scholarly journals Existential spatiality in Being and Time

Phainomenon ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Bernhard Sylla
Keyword(s):  

Abstract In this paper I aim to examine Heidegger’s analysis of existential spatiality in Being and Time in the light of Sloterdijk’s criticism of it. Sloterdijk states in Spheres I that Heidegger presented, in Being and Time, an “embryonically revolutionary” approach to being and space but did not complete it. His own ‘Spheres Project’ would purport fill this gap. Based on the analysis of the fundamental moments of existential spatiality (§§12 to 28 and §70 of Being and Time), and taking into account comments made by Heidegger himself in later years, I will attempt to answer the question of the alleged unfinished character of the analysis of existential spatiality in Being and Time.

2010 ◽  
Vol 2010 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-116
Author(s):  
Ales Novak

During the philosophical pathway of Martin Heidegger the 30s of the 20th century are a crucial period in respect of his effort to point out the temporal meaning of the notion of being. After the failure of his project of Being and Time he turned his attention towards pondering upon the (Hi)Story of being (Seinsgeschichte or Geschichte des Seins), leading him to the thought of the oblivion of being as well as of the forsakenness by the being. Within the eschatological perspectives after the end of metaphysics Heidegger arrives at the notion of Anlage, in which he means to articulate the temporal features of being corresponding to the mentioned epochal situation. The notion Anlage sums up the temporal features of setting, perpetuity, and presence, which according to Heidegger are notoriously associated with the notion of being within the metaphysics. Nonetheless, even this conceptual effort acts as a taking- off towards a far more radical phenomenology of world conceived as the fourfold of heaven and earth, the divine and the mortals.


Author(s):  
Alberto Constante

The impossible moral in Heidegger is based on two fundamental facts: firstly, that Heidegger devoted himself to the theme of being. All other issues, thesis or questions derive from that fundamental and unique “question about the meaning of Being”. Secondly, the ontological question in Heidegger wasn’t the question for the entity, but the question for the Being. On these bases, “The impossible moral” in Heidegger arises from his initial ontological argumentation from which all other structures derive and that Heidegger tries to separate from each anthropological, psychological or biological matter. In fact, we may suggest that an ethical approach in Heidegger could only arise from the exegesis of the structural whole of the “being-in-the-world”. This would happen by apprehending the original being of the “being-there” as “care” that isn’t anything else that the manifestation of the following features: “being-with” and “being one’s self”. All these without forgetting that Being and time has an ontological fundamental intention. Finally, “The impossible moral” in Heidegger is given by his radical antihumanism.


Author(s):  
Kris McDaniel

This chapter develops a version of ontological pluralism that respects two common intuitions about time: that the present moment is metaphysically distinguished but not in such a way that the past is unreal. The version of ontological pluralism developed—presentist existential pluralism (PEP)—embraces two modes of being, the mode of being that present objects enjoy and the mode of being that past objects enjoy. The author argues that this view fares at least as well, and probably better, than other views in which the present is metaphysically distinguished. The chapter also introduces another form of ontological superiority called “levels of being.”


In his later work, Heidegger argued that Western history involved a sequence of distinct understandings of being and correspondingly distinct worlds. Dreyfus illustrates several distinct world styles by contrasting Greek, industrial, and technological practices for using equipment. By reading Being and Time in the light of Heidegger’s later concerns with the history of being, Dreyfus shows how Heidegger’s own account of equipment in Being and Time helped set the stage for technology by encouraging an understanding of being that leaves equipment and natural objects open to a technological reorganization of the world into a standing reserve of resources. Seen in the light of the relation of nature and technology revealed by later Heidegger, Being and Time appears in the history of the being of equipment not just as a transition but as the decisive step toward technology.


In their debate over Dreyfus’s interpretation of Heidegger’s account of das Man in Being and Time, Frederick Olafson and Taylor Carman agree that Heidegger’s various characterizations of das Man are inconsistent. Olafson champions an existentialist/ontic account of das Man as a distorted mode of being-with. Carman defends a Wittgensteinian/ontological account of das Man as Heidegger’s name for the social norms that make possible everyday intelligibility. For Olafson, then, das Man is a privative mode of Dasein, while for Carman it makes up an important aspect of Dasein’s positive constitution. Neither interpreter takes seriously the other’s account, though both acknowledge that both readings are possible. How should one choose between these two interpretations? Dreyfus suggests that we choose the interpretation that identifies the phenomenon that the work is examining, gives the most internally consistent account of that phenomenon, and shows the compatibility of this account with the rest of the work.


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