2 Temporality and authenticity
Heidegger was convinced that Western philosophy had misunderstood the nature of being in general and the nature of human being in particular. His life’s work was dedicated to getting it right on both scores.
In his view, the two issues are inextricably linked. To be human is to disclose and understand the being of whatever there is. Correspondingly, the being of an entity is the meaningful presence of that entity within the field of human experience. A proper or improper understanding of human being entails a proper or improper understanding of the being of everything else. In this context ‘human being’ means what Heidegger designates by his technical term ‘Dasein’: not consciousness or subjectivity or rationality, but that distinctive kind of entity (which we ourselves always are) whose being consists in disclosing the being both of itself and of other entities. The being of this entity is called ‘existence’ (see §4).
Heidegger argues that the structure of human being is comprised of three co-equal moments: becoming, alreadiness and presence. (These are usually, and unfortunately, translated as: ‘coming towards itself’, ‘is as having been’ and ‘making-present’.) As a unity, these three moments constitute the essence of human being, which Heidegger calls ‘temporality’: opening an arena of meaningful presence by anticipating one’s own death. Temporality means being present by becoming what one already is.
Becoming. To be human means that one is not a static entity just ‘there’ among other things. Rather, being human is always a process of becoming oneself, living into possibilities, into one’s future. For Heidegger, such becoming is not optional but necessary. He expresses this claim in various co-equal formulas: (1) The essence of human being is ‘existence’ understood as ‘ek-sistence’, an ineluctable ‘standing out’ into concern about one’s own being and into the need to become oneself; (2) the essence of human being is ‘factical’, always already thrust into concernful openness to itself and thus into the ineluctability of self-becoming; and (3) the essence of being human is ‘to be possible’ – not just able, but above all needing, to become oneself.
The ultimate possibility into which one lives is the possibility to end all possibilities: one’s death. Human beings are essentially finite and necessarily mortal, and so one’s becoming is an anticipation of death. Thus, to know oneself as becoming is to know oneself, at least implicitly, as mortal. Heidegger calls this mortal becoming ‘being- unto-death’.
Alreadiness. Human being consists in becoming; and this becoming means becoming what one already is. Here the word ‘already’ means ‘essentially’, ‘necessarily’ or ‘inevitably’. ‘Alreadiness’ (Gewesenheit) names one’s inevitable human essence and specifically one’s mortality. In becoming the finitude and mortality that one already is, one gets whatever presence one has.
Presence. Mortal becoming is the way human being (a) is meaningfully present to itself and (b) renders other entities meaningfully present to itself. To put the two together: things are present to human being in so far as human being is present to itself as mortal becoming. In both cases presence is bound up with absence.
How human being is present to itself. Since mortal becoming means becoming one’s own death, human being appears as disappearing; it is present to itself as becoming absent. To capture this interplay of presence and absence, we call the essence of human being ‘pres-abs-ence’, that is, an incomplete presence that shades off into absence. Pres-abs-ence is a name for what classical philosophy called ‘movement’ in the broad sense: the momentary presence that something has on the basis of its stretch towards the absent.
Pres-abs-ence is an index of finitude. Any entity that appears as disappearing, or that has its current presence by anticipating a future state, has its being not as full self- presence but as finite pres-abs-ence. The movement towards death that defines human being is what Heidegger calls ‘temporality’. The quotation marks indicate that ‘temporality’ does not refer to chronological succession but rather means having one’s being as the movement of finite mortal becoming.
How other things are present to human being. Other entities are meaningfully present to human being in so far as human being is temporal, that is, always anticipating its own absence. Hence the meaningful presence of things is also temporal or pres-abs-ent – always partial, incomplete and entailing an absence of its own. Not only is human being temporal but the presence of things to human being is also temporal in its own right.
All of Heidegger’s work argues for an intrinsic link between the temporality or pres-abs-ence that defines human being and the temporality or pres-abs-ence that characterizes the meaningful presence of things. But the meaningful presence of things is what Heidegger means by being. Therefore, Heidegger’s central thesis is this: as far as human experience goes, all modes of being are temporal. The meaningful presence of things is always imperfect, incomplete, pres-abs-ential. The meaning of being is time.
Heidegger argues that this crucial state of affairs – finite human being as an awareness of the finitude of all modes of being – is overlooked and forgotten both in everyday experience and in philosophy itself. Therefore, his work discusses how one can recover this forgotten state of affairs on both of those levels.
As regards everyday life, Heidegger describes how one might recall this central but forgotten fact and make it one’s own again. The act of reappropriating one’s own essence – of achieving a personal and concrete grasp of oneself as finite – is called ‘resolution’ (in other translations, ‘resoluteness’ or ‘resolve’). This personal conversion entails becoming clear about the intrinsic finitude of one’s own being, and then choosing to accept and to be that finitude.
Awareness of one’s finitude. Human being is always already the process of mortal becoming. However, one is usually so absorbed in the things one encounters (‘fallenness’) that one forgets the becoming that makes such encounters possible. It takes a peculiar kind of experience, more of a mood than a detached cognition, to wake one up to one’s finitude. Heidegger argues that such an awakening comes about in special ‘basic moods’ (dread, boredom, wonder and so on) in which one experiences not things but that which is not-a-thing or ‘no-thing’. Each of these basic moods reveals, in its own particular way, the absential dimension of one’s pres-abs-ence.
Heidegger often uses charged metaphors to discuss this experience. For example, he describes dread as a ‘call of conscience’, where ‘conscience’ means not a moral faculty but the heretofore dormant, and now awakening, awareness of one’s finite nature. What this call of conscience reveals is that one is ‘guilty’, not of some moral fault but of an ontological defect: the fact of being intrinsically incomplete and on the way to absence. The call of conscience is a call to understand and accept this ‘guilt’.
Choosing one’s finitude. One may choose either to heed or to ignore this call of conscience. To heed and accept it means to acknowledge oneself as a mortal process of pres-abs-ence and to live accordingly. In that case, one recuperates one’s essence and thus attains ‘authenticity’ by becoming one’s proper (or ‘authentic’) self. To ignore or refuse the call does not mean to cease being finite and mortal but rather to live according to an improper (inauthentic or ‘fallen’) self-understanding. Only the proper or authentic understanding of oneself as finite admits one to the concrete, experiential understanding that all forms of being, all ways that things can be meaningfully present, are themselves finite.
Summary. The essence of human being is temporality, that is, mortal becoming or pres- abs-ence. To overlook mortal becoming is to live an inauthentic temporality and to be a fallen self. But to acknowledge and choose one’s mortal becoming in the act of resolution is to live an authentic temporality and selfhood. It means achieving presence (both the presence of oneself and that of other entities) by truly becoming what one already is. This recuperation of one’s own finite being can lead to the understanding that what conditions all modes of being is finitude: the very meaning of being is time.
Heidegger was convinced that Western philosophy had misunderstood the nature of being in general and the nature of human being in particular. His life’s work was dedicated to getting it right on both scores.
In his view, the two issues are inextricably linked. To be human is to disclose and understand the being of whatever there is. Correspondingly, the being of an entity is the meaningful presence of that entity within the field of human experience. A proper or improper understanding of human being entails a proper or improper understanding of the being of everything else. In this context ‘human being’ means what Heidegger designates by his technical term ‘Dasein’: not consciousness or subjectivity or rationality, but that distinctive kind of entity (which we ourselves always are) whose being consists in disclosing the being both of itself and of other entities. The being of this entity is called ‘existence’ (see §4).
Heidegger argues that the structure of human being is comprised of three co-equal moments: becoming, alreadiness and presence. (These are usually, and unfortunately, translated as: ‘coming towards itself’, ‘is as having been’ and ‘making-present’.) As a unity, these three moments constitute the essence of human being, which Heidegger calls ‘temporality’: opening an arena of meaningful presence by anticipating one’s own death. Temporality means being present by becoming what one already is.
Becoming. To be human means that one is not a static entity just ‘there’ among other things. Rather, being human is always a process of becoming oneself, living into possibilities, into one’s future. For Heidegger, such becoming is not optional but necessary. He expresses this claim in various co-equal formulas: (1) The essence of human being is ‘existence’ understood as ‘ek-sistence’, an ineluctable ‘standing out’ into concern about one’s own being and into the need to become oneself; (2) the essence of human being is ‘factical’, always already thrust into concernful openness to itself and thus into the ineluctability of self-becoming; and (3) the essence of being human is ‘to be possible’ – not just able, but above all needing, to become oneself.
The ultimate possibility into which one lives is the possibility to end all possibilities: one’s death. Human beings are essentially finite and necessarily mortal, and so one’s becoming is an anticipation of death. Thus, to know oneself as becoming is to know oneself, at least implicitly, as mortal. Heidegger calls this mortal becoming ‘being- unto-death’.
Alreadiness. Human being consists in becoming; and this becoming means becoming what one already is. Here the word ‘already’ means ‘essentially’, ‘necessarily’ or ‘inevitably’. ‘Alreadiness’ (Gewesenheit) names one’s inevitable human essence and specifically one’s mortality. In becoming the finitude and mortality that one already is, one gets whatever presence one has.
Presence. Mortal becoming is the way human being (a) is meaningfully present to itself and (b) renders other entities meaningfully present to itself. To put the two together: things are present to human being in so far as human being is present to itself as mortal becoming. In both cases presence is bound up with absence.
How human being is present to itself. Since mortal becoming means becoming one’s own death, human being appears as disappearing; it is present to itself as becoming absent. To capture this interplay of presence and absence, we call the essence of human being ‘pres-abs-ence’, that is, an incomplete presence that shades off into absence. Pres-abs-ence is a name for what classical philosophy called ‘movement’ in the broad sense: the momentary presence that something has on the basis of its stretch towards the absent.
Pres-abs-ence is an index of finitude. Any entity that appears as disappearing, or that has its current presence by anticipating a future state, has its being not as full self- presence but as finite pres-abs-ence. The movement towards death that defines human being is what Heidegger calls ‘temporality’. The quotation marks indicate that ‘temporality’ does not refer to chronological succession but rather means having one’s being as the movement of finite mortal becoming.
How other things are present to human being. Other entities are meaningfully present to human being in so far as human being is temporal, that is, always anticipating its own absence. Hence the meaningful presence of things is also temporal or pres-abs-ent – always partial, incomplete and entailing an absence of its own. Not only is human being temporal but the presence of things to human being is also temporal in its own right.
All of Heidegger’s work argues for an intrinsic link between the temporality or pres-abs-ence that defines human being and the temporality or pres-abs-ence that characterizes the meaningful presence of things. But the meaningful presence of things is what Heidegger means by being. Therefore, Heidegger’s central thesis is this: as far as human experience goes, all modes of being are temporal. The meaningful presence of things is always imperfect, incomplete, pres-abs-ential. The meaning of being is time.
Heidegger argues that this crucial state of affairs – finite human being as an awareness of the finitude of all modes of being – is overlooked and forgotten both in everyday experience and in philosophy itself. Therefore, his work discusses how one can recover this forgotten state of affairs on both of those levels.
As regards everyday life, Heidegger describes how one might recall this central but forgotten fact and make it one’s own again. The act of reappropriating one’s own essence – of achieving a personal and concrete grasp of oneself as finite – is called ‘resolution’ (in other translations, ‘resoluteness’ or ‘resolve’). This personal conversion entails becoming clear about the intrinsic finitude of one’s own being, and then choosing to accept and to be that finitude.
Awareness of one’s finitude. Human being is always already the process of mortal becoming. However, one is usually so absorbed in the things one encounters (‘fallenness’) that one forgets the becoming that makes such encounters possible. It takes a peculiar kind of experience, more of a mood than a detached cognition, to wake one up to one’s finitude. Heidegger argues that such an awakening comes about in special ‘basic moods’ (dread, boredom, wonder and so on) in which one experiences not things but that which is not-a-thing or ‘no-thing’. Each of these basic moods reveals, in its own particular way, the absential dimension of one’s pres-abs-ence.
Heidegger often uses charged metaphors to discuss this experience. For example, he describes dread as a ‘call of conscience’, where ‘conscience’ means not a moral faculty but the heretofore dormant, and now awakening, awareness of one’s finite nature. What this call of conscience reveals is that one is ‘guilty’, not of some moral fault but of an ontological defect: the fact of being intrinsically incomplete and on the way to absence. The call of conscience is a call to understand and accept this ‘guilt’.
Choosing one’s finitude. One may choose either to heed or to ignore this call of conscience. To heed and accept it means to acknowledge oneself as a mortal process of pres-abs-ence and to live accordingly. In that case, one recuperates one’s essence and thus attains ‘authenticity’ by becoming one’s proper (or ‘authentic’) self. To ignore or refuse the call does not mean to cease being finite and mortal but rather to live according to an improper (inauthentic or ‘fallen’) self-understanding. Only the proper or authentic understanding of oneself as finite admits one to the concrete, experiential understanding that all forms of being, all ways that things can be meaningfully present, are themselves finite.
Summary. The essence of human being is temporality, that is, mortal becoming or pres- abs-ence. To overlook mortal becoming is to live an inauthentic temporality and to be a fallen self. But to acknowledge and choose one’s mortal becoming in the act of resolution is to live an authentic temporality and selfhood. It means achieving presence (both the presence of oneself and that of other entities) by truly becoming what one already is. This recuperation of one’s own finite being can lead to the understanding that what conditions all modes of being is finitude: the very meaning of being is time.
posted by WRS at 4:33 AM
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