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The Temporal Character of Dasein

13/04/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"I will not try to do justice here to the richness of Heidegger's constructive account of what he calls the 'phenomenological chronology of being.' What is of fundamental importance in it for the purposes of this discussion is the notion that being cannot be identified with the 'is' of the present tense, no matter how disguised, or with the mode of presence that corresponds to it. Instead, being is complexly articulated in the way that the system of tenses expresses, and there is no possibility of simplifying this complex ordering in favor of a single one of its modalities. The analysis of this articulation of being into its various modalities is ontology; and perhaps the most radical claim that Heidegger makes is that ontology has an essentially temporal character. This is because the distinctions it explicates among the modalities of being — between the 'is' and the 'is not' and between 'is possible' and 'not possibly' — have to be understood in temporal terms. The articulated structures of being are thus inextricably bound up with the distinctions of past, present, and future that are comprised in our own temporality as this was characterized in Being and Time. What 'is,' is thus necessarily what will or will not be. But these temporal qualifications of the articulations of being also articulate presence, which is, therefore, not just a matter of the static immediacy of the present tense. To put this point in a maximally paradoxical way, presence also compromises absence. It takes the form of the 'has been' and the 'will be' as well as of the 'is,' and the being of the entities that form part of the world of Dasein is understood in just this ecstatic mode that characterizes the temporality of Dasein. In psychological terms, we would speak here of 'memory' and 'expectation,' but it is just this psychological mode of description that Heidegger avoids because it obscures what most needs attention for the purposes of ontology. Instead, he speaks of the presence of such entities as their presence-to the entity — Dasein — which is itself temporal in the way that makes this presence possible. This presence is also declared to be the being of those entities, once it is accepted that the concept of being is complexly articulated in the manner that has been described and that corresponds to the set of temporal distinctions that Dasein itself deploys" (Guignon 1993:103-104).

Guignon, Charles, ed.
1993 The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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Husserl Philosophy of Mind

07/04/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"Husserl's views on mind and body address issues central to more recent debates about mind, brain, and computer. Indeed, Husserl's views are more articulate in ontology as well as phenomenology than most of the familiar theories of recent decades. A brief comparison will place Husserl’s views in the midst of contemporary philosophy of mind. This placement will help to indicate some of the issues that would have to be addressed in a thorough evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of Husserl's complex ontology of mind and body….

In Individuals (1959) P.F. Strawson proposed that mental and physical predicates are predicates of the same things, namely, persons. Husserl would agree but would go beyond the linguistic claim to ask what phenomenological structures these predicates express and what essences (or moments) these predicates ascribe.

Donald Davidson’s anomalous monism, in 'Mental Events' (1970), we saw, held that the same events are described in two types of theory — physical theory and psychological theory — between which there are no 'bridge laws,' leaving the psychological sphere of the intentional a seamless whole unaddressed by physical theory. Now, Husserl distinguished phenomenology from natural theory, both physical and psychological theory, holding that the same events are described in different ways by these different types of theory. But he assumed an ontology of essences and moments (Davidson remained neutral on such issues), and he distinguished different aspects or moments of mental events which are ascribed by these different types of theory. In particular, according to Husserl, phenomenology describes the aspect of intentionality as a property of 'pure' consciousness (bracketing physical properties of the mental event), psychology describes intentionality as a property of mental events in nature, and physical theory describes brain process. Assuming these are different aspects of the same event, would Husserl allow any 'bridge laws' between these types of theory? Such laws would describe causal relations between the neural and intentional aspects or moments of a mental event. But for Husserl, we saw, causal relations are restricted to the natural aspects of an event. So Husserl would agree with Davidson only on condition that 'psychological theory' be 'pure' intentional psychology, i.e., phenomenology" (Smith and Woodruff Smith 1999:367-368).

Smith, Barry, and David Woodruff Smith
1999[1995] The Cambridge Companion to Husserl. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

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The Connection of Reality and Dasein

14/01/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“The question of the meaning of Being becomes possible at all only if there is something like an understanding of Being. Understanding of Being belongs to the kind of Being which the entity called ‘Dasein’ possesses. The more appropriately and primordially we have succeeded in explicating this entity, the surer we are to attain our goal in the future course of working out the problem of fundamental ontology.

In pursuit of the tasks of a preparatory existential analytic of Dasein, there emerged an Interpretation of understanding, meaning, and interpretation. Our analysis of Dasein’s disclosedness showed further that, with the disclosedness, Dasein, in its basic state of Being-in-the-world, has been revealed equiprimordially with regard to the world, Being-in, and the Self. Furthermore, in the factical disclosedness of the world, entities within-the-world are discovered too. This implies that the Being of these entities is always understood in a certain manner, even if it is not conceived in a way which is appropriately ontological. To be sure, the pre-ontological understanding of Being embraces all entities which are essentially disclosed in Dasein; but the understanding of Being has not yet Articulated itself in a way which corresponds to the various modes of Being.

At the same time our interpretation of understanding has shown that in accordance with its falling kind of Being, it has, proximally and for the most part diverted itself… into an understanding of the ‘world’. Even where the issue is not only of ontical experience but also one of ontological understanding, the interpretation of Being takes its orientation in the first instance from the Being of entities within-the-world. Thereby the Being of what is proximally ready-to-hand gets passed over, and entities are first conceived as a context of Things (res) which are present-at-hand. ‘Being’ acquires the meaning of ‘Reality’. Substantiality becomes the basic characteristic of Being. Corresponding to this way in which the understanding of Being has been diverted, even the ontological understanding of Dasein moves into the horizon of this conception of Being. Like any other entity, Dasein too is present-at-hand as Real. In this way ‘Being in general‘ acquires the meaning of ‘Reality‘. Accordingly, the concept of Reality has a peculiar priority in the ontological problematic. By this priority the route to a genuine existential analytic of Dasein gets diverted and so too does our very view of the Being of what is proximally ready-to-hand within-the-world. It finally forces the general problematic of Being into a direction that lies off the course. The other modes of Being become defined negatively and privatively with regard to Reality.

Thus not only the analytic of Dasein but the working-out of the question of the meaning of Being in general must be turned away from a one-sided orientation with regard to Being in the sense of Reality. We must demonstrate that Reality is not only one kind of Being among others, but that ontologically it has a definite connection in its foundations with Dasein, the world, and readiness-to-hand” (Heidegger 1962:233-234).

Heidegger, Martin
1962 Being and Time. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, trans. San Francisco, CA: Harper San Francisco.

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