviously the ontic rendering of the ontological fact that “[f]actically, Dasein is dying as long as it exists” (SZ 251), which means that while death is not attainable as an actualized possibility (i.e. not realizable within existence), it is all the more manifest as possibility (either inauthentically in fearful evasion or authentically in anxious forerunning toward death).
- 23.
Piotr Hoffman 2007, drawing on Heidegger’s 1924 manuscript „Der Begriff der Zeit” (GA 64), interestingly describes how Heidegger first used ‚Jeweiligkeit’ but then apparently dropped the notion which is for the most part absent from Being and Time (save several employments of the adjective ‚jeweilig’, which, however, seem mostly non-terminological).
- 24.
For a neat exegetical clarification of what Heidegger means by ‘transcendence’, see Käufer 2005.
- 25.
Heidegger at one point even quips that everyday lived time “has holes”: “When Dasein is ‘living along’ in an everyday concernful manner, it just never understands itself as running along in a continuously enduring sequence of pure ‘nows’. By reason of this covering up, the time which Dasein allows itself has gaps in it, as it were. Often we do not bring a ‘day’ together again when we come back to the time which we have ‘used’.“ (SZ, 409) This passage is from Div. II, ch. 6 in which the degeneration of originary temporality into the ordinary (or ‘vulgar’) understanding of time is made plausible. However, roughly one might say that this peculiar discontinuity of time is carried over from originary temporality to time as ordinarily understood.
- 26.
Cf. the following passage Heidegger penned in 1924: „Das gewärtigende Besorgen lebt als von der Ausgelegtheit geführtes seine Vergangenheit. Das Dasein ist so gerade im nächsten Miteinanderbesorgen sein Gewesensein.” (GA 64, 89).
- 27.
In the German original, this passage reads thus: “Die in der eigentlichen Zeitlichkeit gehaltene, mithin eigentliche Gegenwart nennen wir den Augenblick. Dieser Terminus muß im aktiven Sinne als Ekstase verstanden werden. Er meint die entschlossene, aber in der Entschlossenheit gehaltene Entrückung des Daseins an das, was in der Situation an besorgbaren Möglichkeiten, Umständen begegnet. Das Phänomen des Augenblicks kann grundsätzlich nicht aus dem Jetzt aufgeklärt werden.” (SZ, 338)
- 28.
Heidegger distinguishes between Situation and Lage – in short, situation is disclosed by the authentic present, i.e. in the Augenblick, while Lage (roughly, the general instead of the concrete situation) is disclosed by the inauthentic present, i.e. in everyday (fallen) enpresenting. See Schear 2013 for an illuminating discussion of this contrast.
- 29.
“ ‘In the moment of vision’ nothing can occur; but as an authentic Present or waiting-toward, the moment of vision enables us to encounter for the first time what can be ‘in time’ as ready-to-hand or present-at-hand. (SZ, 338 – translation slightly modified).
- 30.
A more detailed explication of the Augenblick is provided by Heidegger in the course of his discussion of boredom in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics – not surprisingly, the moment of resolution is exactly the counter move to profound boredom in which the ecstatic character of time is leveled into a dulling, self-same monotony (see GA 29/30, e.g. 223f).
- 31.
In his highly illuminating 1924 Marburg talk “The Concept of Time”, Heidegger puns: „die Zeit zu berechnen hat die Zeit eigentlich keine Zeit“ (GA 64, 119), adding that this is all one might correctly say about the theme of ‘measuring’ and explicitly ‘reckoning’ with regard of authentic time. In other words, in authentic temporalizing, Dasein is so busy being itself that it literally has no time to bother with ‘time’. That is also why authentic Dasein in an important sense always ‘has time’, and cannot possibly be bored (cf. ibid.).
- 32.
My more specific objection to Ratcliffe’s treatment of the temporality of mood is that he fails to appreciate the way mood itself is unfolding as ecstatic temporality. Making the correct claim, as Ratcliffe does, that “mood changes can significantly alter how time is experienced” (2013a, 173) is not an objection to Heidegger’s account. Rather, the fact that this is so is a consequence of the more basic fact that, prior to that, mood itself is constituted, along with understanding and falling, by original temporality. In which way exactly this is so will be clarified in the present section.
- 33.
Again, I leave out ‘discourse’ for reasons of simplicity.
- 34.
Cf. the striking description of curiosity [Neugier] as an example for the temporal constitution of falling (inauthentic enpresenting) in SZ, § 68c.
- 35.
In light of Haugeland’s nice gloss, Dreyfus’ somewhat clumsy but insightful suggestion to translate Befindlichkeit as “where-we’re-at-ness” becomes intelligible (Dreyfus 1991, 168).
- 36.
From a fallen, present-day vantage point, it can seem that Facebook had to be invented for that dispersing routine evasion, and it is quite telling that there is an ongoing debate on the pros and cons of timelines, clear-name identity profiles and data protection rules: Can social media move from the burdensome drag of identity fixation and the evasive dispersing in our making dead time pass toward a more lively, presentist, Augenblick-like unfolding?
- 37.
What Heidegger chiefly deals with in SZ, § 68b is the basic temporal structure of findingness, he is not yet concerned with the phenomenology of ‘lived duration’ – i.e. as the concrete ways in that the ‘historizing’ [Geschehen] of Dasein unfolds (see SZ, §§ 73–75, most notably pp. 386 and 390/1), and this is what is much more pronounced in the experience of boredom, and notably in profound boredom as described in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. See Hoffman 2005 for a helpful discussion.
- 38.
I did not deal much with the relationship between originary temporality and history in this paper, but from my treatment it should be clear enough – at least in outline – what Heidegger is driving at in this regard. See SZ, §§ 74 and 75.
- 39.
Only for reasons of space I did not discuss the way Heidegger applies his analysis to more ‘positive’ modes of findingness. Toward the end of SZ, § 68b, he notably analyses hope, maybe in order to contrast the ‘negative’ moods of fear and anxiety with a positive one, and again the aim is to show that it is ‘beenness’ that figures prominently, i.e. self-disclosure ahead of world-disclosure. According to Heidegger, in hoping for something I not merely anticipate some future boon but I do so precisely in “hoping something for me” [Sich-erhoffen], i.e. I bring myself to bear in my hope, so that beenness again dominates in thrusting “myself toward what I hope for” (SZ, 345). Here, as in other conventionally ‘positive’ emotions, my inescapable ‘having been’ is temporarily set free of its burdensome character – as long as I am in the mood of hope I am relieved of the burden of being me (not of being me, obviously). The same goes for joy, enthusiasm, elation and so on.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Laurin Berresheim and Alexander Brödner for their highly helpful comments to an earlier version of this paper. Thanks also to Frank Esken and the members of his study project on normativity at University of Osnabrück for raising a number of very good points during a discussion session focused on an earlier draft. Special thanks to Daniel O’Shiel for cleaning up the worst amongst my routine abuses of the English language.
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Slaby, J. (2015). Affectivity and Temporality in Heidegger. In: Ubiali, M., Wehrle, M. (eds) Feeling and Value, Willing and Action. Phaenomenologica, vol 216. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10326-6_11
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