The Ethics of Existence

Omar Quinonez

The question concerning Heidegger’s ethics is by nature an arduous one. It is a question

which triggers philosophical anxiety, a limbo-like experience of being thrown back and forth

between the temptation of building an ethics, and Heidegger’s own bashing remarks over the

question. Nonetheless, as paradoxical as it may sound, I claim one must disregard Heidegger’s

own comments referring to an ethical implication of his philosophy and push for the

development of an Authentic ethics of Dasein. Heidegger’s terrible public relations image with

regards to his full embracement of the total mobilization of the Nazi movement, not only is a

reason for developing an ethics but a demand that the most influential philosopher of the

twentieth century be given a chance to let Dasein claim its space within the possibilities of the

ethical horizon.

This ethical horizon, I claim, must be derived directly from Heidegger’s philosophy,

from the existential categories crafted in Being and Time. A phenomenological look at the

existentials of being reveals that being-in-the-world, Mitda-sein, and care, presuppose an

ontological and pre-thematic understanding of ethics. That Heidegger’s ethics does not derived

from an Inauthentic, Das man-driven theory of ethics, but rather from an Authentic, resoluteness,

and ontological understanding of being as Being. Even more, I claim that to truly apply

Heidegger’s thought as an in-the-world-philosophy concerned with everyday life, philosophers

need to push even further, push for the Destruktion of the history of morality so as to generate a

genuinely ontic application of ethics.

The organic structure of ethics

Heidegger’s overall philosophical project is rooted in the understanding of being as an in-

the-world entity. That is, that being is always-already related to the world previous to any

theoretical analysis (Heidegger, 2003). Even more, because being is always-already in-the-world

it is impossible to separate the two from each other. It is impossible to divide the world as a

subject/object paradigm, in which the I is the subject and all other beings are simple objective

unrelated beings (Heidegger, 2003). Rather, the I is always-already in a relationship to the

different beings in the world, a pre-thematic understanding of them, in the sense that whenever

the I uses an object, this object is always already related to it as a being-for-something and never

as a pure objective neutral being. In other words:

The nature that we find in natural products (productive nature) is not to be understood as
that which is just present at hand (objective nature), nor as the power of nature
(primordial nature). It is discovered within the scope of our everyday dealings with the
world (i.e., within the environment) not by means of a bare conceptual cognition but
through that kind of concern which handles things and puts them to use [ CITATION
Fol951 \l 1033 ]

Out of this understanding of being and the worldliness of the world arises a key fundamental

understanding of ontological morality. If we are inseparable from the world we inhabit, and if the

nature of our own being, Dasein, is always constituted by a relationship with the many beings of

the world, then the correct form of ethics that must be erected from Heidegger’s philosophy has

to be one in which the nature of our being is ontologically related to the beings around it, and by

this it generates organic moral commitments. In other words, being-in-the-world lays down the

axiomatic foundation for an understanding of ethics as something which is inherited in the

ontological relationships of Dasein to the world.

This axiomatic principle of ethics already presupposes moral commitments as organic, as

commitments which arise by themselves according to the parameters set by the manner in which
relations occur. An example would be particularly helpful. A worker is particularly careful with

the way he treats his tools. He maintains them clean, up-to-date, and in optimal condition. But,

why? He cares about the overall wellbeing of his tools in a way that is incompatible with the

Cartesian understanding. This peculiar concern with the wellbeing of the worker’s tools

completely contradicts the subject/object division in which objects are simply seen as

mechanical, neutral things, and more specifically, as ontologically separate entities from us. The

reason why the worker cares about the wellbeing of his tools, is because he does not perceived

them as that, rather he perceive them as an extension of his own being, as something that if

missing, his own being would be essentially incomplete. Heidegger’s insight regarding the

hammer in Being and Time, stating that “[t]he less we just stare at the thing called hammer, the

more actively we use it, the more original our relation to it becomes” (Heidegger, 2003), points

out that our relation to things in-the-world is not one in which they are alien entities; rather they

are extensions of our beings.

But this phenomenological relation between the worker and his tools presupposes an

understanding of ethics. The worker cares. The worker does not allow his tools to be mistreated,

not because he believes they are conscious beings, but because without his tools a part of him is

missing and cannot operate the way it should, as a worker. He therefore, thinks it is incorrect,

wrong, to mistreat or steal his tools and thinks it is correct to maintain them in optimal condition.

In this way, the worker understands a phenomenological and existential form of ethics as a

phenomenon that is in-the-world, a phenomena that arises out of the pre-thematic relation of

Dasein to its world.

In this same way, I claim, Dasein as a being who dwells in planet Earth, who uses its natural

resources, its climate, and the whole of the surroundings, must also encounter organic moral
commitments in its relation to the world. To misuse, destroy, and over-exploit, the dwelling

place of Dasein constitutes destroying the “tools” which allow Dasein to be what he is, an in-the-

the-world being. Therefore, Dasein should pre-thematically possess an attitude of organic ethics,

of knowing the ontological relations to its dwelling place, and therefore caring (morally) for the

fate of the beings that inhabit it and share it with it.

This example also points to the fact that the understanding of morality derived from

Heidegger is not similar to that of Kant’s categorical imperative. It is not something which must

be learned in books and put to practice with hard work, sometimes pain, and strictness. Rather, it

is an existential, a pre-thematic condition that is always-already present in Dasein’s being-in-the

world. The traditional take on morality, which states that it must be cultivated through hard

work, sometimes culminating in failure, is false. Slavoj Zizek’s take on what it means to believe

further clarifies this position:

You don’t believe in facts, to say that I believe in Christ but fuck it I prefer to sin, no you
cannot. Belief is by definition existentially engaged . . . Believing in human rights does
not mean that I look around and scientifically analyze people, see that a certain level
they all have rights and then I believe. No, it is a leap of faith; I posit it as a practical
axiom. (Zizek, 2010)

Zizek’s insights point to the idea that believing is not something learned from books, it is

something which is by nature existentially-engaged in-the-world. In the same manner, the

morality that arises out of Dasein’s being-in-the-world is a morality that is by definition always-

already in the world as praxis, not theory. Aristotle knew it more than two millenniums ago. In

Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, he stated:

Virtue, then, being of two kinds, intellectual and moral, intellectual virtue in the main
owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and
time), while moral virtues comes about as a result of habit, hence also its name ethike is
one that is formed by a slight variation from the word ethos (habit). [ CITATION Whi05 \l
1033 ]
Aristotle here argues that moral virtue, ethics, arises out of the daily living of Dasein as a

being in-the-world. He argues that it is habit, which comes about from practice in-the-world,

what creates an understanding of ethics. The word “ethike” is composed of the world

“ethos” (habit) and of the word “techne” (craft or art). Moral virtue, then, is understood by

Aristotle as the “art of habit.” Thus, ethics comes from the ground up, born as an organic

phenomenon out of Dasein’s fundamental ontology.

There two other existentials of Dasein which shed light into the erection of an

understanding of ethics. Being-with-others is the existential used by Heidegger to explain that

Dasein is always-already in a relation to other beings like it. That is, it is always a social being

that grows in relationships with Daseins-in-the-world. However, Heidegger’s decision to

separate the two, being-with-things and being-with-others (Daseins), means that there is a strict

difference between them. Due to this, I argue that there is a fundamental hierarchy of existential

ethics in Heidegger’s thought. The existential moral commitments and its hierarchy is derived

from the way Dasein encounters beings in its ontological relations to the world, organically,

requiring a distinction between beings-as-objects, beings-as-animals, and beings-as-Dasein, to

name some. That is, there are different moral commitments between the treatment of animals, the

treatment of people, and the treatment of objects. Although animals must not be treated as

ontologically separate from us but as being-in-the-world together with us, they do not have to be

treated in the same form as humans. For example, to walk a dog and have it do its natural

necessities on the street might not be morally incorrect as it would be to walk a person and have

it to do the same. However, it is not morally correct, I claim, to kick a dog as if it was a rock. The

moral implications of dignity, I claim, exist when treating other Daseins, but they do not, when

treating other beings. These three levels in the hierarchy of existential morality commit us to
very different ethics when dealing with different beings. It is fine to throw a rock, while it is not

to throw a person. It is not fine to roll with automobile over a cat, although it is fine to do so over

a rock.

Heidegger’s insights into the existential of care further helps shed light to the claim that

Dasein’s relationship with other Daseins exists at a different sphere than the relationship with

other beings such as objects; thus unconcealing different moral commitments. The capacity for

missing the presence of an individual (for Heidegger) presupposes always-already a take on the

Dasein of others as in-and-for-itself being. It sets Dasein in a special category in which a

phenomenological analysis renders impossible the encounter of it as a neutral, unrelated, and in-

itself being. Sartre’s famous passage regarding pierre’s absence further clarifies the specialty of

care:

I have an appointment with Pierre at four o’clock. I arrive at the café a quoter of an hour
late. Pierre is always punctual. Will he have waited for me? I look at the room, the
patrons, and I say, “He is not here” [ CITATION Sar56 \l 1033 ].

Sartre here helps point out the idea that the capacity of missing the presence of a Dasein is a

special one. Not only was the presence of such being missed, the question “will he have waited

for me?” presupposes an understanding of such being as one that is free, as one that is

“condemned to be free,” as one that is an in-and–for-itself being. The same question could not

have been raise with regards to an object or even an animal. Although there is a

phenomenological possibility of missing an object or an animal, the sphere of capacity of caring

for such being in a completely different sphere as the caring experienced by Daseins with

regards to other Daseins. Daseins are experienced as in-and-for-themselves beings, a hammer is

not. Therefore, because of this pre-thematic phenomenological insight, an organic moral maxim

is generated: whether at work, school, home, or Dasein’s other public dealings with beings like
itself, it cannot take other Daseins as only objective things. It is rendered immoral by the

existentials of being. Frederick Olafson summarized these ideas as follows:

But my contention will be that there is a relationship in which we stand to one another
that in some sense prior to all the substantive ethical rules under which we live . . . the
ground of ethical authority has to be understood in terms of dialectic of human agents
under conditions of Mitsein. [ CITATION Ola98 \l 1033 ]

Mitda-sein and the ability of caring as in missing points to a particular way of encountering

other Daseins, but other beings, which are encountered other ways. Thus, the phenomenological

moral hierarchy, derived from the way Dasein experiences beings, do not allow for applying the

same ethics to all beings. Organic moral responsibilities must be in accordance with the

phenomenological way in which beings are encountered in-the-world.

The understanding of ethics as a “practical axiom,” derived from the

phenomenological relationships of Dasein to the world, is not free of concealment. It must

be phenomenologically exposed and unconcealed from the traps of Das Man, the Gestell,

and, falling prey to the world,

The Present Condition as Concealment

The organic nature of ethics quickly generates an obvious question: if an ethics of Dasein

is always grounded in its pre-thematic relations to the world, then why is the case that organic

ethics is not the accepted take on moral understanding? The answer is: Das Man

Das Man is understood by Heidegger to be the dissolution of selfhood into the public-

self, the selfhood in which all other Daseins are also dissolved [CITATION Hei031 \t \l 1033 ] . It is

an existential of Dasein that arises out of its being-with-others-in-the-world. Because of its

dissolution into the public-self, Dasein can no longer be authentic since everything it thinks,

does, writes, and talks, is nothing but what “the they” (the public-self) commands [CITATION
Hei031 \t \l 1033 ]. Because of this “ it would seem that the morally conscientious individual is

precisely one who is not lost in the crowd, who makes his own judgments and take hold of his

own possibilities in light of a higher standard that what ‘the Anyone’ dictates” [ CITATION

Vog941 \l 1033 ]. What should have been morally existential to Dasein, what arose organically out

of its relation and caring for the world, becomes concealed. Dasein is told by Das Man to believe

in an ontological reality divided strictly between subject and object; that beings are objective,

separated, and external, with no fundamental relation to Dasein at all. If there are no fundamental

relations between the beings in the world and Dasein, then an organic essence of ethics becomes

impossible. Then Das Man triumphs in concealing the phenomenological structures of Dasein

and its ethical implications with its totalitarian, ideological preaching, and its flattening of

possibilities of being.

In this manner, Dasein is told to believe that private property is the correct manner to

approach the world because it is a self-evident truth, a truism not to ever be questioned. It is told

that because capitalism is self-evidently known to be the correct mode of organizing society, and

thus approaching beings, it must only care about the wellbeing of Dasein’s own private property.

It is also told by Das Man that it must learn to divide reality as either its private property or not

its private property. Das Man tells Dasein to relate to the world in this particular sense, to view

objects, the environment, and its place of dwelling as just a form of private property. This world-

view is exposed in an interview by Noam Chomsky:

You don’t have to go back very far to find gratuitous torture of animals. In Cartesian
philosophy, for example … the Cartesians thought they had proven that humans had
minds and everything else in the world was a machine. So there’s no difference between
a cat and a watch, let’s say. It’s just the cat is a little more complicated.

You go back to the court in the seventeenth century and big smart guys who studied all
that stuff and thought they understood it would, as a sport, take lady so-and-so’s favorite
dog and kick it and beat it to death and laugh, saying, this silly lady doesn’t understand
 the latest philosophy, which was that it was just like dropping a rock on the floor. That’s
gratuitous torture of animals. It was regarded as if we would ask a question about the
torturing of a rock. You can’t do it, there’s no way to torture a rock. [ CITATION Cho09 \l
1033 ]

Modern philosophers such as Descartes generated an understanding of beings in which

animals and the surrounding world carry not moral values because they simply were mechanical

objects with no fundamental connection with us; they were ontologically separate entities from

Dasein and as such rendered an organic understanding of ethics impossible. However,

Heidegger’s concept of being-in-the-world questions this particular belief. It questions the

possibility of separating minds (the I) and bodies (the world), and regards it as ontologically

incorrect [CITATION Hei031 \t \l 1033 ] . Nevertheless, Das Man still preaches as such, and has

accompanied it with a world-view based on private property and pure individualism; in other

words, capitalism. The perseverance of Das Man to retain the Cartesian dichotomy is what

transforms Dasein from a being that is always in a relation with its world, and thus cares about

the fate of it, of making of morality an existential reality, into a Cartesian individual,

ontologically separated, and with no organic morality in relation to the world.

Heidegger’s later writings further reflect the power and totalitarian mode of Das Man.

The essay The Question Concerning Technology, deals with the raise of the modern parading of

thought that forms the possibility of a technological world. Heidegger is here mainly concerned

with technology’s gross overuse of Vorhanden, which ultimately culminates in Zurhanden

[CITATION Hei08 \t \l 1033 ] . Under these conditions, Bestand or “standing-reserve,” rains freely

throughout the horizon of reality, depicting an en-framed view of objects as entities that have

successfully already exhausted themselves in being objects for something, as resource [CITATION

Hei08 \t \l 1033 ]. Heidegger mourns the inability to approach beings as Things in the full extent
of the term, as entities that guard the fourfold [CITATION Ins \t \l 1033 ]. He mourns the fate of

Dasein as a being who has become trapped in the flattening world of Das Man, which allows for

its en-framed understanding and no more.

The core problematic for Heidegger is that Zurhanden is a view that is only possible by a

strict distinction between the subject and object, between the master who manipulates and

dominates the value-free and mechanical resources. A disliked Heidegger points out how under

the totalitarian essence of technology even in-and-for-themselves Daseins are turned into

resource, into human resource, a form of standing-reserve. This dislike goes back to the idea that

Dasein is an in-and-for-itself being that is never encountered at-hand ontologically. Furthermore,

technology’s Zurhanden blocks Dasein in understanding its ontological connection with beings.

Thus, beneath Heidegger’s warning of technology lays a concern about the possible concealment

of the relationship between the world and Dasein, replacing it with a world-view of standing-

reserve. The totalitarian essence of technology would successfully also block Dasein from

understanding the organic structure of morality because it would replace the phenomenological

experiences in encountering the different beings with a single, universal, and totalitarian form,

Bestand.

Das Man’s success is trigger in part by an existential condition of Dasein: falling prey to

the world. What Heidegger means with falling prey is that Dasein as a being who is always-

already in-the-world involved in projects and goals, has the tendency of becoming so involved

with the worldliness of the world that it eventually is completely absorbed by its symbolic reality

[CITATION Hei031 \t \l 1033 ]. It is no longer concerned with its own Authenticity or with

uncovering the actual meaning of its life, let alone understanding the organic structure of ethics.
Rather, it is so absorbed by its daily activities that it literally has no time whatsoever to care

about investigating the essence of Being.

At the core of falling prey is, I claim, an interesting problematic of morality. An example

would be helpful in understanding this. A phenomenological mechanism which is common in the

complicated life of Dasein is taking other Daseins not as in-and-for-themselves being, but rather

as beings for-the-sake-of, as only beings in-themselves. Heidegger clearly states in Being and

Time that the way we ontologically and existentially encounter other beings like Dasein is not in

the same sense that we counter things in-the-world. That is, we first of all do not encounter

beings like Dasein as being-for-something, but rather as fully in-and-for-themselves beings.

Nevertheless, I claim that in the mist of the everyday-life of Dasein, and especially when Dasein

falls completely prey to the world, it is pushed into encountering other Daseins as simply beings-

for-something. Kant’s argument that people should not be taken as means to an end but rather as

ends in themselves, refers to the tendency of Dasein to do precisely that.

A trained sniper’s Dasein in the middle of a battle takes its victim not as an in-and-for-

itself being but rather as an objective entity. It is easier to drop bombs and shoot people when

those people appear to be diminutive entities, not in-and-for-themselves Daseins. Once Dasein is

forced to appreciate those diminutive entities as in-and-for-themselves beings, it can no longer

easily kill them or destroy them; it is push back to remember the existential organic ethics of

being-in-the-world. Falling prey to the tasks of the world, as in only fallowing order to drop

bombs, pushes Dasein to lose its grip on its own ontological essence and fall prey to the claws of

Das Man.

Furthermore, I claim this also happens in regular life. The labels of “abusive,”

“exploitative,” and “inhumane,” are typically applied to someone who has used people as tools
for his own purpose. However, Heidegger states: “these beings [people] are neither objectively

present nor at hand, but they are like the very Dasein which frees them – they are there, too, and

they are with” (Heidegger, 2003). However, a job manager, whether blinded by the economic

prosperity of exploiting people or pressure by his desired to keep his own job and follow orders,

is never allow by the responsibilities of the world to take the time to encounter the

phenomenological ontological structures of Being. It is never allowed to question the manner in

which he takes and understands beings. It is easily pushed out of what closes to himself into

falling prey to the world.

Breaking Free From the Hands of Das Man

Angst is for Heidegger the very special attunement in which Dasein is striped from its at-

home feeling and sent into the nothingness to stand in a direct relation to the whole of beings,

and its own mortality [CITATION Hei031 \t \l 1033 ] . Angst, besides disclosing to Dasein the

possibility of an authentic life, also discloses to Dasein, I claim, the possibility of an authentic

morality. During Angst, Dasein’s whole of meaning collapses and it’s exposed to the reality of

beings as whole and to its possibilities of being. If Dasein is stripped from the web of meanings,

from the symbolic reality into which it was previously rooted, then Dasein has also been striped

the inauthentic form of morality it was it, becoming exposed to the possibility of an Authentic

understanding of ethics. That is, Dasein stands in a direct relation to the moral existential

conditions of its beings in-the-world. In the same way, it has been stripped out of the hands of

Das Man and falling prey to the world.

This makes of Angst the mechanism by which Dasein is pushed to really inquire why a

certain act is deemed wrong. Because the whole of moral substance has collapsed, Dasein now
faces the feeling of not-at-home that pushes Dasein to elaborate a new morality, one that arises

of the only thing it has not been stripped out of: its existential conditions. Thus, Angst is the

mechanism which can uncover the organic existentials of morality lay down in the first part of

this paper. It is the nemesis and antagonistic counterpart of Das Man, falling prey, and the

Gestell. What needs to be called on by philosophers, then, is the free experience of Angst so that

a space can be open for the possibility of Authentic ethics.

A second implication of feeling Angst is how important, shocking, and unique, the

experience of it is, particularly the experience of one’s own mortality. Because of this, I claim,

and only if Dasein is free of Das Man and falling prey to the world, an existential moral

characteristic would imply caring about the mortality and life of other Daseins. Even when

Heidegger discussed that it is impossible to experience the death of other Daseins, which makes

of death a unique individualizing experience, the fact that Dasein can have such a dramatic and

intense experience of death pushes it to understand how unique it must be for other Daseins as

well. In other words, “though in authentic Being-unto-death one faces oneself alone without

support from others, this does not isolate one from them but enables a kind of relationship to

them – “liberation solicitude” [ CITATION Vog941 \l 1033 ]. Because of our indirect relation to the

death of others, it follows that existentially we should not consider correct to kill people, and that

the waste of the life of a person because of our use of them as means-to-an-end is not morally

right.

Heidegger’s concept of authenticity is the single most important mechanism in achieving

a true existential morality. The previous sections of being-in-the-world, Das Man, falling prey to

the world, and being-with-others/care, presented a picture of morality derived from Heidegger’s

thought in which morality is perceived as something negative. It is negative because it prohibits

or creates boundaries that limit Dasein’s actions in-the-world. Authenticity, on the other hand,

pushes Dasein into a positive interpretation of morality by requiring it to take action in realizing

morality in-the-world.

In order to live an authentic life Dasein must first experience Angst towards being and

death because such experiences ravels to Dasein the possibility of being authentic. However, I

claim that to be fully Authentic, Dasein is required to also materialize the morality obtained from

feeling Angst as an in-the-world existential. Because Dasein is not allowed to take people as

objective at-hand beings, it is also required to fight against any person or institution that does. To

be Authentic Dasein is required to question its own government if this is using taxpayer’s money

to found military campaigns, coup d’états, or exploitative practices. This is so because they limit

Dasein’s (the one experiencing exploitation) ability to be an in-and-for-itself being, and many

times turn Dasein into the object of system who takes it as a means-to-an-end. Following Zizek’s

take on belief, morality is only possible whenever it is realized and materialized in-the-world.

Therefore, to be Authentic, Dasein must not only understand its relation and moral commitments

to Mitda-sein and the world, but it should move to materialize those realizations.

Heidegger himself tried to become an authentic being through his involvement with the

Nazi Party. Such involvement represented a positive application of his morality. He understood

how much Germany was destroyed by WWI, how much its people had suffered, and how much

they were without any direction as to what their identity was. His involvement with the Nazi

party represents to me his stand against allowing his country to become a nation of people whose

existence was fragmented and revolving around private material gain or mere survival, thus

without seizing their own history. This, I believe, Heidegger must have opposed because it did

not take into account the fact that Germany’s people were Daseins in-the-world who always-
already related to beings. Also, it did not take into account that they were able to experience

Angst which allow them to become authentic by seizing the possibilities of their being.

Furthermore, to agree with the situation of his time would have meant for Heidegger to be

absorbed by Das Man and falling prey to the world.

Heidegger wanted to be authentic by escaping Das Man and showing the German people

that their Daseins are always in-the-world and always-with-others and therefore they should look

not only after themselves but after their entire community. It can also be said that what

Heidegger felt, what actually pushed him into the Nazi party, was his feeling of true guilt, that is,

the obligation to be what the ontological possibilities allow him to be. The common

understanding of guilt that is often use in public life also involves morality, but refers to it as the

product of one’s failures in being moral beings. Heidegger’s take on guilt is somewhat different

in the sense that it involves the existential feeling of necessity to be Authentic and to size hold of

one’s own possibilities of being. Even more, since true guilt requires the realization of

possibilities of being, it is also involves the materialization of organic existential ethics since

they arise out of Dasein’s ontological relations. Heidegger’s decision in 1934, then, represents

the claim that it is not enough to understand the ontology of organic existential ethics; it must be

Authentically materialized as concrete in-the-world actions. Heidegger’s Nazi embracement did

turned out into a complete catastrophe, but he “made the correct step towards the wrong

direction” by materializing the ontological structures of Dasein’s being-in-the-world. (Zizek,

2008)

destruktion as the engine of the ontic realm

 Now that it has been shown how the categories in Being and Time imply an existential

morality, a question arises as to how specifically this morality works in-the-world. It is not the

aim of this paper to provide a clear list of moral and immoral acts; rather, it attempts to show that

something else is needed: a phenomenological deconstruction of morality.

Heidegger’s idea of deconstruction as a technique to arrive at the roots of philosophical

discourse can be use to understand the roots of morality. Before attempting to arrive at an ontic

interpretation of Heidegger and morality, the mechanism of deconstruction must be unleashed. It

must be use to deconstruct the symbolic reality of moral values today. What is needed is to

understand what the origins of the moral values we hold today are. To understand why it is

mostly consider fine to mistreat or not care for the world we live in but only for what is our

property. Understanding that it arises out of the Cartesian philosophy and the raise of capitalism

can serve us to become aware and decide whether such value is relevant or not. Further, no real

authenticity can be complete without a deconstruction of morality, since it means to take over

one’s own moral historical construction.

Furthermore, to deconstruct the moral values of today also means to reveal the

philosophical origins of such values. In other words, it means to arrive at the very roots of

morality, at an understanding of what philosophical impulse pushed people to create that value.

As Heidegger believes with the question of being, the question of morality might have had

already been distortion and bastardized to the point that people today do not share the original

motives out of which certain value was created, and instead an utterly incorrect one. It might

have been the case that such philosophical impulse was correct (as with Heidegger’s Nazi

support) but the ontic step taken went completely wrong. It could also be the case that the initial

existential impulse is no longer relevant in today’s world.

 By deconstructing the tree of morality it becomes possible to create an ontic existential

morality because of two reasons. One, the original impulses of today’s moral values can become

unconcealed, allowing us to decide whether they relevant today. Two, as the expose takes place,

new phenomenological impulses can be crafted into values as to satisfy today’s historical needs.

Philosophers must now echo and appropriate for morality Heidegger’s cry “to the things

themselves!” (Heidegger, 2008)

Being-in-Ethics!

Heidegger’s categories of being conceal within them an existential, in-the-world, and pre-

thematic ethics. It is a take on ethics which diverts from the traditional understanding; it brings

morality back to the closest of our being, namely, Dasein. However, in order for the ethics of

existence to unfold, philosophers must call for the Destruktion of today’s moral reality, for a

review of the genealogy of morals, and for the elaboration of a new “rootness.” This is only

possible, however, if the totalitarian nature of Das Man, who captured Dasein in its falling prey

to the world, it is only when it is becomes dismantled, that Authentic ontology of the ethics can

be unconcealed

The ontic horizon of reality is in desperate need for a new ethics. The globalized and

technological world of the twenty-first century with increasing economic inequalities, a soon-to-

be ecological catastrophe, chronic hunger, and open exploitation, call for the need for a new

ethics, an ethics of existence.

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