Abstract
In Being and Time, Heidegger affirms that being-with or Mitsein is an essential constitution of Dasein but he does not submit this existential to the same rigorous analyses as other existentials. In this essay, Jean-Luc Nancy points to the different places where Heidegger erased the possibility of thinking an essential with that he himself opened. This erasure is due, according to Nancy, to the subordination of Mitsein to a thinking of the proper and the improper. The polarization of Being-with between an improper face, the Anyone, and a proper one, the people, which is also, as Nancy shows, a polarization between everydayness and historicity, between a being-together in exteriority (indifference and anonymity) and a being-together in interiority (union through destiny), between a solitary dying and the sacrificial death in combat, leaves the essential with unthought. This essay shows not only the tensions that arise out of Heidegger’s own analyses of Mitsein and affect the whole of Being and Time but also underlines in the end a “shortfall in thinking” inherent not only to Heidegger’s work but, as Nancy claims, to our Western tradition, a shortfall which Nancy has attempted to remedy in his Being Singular Plural.
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Notes
Our analysis here follows § 26 of Being and Time.
[See Heidegger 2000, section 196 “Da-sein and the People”: “What is ownmost to a people, however, is its “voice”].
[See Lacoue-Labarthe 2007, p. 84].
[In English in the original]
I refer on this precise point to “La décision d’existence” in Une pensée finie (Galilée 1990) [Nancy 1994, pp. 82–109]. On the general issue, see also “L’ ‘éthique originaire’ de Heidegger” in La pensée dérobée (Galilée 2000) [Nancy 2002, pp. 62–86] and Être singulier pluriel (Galilée 1996) [Nancy 2000].
[Heidegger 1962, p. 159, German edition, p. 122].
This word means normally “communicating,” but such a translation would be too ambiguous here. I prefer to translate it as “message.” One would remain closer to its meaning in translating it as “sharing” [partage]. But one must also understand that it is a matter of sharing an announcement or a call: a “communiqué” addressed to the community to signify and hand it over to its destination. Hence the modification in my translation of “communicating” into “message.” A simple commentary on the occurrence of the term Mitteilung here in conjunction with Kampf could focus the stakes of the question of the mit. It is not a “communication” where it would only be a matter of talking among us, but an address which destines or sends us to seize our destiny by assault.
[Both citations are from Heidegger 1962, p. 436 modified, German edition, p. 384].
We can find this motive much earlier in the history of the thought of peoples (e.g., in Herder’s Treatise on the Origin of Language, Book II, Law III). Languages, cultures and peoples posit themselves according to opposition, while individuals posit themselves according to differentiation.
The citations are from the German edition, pp. 390–391 [Heidegger 1962, pp. 442–443 modified]. Concerning the word “sacrifice,” it must be noted that it is used here to translate the German words Aufgabe or Selbstaufgabe [normally, a task to which one devotes oneself], which differ from the religious terms Opfer, Aufopferung or Selbstaufopferung. It is somewhat excessive to use “sacrifice”: it is more a matter of “self-renunciation” or “self-resignation” in favor of the Mitsein and its Mitgeschick. However, none of these terms is sufficient to render the movement of handing over one’s own singular fate to the destiny of the people. And insofar as it is a matter of “struggle” (likewise later in the comments on the Rhine, see below) it is judicious to use “sacrifice” here—on the condition that a longer commentary be developed elsewhere.
I can only quickly gesture to the following regarding all of Husserl’s investigations on the topic of intersubjectivity: regardless of their merits, they always fail to touch the with as such, to touch its pace [allure] or its texture of between that the inter-subjective presupposes and obscures more than it reveals its modality.
[Both citations are from Heidegger 1962, pp. 308–309 modified, German edition, p. 264].
[“giving itself up” as it appears in the Macquarrie & Robinson translation].
Letter of 8.V.25 [Arendt and Heidegger 2003, p. 19].
Letter of 13.V.25 [Arendt and Heidegger 2003, p. 21].
Letter of 22.VI.25 [Arendt and Heidegger 2003, p. 25].
Letter of 9.VII.25 [Arendt and Heidegger 2003, p. 27].
References
Arendt, H., & Heidegger, M. (2003). Letters: 1925–1975. In U. Ludz (Ed.). Orlando: Harcourt.
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and time (trans: Macquarrie, J. & Robinson, E.). New York: Harper & Row.
Heidegger, M. (2000). Contributions to philosophy (from enowning). Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Lacoue-Labarthe, P. (2007). Heidegger and the politics of poetry. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (2000). Being singular plural. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (1994). The decision of existence. In Birth to presence. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Nancy, J.-L. (2002). Heidegger’s ‘originary ethics’. In F. Raffoul & D. Pettigrew (Eds.), Heidegger and practical philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press.
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A slightly different version has been published under the title “L’être-avec de l’être-là” in Lieu-Dit 19 “Communauté” (Spring 2003). All additions in square brackets are the translators’ unless otherwise indicated. The German words in parentheses are Nancy’s additions. For the translation of citations from Being and Time, we have used the Macquarrie & Robinson’s translation which we have modified only when constrained by Nancy himself. Overall, we have tried to be faithful to the Heideggerian tone of Nancy’s text by using the accepted English translation of the central concepts of Being and Time. When we depart from the accepted translations, it is to remain true to Nancy’s paraphrases, emphases, and displacements. For example, we refrain from using “authentic” and “inauthentic.”
Translated by Marie-Eve Morin
Department of Philosophy, 4-97 Humanities Centre, University of Alberta,
Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E5
e-mail: mmorin1@ualberta.ca
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Nancy, JL. The being-with of being-there. Cont Philos Rev 41, 1–15 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-007-9071-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-007-9071-4