Fundamental Ontology and the Crisis as Paradox

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to treat critically three separate but related groups of questions that arise in the context of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology as a response to the crisis of the forgetting of the question of Being. First, there is the problem of the “necessity” of the crisis. Is (or was) the crisis of forgetfulness in modem times (or in the past) avoidable? Far more openly than Hussed, Heidegger admits of a certain “necessity” to the crisis, a type of “inevitability” to the forgetfulness which characterizes the crisis. However, this necessary forgetfulness is not conceived of solely as a “negative” phenomenon. Indeed, since it is viewed neither as accidental to the history of reflection on Being nor as extrinsic to the life of Dasein, this forgetfulness is taken as somehow being “constitutive” of both that history and of Dasein as the type of being which is open to the questioning of Being. What is the significance of a viewpoint which attributes such a “positive” or “creative” role to forgetfulness? Would not the view of forgetfulness as somehow intrinsic to Dasein, combined with the equation of forgetfulness with “inauthenticity,” lead to the conclusion that for the early Heidegger Dasein is necessarily inauthentic and that there is no such thing as “pure” authenticity?