Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy: Key Concepts

In these notes, I will briefly sketch the key concepts of Martin Heidegger’s existential philosophy. However, it must be noted that Heidegger is a huge philosopher and difficult to understand. Thus, I will only present the key concepts of his existential philosophy.

To begin with, it is important to note that Heidegger offers a new conception of philosophy, which, according to some scholars, such as Werner Marx, aims ultimately to attain a “second beginning” at this late stage (20th century) of human development. Thus, Heidegger’s effort must be seen as composing in a new different way the question concerning the “Essence of Being”, and, at one with this, articulating the “Essence of Man”. It appears therefore that Heidegger’s main intention in rekindling the question concerning the “Essence of Being” is to really articulate the essence and meaning of being human.

Why the “second beginning” of philosophy and the task of composing anew the “Essence of Being” and the “Essence of Man”?

For Heidegger, this question has long been stalemated and yet the question of Being, that is, the Essence of Being and the Essence of Man, remains the original question. Indeed, it is the “first” question concerning the meaning of our own Being (that is, the meaning of being human) vis-à-vis the meaning of Being (that is, Being in general or the entirety of Nature).

The attempt to rekindle the question of Being implies for Heidegger not only a “going back” (that is, remembering) to the original question and appropriating what this serious question itself had revealed to human beings (Dasein), but also a “going back” to those thinkers who first raised the question concerning the Being of beings, that is, the pre-Socratics. In other words, for Heidegger, if we want to understand the essence of Being, then we need to revisit the pre-Socratic philosophers and know what they said about “Being”.

As is well known, the pre-Socratics were the first to raise the question concerning the Essence of Being and of Man. Thus, they were referred to as the “first philosophers”. With this, they were said to have set the “first beginning” of philosophy.

We must note, however, that the term “pre-Socratics” does not refer only to the set of philosophers from Thales to the Sophists (for example, Protagoras, Gorgias, and Thracymachus), but also to the philomythoi (that is, the lovers of myth, like Hesiod and Homer), as Aristotle would call them. Thus, in this context, philosophy could be said to have begun with the philomythoi and the pre-Socratics. Let me briefly explain the difference between the philomythoi and the Pre-Socratics’ way of philosophizing.

On the one hand, the philomythoi addressed the question concerning Being through their mythical songs. According to Werner Marx, through the mythical songs of the philomythoi, the great and terrifying powers that formed and ruled the cosmos came to light and shone forth in the brilliance of the beautiful and the terror of the numinous. In other words, the philomythoi explained the meaning of Being (that is, the entirety of Nature) through mythical songs and poems.

If it helps, we have to remember that the ancient people (the philomythoi and the Pre-Socratics in this case) found the cosmos or Nature to be mysterious. For example, it’s difficult for the ancient people to make sense of darkness, lightning, the four seasons, the, and the like. But as records show, they attempted to explain the mysteriousness of these phenomena, and, in doing so, the philomythoi used their mythical songs and poems. Concrete example to this is the Genesis (the first part of the Bible). As we know, the authors of the Genesis explained the origin and development of the world through myth.

It is interesting to note that during this time, “myth” is the best available method in explaining the mysteriousness of the world.

It is also important to note that in and through the simplicity and immediacy of the speech (saying and singing) of the philomythoi, a whole meaningful order arose out of the darkness that had shrouded all-that-is (Being). In other words, it is through their mythical songs and poems that the philomythoi was able to make sense of the mysteriousness of the world.

Lastly, the philomythoi in awe and wonder felt themselves as simply servants or instruments or and voices of the powers about which they sang. In other words, the philomythoi believed that they were simply “recipients” of thoughts or knowledge, that they did not invent thoughts; instead, thoughts or knowledge were simply revealed to them. As we can see later, this is the basis of Heidegger’s famous line “we do not come to thoughts; thoughts come to us”.

The pre-Socratics, on the other hand, addressed the question concerning Being through reason. Hence, it was with the pre-Socratics that reason was first used in in thinking of the mysteriousness of the world. For Heidegger, the thinking of the pre-Socratics was simple, immediate, and poetic (that is, creative). Hence, for Heidegger, the thinking of the pre-Socratics is a thinking of and toward that which enables, empowers, and forms all-that-is, that is, the thinking of and toward the logos or underlying principle of the world.

Like the philomythoi, the pre-Socratic thinkers felt themselves as servants, instruments, and voices of that power they deserved most―that is, of Nous, the light-giving Reason.

Blessed with Nous (light-giving Reason), the pre-Socratic thinkers were gifted with noises, that is, the capacity to apprehend intuitively and, thereby, to bring the meaning of Reason into the fullness of its light. And through these elucidations, the cosmos become more lucid.

Now, it must be noted that the pre-Socratics did not try to elucidate the various meanings of all the many “particular beings”. Instead, they tried to understand the meaning of Being holistically. Hence, the pre-Socratics most of all attempted to understand the entirety of Nature through the conception of the phenomenal elementary powers of Nature―the elements of water, fire, air, and earth. And in doing so, the pre-Socratics attempted to let emerge that which held all these elements together and empowered them: namely, physis―that is, the natureness of Nature.

For the pre-Socratics, physis is the great unifying mother and is conceived as Eon or “to einai”, that is, Being or “to be”. This is because the way physis unfolds itself was seen by the pre-Socratics as the way Being unfolds itself, or the way Being allows the physei onta, the natural beings, to “be” or “not be”. In this way, physis is understood as that which allows Being to make itself appear, but in the act of “appearing” Being passes again into darkness of their past. Again, as we can see later, this is the basis of Heidegger’s famous claim that the moment Being reveals itself, it automatically withdraws itself.

Indeed, in their “philosophizing poems”, the pre-Socratics elucidated poetically a certain “Essence of Being”, and at one with the Essence of Being, the Essence of Man was poetically composed as that natural being that can think the Essence of Being. Put differently, as Martin Heidegger sees it, through the thinking of the pre-Socratics we are therefore able to make sense of the mysteriousness of Nature; and part of this understanding is the realization that indeed man (which Heidegger calls Dasein) has the capability of understanding reality.

The discussion above indeed provides the context of Heidegger’s existential philosophy and the reason why Heidegger appropriated the “thinking” of the pre-Socratics in making sense of the meaning of Being. As Werner Marx writes:

“It is therefore not surprising to find in analyzing the writings of Heidegger that his new conception of philosophy seems to demand that the self-understanding of the philosopher be changed to the kind of self-understanding which the pre-Socratics had, that is, that the new philosopher feel himself again as intermediary, instrument, and voice and the style of philosophizing again become simple, immediate, and poetic like the singing and thinking of the pre-Socratics. And finally,

Heidegger―as the first thinkers did―now sees the foremost task or subject matter of philosophy not as the explanation of the meaning of “particular beings”, but as the elucidation, articulation, and poetic composition of a new Essence of Being, and thereby of a new Essence of Man”. See Werner Marx, Heidegger and the Tradition (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971).

The Metaphysics of Heidegger

At this point, I need to briefly present the key intuition of Heidegger’s brand of metaphysics because we cannot fully understand Heidegger’s existential philosophy without understanding the key intuition of his metaphysics.

It must be noted that Martin Heidegger rejects the whole enterprise of “metaphysics” in the traditional sense of this word where it indicates something eternal, infinite, and perfect. Heidegger’s metaphysics is a “finite metaphysics of finiteness”.

What Heidegger calls metaphysics, therefore, is bound up with the structure of man’s finite existence in the world. And so Heidegger proposes to understand man’s being in particular and Being in general within the horizon of Time. Thus, the idea of going beyond Time and coming back to Time (i.e., Transcendence) is a misunderstanding of Heidegger. Transcendence for Heidegger is Transcendence within immanence, that is to say, Transcendence within Time.

Again, the point of Heidegger’s metaphysics is that the meaning of Being in general and the meaning of man’s existence should be understood in the context of time. There is no outside of time for Heidegger. And this is one of the proper angles in understanding Heidegger’s existential philosophy.

Thus, for Heidegger, man (Dasein) transcends itself, but not toward a perfect Being (like God of Kierkegaard and Jaspers). Man transcends itself toward its own world, and nothing else. We can fully understand this concept once we have understood the key concepts of Heidegger’s existential philosophy.

Key Concepts in Heidegger’s Existential Philosophy

1) Facticity and Deliverance

The result of Heidegger’s inquiry into the meaning of Being (that is, existential phenomenology) is that Dasein is being-there-in-the-world and that it has come to be in the world through “deliverance”―“thrownness,” to use Heidegger’s word. As Heidegger says, Dasein is “thrown” into the world and that being-in-the-world is a “thrownness”.

Heidegger writes:

“This characteristic of Dasein’s Being – this ‘that it is’ – is veiled in its ‘whence’ and ‘whither’, yet disclosed in itself all the more unveiledly; we call it the ‘thrownness’ of this entity into its ‘there’; indeed, it is thrown in such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the ‘there’. The expression ‘thrownness’ is meant to suggest the facticity of its being delivered over.”

For Heidegger, this “thrownness” into the world necessarily implies that Dasein always exists with other entities in the world and, hence, as a being with-others-in-the-world, Dasein is entirely submerged in the immediate care and concern of the everyday world into which it is thrown. Evidently, being with-others-in-the-world suggests that the existence of Dasein in the world is an existence with the “they” (das Man) or the anonymous anyone. Thus, when Heidegger says that Dasein is submerged in the immediate care and concern of the everyday world into which it is thrown, this means that Dasein is constantly related to other human beings in the form of concern and care.

As a thrown being, Dasein is not simply extant (vorhanden or present-at-hand) like a stone, nor Dasein is determined by an alien purpose (zuhanden or ready-to-hand) like a hammer which is what it is as something “to hammer with” and which only man can handle.

In contradistinction from these two other ways of being, the merely extant (vorhanden) and the functional being (zuhanden), man (Dasein) has the privilege of being in such a way that he is thrust upon himself, and yet owns his own existence. And unlike all other beings, man is so constituted that through most of his actions, he stands in some awareness of his being, of “that and how he is”. This means that man (Dasein) is conscious not only of the things around him, but also of his own existence.

For this reason, almost all of man’s act is an act in some awareness of the Essence of Being. In other words, for Heidegger, the awareness of one’s being (that is, self-consciousness) is also at the same time an awareness of the Essence of Being (or Essence of Reality). In fact, Heidegger believes that man is so constituted that he is “open” not only for his own Being (the character and meanings of his own existing) but also for the Being of other human and non-human “particular beings”.

2) Overtness and World:

The idea that man (Dasein) is open to the Essence of Being (i.e., his own Being and the Being of other beings) gives way to the concept of “overtness” as one of the conditions of the possibility of truly existing as a human being.

But what is “overtness” and how does man make himself open to the Essence of Being?

Heidegger understands “overtness” as “consciousness”, but he avoids using the term not only because of its Cartesian implications, but because it prevents us from realizing that each individual lucidity or overtness is part and parcel of a wide and general overtness, of an elementary sort of Truth. Thus, “overtness” as consciousness simply refers to the “manifestness” of Being or things. Thus, for Heidegger, this “overtness” is an a priori condition for any so-called subject-object relationships.

Thus, for Heidegger, no subject could refer itself to an object, no act of experiential knowledge about an object could take place, and no statement or judgment could be arrived at about an object, if such prior statement of manifestness had not come about, embracing both subject and object.

Now, again, how does man make himself open to the Essence of Being?

First, we need to note that for Heidegger man (Dasein) is gifted with understanding, mood, and speech. But for Heidegger, these gifts are not gifts from someone, say, God. In fact, Heidegger hardly believes in God. Heidegger simply calls these gifts as “existential givens”. They were there the moment man was born.

According to Heidegger, in and through these existential givens, man discloses or illuminates himself. This is because, with these existential givens, man (Dasein) can understand, feel (mood), and articulate (speech). Hence, through these existential givens, overtness is brought into the fore, and man (Dasein) is able to understand himself and the things around him.

Lastly, with overtness, it is therefore possible for man (Dasein) to become truly himself, to truly exist as a human being.

In addition to overtness, Heidegger introduced the concept of “world” as another important condition of the “possibility” of truly existing as a human being.

For Heidegger, “world” refers to that which constitutes the unity of significances, that is, the context of meanings in which man moves. Thus, “world” for Heidegger is not a blind mass of things (or the totality of nature), but an existential structure that defines or constitutes man’s way of Being. Put simply, “world” for Heidegger could refer to a socio-cultural “context” upon which man draws meaning or that which shapes one’s behavior. For example, consider the phrase “The Germans’ way of doing things” or “The Americans’ way of doing things”. For sure, the Germans or the Americans have their specific way of doing things because they have been defined by their own context. Hence, it is unnatural for the Germans to do the Americans way of doing things because they it’s outside of their own context.

For Heidegger, man refers to this context of intersubjective meanings because he is always already within and amidst “beings” and moves around them with ease and familiarity.

Thus, for Heidegger, it is in and through the “world” that man projects and charts his own life for pragmatic reasons, but does so within this context of meanings and always guided by it.

In this sense, we can infer that man is determined by “world” and, therefore, on this ground alone, it is quite wrong to assert that Heidegger has conceived of a man as “sovereign” or a self-creator.

Now, the two notions of “overtness” and “world” constitute man as an entity that stands in an intimate and immediate awareness of Being in its character and meanings. Only when “overtness” and “world” occur can all-that-is (Essence of Being) and particular beings (ontic) be encountered as “be-ings”. It is only through “overtness” and “world” therefore that the “unconcealment of Being” becomes possible.

3) The Problem of Authenticity and Inauthenticity

In the previous discussion, we learned that through “overtness” and “world” man can gain a high degree of understanding of itself and the things around him, and, thereby, experience his true Being, that of others and of his things.

However, man in his everyday life fails to realize that his mood, understanding and speech are “necessary ways of Being”. This is due to the fact that man’s thrownness into the world implies deliverance or “fallenness”.

Man’s failure to realize that his mood, understanding and speech are “necessary ways of Being” suggests that man is “lost” in the world. For Heidegger, this “lostness”or “fallenness” in the world means that it is now the world that prescribes the path for man of which he succumbed (surrendered) his creative abilities to worldly things. This is exactly characterizes Heidegger’s notion of “inauthenticity” or an inauthentic or meaningless existence.

Hence, inauthenticity for Heidegger means being not free because we let others (das Man) decide for ourselves. Indeed, inauthenticity means not owning one’s own existence.

Now, in order for man (Dasein) to be authentic, therefore, it has to own its existence again, that it has to regain its existence that is lost in the “they”. And for Heidegger, this implies that Dasein has to gain somehow full awareness of the significance of what it means “to be”, of what it means to be a self with others and objects in the world.

If inauthenticity is understood as the fallenness of Dasein into the “world”, and if authenticity means full awareness of what it means to be a self with others and objects in the world, then this implies a “becoming” or the realization of Dasein’s possibilities.  For Heidegger, such realization of Dasein’s possibilities occurs through the experience of angst which mobilizes other key categories, such as, death, conscience, and decidedness.

Heidegger understands angst as the authentic sensibility that discloses Dasein’s finite existence in the world. This disclosure allows Dasein to understand itself as a finite being thrown toward its own-most possibility, which is death. Through death, understood as the paradoxical possibility of no-longer-being-able-to-be-there, Dasein is thrown back onto its own resources. This movement then discloses Dasein as an individual self thrown into the world, whose task in the world is to exist as itself, that is to say, to be authentic. For Heidegger, therefore, death is the ultimate basis of authenticity.

For Heidegger, the categories of conscience and decidedness answer the question concerning the possibility of authentic existence. Heidegger understands conscience as the inner voice within Dasein itself that calls Dasein to “come back to itself and seize the authentic possibility of truly being itself”.  Conscience appears to be an “ought” on the part of Dasein to own his existence again.  Once Dasein heeds the call of conscience, decidedness ensues.  Authenticity, therefore, as the full awareness of the significance of what it means to be a self also means an “awareness of one’s own-most possibilities and the firm resolve to realize them in the future.” Authenticity is thus tied to one’s possibilities and to possible future ways of being.  For Heidegger, this makes manifest the “temporal” axis of existential phenomenology─Dasein is in the present, indebted to the past, and oriented toward the future (death).  Indeed, the threefold structure of care turns out to be also the structure of existence: the human being is a being in time.

However, for Heidegger, authenticity requires a kind of mood, understanding, and speech that are attuned to the Essence of Being, and this is possible in the “thinking of the philosopher”. And man as Dasein and as thinker will realize that his thinking is a way of Being, that the Essence of Being unfolds in it, and that he is therefore a necessary instrument, that he is needed for the articulation of the Essence of Being.

Heidegger, however, believes that Aristotle and the philosophers after him failed to think about the Essence of Being because they had only articulated the meaning of “particular beings”. Because of this, Heidegger believes, philosophers hitherto could not realize themselves as Dasein, as authentic beings.

This is precisely the reason why Heidegger calls for a second beginning of philosophy. And for Heidegger, this is the new task of philosophy: to think of Being holistically.

But what is the character of this new philosophizing?

Heidegger calls this andenken, which means a thinking “toward and of”, and in this sense a “remembering” kind of thinking―remembering because the moment Being reveals itself, it automatically withdraws itself.

But toward what and of what? In other words, what is the subject matter of this kind of thinking?

According to Heidegger, man should think toward and of the Essence of Being and of the Essence of Man. This is what we meant attuning oneself to Being. And as we already know, it is only when we attuned ourselves to Being that we become ready of the unconcealment of Being and our eventual appropriation of that which is unconcealed by Being. As Heidegger formulates it: “Being commands and directs the thinker”, or “Being claims the thinking of the thinker so that it thereby may conceal itself in its truth”. This is what Heidegger calls “essential or meditative thinking” as opposed to “calculative or scientific thinking”.

On a final note, it must be remembered that Heidegger did not pretend to have solved the problem of Being. Toward the end of his magnum opus Being and Time, Heidegger says explicitly that its only purpose is to rekindle the question of Being and to bring into motion what has become stalemated. In fact, Heidegger concludes this work not with ready-made answers, but with a series of open questions.

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