Abstract
On the opening pages of Being and Time Heidegger throws down the gauntlet at traditional ontologies. Prejudices of construing being as undefinable, self-evident, and the most universal and emptiest of concepts are, he charges, so widespread that raising the question of being itself is considered the mark of a methodological deficiency. Yet it is in fact “the most essential [prinzipiellste] question,” not least given the make-up of the sciences. Every science rests upon “basic concepts” of the entities making up its respective subject matter. In order to determine the adequacy of those basic concepts for the entities they putatively designate, it is necessary to interpret the entities on the basis of “the basic constitution” of their being (die Grundverfassung seines Seins). Since the sciences are thus founded upon ontologies (conceptions of being), it would be “naïve and lacking in transparency” to conduct research into how those entities are without discussing the sense of being at all. From these considerations, he draws the following conclusion, italicizing it for emphasis.All ontology…remains blind and a perversion of the objective most proper to it if it has not first sufficiently clarified the sense of being. (SZ 11)He accordingly also refers to the question of the sense of being as “the fundamental question” (Fundamentalfrage) and the “basic question” (Grundfrage) of all ontology (5, 231).
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Notes
- 1.
Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1967), 9 (hereafter ‘SZ’). No English translation is cited since the page numbers of the Niemeyer edition are given in the margins of both standard English translations. I am grateful to Andrew Butler and Al and Maria Miller for valuable critical comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
- 2.
Several authors have addressed the topic in general, often quite ably, but without providing a close analysis of the passages and language in which Heidegger gives his account of sense or meaning (as it is often translated), particularly as the Woraufhin of projection; see, for example, Blattner 1999, 39–40; Crowell 2013, 28–29; Dreyfus 1992, 221–223; Hoagland 2013, 149–159; Sheehan 2015, 88; McManus 2012, 115–117, 174n.
- 3.
The fact that quotation marks may be used not a indicators of mention of a term but as scare quotes for emphasis raises further difficulties for interpretation.
- 4.
Contemporary discussion of difficulties besetting the use/mention distinction typically begin with the objection that mentioning a word is a way of using it and, indeed, a way that, while distinctive, is far from obvious; see Donald Davidson, “Quotation,” Theory and Decision 11/1 (1979): 27–40 and Herman Cappelen & Ernest Lepore, “Quotation,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2012).
- 5.
Heidegger deploys the expression ‘sense of’ both with and without quotation marks surrounding the word that follows ‘of,’ presumably marking in this way semantic and thematic uses of ‘sense’ respectively. On the one hand, for example, he speaks of the sense of ‘seiend’ (SZ 6), ‘sum’ (SZ 24), ‘repetition’ (SZ 26), ‘hermeneutics’ (SZ 37), ‘authenticity’ and ‘inauthenticity’ (SZ 42f), ‘empiricism’ (SZ 50), habito and diligo (SZ 54), ‘taking care of’ (Besorgen) (SZ 57), ‘interpreting’ (SZ 62), ‘within’ (SZ 62), ‘nature’ (SZ 65), ‘surrounding’ (Umherum) (SZ 66), ‘between four walls’ (SZ 68), ‘tool’ (SZ 74). Yet he just as often speaks of the sense of concepts (SZ 31, 34), assertions and judgments (SZ 32), questions and questioning (SZ 1, 8, 20f), belief (SZ 10), knowing (SZ 71), ontology (SZ 11, 27), ancient ontology (SZ 25), science (SZ 11), time (SZ 18) propositions (SZ 18), destruction (SZ 22), ens (SZ 24), research (SZ 34, 36, 50), covering up (SZ 36), analytic (SZ 38), structures (SZ 44), immersing (SZ 54), knowledge-problem (SZ 61), substantiality (SZ 63), occurring (SZ 80), creating signs (SZ 80), and so on.
- 6.
For the most part, Heidegger uses ‘meaning’ (Bedeutung) together with quotation marks or italics, signaling mention not use; see, for example, his talk of the meaning of ‘phenomenal’ (SZ 37), ‘understanding something’ (SZ 143), ‘cura’ (SZ 199), ‘truth’” (SZ 256), ‘being guilty of’ (SZ 282). Yet there are several exceptions such as his talk of the meaning that the world (not ‘world’) has (SZ 65).
- 7.
In short, ‘meaning’ = ‘sense’ but meaning ≠ sense.
- 8.
Heidegger does not elaborate the nature and extent of this grounding, leaving open the question of the difference between meaningfulness and purposefulness. In order to avoid the clumsiness of employing ‘for-the-sake-of’ – Heidegger’s remake of Aristotle’s hou heneka – as a noun, I occasionally employ ‘purposefulness’ to translate Worumwillen.
- 9.
As a metonym for ‘being-here,’ ‘being-in-the-world’ encompasses what we are more or less consciously doing (activities that define our worlds), what and how we encounter things within the world (innerweltlich), and to what end. These activities, encounters, and ends are woven into the understanding that defines us, disclosing that and who we are. We can say that we understand what we are doing, what we encounter and how, or for what end, but each of these instances of understanding supposes the other. But these various concrete instances of understanding and their reciprocity are based upon an existential understanding, an understanding of what it means for us to be here at all.
- 10.
- 11.
This gloss on understanding is abbreviated for the purpose of introducing Heidegger’s account of the topic of sense. A more accurate gloss would not sidestep the analysis of mattering, a notion underscoring that understanding is inseparable from affective modes of being-here, that being-here consists in being a thrown projection, or (as Heidegger sums up the same point) that it consists in caring (Sorge).
- 12.
Thanks to the way that this projection existentially constitutes the sort of being peculiar to being-here, it is always more than it factually is (were we to construe it as something merely on hand). But it is also never more than what pertains to its facticity, which is to say that it can project itself onto its authentic potential-to-be or not.
- 13.
The word-play on Vorhabe can be read as anticipating Heidegger’s later doctrine of time-space, where what we already have is a domain for decisions (a future).
- 14.
Most literally perhaps, Vorgriff could be translated ‘prehension.’
- 15.
We can surmise that Heidegger has something time-related in mind here, since he has announced his intention of demonstrating that time is the sense of being-here’s being.
- 16.
One might be tempted to equate the sense here with the fore-structure, but given Heidegger’s claim that the sense is structured by the fore-structure, he is distinguishing them in some way. Graham Nicholson’s interpretation moves in the direction of that equation when he states that “Verstehen projects a ‘fore-structure’”; see Nicholson 1999, 172.
- 17.
I pass over a further puzzle concerning how we are to understand the ‘is’ in the opening sentence. Is the ‘is’ here an abbreviated way of saying ‘is identical to’ or of saying ‘is partly’?
- 18.
Macquarrie & Robinson translate it this way and Stambaugh follows their lead; see Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), 193; Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: SUNY, 2010), 147.
- 19.
Kisiel, 441.
- 20.
Apparently, the entwerfen originally had a technical meaning in relation to weaving; see Kluge 1995, 224.
- 21.
Fritz Schröter, “Zerlegungsmethoden des Fernsehens,” Handbuch der Bildtelegraphie und des Fernsehens: Grundlagen, hrsg. Von Fritz Schröter et al. (Berlin: Springer, 1932), 40: “Sie [Bildchen] werden dann über ein Ablenksprisma auf einen Schirm entworfen.”
- 22.
In this respect, the Woraufhin may correspond to the arche on the basis of which something comes to be known; see Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Delta 1 (1013a15–16).
- 23.
The list omits the use of woraufhin with ‘projected’ (145, 151, 324–25) and ‘being out for’ (SZ 210).
- 24.
One might object that these locutions have too teleological a ring for what Heidegger has in mind, particularly if he is interpreted as arguing that the sense of being-here just is its being-possible rather than some end state. But such an interpretation runs afoul, I submit, of Heidegger’s insistence on an authentic potential-to-be, a projection of possibilities with a clear view to the possibility of the end of all possibilities.
- 25.
The contrast of the nonsensical (unsinnig) and the absurd (widersinnig) on the following page (SZ 152) appropriates and re-writes Husserl’s own version of the contrast.
- 26.
SZ 328: “Die Zeitlichkeit »ist« überhaupt kein Seiendes. Sie ist nicht, sondern zeitigt sich.”
Bibliography
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Dahlstrom, D.O. (2022). The Topic of Sense in Being and Time. In: Rogove, J., D’Oriano, P. (eds) Heidegger and his Anglo-American Reception. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 119. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05817-2_8
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