Hoffmann had set up a strange psychological barometer designed to indicate the different temperatures and atmospheric phenomena of his soul.
Charles Baudelaire
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to explore the connection between moods and meteors or atmospheric phenomena in Heidegger’s thinking. The idea of the weather as something affecting our emotional state is not new but goes all the way back to Homer. However, the ontological basis of this connection is missing. In this paper, I argue that Heidegger provides exactly such an ontological account of moods and meteors not as two separate spheres but as a common atmosphere of attuned elementality—a dynamic interface where beings bend into being. Being can no longer be understood solely as that which determines beings qua beings but beings inform/transform being as well.
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Notes
The German Befindlickheit is notoriously difficult to translate. Joan Stambaugh translates Befindlichkeit with “attunement” which links the German term explicitly to that of mood [Stimmung]. This is a great choice, since it is the mood, according to Heidegger, that makes manifest “how we are doing”. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, translates Befindlichkeit to “state-of-mind”, which also captures the notion of “how we are” but perhaps in a more psychological fashion. John Haugeland translates it to “Sofindingness” emphasizing the notion of finding oneself (see Haugeland 2000: 52). Befindlichkeit refers to Dasein as being-t/here, since befindlich means “to be here” not merely as the fact of being present but as attending. Befindlichkeit then signifies “finding ourselves as being-t/here always-already attuned, attentive and attending in a state of how we are doing”.
It is interesting to note that Kierkegaard—the theoretical background inspiration for Heidegger’s analysis of anxiety—presents anxiety in a similar way. In The Concept of Anxiety, he explicitly uses a meteorological image to describe anxiety in its most potent form as mood. He compares anxiety at this last stage to a presentiment of an approaching storm. The storm is a translation of the Danish word Uvejr, literally “bad weather,” which links anxiety to the atmospheric as such (see Kierkegaard 1980: 115).
Even though the notion of the storm does not literally refer to”windy weather”, it still makes sense to invoke this image due to its meteorological denotation. The storm is not merely poetical sprinkle nor is it a metaphor understood as a transfer from one domain of meaning to another. Rather, the storm is an image that helps open up our understanding of Being. Elsewhere, Heidegger uses the image of the storm more explicit, e.g., to point to the conflict between concealing and unconcealing (see Withy 2015: 118).
The term Zumutesein, echoes the very notion of Befindlichkeit in terms of “finding oneself in certain way” but in the case of the former, the idea of “mood” is explicitly emphasized.
Mitchell translates this passage as”a marginal note” [Randbemerkung]”the fourfold, no ontological difference” (see Mitchell 2015: 320). The term”marginal note” is well chosen because Randbemerkung literally means “something written in the margin” as well as”a minor/marginal comment”. In that sense, it invokes the notion of”the slight”. Further, Rand- can mean something like an”edge” or a ”rim” pointing to this in-between space as well.
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Wilde, N. Moods and Meteors: A Reconstruction of Heidegger’s Atmospherology. Hum Stud 43, 369–383 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09541-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-020-09541-8