Elkholy, Sharin - Heidegger and A Metaphysics of Feeling (Continuum, 2008)

Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy

Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from

Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs
across the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major
contribution to the field of philosophical research.
Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan

Badiou and Derrida, Antonio Calcagno
Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas Hewlett
Deconstruction and Democracy, Alex Thomson
Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert
Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire Colebrook
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan-Wortham and
Allison Weiner
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell
Husserl’s Phenomenology, Kevin Hermberg
The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement, T. Storm Heter
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Heidegger and a Metaphysics
of Feeling
Angst and the Finitude of Being
Sharin N. Elkholy
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Sharin N. Elkholy 2008
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9875-2

ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9875-5
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Elkholy, Sharin N.
Heidegger and a metaphysics of feeling: Angst and the finitude of being/Sharin N. Elkholy.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0-8264–9875-5
1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. Sein und Zeit. 2. Anxiety. 3. Finite, The. 4. Truth.
5. Aletheia (The Greek word) I. Title.
B3279.H48S4629 2008
193--dc22
2008001251
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
For my father
who gave me a world,
and the world
And as for our future, one will hardly find us again on the paths of those
Egyptian youths who endanger temples by night, embrace statues, and want
by all means to unveil, uncover, and put into bright light whatever is kept
concealed for good reasons . . . We no longer believe that truth remains truth
when the veils are withdrawn; we have lived too much to believe this. Today
we consider it a matter of decency not to wish to see everything naked, or to
be present at everything, or to understand and ‘know’ everything.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix
in Songs, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Yoking of Angst to Aletheia: Heidegger
and a Metaphysics of Feeling 1
Chapter 1
Introduction to the Project and Method of
Being and Time: Preliminary Outline of the
Existential Structures of Da-sein 13
Chapter 2
Being-toward-death—Stage one of Angst:
The Groundlessness of Being and the
Unboundedness of Da-sein 43
Chapter 3
Being-guilty—Stage two of Angst:
The Temporalization of Angst and how
the Nothing becomes Something 69
Chapter 4
Angst and Aletheia: Finitude and the
Nondialectical Relation of Da-sein and Being 95
Conclusion
Angst and Historicity: From the “They” to the “We” 119
Notes 135
Bibliography 145
Index 149
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Introduction
The Yoking of Angst to Aletheia : Heidegger

and a Metaphysics of Feeling
The problem starts with Plato. But never having been recognized as a
problem, it continues to plague philosophy, that is, before Heidegger came
onto the scene to expose how Western metaphysics had gone awry. The
problem is summarized in his essay Plato’s Doctrine Of Truth. It is the problem
of metaphysics bequeathed by Plato. Through his reading of the “allegory
of the cave,” Heidegger argues that Plato inaugurates a remarkable shift in
the essence of truth that simultaneously founds both the essence of Being
as “presence,” and the orientation of the human being toward this essence.
Prior to the shift, Heidegger’s Greeks understood truth—aletheia—as an
“unhiddenness” in relation to a “hiddenness” that remained beyond the
grasp of subjective self-assertion. “Truth originally means what has been
wrested from hiddenness.”1 However after Plato, “being present is no longer
what it was in the beginning of Western thinking: the emergence of the
hidden into unhiddenness.”2 After Plato, what originally appeared ceased
to show itself in relation to the mystery of the hidden; but instead came to
be yoked to the outward appearance of what is made visible by the “idea.”
“A ληθεαι comes under the yoke of the ιδεα.”3
Heidegger goes on to explain, by positing the idea as that which brings
forth the unhidden as well as that by which the unhidden is recognized,
Plato comes to construct truth as correctness in the sense of catching sight
of the idea as it is manifest in the world. The idea, particularly the Idea of
all ideas, the Good, replaces the hidden as the source of beings that are no
longer understood in an “attunement” to the hidden but in terms of percep-
tion. “Ever since, what matters in all our fundamental orientations toward
beings is the achieving of a correct view of the ideas.”4 According to
Heidegger, this shift inherited from Plato founds both the notion of Being
as “objective presence” and the notion of truth as correctness that continue
to plague Western metaphysics.
Inseparable from this change in the essence of truth is a parallel change
in the essence of education that “has to do with one’s being and thus takes
2 Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling
place in the very ground of one’s essence.”5 Plato’s allegory is the documen-
tation of such an education depicted in the four stages of “dwelling” that
Heidegger points out in the prisoner’s ascent from the cave.6 Because truth
is now oriented toward what can be perceived “as something” through the
lens of the idea, education occurs fundamentally with respect to sight.
Human nature must subsequently be educated to orient itself toward the
outward appearance of things as they may be grasped by the idea lighted by
the Idea of the Good. “If our comportment with beings is always and every-
where a matter of the ιδεαν of the ιδεα, the seeing of the ‘visible form,’
then all our efforts must be concentrated above all on making such seeing
possible. And that requires the correct vision.”7 With the shift from conceal-
ment, or hiddenness, to what can be made present through the lens of the
idea, the essence of truth henceforth lies in the correct relation between
the outward appearance of a thing and the perception of that thing estab-
lished by the Idea. This is the message, Heidegger believes, that the “allegory
of the cave” is meant to disclose. “Truth is no longer, as it was qua unhid-
denness, the fundamental trait of being itself. Instead, as a consequence of
getting yoked under the Idea, truth has become correctness, and hence-
forth it will be characteristic of the knowing of beings.”8
But let us once more re-visit Plato’s cave allegory. Unable to move his
head or body while chained in the cave, the prisoner’s gaze is fixed to the
wall before him where images that he thinks are “real” are projected. Upon
release, the prisoner eventually comes to understand that the life he was
living in the cave was an illusion. What he had perceived as real while
chained in the cave were actually just shadows. This realization comes to
him when he is brought forth before the light of the sun, or the Good.
Beneath the light of the sun, surrounded by its warmth, he comes to under-
stand it as the true source of everything that he perceives. But what must he
have first experienced, now as an embodied being underneath the light of
the sun? What must he have first experienced before coming to an under-
standing of the Idea as that toward which he must fix his “nonsensuous
glance?” Surely it must have been wonder (thaumazein). Perhaps this is why
Aristotle says philosophy begins in wonder, and perhaps this is also why it is
actually a feeling, the feeling of eros, and not the idea, as Heidegger claims,
that Plato uses to arrive at the truth.9
I want to argue similarly, that in Being and Time it is rather Heidegger who
attempts a shift in the education of the human being that is simultaneous
with a shift in the essence of truth: from correctness, back to what he
believes is the originary notion of truth belonging to the Greek experience
prior to Plato’s reversal. This shift, perhaps informed by wonder itself, aims
The Yoking of Angst to Aletheia 3
to reorient the human being toward an understanding of beings in relation

to the hidden or concealed ground from which they arise—what Heidegger
calls the “truth of Being.” However, rather than “yoke” sight to truth, I shall
show that Heidegger instead yokes Angst to aletheia for the purposes that
he attributes to Plato of “leading the whole human being in the turning
around of his or her essence.”10 Heidegger reorients the human essence
from a perception of the unhidden in relation to the idea, which grasps
beings on the order of “objective presence”, to an attunement to what does
not appear but is the originary ground of beings characterized by the
concealment belonging to aletheia and the nothing of Angst.
Of all beings, only the human being, called upon by the voice of being,
experiences the wonder of all wonders: that beings are. The being that is
thus called in its essence into the truth of being is for this reason always
attuned in an essential manner. The lucid courage for essential anxiety
assures us the enigmatic possibility of experiencing being. For close by
essential anxiety as horror of the abyss dwells awe.11
But, while Heidegger’s substitution of Angst for sight allows him to recon-
ceive the relation of humans to beings through a reconception of truth,
Heidegger nevertheless maintains the essence of the yoke that he exposes
in his analysis of Plato’s doctrine of truth. Instead of positing the Idea as
that which yokes sight to the unhidden, thereby establishing truth as correct-
ness in a relation of perception to what is perceived through the framework
of the idea, Heidegger yokes Angst to truth. Through this yoke what comes
to view does so out of an attunement of mood to the concealment belonging
to aletheia. Specifically, by yoking Angst to aletheia Heidegger unites the
being of the human being to the horizon and ground of its possibilities.
Thus, like Plato’s idea, which not only makes possible what is unhidden but
also serves as the mode of access to the unhidden, in yoking Angst to aletheia,
Heidegger attributes to mood both the means of access to beings, as well as
the possibility for the presencing of beings. This yoke leads to the phenom-
enon of what I shall call “ontological occlusion.”
With the concept of ontological occlusion, I hope to show what may
perhaps not be able to be shown at all: the basis of the familiar, yet
unreflective background understanding of our everyday engagement with
things and others. The concept of ontological occlusion is appropriate
because the term occlusion entails both a fitting together as well as a closure.
Through a study of Heidegger’s ontology of mood, I will show how Angst
attunes the human being to Being in such a way that the two are fitted
together in a total and complete accord. All understanding, of oneself, of

one’s relations to others and of one’s possibilities is rooted in this accord
that is struck prereflectively in the yoking of mood with the ground of all
possibilities, or Being. This fitting of the human being with Being through
mood is what underlies the common background practices of culture and
meaning that are hidden and remain tacit in everyday human activities.
Mood allows for the ground of these practices to stay in the background.
However, while the fitting together of mood and Being prereflectively
bounds the human being inseparably to the horizon of its possibilities, it
simultaneously occludes, or closes off a relation to a different world that he
or she is not attuned or fitted to. It may even be the case that the predispo-
sitional bond established by mood, which ties a particular person to a world
and with others, is the same bond that might separate that person from the
meaningful possibilities belonging to someone from a different world, and
therefore from that other individual or community as well in a prereflective
and predispositional manner. At the very least, this concept of ontological
occlusion may help to bring to the fore the affective foundation that lies at
the root of a person’s prereflective openness to a world shared with others
and, similarly, the prereflective and predispositional basis for a closing off
to the voice of an other that one does not share a meaningful horizon of
possibilities with.
Arguably, Heidegger’s most important contribution to the history of
philosophy, in addition to entrenching the subject in its world and thereby
overcoming the subject/object dualism, is the primacy that he accords to
mood in his analysis of human existence. Through mood humans gain
access to their world, to themselves and to their relations with others in the
world in a manner that is prereflective and unthematic. “The moodedness
of attunement constitutes existentially the openness to world of Da-sein”
(137/129).12 Different from affect or emotion, mood, especially the mood
of Angst, has the power to reveal the whole: the whole of how one is in the
world and the whole of the world at large. Before Heidegger, Wittgenstein
succinctly captured this phenomenon in characteristic terseness. “The
world of the happy man is different from that of the unhappy man.”13 But
where Wittgenstein leaves mood to the realm of what can’t be spoken about,
Heidegger goes so far as to claim that “we must ontologically in principle
leave the discovery of the world to ‘mere mood.’” (138/130)
Indeed, by using mood to access the whole of what gives meaning to
human existence, that is, Being, Heidegger follows perhaps more closely in
the footsteps of Plato than even he realizes. Heidegger focuses on the role
of educating vision with regard to catching sight of the idea in his analysis
of “the cave allegory.” But the possibility of grasping the idea for Plato is
rather brought about through an education of love taught to Socrates by
Diotima in his Symposium. In fact, the education of love significantly trumps
the education of sight discussed by Heidegger in on “Plato’s Doctrine of
Truth.” For in Plato’s metaphysics it is ultimately eros and not the idea that
serves to bridge the “lover of wisdom” to the truth. Only on the basis of an
attunement between eros and the Good, an attunement that also requires
an education, may a follower of Plato, as Heidegger puts it, be able to
correctly catch sight of the idea in perception.
In the Symposium, Diotima teaches Socrates the truth about love. She
explains that love is the love of a certain understanding of beauty. “Wisdom
is one of the most beautiful things, and Love is love of beauty. So Love must
necessarily be a lover of wisdom; and as a lover of wisdom he falls between
wisdom and ignorance.”14 The identity between love and the being of the
lover is here forged under the name “lover of wisdom.” Thus the lover of
wisdom occupies the same midway status that Diotima ascribes to love: a
state “in between wisdom and ignorance.”15 Significantly, this state of mind
shows itself in “having right opinions without being able to give reasons for
having them . . . Right opinion, of course, has this kind of status, falling
between understanding and ignorance.”16 Thus the significance of love for
Plato is that it allows for a level of certainty that bypasses any form of
epistemological confirmation based on some kind of cognitive idea. Love
provides the lover with a precognitive and pre-reflective certainty that is
experienced through mood, or the feeling of being in the world.
Diotima shows Socrates that love becomes perfectly revealed only to those
pilgrims who have received a proper education in feeling and are thus able
to pursue their goal in the right way. By the right use of his feeling for the
love of boys, the lover of wisdom observes that the beauty of one particular
body is “one and the same” in all bodies.17 This realization frees the lover
from the desire for any one particular body and allows him to direct himself
towards the contemplation of beauty as it exists in men’s souls, moral prac-
tices and institutions. The lover of wisdom progresses to the love of sciences
until he finally reaches the region where a good life should be spent contem-
plating “divine beauty,” or the Good.
By becoming a lover of wisdom, then, the educated lover embodies love
itself. On the basis of love, which constitutes the totality of the being of Plato’s
lover, a unity is forged with the ground of Being. Similarly, it is on the basis of
the totalizing attunement of the mood of Angst that Heidegger joins the being
of the human being—Da-sein—to the nothing signifying Being and the
concealment of aletheia through an education on the nothing in his
discussion of “being-toward-death.” As quoted above, eros allows for a

predisposition that results in “having right opinions without being able to give
reasons for having them.” Likewise, the certainty that Da-sein has of its
authentic being, first revealed in the mode of existence Heidegger calls “being-
toward-death,” is secured prereflectively by the yoking of Angst to the nothing
of Being. Because Heidegger uses mood to bridge a human to the ground of
all beings and to what gives meaning to human relations; and further, because
he grounds certainty in mood by virtue of linking it to Being, I place
Heidegger within a Western tradition of what I call a “metaphysics of feeling,”
as well as challenge the division of Heidegger’s thinking into two parts.
The term “metaphysics of feeling” is also employed by Quentin Smith in
his book The Felt Meanings of the World: A Metaphysics of Feeling. Smith argues
for what he understands as a “metaphysics of feeling” by contrasting it to a
“metaphysics of reason” that has dominated philosophy and conceived of
feeling as inferior to reason’s quest for seeking the “true” meaning of the
world. “Feeling cannot have a true relation to the world that reason cannot
have in a more clear and direct way; hence a metaphysics of feeling by defi-
nition can be no more than an inferior version of a metaphysics of reason.”18
Smith believes it is now time to turn the table and to place a “metaphysics
of feeling” at the fore. In this metaphysics knowledge will be experienced in
terms of “tonalities,” and meaning will be accompanied by feeling. Accor-
ding to Smith, Wittgenstein and Heidegger came close to such a metaphysics,
but failed because each remained within the realm of a metaphysics of
reason. He says of the latter, “the metaphysical import of anxiety for Heide-
gger is not that it reveals the felt meaning of the Being of being, but that it
makes possible the question about the reason for the Being of being.”19
But, in fact, a metaphysics of feeling and not of reason has dominated the
Western tradition of philosophy from the time of Plato onwards, making
Heidegger its most recent representative. While it is beyond the scope of
this project to document such a history, it may suffice to point out, in addi-
tion to my above mention of Plato, the use of love or Agape in the Christian
theological tradition and its function of joining humans to God. Kant’s use
of “disinterested pleasure” in relation to beauty as the bridge between
understanding and imagination, and as the basis for his idea of sensus
communis in the Critique of Judgment. Friedrich Schlegel’s use of love as the
means to access human nature and nature at large discussed in his “Philo-
sophical fragments”; and Hegel’s use of desire operating through negativity
to encompass Being in his Phenomenology of Spirit.
Heidegger seems to have picked up on what was essential to the Greek
belief that philosophy begins with wonder. Prior to any questioning
regarding the Being of a being or of the outward appearance of a thing, is

surely wonder that is akin to awe: awe that there is something rather than
nothing. Through this awe the human being is brought closer to Being.20
Following Plato, then, who posits feeling as the prereflective mode of access
to Being, or truth, upon which all subsequent knowing is based, Heidegger
draws upon the prereflective mood of Angst as a bridge to the truth of
Being, or the ground of everything that is. This yoking of Angst and aletheia
in Being and Time, wherein the finitude of Da-sein will be rooted in an
inseparable relation to the finitude of Being, puts into question the division
of Heidegger’s thinking into two parts.
Much has been made of the so called “turn” (Kehre) in Heidegger’s
thought from an emphasis on Da-sein in Being and Time to Being in his later
works. William J. Richardson dates this turn with “On the essence of truth”
(1943) where he claims that Heidegger first begins “to appreciate the full
import of what it means for concealment somehow to precede nonconceal-
ment in the coming-to-pass of” aletheia.21 With this appreciation the trans-
formation of “Heidegger I into Heidegger II” makes itself seen in a “shift of
focus from there-being [Da-sein] to Being.” Michel Haar notes the turn in
the earlier lecture “What is Metaphysics” (1929). “This text is marked by all
the signs of a reversal, in which the link between anxiety and the self-mani-
festation of being is substituted for the linking of anxiety with extreme,
individual enabling.”22
Both Haar and Richardson, like so many commentators on Heidegger’s
work, distinguish the earlier Heidegger from the later by claiming that in
the later Heidegger Da-sein, or the human being, is the humble recipient
of the gift of Being, while in Being and Time the individual authenticity of
Da-sein holds the primary place of the locus of meaning—anxiety linked to
“extreme, individual enabling.” Thus Richardson implies that a philosophy
of existentialism may be retrieved from Being and Time, and wonders: “does
Heidegger II have any more right to re-trieve the unsaid of Heidegger
I than, let us say, Jean Paul Sartre?”23
Indeed, the existentialist reading of Being and Time has a long history, one
that continues to shape the interpretation of Da-sein and finitude in Being
and Time.24 As Robert Bernasconi points out: “The familiar accusation
against Heidegger that the existential analytic of Da-sein in Being and Time
amounts to an egoism is almost as old as Being and Time itself.”25 It is perhaps
best summed up by Frederick A. Olafson in his book on existentialism.
“Underlying all these conceptions of self-choice is the profound
Heideggerian conception of man as the being that founds his own being.”26
Support for this individualist and existentialist reading of Being and Time is
drawn from the section on “being-toward-death,” where Heidegger first

begins to establish the finitude and “individuation” of Da-sein in relation to
the nothingness of Angst. For the most part, Heidegger’s notion of finitude
is taken at face value, as a consequence of “becoming aware of our death,
which is to say our finitude,” as Jonathan Dollimore writes.27 Similarly,
Richardson believes “finitude consists in the fact that its end/death is
already immanent within it.”28 An understanding of this end—an individu-
al’s physical death—is to reveal to Da-sein that its existence is limited, that
is, finite; and this understanding, which Da-sein must carry with it constantly,
is supposed to prompt Da-sein to take charge of its life in an authentic
manner that is completely its own. This general interpretation is summa-
rized by Sartre’s view that the nothing of Angst reveals that there is no
foundation for human choices outside of the individual’s choice itself; and
that an individual must bear responsibility for creating his or her existence
from nothing.
With this idea of finitude, founded on a rendering of being-toward-death
as the factical end of Da-sein’s earthly existence, the groundwork for an
existentialist interpretation of Da-sein is laid. Thus the early Heidegger of
Being and Time is believed to locate finitude strictly within the individual,
based on an understanding that this individual will have to face its death
alone and in its singularity. Finitude belongs solely to Da-sein, and the divi-
sion of Heidegger’s thought into two commences with the turn from the
finitude of the individual to the finitude of Being in his later thinking.
However, such a reading is misguided and fails to recognize the kernel of
Heidegger’s essential thought: the truth and finitude of Being. In a refer-
ence to Being and Time found in the Beitrage Heidegger states explicitly:
“As long as one accounts for this attempt as ‘philosophy of existence’ every-
thing remains uncomprehended.”29 Indeed, the finitude of Da-sein has
little to do with an understanding of death as the end or limit of an indi-
vidual’s existence. Being-toward-death is an existential of Da-sein and, as
such, must be an experience available to it throughout its existence, unlike
factical death, which is beyond the bounds of experience. As Wittgenstein
puts it: “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death.”30
Against the standard reading, I argue that rather than gain the self
through the experience of being-toward-death, Angst leads to a loss of self
signalled by the loss of Da-sein’s relations to others and concerns in the
world—a loss that will establish Da-sein as the clearing of Being. Heidegger
dissolves the subjective boundaries of an individual through the experience
of being-toward-death, an experience which is defined by the loss of
all relations to others and to Da-sein’s possibilities brought about by a
confrontation with the nothing of Angst. Later Heidegger reestablishes

the self through its relations in the world with others, thereby joining the
fate of the individual to the fate of the world and other Da-seins by yoking
Angst to aletheia, the truth of Being, which he will reveal as tradition. Indeed,
I will show that Da-sein’s “authentic” self is born as Mitda-sein, the term that
Heidegger uses to describe the prereflective understanding of “being-with”
others that is inherent in one’s own self-understanding. Therefore, having
a world is not a given. The having of a world comes from being-with others
in an attunement to the world. Mood, then, becomes essential to the disclos-
edness of Being, and being-with others becomes vital to Da-sein’s own
self-understanding.
Both Richardson and Haar correctly point to the crucial concepts of conceal-
ment and Angst, respectively, in their roles of decentering Da-sein by positioning
it as the “clearing” for the happening of the truth of Being. But the funda-
mental structure that places Da-sein within the fold of Being, as a recipient of
what Being gives, is laid out in Being and Time through the yoking of Angst to
the truth of Being. Angst works to clear Da-sein of any sense of individuality
and functions to place it in a direct relation to Being. In fact, I want to suggest
that without an understanding of the way in which Angst is yoked to aletheia in
Being and Time, Heidegger’s project of grounding the being of Da-sein as the
site of the happening of the truth of Being and his notion of the finitude of
Being in his later writings would be difficult to comprehend. Reiner Schur-
mann believes that “the correct understanding of his [Heidegger’s] early
writings is obtained only if he is read backward, from end to beginning.”31
Heidegger’s writing, style and perhaps even strategy lend themselves to such
an interpretation by leaving behind a trail of questions for his readers to
follow. Nonetheless, it is rather an understanding of Heidegger’s project in
Being and Time, specifically with respect to the relationship between the
nothing of Angst and the groundless ground of all beings, that is crucial for an
understanding of the finitude of Being in Heidegger’s later works. And while
Angst does not play much of a role in Heidegger’s later writings, the nothing
that characterizes death nevertheless remains for Heidegger the defining
feature of the human being and of Being throughout all of his writings.
Indeed, the relation of Da-sein to Being has posed as much difficulty for
Heidegger, who simply asserts the relation, as it has for Heidegger scholars,
who often repeat Heidegger’s assertions. In an “Addendum” (1956) to his
essay “The Origin of the Work of Art” (1935) Heidegger laments over his
inability to conceive of this relation. He writes: “the relation of Being and
human being, a relation that is unsuitably conceived even in this version” has
posed “a distressing difficulty, which has been clear to me since Being and
Time and has since been expressed in a variety of versions.” In “The Origin
of the Work of Art” Heidegger refers us to his discussion of truth in Being
and Time. There he states that if the essence of truth belongs to Being, then
to the essence of Being belongs the happening of truth wherein “the
free space of openness (the clearing of the There) happen.”32 However,
Heidegger confesses that this explanation fails to adequately conceive of
the relation.
In the “Letter on Humanism” (1947), which is addressed as a response to
a query posed by Jean Beaufret, Heidegger again attempts to define the
relation between Being and Da-sein, but only succeeds in asserting it. “Only
so far as man, ek-sisting into the truth of Being, belongs to Being can there
come from Being itself the assignment of those directives that must become
law and rule for man.”33 And in “On the Question of Being” (1955), where
we are directed from the “Addendum” to “The Origin of the Work of Art,”
Heidegger discounts the problem entirely, stating that the question
regarding the relation between Being and the human being is “inadequate”
because in saying that “they” belong together “we continue to let both subsist
independently.”34 Instead, he argues, that Being needs humans and concom-
itantly within the human being is “a relating in the sense of needful usage”
to Being.35
However, the phrase “needful usage” does not add much to an under-
standing of how Being and the human being are to be thought of as
interdependent. John Caputo, who has written on the mystical features of
Heidegger’s thought, has facetiously voiced his frustration over the diffi-
culty in comprehending this relation between Da-sein and Being. “Though
I wait daily by the phone, though I keep my ear close to the ground, I
cannot, for the life of me, hear the call of Being. I have been forsaken.
(I think Being has discovered that I am American and that I use a computer.
I suspect an informer.)”36
In revealing the link between Angst and aletheia in Being and Time, I explain
how the finitude of Da-sein is constructed in a dynamic relation to Being.
Specifically, by questioning the role of Angst in Heidegger’s discussion of
death, I argue that being-toward-death cannot point to the finitude of an
individual, as Heidegger claims, because being-toward-death is character-
ized by the nothing of Angst and the nothing has no boundaries, but is
rather unbounded. Nor, contrary to Heidegger’s claims, can Da-sein’s
meaningful possibilities be opened up by being-toward-death, as being-to-
ward-death is characterized precisely by the receding of all meaningful
possibilities into the nothing of Angst. Rather, it is at the point of the
transition from the nothing of Angst back to the world of projects that the
finitude of Da-sein is established in an inseparable relation of mood to

Being by virtue of the possibilities and relations to other Da-seins that Being
grounds.
My discussion is divided into four chapters followed by a conclusion.
In Chapter 1, I provide a general introduction to Heidegger’s project of
seeking out the meaning of Being in Being and Time and his commitment to
establishing a tie to what he understands as the Ancient Greek tradition of
thinking that lies latent in the Western questioning about the meaning of
Being. I give a description of the essential ontological structures of the
being of Da-sein: the world, Mit-sein and Mitda-sein, as well as the existential
structures of “understanding,” “attunement,” and “discourse” by which
Da-sein gains access to its being. The main focus of Chapter 1 is to explain
Heidegger’s characterization of “inauthenticity” through Da-sein’s relation
to “leveled down” possibilities supported by its prereflective understanding
of Being as “objective presence.” As I work to show throughout this book,
“authenticity,” against the standard reading, is not characterized by a radical
independence of the self, but is brought about by a reversal in Da-sein’s
relation to its possibilities and others through a reorientation to Being and
aletheia. Readers already familiar with the general project, method and exis-
tential structures making up Heidegger’s analysis of Da-sein, as well as his
discussion of inauthenticity, may skip this chapter and begin at Chapter 2.
In Chapter 2, I argue that being-toward-death, rather than characterizing
the mode of existence that reveals the gain of the authentic self is, to the
contrary, the mode of existence whereby Da-sein losses its selfhood.
Adhering to a strict phenomenological description of being-toward-death
revealed in the mood of Angst, I challenge Heidegger’s claim that being-
toward-death opens Da-sein up to its authentic possibilities by underscoring
the fact that Angst signals the withdrawal of all meaningful possibilities into
the nothing of Angst. To the contrary, Angst renders the individual Da-sein
paralyzed and inert through a loss of possibilities and a loss of being-with
others. The focus of Chapter 2 is to show how Angst clears the being of
Da-sein and establishes an “existential identity” of the whole of the being of
the world and the whole of the being of Da-sein that will later be put into
what I have called an ontological occlusion whereby the totality of Da-sein
is attuned to a certain world that Heidegger will describe as “heritage.”
In Chapter 3 I discuss the second stage of Angst where Da-sein moves out
of a paralysis in being-toward-death by taking up the nothing as a ground in
the existential that Heidegger calls “being-guilty.” In the “resolution” to
exist as a being-toward-death, Heidegger argues, Angst must be “wanted,”
“demanded,” “endured” and related to as a possibility at every state of
existence. However, paradoxically, being-guilty is also revealed to Da-sein

through the mood of Angst. The question, then, is how one and the same
nothing of Angst that left Da-sein in a paralysis in its being-toward-death
may lead to an active engagement in the world with others in being-guilty.
Through the temporalization of Angst, I show how Heidegger establishes a
difference within the nothing in terms of a directionality that characterizes
the “temporality” of Da-sein. The focus of Chapter 3 is to show how Da-sein
is “cleared” through a “stillness” made possible in the enduring of Angst, or
the holding open of the nothing so to eventually be positioned as the
“opening” and “clearing” for the “presencing of Being” that Heidegger
elaborates on in his later writings.
In Chapter 4, I explain how Heidegger specifically brings Da-sein back
into the world and into relation with others by yoking Angst to aletheia.
Through this yoke the groundless ground of the nothing circumscribes
Da-sein’s relations and possibilities in the manner of “letting-be” (Sein-
lassen) belonging to aletheia. The understanding of possibilities and Da-sein’s
relations to others will therefore be rooted in an accord struck between
mood and the ground of meaning supporting all understanding. By way of
this accord, the finitude of Da-sein occurs simultaneously to the finitude of
Being as a bounding of the unbounded nothing of Angst through the rela-
tions that the nothing circumscribes.
In the Conclusion, I discuss how the structure of the temporality of
Da-sein allows Heidegger to position tradition and heritage as the meaning
of the world and therefore the ground of Da-sein’s being. I also discuss the
construction of the individual being of Da-sien and show how it is consti-
tuted and bounded by the “community.” The social being of Da-sein, or
Mitda-sein, will be shown to be primary to that of Da-sein’s individual being.
I conclude with the problem of ontological occlusion and what Heidegger’s
configuration of mood and Being might tell us about the affective roots
that tie humans to their particular traditions.
Chapter 1
Introduction to the Project and Method of

Being and Time: Preliminary Outline of the
Existential Structures of Da-sein
The Question Regarding the Meaning of Being and the

Significance of Being to the project of Being and Time
In Being and Time Heidegger prepares the way to ask about the meaning of
Being. The question, Heidegger claims, has not only been “forgotten,” it
has not even been asked for a variety of reasons. This question has been
buried over throughout the history of Western ontology because Being is
assumed to be either too universal, too obvious, or too ephemeral to ask
about. But since Being is the ground of everything that exists and is already
presupposed with every questioning about what “is,” Heidegger insists that
the question of Being is the “fundamental question” of all time. “Everything
we talk about, mean, and are related to is in being in one way or another.
What and how we ourselves are is also in being” (6–7/5).
Being is the human being’s most fundamental, yet hidden, interpretive
horizon. Being grounds the understanding of all human relations and of
everything that is. The self’s relation to itself, to others, and to things in
the world are all rooted in a prereflective understanding of Being.
Without a tacit understanding of Being we would be unable to situate
ourselves in our relations in the world, or be able to grasp the meaning
of anything at all. Indeed, it is Being that opens up the range of possibili-
ties that are there before us in the world. Because of Being, humans are
able to recognize, comprehend, realize, and entertain certain possibili-
ties, as well as hope for and desire possibilities in the future and remember
those from the past. Being grounds the totality of all relations and
connections that give to the world the sense of meaning that it has for
human existence. “Manifestly it [Being] is something that does not show
itself initially and for the most part, something that is concealed . . . But at
the same time it is something that essentially belongs to what initially and
for the most part shows itself, indeed in such a way that it constitutes its
meaning and ground” (35/31).
While he does not explicitly identify Being with culture, it is this analogy
that has most fruitfully helped contemporary readers of Heidegger make
sense of his notion of Being. Carol White, for example, suggests that Being
is best understood as designating “cultural background practices.”1 In his
Foreword to White’s Time and Death, Hubert Dreyfus elaborates on this
theme. Being is “invisible,” like a style, and is to Da-sein “like the water to
the fish.”2 “Style, while remaining hidden, is what makes everything intelli-
gible and is what Heidegger calls Being.”3 Charles B. Guignon also speaks
of Being as a “style,” and explains Being as the hidden and “implicit back-
ground of understanding which is the condition of the possibility of
encountering anything as given.”4 In this book I am putting forward the
thesis that it is mood that is the invisible hand that styles Being and simulta-
neously weds humans to a style belonging to Being.
Like cultural familiarity and background practices belonging to a world,
Being is not conceptualizable, nor is it anything tangible. Nevertheless it is
there, underlying all human understanding and activity. Heidegger
approaches the nature of this unconceptual comprehension of Being
through mood. “[B]eing can be unconceptualized, but it is never completely
uncomprehended” (183/172). Being is comprehended prereflectively,
prethematically and precognitively in mood by way of the beings that it
grounds. Being itself, however, is never explicitly known. “Something like
‘being’ has been disclosed in the understanding of being that belongs to
existing Da-sein as a way in which it understands. The preliminary disclo-
sure of being, although it is unconceptual, makes it possible for Da-sein as
existing being-in-the-world to be related to beings, to those it encounters in
the world as well as to itself in existing” (437/398). The nature of this
unconceptual comprehension of Being Heidegger approaches through
mood, specifically, the mood of Angst, which we explore in our discussion
of “being-toward-death.”
Being, then, is not a being. It is the ground of all beings, but it is not
reducible to a being. “The being of beings ‘is’ itself not a being” (6/5). In
fact, the reduction of Being to a being is what Heidegger is trying to address
through his critique of Being as “objective presence.” Heidegger attributes
this reduction to Plato with his reversal of the role of truth. In “Plato’s
doctrine of truth,” as discussed in the Introduction, Heidegger argues that
Plato inaugurates a shift from an understanding of truth as aletheia to an
understanding of truth as correctness. This shift founds the modern notion
of propositional truth (see chapter 4). In propositional truth, the locus of
Introduction to Being and Time 15
meaning moves from Being, which Heidegger claims was originally under-
stood by the Greeks in relation to the concealment of aletheia, to what may
be understood in terms of objective presence. Prior to Plato’s reversal what
came to presence for human understanding was understood in a relation-
ship to what did not come to presence—Being. The presence of what was
unconcealed, or discovered, found its shelter in the concealment of aletheia.
By virtue of this shelter, beings reveal themselves as they are—in the self-
presencing belonging to what is most proper to them. And what is most
proper to beings is a concealment that is outside of human manipulation
and control, a concealment that belongs to Being.
In place of aletheia and the self-showing of beings, Plato introduces a
metaphysics of the Idea that renders Being to the level of something objec-
tively present. Enframed by the Idea, beings are forced out of hiding and
into the light to be seen. After Plato, and ever since, truth has become
synonymous with correctness and sight. Beings are no longer characterized
by aletheia but by an agreement of ideas established between the subject and
an object. This fate of Being, Heidegger believes, is manifest throughout
the history of Western ontology. In reducing Being to a being that belongs
to the order of objective presence, humans take the place of the locus of
meaning and the original ground of meaning, or Being, gets covered over.
“What no longer takes the form of a pure letting be seen, but rather in its
indicating always has recourse to something else and so always lets some-
thing be seen as something, acquires with this structure of synthesis the
possibility of covering up” (34/30).
Heidegger’s project is to return to Being the dignity of the unknown.
As the ontological basis for the understanding of beings and for all rela-
tions among beings, Being transcends any particular being. “Being and
its structure transcend every being and every possible existent determi-
nation of being. Being is the transcendens pure and simple” (38/33–34).
Consequently, Heidegger underscores that there is an “ontological differ-
ence” between Being and beings. Being is not reducible to something
objective. It cannot be weighed, measured, empirically investigated, or
verified. This is why Heidegger often uses the word “mystery” to indicate
Being’s independence from human manipulation and control. Reducing
Being to a being has allowed humans to believe that they can get to the
source or origin of all existence and of everything that is. Heidegger
intends to disburden humans of this pretension. “The first philosophical
step in understanding the problem of being consists in avoiding the
mython tina diegeisthai, in not ‘telling a story,’ that is, not determining
beings as beings by tracing them back in their origins to another being—as
if being had the character of a possible being” (6/5). The nothingness

about Being that Heidegger wants humans to acknowledge is a nothing-
ness that points to the fact that Being, as the groundless ground of all
possibilities, can never be explicitly comprehended. But, as we shall see,
the mood of Angst is the vehicle to this nothingness inherent to Being.
Therefore, with the forgetting of Being humans are left with the impres-
sion that they are the ones that set the standards for determining all that
there is. “Thus left, humanity replenishes its ‘world’ on the basis of the
latest needs and aims, and fills out that world by means of proposing and
planning.”5 But, it is rather the other way around. Planning, proposing, and
ordering all belong to the order of the forgetfulness of Being. Again, from
his later writings Heidegger states that man “is all the more mistaken the
more exclusively he takes himself, as a subject, to be the standard of all
beings.”6 In Being and Time, it is the public opinion of “the They” (das Man)
that dictates the order of beings, whereas in his later writings it is the
enframement of technology that determines the mode of revealing of
human goals and needs. Indeed, the way of life that belongs to the They is
merely another expression of the consequence of this planning, proposing,
and objectification of Being that Heidegger expands upon in his later writ-
ings. When the mystery of Being is covered over and everything is revealed
as objective presence, both the nature of humans and the nature of Being
fall victim to the order of an impersonal force. What Heidegger deems the
“authenticity” (Eigentlichkeit) of Da-sein, I shall argue, is a change in the
understanding of Being away from objective presence and back to the
concealment of aletheia.
Heidegger thinks it is crucial to ask about the meaning of Being not only
because it is neglectful to forget about the basis of everything that is, but
also because there is a danger in forgetting that Heidegger hopes to save
humanity from. In pursuing the question about the meaning of Being,
Heidegger adheres to a certain method and is guided by a certain directive.
The directive that he adheres to is the tradition of Western ontology that he
claims encompasses an original understanding of the meaning of Being
(5/3). Indeed, the way back to Being lies in the story of origins that
Heidegger tells about the first experience of Being that belonged to the
ancient Greeks. “This destructuring is based upon the original experiences
in which the first and subsequently guiding determinations of being were
gained” (22/20). Thus what guides Heidegger’s entire analysis into the
question of the meaning of Being is a nostalgia for the ancient ontology of
the Greeks that he states still determines the goals and the foundation of
philosophical inquiry in the West. Therefore a proper understanding of the
tradition of Western ontology entails an understanding of the meaning of

the forgotten history of Being.
Returning, then, as close to the original Greek experience from wherein
the question first arose, Heidegger aims to uncover the meaning of Being
that he says is implicit in the ontological tradition of the West. “The
ontology that thus arises is ensnared by tradition, which allows it to sink to
the level of the obvious and become mere material for reworking (as it was
for Hegel)” (22/19). In asking about Being, Heidegger by no means
intends to overturn this tradition. “The destructuring has just as little the
negative sense of disburdening ourselves of the ontological tradition”
(22/20). Rather, Heidegger plans to go back to the source of the question
and then trace out how it had come to be forgotten. In doing so, he hopes
to gain a footing into the most important question regarding everything
that is, which belongs to the heritage of the Western tradition of Being. “If
the question of being is to achieve clarity regarding its own history, a loos-
ening of the sclerotic tradition and a dissolving of the concealments
produced by it is necessary” (22/20).
The way back to Being and to the comprehension of the meaning of
Being is through the human being—Da-sein. Without Being there is no
understanding of anything at all, but without understanding there is no
Being. Being and human understanding are therefore, inextricably bound.
This is why the question regarding the meaning of Being presupposes an
understanding of Being. “[A]lready when we ask, ‘What is being?’ we stand
in an understanding of the ‘is’ without being able to determine conceptu-
ally what the ‘is’ means” (5/4). Therefore, while Being cannot be known
cognitively or thematically, it may be approached by way of the beings and
relations that it makes possible. Specifically, Being may be brought nearer
through the human being’s understanding of its own existence, which is
always a lived existence with others in the world. “[B]ecause . . . being is
always the being of beings, we must first of all bring beings themselves
forward in the right way if we are to have any prospect of exposing Being”
(37/33).
The right way is phenomenology. In seeking the proper methodological
ground, Heidegger aims to gain a position from which the question of the
meaning of Being may be asked. As it is the basis of all human under-
standing, understanding cannot get outside of Being in order to grasp it.
However, since Being is the ground of every being, the way to access the
meaning of Being is to begin with a being and to question it with regard to
its being. “Being is always the being of a being” (9/7). This means that the
questioner asking about the meaning of Being is implicated in Being. “Only
if an understanding of being is, are beings accessible as beings; only if

beings of the kind of being of Da-sein are, is an understanding of being
possible as beings [Seinsverstandnis als Seiendes]” (212/196).
The most appropriate being that gives us access to the question of Being
is, of course, the being of the human being—“Da-sein.” “The question of
the meaning of being is possible at all only if something like an under-
standing of being is. An understanding of being belongs to the kind of
being of the being which we call Da-sein” (200/186). Heidegger there-
fore approaches Being through a phenomenological study of the human
being, which already has a prereflective understanding of Being. Substi-
tuting the term Da-sein (being-there) for the term subject, Heidegger
highlights the interrelationship between Da-sein and Being. Da-sein
distinguishes itself from all other beings as the most appropriate place to
start “by the fact that in its being this being is concerned about its very
being. Thus it is constitutive of the being of Da-sein to have, in its very
being, a relation of being to this being” (12/10). Da-sein is also the being
that has the affective foundation that will allow access to the prereflective
and nonconceptual understanding of Being that underwrites and makes
possible the understanding of everything that is. Thus by revealing the
meaning of the being of Da-sein, Heidegger will establish the basis for the
question regarding the meaning of Being, as Being is the ground of
Da-sein’s being, and it is by way of Da-sein that the meaning of Being may
be revealed. “The analytic of Da-sein . . . is to prepare the way for the
fundamental, ontological problematic, the question of the meaning of being
in general” (183/171).
Heidegger’s method of choice is phenomenology because phenomen-
ology lets “what shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from
itself” (34/30). The maxim of phenomenology is “To the things them-
selves!” (34/30). Thus to phenomenologically study the being of Da-sein is
to let Da-sein show itself as it is in its existence and to provide a description
of how Da-sein reveals itself in its existence (Existenz). In accordance with
the phenomenological method, “access” to the being of Da-sein must be
given by Da-sein itself, which is why Heidegger approaches his investigation
of Da-sein by way of its everyday relations and practices in the world
(36/32). Heidegger, therefore, does not start out with a hypothesis about
the meaning of the being of Da-sein and then set out to prove it right or
wrong. To approach Da-sein phenomenologically is to let Da-sein show
itself as it itself is by way of its existence. What shows itself must be “directly
indicated and directly demonstrated” (35/30).
“Initially and for the most part,” as Heidegger never tires of saying,
Da-sein’s existence is “inauthentic” (uneigentlich). Therefore the true
meaning of the being of Da-sein, its authenticity (Eigentlichkeit), is concealed,
along with the true meaning of Being. The signal trait of inauthenticity is
Da-sein’s evasion of its death, which is disclosed to it in Angst. “Lostness in
the they and in world history, revealed itself earlier as a flight from death”
(390/356–357). This evasion is evident in Da-sein’s understanding of Being
as objective presence and the consequent relation to possibilities that this
understanding underwrites. In fleeing from its death, Da-sein loses itself in
the world of material possessions and superficial relations. This superfici-
ality is characterized by a failure to take up its authentic history and instead
be directed toward the history-making of the present day belonging to inau-
thentic Da-sein. “Lost in the making present of today, it understands its
‘past’ in terms of the ‘present’” (391/357).
Through a phenomenological description of what shows itself in Da-sein’s
everyday existence, followed by an interpretation of the underlying meaning
of everydayness, Heidegger reveals the authentic ground of Da-sein’s exis-
tence so to provide the proper horizon for investigating the meaning of
Being. “But freeing the horizon in which something like being in general
becomes intelligible amounts to clarifying the possibility of the under-
standing of being in general, an understanding which itself belongs
to the constitution of that being which we call Da-sein” (231/213–214).
Heidegger therefore first describes, then later interprets the everyday prac-
tices and understanding belonging to human existence so to reveal the “true”
meaning of the being of Da-sein that has been “concealed” and must be
“wrested” from everyday, inauthentic existence. Ontically, Heidegger states,
Da-sein is near “we ourselves are it, each of us” (15/13). But the meaning of
the being of Da-sein is “ontologically what is farthest removed” (15/13).
Gaining his directive from the tradition that thinks the relation of Being
and truth together with time, Heidegger establishes the basic framework of
Being and Time. Through a “thematic ontology of Da-sein” he will reveal the
“authentic” being of the being that experiences the meaning of Being. And
by revealing Da-sein as temporality, he will then seek the primordial
and forgotten meaning of Being on the horizon of time. “The existential
and ontological constitution of the totality of Da-sein is grounded in tempo-
rality. . . . Is there a way leading from primordial time to the meaning of
being? Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?” (437/398). As we
shall see, Da-sein’s temporality does, in fact, show itself as the horizon of
Being in Being and Time.
The Ontological Structure of the Being of Da-sein:

Being-in-the-world and Being-with Others
Heidegger breaks from the tradition of Cartesian subjectivity by coining the

term Da-sein to capture the way of being belonging to human existence.
Da-sein is in every respect the opposite of the Cartesian self-contained and
egocentered subject that exists independently of its world and other human
beings. According to Descartes, the rational subject is the center of the
world. It is in total control of itself, of what it perceives and wills, as well as
of what it judges to be true or false. As the basis of all knowledge, the Carte-
sian subject reduces what it sees to ideas or representations whose truth
resides in the human cogito. Knowledge is thus founded upon reason,
discoverable by the mind alone, and it occurs on the order of visual percep-
tion, as both the perception of innate ideas and as ideas derived from the
“external world.” Even other people are relegated to the status of objects or
representations in the mind of the Cartesian subject. Through the light of
reason, which provides incontrovertible “clear and distinct ideas,” the sub-
ject masters its world, others and itself. In this order of knowing all beings
become objects amenable to human representation and control. Knowl-
edge is turned into a method wherein thinking becomes calculative,
manipulative, and objectifying.
In place of the Cartesian subject and its many dualisms between mind and
body, or mind and world, Heidegger introduces his notion of Da-sein. Liter-
ally translated, Da-sein means Da (there) sein (being), or being-there. Here
Heidegger underscores two essential features belonging to the being of
Da-sein: the world and being-with (Mit-sein) others, which characterizes
Da-sein as a Mitda-sein or Da-sein with. Against Descartes’ claim that
knowledge and certainty are independent of the world and based in the
cogito, Heidegger argues that Da-sein is inextricably rooted in its world. As
with Being, the world is the nonconceptual ground of meaning that provides
the horizon of understanding for all of Da-sein’s relations and its possibili-
ties. With its prereflective understanding of its world, Da-sein approaches
itself, beings, and other Da-seins. “World is already discovered beforehand
together with everything encountered, although not thematically” (83/77).
Contrary to Descartes’ claim, for Heidegger the world is not a product of
the subject’s rational manipulations or self-assertion, but rather the ground
that makes possible Da-sein’s rational manipulations and self-assertions.
“The world is already presupposed in one’s being together with things at hand
heedfully and factically, in one’s thematization of what is objectively
present, and in one’s objectivating discovery of the latter, that is, all these
are possible only as modes of being-in-the-world” (365/334). To indicate

this interrelationship between Da-sein and the world, Heidegger defines
Da-sein as “being-in-the-world.” “World belongs to its being a self as being-
in-the-world” (146/137). Whereas for Descartes the world is dependent on
the subject, for Heidegger Da-sein and the world are interdependent. In
every “being-toward” or open comportment toward oneself, others and
beings, Da-sein reveals its being-toward the world, which prereflectively
organizes and structures its understanding of beings and relations in the
world. And likewise, the world shows itself in Da-sein’s relations to others
and to beings in Da-sein’s being-in-the-world.
Heidegger uses a number of terms to describe the world: “Region,”
“totality of relevance,” “relations of relevance,” “referential relations” and
“significance.” These terms all characterize the “worldliness” of the world.
They name the ways in which the world appears as the unthematic horizon
of understanding that gives meaning and context to the things and rela-
tions that are of “concern” to Da-sein in its everyday engagements. Through
the practical use of a hammer, Heidegger illustrates how the world preserves
the implicit background understanding of everyday activities and serves to
contextualize meaning for Da-sein as a being-in-the-world. He shows that a
hammer is never initially encountered in terms of its objectivity or “thing-
hood.” The hammer is an “innerworldly being” whose meaning is enrooted
in the world within which it has significance. As embedded within a world
of meaning, the hammer is understood in terms of its “referential relations”
to other tools like nails and wood encountered through the practice of
hammering. The hammer, nails, and wood, are further rooted in “relations
of in-order-to, what-for, for-that, and for-the-sake-of-which” (364/333). For
example, the hammer is used in order to hang a painting for an exhibit that
is opening for the sake of art lovers in a certain community. Heidegger calls
the thing encountered in our everyday prereflective practical engagement
with it “ready-to-hand” (Zuhandenheit), or handiness. He contrasts this
understanding with the more derivative understanding of a thing in its
conceptual isolation as “presence-at-hand” (Vorhandenheit). What is pres-
ence-at-hand is temporarily detached from its use and all of its referential
relations, and, as such, stands out in its objectivity.
Thus in its everyday practical activities, Da-sein is always already prereflec-
tively engaged in the whole of the world in such a way that things show
themselves as meaningful within the context of their practical use. In the
absorption of hammering, the hammer is not perceived by Da-sein as a
thing, but is rather used as a tool within the context of hammering. The
hammer stands out in its stark objectivity when Da-sein cannot find the
hammer or when the hammer breaks, for example, and Da-sein directs its
gaze toward the physical matter of the thing. But the conceptual meaning
of a hammer, as Heidegger points out, is not prior to, but derived from the
practical understanding of a hammer and its in-order-to, that is, its “service-
ability, usability, detrimentality” and overall significance in the world at large
(144/135). “To expose what is merely objectively present, cognition must
first penetrate beyond things at hand being taken care of. Handiness is the
ontological categorical definition of beings as they are ‘in themselves’” (71/67). Just
as when one learns to speak a language, the words that one learns are not
initially divorced from their use. The word is first understood in relation to
the context in which it is used before it is separated out as an individual
word.
The hammer, then, is there in-order-to, for example, build a house that is
ultimately for-the-sake-of-which Da-sein has shelter. A brick is not first
encountered as a molded piece of clay from a quarry, but as brick in a wall
that is stacked and cemented by a builder to make the façade of the house
to the taste and specifications of a particular Da-sein. This Da-sein’s tastes
are, in turn, generally in accordance with the ideas and expectations of its
community. The same is the case for Da-sein and its relations to others. In
our everyday practices and concerns with things, other Da-seins are always
already there. “Thus not only beings which are at hand are encountered in
the work but also beings with the kind of being of Da-sein for whom what is
produced becomes handy in its taking care. Here the world is encountered
in which wearers and users live, a world which is at the same time our
world” (71/66).
Da-sein’s encounter with others through its engagement in everyday prac-
tical affairs points to the other constituent of its being: Da-sein’s being-with
others (Mit-sein). “Our analysis has shown that being-with is an existential
constituent of being-in-the-world. . . . In that Da-sein is at all, it has the kind
of being of being-with-one-another” [Miteinandersein] (125/117–118). As a
being-in-the-world Da-sein is always already in relation to other Da-seins,
whether it is aware of these relations or not. “The clarification of being-
in-the-world showed that a mere subject without a world ‘is’ not initially and
is also never given. And, thus, an isolated I without the others is in the end
just as far from being given initially” (116/109).
Thus inherent to the being of Da-sein is a Da-sein-with (Mitda-sein).
Mitda-sein is an ontological constitution of Da-sein and points to the fact
that Da-sein never understands itself in isolation from others but always in
relation to others and to the world within which these others exist along-
side with it. “The world of Da-sein is a with-world” (Mitwelt) (118/112).
“The disclosedness of the Mitda-sein of others which belongs to being-with
means that the understanding of others already lies in the understanding

of being of Da-sein because its being is a being-with” (124/116). When
Da-sein plans, proposes, or reflects upon itself, others are already involved.
Mitda-sein belongs to every thinking about oneself because the founda-
tions of all thought lie in being-in-the-world and Da-sein is in the world
with others.
By rooting the being of Da-sein in its world and to others living with it
in the world, Heidegger overcomes some of the problems that have plagued
the Western philosophical tradition, at least since Descartes. Da-sein is
not with others as an isolated subject that stands before an other isolated
subject. Da-sein encounters others and itself from within its world, and
indeed already has a relationship to others as a being-in-the-world. “The
others are not encountered by grasping and previously discriminating
one’s own subject, initially objectively present, from other subjects also
present. They are not encountered by first looking at oneself and then
ascertaining the opposite pole of a distinction. They are encountered from
the world in which Da-sein, heedful and circumspect, essentially dwells”
(119/112).
Here the question of solipsism, or whether a self-contained subject can
gain access to the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of an other self-
contained subject, loses its force. Mitda-sein belongs to the structure of
Da-sein’s being-in-the-world and therefore to the ontological constitution
of the very being of Da-sein. Just as with the objectification of the hammer,
the notion of a self-contained subject in isolation from an other Da-sein is
itself a derivative form of understanding oneself and the other. “Encoun-
tering a number of ‘subjects’ itself is possible only by treating the others
encountered in their Mitda-sein merely as ‘numerals’” (125/118).
In his analysis of Da-sein’s everyday practical engagements with its work
world, Heidegger shows how others are approached from within Da-sein’s
familiar, yet prereflective awareness of its surrounding world. As was already
mentioned, the hammer is not initially met as an object, but as a tool that is
bound up within a whole system of relations that includes references to
other people. Likewise, in Da-sein’s activities and engagements with beings
in its everyday practical activities, others are also encountered.
The field, for example, along which we walk “outside” shows itself as
belonging to such and such a person who keeps it in good order, the
book which we use is bought at such and such a place, given by such and
such a person, and so on. The boat anchored at the shore refers in its
being-in-itself to an acquaintance who undertakes his voyages with it, but
as a “boat strange to us,” it also points to others (118/111).
In fact, even when Da-sein feels alone, or is lonely in the midst of a crowd
of people, Heidegger argues, others are “there with” Da-sein: “The being-
alone of Da-sein, too, is being-with in the world. The other can be lacking
only in and for a being-with. Being-alone is a deficient mode of being-with,
its possibility is a proof for the latter” (120/113). Here Heidegger under-
scores that Da-sein is never an isolated being, like a numeral, but always
already understands itself in relation to others. Mitda-sein belongs essen-
tially to Da-sein’s own self-understanding, which is always rooted in a world
shared with others.
As a consequence of Mitda-sein, then, to know oneself is to know others,
as the foundation of one’s own self-understanding is a world shared with
others. “Knowing oneself is grounded in primordially understanding being-
with” (124/116). Mitda-sein highlights the fact that an understanding of
others is built into Da-sein’s own self-understanding. Therefore, Da-sein
does not first come to an understanding of itself in isolation from the world
and others and then project this understanding onto its relations to others.
Such an encounter presupposes that one’s self-understanding is divorced
from one’s relations in the world, and furthermore may translate into an
understanding of the self of another. “The relation of being to others then
becomes a projection of one’s own being toward oneself ‘into an other.’
The other is a double of the self” (124/117). This doubling of the self is also
how Heidegger interprets the everyday understanding of empathy.7 But
empathy, he argues, is possible only because Da-sein is already in the world
with others and consequently may understand and relate to others through
Mitda-sein. “Being toward others is not only an autonomous irreducible
relation of being, as being-with it already exists with the being of Da-sein”
(125/117).
It is important, therefore, not to mistake Heidegger’s analysis of Da-sein
and its existential characteristics as an exclusive analysis of the self or of the
subject. Integral to every aspect of Da-sein’s being is the world and being-
with others. Da-sein’s knowing of what the other may think, feel, or desire
is inseparable from its own possibilities of knowing, feeling, and desiring.
This is because the knowledge of others and of one’s own self are equally
grounded and derived from being-in-the-world. This is the reading that
I am stressing. Rooting understanding in the world dissolves the bound-
aries between Da-seins in such a way that to know others is to know oneself.
Perhaps this is why Heidegger says that authentic Da-sein is never alone but
always carries with it “the voice of a friend” (163/153). Later, in the conclu-
sion, I explore the breakdown of Mitda-sein in the encounter with the other
that one does not share a world with.
Da-sein’s Existentiales: Attunement, Understanding,

and Discourse
Da-sein is disclosed and discloses itself in its relations in the world and
with others through three existential structures: “attunement” (Befind-
lichkeit), “understanding” (Verstehen), and “discourse” (Rede). Disclosedness
is how the being of Da-sein shows or reveals itself. “‘To disclose’ and
‘disclosedness’ are used as technical terms in what follows and mean ‘to
unlock’—‘to be open’” (75/70). As Da-sein is always a being-in-the-world
with others, Da-sein’s disclosure or disclosedness includes its prereflec-
tive understanding of the world and of Mitda-sein. “Da-sein is its disclosure,”
means that Da-sein is how it understands itself by virtue of its openness to
the world and to others in its being-in-the-world (133/125). “Through
disclosedness this being (Da-sein) is ‘there’ for itself together with the
Da-sein of the world” (132/125). Disclosedness is therefore simply
the way that Da-sein shows or reveals itself. It is how Da-sein is revealed in
the act of existing. “Falling-prey” also belongs to Da-sein as an existential.
Falling prey is what Heidegger identifies as the essential tendency that
Da-sein has to succumb to the inauthentic interpretations of the “They”
and the possibilities given to it by the public. This fallenness is a result of
finding oneself in a world that has reduced Being to the order of objec-
tive presence, to what can been seen, weighted, measured, and so on.
Falling prey essentially indicates Da-sein’s propensity to want to be like
the others, that is, to follow and be a part of the popular public opinion
at the time.
The most powerful of the three existentiales, which are equiprimoridal
and therefore occur simultaneously, is attunement (Befindlichkeit) or mood
(Stimmung). Mood is the prevailing existential because mood is how the
world opens up to Da-sein as a whole. Mood conditions the mode of access
of Da-sein’s understanding of beings and others in the world. Mood “first
makes possible directing oneself to something” (137/129). Mood opens up the
horizon of the world within which Da-sein finds itself in its relations to its
possibilities and to other Da-seins. By opening up the world, mood opens
Da-sein up to its being-in-the-world. “The moodedness of attunement
constitutes existentially the openness to world of Da-sein” (137/129). How
the world matters to Da-sein, how Da-sein will approach its possibilities, and
what possibilities it will find are all determined by mood. “In attunement lies
existentially a disclosive submission to world out of which things that matter to us can
be encountered” (137–138/129–130). “This mattering to it is grounded in
attunement, and as attunement it has disclosed the world[.]” (137/129)
“Indeed,” says Heidegger, “we must ontologically in principle leave the

primary discovery of the world to ‘mere mood’” (138/130).
Therefore, what matters to Da-sein, what Da-sein concerns itself with, and
how the world affects Da-sein are all determined by mood. Mood colors
Da-sein’s world. It is inseparable from Da-sein’s understanding, which is
always attuned. “Attunement always has its understanding . . . Under-
standing is always attuned” (142–143/134). Through mood the world is
disclosed and on the basis of this disclosure Da-sein understands itself and
its relations to others. “Mood makes manifest ‘how one is and is coming
along.’ In this ‘how one is’ being in a mood brings being to its ‘there’”
(134/127). Significantly, mood does not disclose to Da-sein a part of the
world, or certain situations within the world divorced from others. The
world as a whole and Da-sein as a whole are disclosed in mood. For example,
if one finds oneself in a bad mood after receiving a poor score on an exam,
this mood not only discloses the being of the individual in the mood, but
the mood points to a world where exams matter to that student. Perhaps
this is because exams may be used to place individuals into this or that
educational bracket. Presumably, this bracket will determine the student’s
possibilities with respect to employment options, subsequent housing loca-
tion, social status, and so on. In disclosing what matters to Da-sein, mood
discloses the world, and vice versa, in disclosing the world, mood discloses
what matters to Da-sein in its being-in-the-world.
Da-sein, then, finds itself in a mood and also finds itself by virtue of a
mood. Mood is there before Da-sein is, so to speak. “Da-sein is always already
in a mood” (134/126). When Da-sein feels listless, “tired of itself” and of life
in general, mood is there, even if it can’t be identified. “One does not know
why. And Da-sein cannot know why because the possibilities of disclosure
belonging to cognition fall far short of the primordial disclosure of moods
in which Da-sein is brought before its being as the there” (134/127). Mood
is not a psychical condition belonging to a self-contained subject. Mood
permeates and arises together with the being of the world. “Mood assails.
It comes neither from ‘without’ nor from ‘within,’ but rises from being-
in-the-world itself as a mode of that being” (136/129). Unlike an emotion
that has a cognitive component, mood is prior to reflection, cognition, and
willing. In fact, mood is the foundation of all of these acts. “Far from having
the character of an apprehension which first turns itself around and then
turns back, all immanent reflection can find ‘experiences’ only because the
there is already disclosed in attunement” (136/128).
Mood characterizes Da-sein’s prereflective openness to the world, an
openness that creates the space for the presencing of beings, being-with
others and Da-sein’s own being with itself. What distinguishes mood and
makes it the dominant existential in Heidegger’s analytic of
Da-sein is its capacity to grasp the whole of the world together with the
whole of Da-sein’s being-in-the-world. The world, which is equivalent in
function to Being, cannot be cognitively grasped because it is all pervasive,
too ephemeral, and too universal. Understanding cannot get outside of the
world to grasp it as a whole because the world permeates every aspect of
Da-sein’s understanding and is, indeed, projected by this understanding as
its preconceptual ground. Mood, on the other hand, is able to grasp the
whole of the world, albeit this grasp will always remain prethematic and
prereflective. Mood has the potential to open Da-sein up to Being as a
whole. Thus being in a mood is prior to any reflective understanding of
oneself or of one’s situations. Rather, mood is the requisite for this reflec-
tion because it discloses the world as a whole and how Da-sein is as a whole
in its being-in-the-world. As Da-sein is always in the world with others, mood
also characterizes the Mitda-sein of Da-sein and is that by virtue of which an
understanding of others is possible. “It [mood] is a fundamental existential
mode of being of equiprimordial disclosedness of world, being-there-with, and
existence because this disclosure itself is essentially being-in-the-world”
(137/129).
Therefore, preceding all reflection and cognition, mood is there
disclosing Da-sein in its being-in-the-world. “That a Da-sein can, should,
and must master its mood with knowledge and will . . . must not mislead us
into ontologically denying mood as a primordial kind of being of Da-sein in
which it is disclosed to itself before all cognition and willing and beyond their
scope of disclosure” (136/128). Mood is the vehicle that brings Da-sein
before itself, in its relation to others, and before its various possibilities.
Mood is how Da-sein and the world are disclosed as a whole in a prereflec-
tive relation to each other. Consequently, mood does not arise in response
to a particular situation. Rather, mood is the way in which a certain situa-
tion initially arises as mattering to Da-sein. In the mood of fear, for example,
one does not first identify something as threatening and then respond to it
in a fearful manner. What is threatening is not what initially invokes the
mood of fear. Rather, fear is the mood by which the threatening is first
discovered, or disclosed as threatening. “Circumspection sees what is fear-
some because it is in the attunement of fear” (141/132). A knife may not be
threatening in a kitchen, but may arouse fear if encountered in the hand of
a man in a dark alleyway. The knife itself is not what is threatening, rather
it is Da-sein’s being-toward the knife that allows the knife to be approached
as either something threatening or not, and this being-toward the knife is
dependent upon Da-sein’s attuned being-toward the world where the knife
is understood within a certain context of relations as either threatening or
not. Fear, therefore, brings about that which is threatening, and not the
other way around; and this is because mood opens up the world and deter-
mines the character of this world from which beings are encountered.
Attunement, then, holds together what was never apart, the whole of the
being of Da-sein with the whole of the being of the world by virtue of what
matters to Da-sein—its possibilities and relations to others. By simultane-
ously opening up the being of Da-sein to its world and the world to Da-sein,
mood conditions the mode of access to possibilities. Indeed, there is never
a moment when Da-sein is without a mood because Da-sein is always a being
in the world. “[W]e never master a mood by being free of a mood, but
always through a counter mood” (136/128). In Da-sein’s everyday, inau-
thentic existence, public opinion decides upon what matters to Da-sein and
therefore dictates the way of its attunement. “The domination of the public
way in which things have been interpreted has already decided upon even
the possibilities of being attuned, that is, about the basic way in which
Da-sein lets itself be affected by the world. The They prescribes that attune-
ment, it determines what and how one ‘sees’” (170/159). But the actual
engagement with possibilities that mood attunes Da-sein to is accomplished
only by understanding.
The understanding is the projective structure of Da-sein and it is always
attuned. “Understanding is always attuned” (143/134). Mood opens up the
world that is prereflectively understood by Da-sein and within which it finds
its possibilities. Understanding is the projection of the world that is opened
up by mood. On the basis of this projective, prereflective understanding of
the world, Da-sein finds itself in a relation of understanding to others, to
beings and to itself. Understanding is therefore not something that Da-sein
applies to particular situations retrospectively in order to make sense of
them. Understanding is that by virtue of which situations and possibilities
initially come to light. Situations and possibilities show up for Da-sein as
meaningful within the context of the prereflective understanding of the
world belonging to Da-sein. “As understanding, Da-sein projects its being
upon possibilities” (148/139).
Like mood, then, the understanding of Da-sein is not merely a response
to a situation. Rather, situations are made possible and arise together with
the attuned understanding of Da-sein to the world because in this attune-
ment the world is projected as a whole, and this world is the prereflective
ground of all possibilities. “Projecting discloses possibilities, that is, it
discloses what makes something possible” (324/298). Da-sein is not first in
a world that it then tries to understand. In its projective understanding,

Da-sein is in an attuned being-toward the world and grasps this world prere-
flectively in what Heidegger calls a “fore-having,” which belongs to the
hermeneutics of understanding. On the basis of this prereflective under-
standing of the world, Da-sein engages with its possibilities and with others.
“As something factical, the understanding self-projection of Da-sein is
always already together with a discovered world” (194/181).
Understanding projects the world as the prereflective horizon that makes
possible the understanding of possibilities, and this includes Da-sein’s own
self-understanding. “It projects the being of Da-sein upon its for-the-sake-
of-which just as primordially as upon significance as the worldliness of its
actual world” (145/136). Therefore, in every projection of Da-sein’s under-
standing, the being of Da-sein and the being of the world are simultaneously
projected. On the basis of this projection, Da-sein relates to its possibilities.
Understanding is a “being toward possibilities” (148/139). However, this
projection is not to be understood as a projection arising from the selfhood
of Da-sein. To attribute Heidegger’s notion of understanding to the will of
a subject unwittingly robs Da-sein of its world and of its being-with others in
the world. “As the disclosedness of the there, understanding always concerns
the whole of being-in-the-world” (152/142). This whole cannot be mastered
by the will or grasped in cognition. The projective structure of under-
standing, which is always attuned, is prereflective and serves as the backdrop
or horizon for reflective understanding. By virtue of its prereflective attuned
understanding of the world, Da-sein approaches itself, its possibilities, and
its relations to others.
In Da-sein’s projective understanding the ground (Being, world) is
disclosed prereflectively and prethematically. This ground is projected as
the horizon of understanding, that is, as understanding itself wherein what
is to be understood is found. Da-sein does not project onto specific possi-
bilities, or understand one possibility in isolation from all others. In the
understanding of certain possibilities the totality of the range of possibili-
ties open to Da-sein is disclosed by virtue of Da-sein’s attuned understanding
to the whole of the world and the possibilities that this world grants or
makes available.
Projecting has nothing to do with being related to a plan thought out,

according to which Da-sein arranges its being, but, as Da-sein, it has always
already projected itself and is, as long as it is, projecting. As long as it is,
Da-sein always has understood itself and will understand itself in terms of
possibilities. (145/136)
Therefore, what is projected in the understanding is a prereflective

understanding of Being and of the world. This understanding is projected
as the backdrop before which all possibilities and relations to others arises.
“In projectedness of its being upon the for-the-sake-of-which together with
that upon significance (world) lies the disclosedness of being in general.
An understanding of being is already anticipated in the projecting upon
possibilities. Being is understood in the project, but not ontologically
grasped” (147/138). It is important to keep in mind, then, that specific pos-
sibilities are not what are projected upon in understanding, but the world
within which these possibilities arise and are understood as meaningful.
[T]he project character of understanding means that understanding

does not thematically grasp that upon which it projects, the possibilities
themselves. Such a grasp precisely takes its character of possibility away
from what is projected, it degrades it to the level of a given, in-tended
content, whereas in projecting project throws possibility before itself as
possibility, and as such lets it be. As projecting, understanding is the mode
of being of Da-sein in which it is its possibilities as possibilities.
(145/136)
The third existential belonging to the being of Da-sein is discourse.

Discourse constitutes the realm of language in general. It is the interpretive
awareness of Da-sein’s attuned understanding. “The attuned intelligibility
of being-in-the-world is expressed as discourse” (161/151). Discourse is insepar-
able from Da-sein’s understanding and from mood. “Discourse is existentially
equiprimordial with attunement and understanding” (161/150). Hearing and
silence also fall within the realm of discourse. In fact, these modes reveal
more clearly the existential disclosedness of Da-sein’s existence, as we shall
see with the silent “call of conscience” in Chapter 3. Discourse belongs
inherently to Mitda-sein because Da-sein is always in the world with others.
“Mitda-sein is essentially already manifest in attunement-with and under-
standing-with. Being-with is ‘explicitly’ shared in discourse, that is, it already
is, only unshared as something not grasped and appropriated” (163/152).
As with understanding and mood, discourse is also rooted in the world.
Da-sein does not hear sounds or noises that it then assigns meaning to. The
sounds it hears are already understood as particular sounds arising from
the world that Da-sein shares with others. “‘Initially’ we never hear noises
and complexes of sound, but the creaking wagon, the motorcycle. We hear
the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the
crackling fire” (163/153). Since Da-sein is a being-toward the world through
an attuned understanding, what discourse communicates is Da-sein’s
being-in-the-world. The world as a whole within which sounds and words

have meaning is there in what is heard and said. “Discourse necessarily has
this structural factor because it also constitutes the disclosedness of being-
in-the-world and is pre-structured in its own structure by this fundamental
constitution of Da-sein” (162/151).
Significantly, then, because discourse is rooted in Da-sein’s being-in-the-
world a certain understanding already belongs to the listening of what is
said. “Discourse and hearing are grounded in understanding. . . . Only he
who already understands is able to listen” (164/154). To understand what
is heard is possible only because Da-sein is a being-in-the-world and has a
prereflective understanding of this world. On the basis of this attuned
understanding of the world, what is said is essentially already understood.
As discussed above, the hammer is known through its use prior to its explicit
articulation, for example, as a broken or missing hammer.
It requires a very artificial and complicated attitude in order to “hear” a

“pure noise.” The fact that we initially hear motorcycles and wagons is,
however, the phenomenal proof that Da-sein, a being-in-the-world, always
already maintains itself together with innerworldly things at hand and
initially not at all with “sensations” whose chaos would first have to be
formed to provide the springboard from which the subject jumps off
finally to land in a “world” (164/153).
As discourse belongs to the being of Da-sein as being-in-the-world and the

world is a with-world, discourse is always a discourse with. Discourse “brings
about the ‘sharing’ of being attuned together and of the understanding
of being-with. . . . Being-with is ‘explicitly’ shared in discourse” (162/152).
Stephen Mulhall explains attuned discourse by comparing it to being in
harmony with others: “human beings who agree in the language they use
are mutually voiced with respect to it, mutually attuned from top to bottom.”8
The possibility of a mutual attunement that is shared explicitly in discourse
is rooted in a shared understanding, that is to say, a shared world. When
Da-sein is in a being-with others, Da-sein listens understandingly. “Listening
to . . . is the existential being-open of Da-sein as being-with for the other”
(163/153). But if listening already requires a certain understanding, and if
understanding is always attuned, do Da-seins have to be similarly attuned in
order to listen to and understand one another? Do they have to be similarly
attuned to the same world in order to communicate openly with each other?
Are languages themselves already imbued in moods? Indeed, is a shared
mood that is attuned to the same world the ontological condition for the
possibility of listening to one another? These questions are taken up in the
conclusion through a discussion of ontological occlusion where it is shown

how the relationship between attunement and world helps to explain the
prereflective foundation for an openness, as well as a closing off to certain
voices and relationships to others.
Inauthentic Da-sein and the Leveling Down of Possibilities
The world and being-with others belong to Da-sein’s being as a being-in-

the-world. The being of Da-sein shows itself in Da-sein’s existence. “The
‘essence’ of Da-sein lies in its existence” (42/40). Existence reveals the “possible
ways for it to be, and only this” (42/40). Being and Time describes how there
are essentially two possible ways for Da-sein to be in the world: “two kinds of
being” that characterize its existence. Da-sein may exist either authentically
or inauthentically. “Da-sein is disclosed to itself authentically or it may exist
inauthentically with regard to its existence” (325/298). These two ways of
existing are determined by the prereflective and prethematic understand-
ing that Da-sein has of Being and of its world, an understanding that shows
itself in Da-sein’s relations to others and to its possibilities in its being-in-
the-world. “In every understanding of world, existence is also understood,
and vice versa” (152/142). Existence, then, is revealed in the very act of
existing.
Heidegger begins with the premise that Da-sein has forgotten the meaning
of Being. As such, Da-sein exists inauthentically. It understands the world
and its possibilities in terms of what has been made objectively present and
familiar by the They. “Initially and for the most part, the self is lost in the
they. It understands itself in terms of the possibilities of existence that
‘circulate’ in the actual ‘average’ public interpretedness of Da-sein today”
(383/351). Thus what characterizes Da-sein’s inauthenticity is the nature of
its relations to its possibilities and its being-with others, relations that are
determined by its prereflectively attuned understanding of the world where
Being is reduced to the order of objective presence. Indeed, authenticity
does not lie in a radical independence for one’s own individual choices, as
generally assumed, but as already mentioned, in a shift in the understanding
of the ground of one’s relations and understanding of possibilities.
In its everydayness, Da-sein “falls prey” to the They’s “essential tendency”
of “the levelling down of all possibilities of being” (127/119). Specifically, the
They do not let possibilities show themselves as they are from out of a shared
history of the world—a history that Heidegger will later explain in terms of
generations—but as they make Da-sein feel secure in the here and now.
The They reduce all possibilities to the level of what can be ordered,
measured, and controlled. The They are attuned only to what can be seen
on the order of objective presence in the here and now.
And since factical Da-sein is absorbed and entangled in what it takes care
of, it initially understands its history as world history. And since, further-
more, the vulgar understanding of being understands “being” as objective
presence without further differentiation, the being of what is world-
historical is experienced and interpreted in the sense of objective
presence that comes along, is present, and disappears (389/356).
Instead of being-toward the ground of the world and receiving its possi-
bilities from this world, inauthentic Da-sein lets itself be given its possibilities
from the public opinion of the They. This is what it means to fall prey to the
world that Da-sein has been thrown into. “Thrownness” is an essential
feature belonging to the existence of Da-sein and “is meant to suggest the
facticity of its being delivered over” (135/127). With the term thrownness Heide-
gger points out the phenomenal fact that Da-sein finds itself in a world
already organized before its arrival into this world. “Da-sein exists as thrown,
brought into its there not of its own accord” (284/262). The manner by
which Da-sein takes up its thrownness and being-in-the-world determines
the character of its existence as either authentic or inauthentic. This
manner is revealed in Da-sein’s relations to its possibilities, in its being-with
others, and in its own self-understanding, all of which are rooted in its
prereflective, attuned understanding of Being. “Thrown into its ‘there,’
Da-sein is always factically dependent on a definite ‘world’—its ‘world.’ At
the same time those nearest factical projects are guided by the lostness of the
they taking care of things” (297/274).
When Da-sein understands its possibilities within the context of the world
that the They have grown comfortable and familiar with, the world into
which it has been thrown, Da-sein exists inauthentically. Da-sein “takes its
possibilities, initially in accordance with the interpretedness of the they.
This interpretation has from the outset restricted the possible options of
choice to the scope of what is familiar, attainable, feasible, to what is correct
and proper” (194/181). The desire for a certain kind of security, which
Heidegger interprets as a defense against death, underlies the They’s
tendency to diminish all possibilities to what can be made objectively avail-
able, measurable, and therefore calculable, including the possibilities of its
relations to others and to itself. They determine the context of meaning for
all of Da-sein’s relations and They decide what possibilities are meaningful.
“The they itself, for the sake of which Da-sein is everyday, articulates the
referential context of significance. The world of Da-sein frees the beings

encountered for a totality of relevance which is familiar to the they in the
limits which are established with the averageness of the they” (129/121).
Heidegger is particularly perturbed by the fact that traditions that have
long held standing in the world are covered over by the whims of the They
and its perpetual movement toward what is new and improved. “Awaiting
the next new thing, it has already forgotten what is old” (391/357).
In the order of the “business of everyday activities” belonging to the They,
Da-seins are defined by what they do, what they take care of, and the possi-
bilities that they encounter that are “nearest at hand” (338/311). “One is,
after all, what one takes care of” (322/296). “Da-sein initially finds ‘itself’ in
what it does, needs, expects, has charge of, in the things which it initially
takes care of in the surrounding world” (119/112). Da-sein first finds itself
“ontically in terms of the horizon of taking care of things” and “ontologi-
cally defines being in the sense of objective presence” (293/270). Here
Heidegger distinguishes between the “ontological” and the “ontic,” and the
“existential” and the “existentiell.” What is ontic is the actual way that
Da-sein or something in the world shows itself in terms of its “facticity,” as
the fact of its everyday way of being in the world. Likewise, what is existentiell
defines the specific ways in which Da-sein factically exists in the world, for
example, as a musician or as a philosopher. These roles are defined by
Da-sein’s existentiell possibilities. Existentiell possibilities belong to Da-sein’s
existence in the world with others and are rooted in its prereflective under-
standing of the horizon of its possibilities. “Existing, it has always already
projected itself upon definite possibilities of its existence; and in these exis-
tentiell projects it has also projected pre-ontologically something like
existence and being” (315/291).
Ontologically, Da-sein is defined as “being-possible.” “Da-sein is not some-
thing objectively present that then has as an addition the ability to do
something, but is rather primarily being-possible. Da-sein is always what it
can be and how it is its possibility” (143/134). The statement that Da-sein is
what it can be and exists as a possibility has been used to support a Sartrean
existentialist reading of Heidegger. However, while Da-sein is always its poss-
ibility, Heidegger’s notion of Da-sein as possibility differs significantly from
Sartre’s. For Sartre, humans are free to create themselves at any moment
anew because the limits to human freedom rest entirely within the self.
“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”9 This is why Sartre
believes that freedom is a burden, because one is responsible for creating
one’s existence ex nihilo. By contrast, Da-sein is not the origin of its being.
The limits of its freedom reside in the world with others and not in the self.
For Heidegger, as we shall see later on, freedom is ultimately bound up with
Da-sein’s relation to Being and the concealment belonging to the truth of

Being, or aletheia. The nothing that Da-sein exists out of is a nothing that
belongs to Being and the nonpersonal mood of Angst, and not exclusively
to the self of a particular Da-sein, as with Sartre. Indeed, Heideggerian
freedom lies in disburdening oneself of the self by grounding one’s exis-
tence in the world with others.
Therefore, by defining Da-sein as possibility Heidegger does not mean to
indicate that Da-sein is free to create itself as it pleases. Da-sein is not the
sole source of meaning of itself or of its relations in the world. To under-
stand possibilities in this light would be to fall into the existentialist
interpretation of Da-sein. For Heidegger, Da-sein’s existence is inseparable
from its world, the world into which it is thrown. Its possibilities will, there-
fore, always be circumscribed by the possibilities that the world makes
available to it. Consequently, when Heidegger speaks of Da-sein and its
possibilities he is always referring to possibilities arising from out of a world
to which Da-sein is attuned.
But even more importantly, Heidegger does not believe that one is what
one does or what one takes care of. As with the example of the hammer, the
focus of Heidegger’s thought is not with the what of objective presence, but
with the how of existence. Neither does he believe that a person’s worth is
to be judged by his or her successes or failures, which are determinable
through the measurement of objectively present gains or losses. “Everyday
taking care of things understands itself in terms of the potentiality-of-being-
that confronts it as coming from its possible success or failure with regard
to what is actually taken care of” (337/310–311). Equating the ontological
and existential being of Da-sein with its ontic and existentiell possibilities
overlooks the being of Da-sein and the being of the world. It is not the
objectively present possibilities that are an issue for Heidegger, but
the ground of these possibilities, Da-sein’s being-toward the ground of its
possibilities, and Da-sein’s relations to others on the basis of its attuned
understanding to this ground.
By reducing possibilities to the familiar forms of everyday knowing,
Da-sein’s possibilities are robbed of their character of possibility and Da-sein
exists inauthentically. According to Heidegger, only an understanding of
the existential meaning of death can give to Da-sein a perspective on its
authentic possibilities and existence. “Only the anticipation of death drives
every chance and ‘preliminary’ possibility out” (384/351). As possible at
any moment rather than at one “not yet objectively present” time, death pursues
Da-sein and threatens to free it from its everyday, inauthentic way of life.
In fact, the hold that the They’s entanglements and affairs have on
Da-sein is rooted in the fear of death and the covering over of the Angst that
discloses to Da-sein its being-toward-death. By reducing possibility to what

is merely “real,” everyday Da-sein attempts to gain a certain sense of security
by surrounding itself with possibilities that are tangible, manipulable, and
calculable in the face of the indefiniteness characterizing the possibility of
death.
The leveling down of the possibilities of Da-sein to what is initially availa-

ble in an everyday way at the same time results in a phasing out of the
possible as such. The average everydayness of taking care of things
becomes blind to possibility and gets tranquilized with what is merely
“real.” This tranquilization not only does not rule out a high degree of
busyness in taking care of things, it arouses it (194–195/181–182).
The They transform their Angst about the indefiniteness of death by

sublimating it into a definiteness about possibilities that can be calculated
and controlled. By reducing possibilities to what can be calculated and
measured, the They express a certain anxiety about death. At the root of
the leveling down of possibilities and of inauthenticity, which results in a
tranquilization by the known, is a fleeing from death. The leveling down
of possibilities to what is tangible, calculable, and manipulable is how the
They “entrenches its stubborn dominance” by taking the edge off the
indefiniteness of the possibility of death (128/120). “Thus the they makes
sure of a constant tranquillization about death” (253–254/235). By reducing
all possibilities to the order of objective presence, mystery is no longer
sacred. Truth is stripped bare. The unknown becomes known. Death is
staved off.
In its being, the they is essentially concerned with averageness. Thus, the
they maintains itself factically in the averageness of what is proper, what is
allowed, and what is not. Of what is granted success and what is not. . . .
Overnight, everything primordial is flattened down as something long
since known. Everything gained by a struggle becomes something to be
manipulated. Every mystery loses its power. The care of averageness
reveals, in turn, an essential tendency of Da-sein, which we call the leveling
down of all possibilities of being. (127/119)
By fixating only on what is objectively present, the They take the element of
possibility away from all possibilities, including the possibility of death.
In reducing Being to what is merely real, the They comport themselves only
to what is familiar and readily available. “Being out for something possible
and taking care of it has the tendency of annihilating the possibility of the
possible by making it available” (261/241). Relating to possibilities that

have been interpreted and stabilized by the public, Da-sein gains a sense of
security and is able to push death aside indefinitely. “One also dies at the
end, but for now one is not involved” (253/234). This satisfies the They’s
“tendency to take things easily and make them easy” (128/120).
The leveling down of possibilities to what is actual, definite, and real,
makes up the essence of the They-self (Man-selbst) and its disclosedness.
Existing inauthentically, Da-sein passes over the being of the world and
instead understands its possibilities on the order of the referential relations
that the They make available to it. What the They-self concern itself with is
what everyone else concerns itself with, the tangible and material things
that are there for public consumption. In this mode of being, any self is
exchangeable with another. “Everyone is the other, and no one is himself”
(128/120). Indeed, it requires a great effort to escape from the grip of the
They, as the They are everywhere.
In utilizing pubic transportation, in the use of information services such

as the newspaper, every other is like the next. . . . In this inconspicuous-
ness and unascertainability, the they unfolds its true dictatorship.
We enjoy ourselves and have fun the way they enjoy themselves. We read,
see, and judge literature and art the way they see and judge. But we also
withdraw from the “great mass” the way they withdraw, we find “shocking”
what they find shocking. The they, which is nothing definite and which all
are, though not as a sum, prescribe the kind of being of everydayness.
(126–127/119)
Lost in the They, Da-sein is relieved of all responsibility. It takes care of

what everyone else takes care of. “The they is everywhere, but in such a
way that it has already stolen away when Da-sein presses for a decision.
However because the they present every judgement and decision as its
own, it takes the responsibility of Da-sein away from it” (127/119). There-
fore, in assimilating itself to the They-self, Da-sein relinquishes its
responsibility for the world and for itself. But most significantly, the They
take away Da-sein’s responsibility to others. Indeed, the They-self is a fail-
ure of Da-sein to understand the being of Mitda-sein. Approaching others
from the perspective of its everyday absorption with things, Da-sein relates
to others as “objectively present thing-persons” (120/113). Being-with the
other is then a being with the matters of concern that are engaged in by
the other, rather than a being-with the being of the other. Da-sein there-
fore inauthentically focuses on what the other does, and passes over the
being of the other.
In a rather obscure passage in section 26 of Being and Time, “The

Mitda-sein of the others and everyday being-with,” Heidegger describes two
modes of being-with, or solicitude (Fursorge) that one can exercise in rela-
tion to the other. The first mode of solicitude, belonging primarily to
inauthentic Da-sein, Heidegger calls leaping in. To leap in for the other one
relates not directly to the other, but to the matter at hand that is of concern
to this other.
Concern takes over what is to be taken care of for the other. The other is
thus displaced, he steps back so that afterwards, when the matter has
been attended to, he can take it over as something finished and available
or disburden himself of it completely. In this concern, the other can
become one who is dependent and dominated even if this domination is
a tacit one and remains hidden from him. (122/114)
For example, if an individual is worried about writing a paper for a class, the
mode of concern called leaping in would address this worry by helping the
other to write the paper, or by going so far as to write the actual paper for
the other person. What is dominating about this stance is not only that the
other becomes dependent on the one giving and is in debt to this caregiver.
But rather that the focus of concern is toward something material or objec-
tively present, the finished paper, and not toward the person who is writing
the paper. In this mode of solicitude, leaping-in for the other takes the
person as a “thing-person” by seeing that person in relation to a thing, the
paper.
The more authentic mode of solicitude is when Da-sein is said to “leap
ahead” of the other (121/115). In leaping ahead Da-sein is not concerned
with the specific task that confronts the other, but with the other’s existen-
tial well-being in the rootedness of their lived situation. In this mode of
concern one
does not so much leap in for the other as leap ahead of him, not in order
to take “care” away from him, but first to give it back to him as such. This
concern which essentially pertains to authentic care; that is, the existence
of the other, and not to a what which it takes care of, helps the other to
become transparent to himself in his care and free for it. (122/115)
With respect to the above example, to authentically recognize the other

would mean to address him or her as someone who is engaged in the art of
thinking, writing, and creation. To excite the other to write is not to offer
any particular topic to the writer, although this may stimulate thought, but
to help the other to approach a topic from the background practices and
worldly concerns that he or she is concerned about.
However the inauthentic character of being-with others can most starkly
be viewed in Da-sein’s relation, or lack of relation to the death of others.
The flight from the other’s death rehearses Da-sein’s flight from its own
death. Not only does Da-sein push aside its own death, it experiences the
death of others as a “downright” inconvenient imposition in an otherwise
carefree and shallow existence. Heidegger’s description of the everyday
relation to death takes its inspiration from Leo Tolstoy’s “The death of Ivan
Illyitch.”10 No longer valued for what They do and what They can provide,
a dying Da-sein is simply superfluous to the tasks and concerns of everyday
existence.
The evasion of death which covers over, dominates everydayness so stub-

bornly that, in being-with-another, the “neighbors” often try to convince
the “dying person” that he will escape death and soon return again to the
tranquillized everydayness of his world taken care of. . . . But, basically,
this tranquillization is not only for the “dying person,” but just as much
for “those who are comforting him.” And even in the case of a demise,
publicness is still not to be disturbed and made uneasy by the event in the
carefreeness it has made sure of. Indeed, the dying of others is seen often
as a social inconvenience, if not a downright tactlessness, from which
publicness should be spared. (253–254/234–235)
Through a confrontation with a certain mode of death that is made phe-

nomenally accessible, Heidegger reveals the authentic being of Da-sein.
Only death, he claims, can disclose Da-sein’s authenticity because only
death can reveal the whole of the being of Da-sein together with the whole
of the being of the world. In authentically being-toward-death the being of
Da-sein is disclosed in its “totality.”
Moving from Division One and the Inauthentic being of

Da-sein to Division Two and the Authenticity of Da-sein
In division one of Being and Time Heidegger puts forth the ontological and
existential structures that make up the constitution of the being of Da-sein.
These structures he reveals through his phenomenological description of
Da-sein’s everyday existence. Existence reveals both the being of Da-sein
and the being of the world in an inseparable and reciprocal relationship to

each other. Through Da-sein’s everyday practical engagements in the world
and being-with others, the world shows itself. This showing of the world is
prereflectively grasped in mood and projected by the understanding.
Discourse also belongs to the structure of Da-sein as a way by which it dis-
closes itself in its relations to others. The term that Heidegger uses to
characterize the overall being of Da-sein is “care” (Sorge). “The being of
Da-sein is care. It includes in itself facticity (thrownness), existence (proj-
ect) and falling prey” (284/262). The meaning of care is shown to be
temporality, the structure that defines the meaning of the being of Da-sein
that Heidegger puts forth in division two of Being and Time: “being-ahead-
of-oneself-already-being-in (a world) as being-together-with (innerworldy
beings encountered)” (317/292). Care characterizes the existence of
Da-sein with respect to what matters to it, that is, what is of concern to
Da-sein. Care is not worry. It is not anything psychological. It designates an
ontological structure belonging to Da-sein unifying all of its various ways to
be. “Since being-in-the-world is essentially care, being-together-with things
at hand could be taken in our previous analysis as taking care of them, being
with the Mitda-sein of others encountered within the world as concern”
(193/180). Care is defined as being-toward-death, resoluteness and being-
guilty (329/303; 285/263). Care is also characterized by Da-sein’s
temporality (327/301, 303/281).
Initially and for the most part, Da-sein lives inauthentically. As discussed
above, Heidegger defines inauthenticity in light of Da-sein’s understanding
of its possibilities and its relations to others. When Da-sein projects upon
possibilities whose referential relations are defined by the They, Da-sein
exists inauthentically. When Da-sein relates to others as it relates to objects,
Da-sein is inauthentically being-with others. Underlying all of the relations
engaged in by inauthentic Da-sein is its understanding of Being as objective
presence.
However, if the possibility of a different understanding of Being is to
come about, an understanding that is buried in the tradition of Western
ontology, Heidegger must reveal the whole of the being of Da-sein in its
authenticity. On the basis of this whole, cleared of all obstructions and
diversions, the memory of Being may be retrieved and the possibility of
asking about the meaning of Being may begin again on authentic
ground.
One thing has become unmistakable. Our existential analytic of Da-sein

up to now cannot lay claim to primordiality. Its fore-having never included
more than the inauthentic being of Da-sein, of Da-sein as fragmentary.

(233/215)
In other words, if Heidegger is going to get to the root of the meaning of

Being, then he will need to get to the ground of the being that asks about
the meaning of Being and that has a prereflective understanding of Being
in its authenticity and totality. The problem arises, however, of how
Heidegger will be able to gain an understanding of the whole of Da-sein in
its totality and in its authenticity. The phenomenological findings exhibited
in division one of Being and Time have revealed Da-sein, whose essence lies
in its existence, as a work in progress, and as an inauthentic work in prog-
ress. As possibility and as existence, the meaning of the being of Da-sein is
rooted in its being-in-the-world with others among its possibilities. Da-sein
is always in the process of projecting upon possibilities, and therefore exists
only so long as it projects upon possibilities in relation to others. So if the
whole of Da-sein is to be grasped, it must be grasped after it has exhausted
all of its possible ways to be. But this can only happen after its death, when
the possibility for it to be is no longer possible. “Eliminating what is
outstanding in its being is equivalent to annihilating its being. As long as
Da-sein is as a being, it has never attained its ‘wholeness.’ But if it does, this
gain becomes the absolute loss of being-in-the-world. It is then never again
to be experienced as a being” (236/220).
The task of grasping the whole of the being of Da-sein, therefore, appears
to be futile so long as Da-sein exists and engages in its relations in the
world. “A constant unfinished quality thus lies in the essence of the constitu-
tion of Da-sein. This lack of totality means that there is still something
outstanding in one’s potentiality-for-being” (236/219–220). If, however,
Heidegger is able to grasp the being of Da-sein at its end, that is, if the end
of Da-sein were somehow to make itself known, then perhaps the task of
exposing Da-sein in its totality would be possible. But how can Heidegger
bring the end of existence into view phenomenologically, that is, as an
experience belonging to Da-sein that may be interpreted? “What cannot
even be in such a way that an experience of Da-sein could pretend to grasp
it, fundamentally eludes being experienced. But is it not then a hopeless
undertaking to try to discern the ontological wholeness of being of
Da-sein?” (236/220).
To grasp the whole of the being of Da-sein, Heidegger has to bring this
whole into view. The mood of Angst is the vehicle for this exposure. Through
the use of Angst Heidegger reveals death as an existential experience of
Da-sein, and reveals the totality of Da-sein together with the whole of the
being of the world. In the nothing of Angst, Da-sein experiences its death in
terms of a loss of all possibilities. Through this loss of possibilities in
Angst, Heidegger clears the being of Da-sein and repositions it in a different
relation to the ground of all of its relations: away from objective presence
toward the hidden belonging to aletheia.
Chapter 2
Being-toward-death—Stage one of Angst:

The Groundlessness of Being and the
Unboundedness of Da-sein
The role that “being-toward-death” plays in revealing the meaning of the

being of Da-sein is central to the entire project of Being and Time. How
Da-sein understands its death determines whether or not it exists authenti-
cally or inauthentically. And how scholars interpret Heidegger’s discussion
on death and being-toward-death in part I of division two of Being and Time,
decides if there is an earlier Heidegger from which the later turns. The
difference in interpretation depends on whether one thinks that the
finitude signaled by being-toward-death is based on the physical death of a
particular Da-sein, in which case finitude belongs to an individual and the
way is open for a subjectivist interpretation of the meaning of the being of
Da-sein; or whether one understands finitude as delimiting the ground of
possibilities including, equally, the ground of Da-sein’s existence and its
relations to others. In this case finitude belongs to Being and to the char-
acter of Da-sein’s being-toward the ground of it possibilities. The disparity
essentially lies in the interpretation of Heidegger’s notion of death.
Being-toward-death is crucial to the project of Being and Time because it
holds the key to disclosing the whole of the being of Da-sein. Heidegger
ultimately sets out to discover the authentic meaning of the being of Da-sein
so that he can establish a secure foundation for asking about the meaning
of Being. In order, then, to embark upon the question of the meaning of
Being, Heidegger must disclose the totality of the being of Da-sein and
attain its authentic meaning. “If the interpretation of the being of Da-sein
is to become primordial as a foundation for the development of the funda-
mental question of ontology, it will have to bring the being of Da-sein in its
possible authenticity and totality existentially to light beforehand”
(233/215).
In Division One, Heidegger discusses Da-sein’s essential structures of
world and being-with, as well as the modes by which Da-sein discloses itself
as a being-in-the-world with others: attunement, understanding, and

discourse. However, what Heidegger fails to reveal is the whole of the being
of Da-sein in its totality. The everyday understanding that Da-sein has of
itself and of its world, its being-in-the-world is “inauthentic” and “fragmen-
tary” (233/215). On the one hand, everyday Da-sein encounters the world
with its prereflective understanding of Being as objective presence whereby
all possibilities are leveled down to what is tangible, manageable, and
calculable. While on the other hand, “Da-sein is always its possibility,” and
therefore remains open to experiences until it ceases to exist (42/40). As
long as Da-sein continues to live and to project upon its possibilities, the
task of disclosing the totality of its existence appears to be a “hopeless
undertaking” (236/220). Thus at the end of Division One of Being and
Time Heidegger questions if it is at all possible to phenomenologically
grasp the whole of the being of Da-sein, as it perhaps “fundamentally
eludes being experienced” (236/220).
This is why Heidegger turns to death and to Angst. “Angst provides the
phenomenal basis for explicitly grasping the primordial totality of the whole
of the being of Da-sein” (182/171). In Angst Da-sein approaches a certain
mode of death through the detachment from every one of its possibilities
and its relations to others. On account of this detachment, being-toward-
death allows Heidegger to bring into view the structural whole of the being
of Da-sein, and to reveal this whole as finite. The question is whether being-
toward-death and finitude are defined with regard to the physical death of
an individual Da-sein, or whether the emphasis remains on Angst, in which
case, I will argue, that at this stage of the discussion of being-toward-death,
isolated from “being-guilty” and “temporality,” it is not possible to arrive at
a notion of finitude because Angst is characterized by a nothingness that is
unbounded.
Against the standard reading that derives the finitude of Da-sein from the
fact of its individual death, I argue that there is no individual being disclosed
in being-toward the nothing of death. The existentiales that Da-sein uses to
understand its death are attunement, understanding, and discourse; the
latter will be put into play in the next chapter on “being-guilty.” As existen-
tiales, attunement and understanding are not aspects adhering to a subject,
they make up the being of Da-sein, that is, Da-sein is its attuned under-
standing. Like Plato’s lover in the Symposium who embodies love as a “lover
of wisdom,” Heidegger’s Da-sein embodies death as a being-toward-death.
Therefore, the understanding that Da-sein has of its death is its being-
toward-death. Understood in its objectivity, as the event of physical death,
Da-sein is in a being-toward an object, and is simultaneously underwriting
Being-toward-death 45
its subjectivity. Understood, as I am going to show, in light of the nothing of

Angst, both the objectivity of death and the subjectivity of Da-sein are
dissolved into an “existential identity” with the whole of the being of the
world that is unbounded by the nothing.
Few scholars question Heidegger’s assertion of finitude as it relates to
being-toward-death because they interpret death as a physical event. It is
generally accepted that the meaning of finitude is implicit in the fact of
physical death. Death is commonly seen as the horizon that is at the end of
all possibilities and toward which Da-sein exists authentically as a being that
is aware that it is going to die. Joseph Kockelman, for example, claims that
death must be understood “not only as the ‘point’ where Da-sein’s life
reaches its end, but also as that toward which Da-sein is always ‘on the way.’”1
William J. Richardson writes: “Being-unto-death in There-being means for
Heidegger that the limit is not simply the term of the process but permeates
every part of it and makes the potentiality, which There-being is, limited
through and through—thoroughly and irretrievably finite.”2 Similarly,
Michel Haar claims: “Anticipating the potential for no longer being reinforces
absolutely the potential to be, opens Da-sein for its being-in-full-time, its being
to the limit of its time.”3
More recently, Heidegger scholars have approached the meaning of fini-
tude in light of the loss of possibilities represented by being-toward-death.
For Jeff Malpas the lesson of Heidegger’s account of being-toward-death is
that life-possibilities are not endless but finite. Life should therefore be
lived as a coherent narrative with a beginning, middle, and an end.
“Grasping a life as a whole requires grasping it in terms of the ongoing
unity and integrity of a set of projects.”4 Similarly, Julian Young states: “The
practical affirmation of finitude, that is, is a life that is appropriate to the
fact that we do not have unlimited time at our disposal and so must reject
‘accidental’ and confine ourselves to living out our central, essential life-
possibilities.”5 Despite the fact that death often disrupts the purposiveness
of the will and puts into question the illusion of individual freedom with
regard to life-possibilities, both Malpas and Young draw upon death to
support their assertions of the self.
In the same vein, Taylor Carman argues that we should understand
death as a loss of possibilities that occurs each time that we make a choice.
“Foregoing some possibilities as nullified by others, the constant closing
down or extinction of possibilities as possibilities, I have suggested, is exis-
tential death.”6 To exist finitely, then, is to resolve oneself to the “dying off”
of some possibilities in the choosing of others.7 But Carman does not seem
to acknowledge that some choices don’t close off as many possibilities as
they may open. Similarly, Stephen Mulhall understands finitude in light of

the individual choices that Da-sein makes in the face of a plethora of avail-
able possibilities, some beyond its immediate control. Da-sein is “always
haunted by the choices it didn’t make, the choices it couldn’t make,
and its inability to choose to live without the capacity to choose—the
conditions of freedom for a finite creature, one that must inhabit a spatio-
temporal world.”8
However, the shutting down or disappearance of possibilities is, in fact,
the complete opposite of what Heidegger claims for the meaning of fini-
tude and for being-toward-death. On the contrary, in direct opposition to
the leveling down of possibilities characteristic of the They, death has to do
signally with keeping possibilities open as possibility. “Essentially, this possi-
bility offers no support for becoming intent on something, for ‘spelling
out’ the real thing that is possible and so forgetting its possibility. As antici-
pation of possibility, being-toward-death first makes this possibility possible
and sets it free as possibility” (262/242).
Notwithstanding the differences in the characterizations of death above,
all of them have two things in common. First, finitude is conceived unques-
tioningly with a view toward physical death. Thus the claim is that Da-sein is
finite because its life is going to end in death, consequently interpreting
Heidegger’s discussion of being-toward-death as a discussion about mortality.
But, if finitude were merely another word for the fact of Da-sein’s mortality
then Paul Edwards would be right, Heidegger’s assertions that authenticity
lies in running toward our death would be filled with platitudes, banalities,
and absurdities. Edwards spares no criticisms against Heidegger scholars
who uphold what he calls the “golden opportunity” view that treats death
“like the opportunity that comes to an understudy for a great singer when
the latter is suddenly taken ill.”9 He points to Father Demske’s “startling”
and “remarkable conclusion” that Heidegger’s notion of death should be
understood as the “crown and culmination of human life.”10 For Edwards,
death does not signal such an opportunity, but rather its opposite, horror.
“When deadness horrifies me I am concerned about the absence for all
eternity of any further experiences that would be my experiences, the
experiences of Paul Edwards.”11
Interpreted in terms of a person’s physical death, the focus will inevitably
fall on the subjectivity of a particular Da-sein to the exclusion of its relations
to others, and to the world. What most scholars who look at finitude purely
as a question of literal mortality are missing is that Heidegger is engaged in
a critique of the subject understood as a substance characterized by a certain
bundle of qualities, or leveled down “possibilities.” Therefore, the second
feature that the above interpretations all share, a feature stemming from
the fact that death is regarded in its objectivity as a physical event, is the
emphasis on the self. Characterizing the meaning of death by the choices
one makes underscores the will, Da-sein’s subjectivity and the objectivity of
its possibilities. Choices are said to either disable access to, or enable and
enhance the meaning of finitude. It is, then, only a matter of choosing
consistently and purposefully, and neither a question about the nature of
the understanding of the ground of possibilities, nor in what way this under-
standing pertains to Da-sein’s being-with others. The individual subject is
left to him or herself alone to decide upon the right choices, and is believed
to be capable of measuring and calculating the ways in which these choices
are best able to fit into a whole that belongs to an isolated existence. With
the emphasis on choice, the above interpretations do not escape
Heidegger’s fundamental criticism of inauthentic Da-sein, its leveling down
of possibilities to what can be decided upon, projected upon, and managed
by a being who, for the most part, believes that it is in control of the essen-
tials that belong to its own particular life.
In this chapter I maintain a strict phenomenological account of Heide-
gger’s description of being-toward-death. I argue against any attempt to
render this mode of being understandable within the framework of objec-
tive presence. In other words, I dispute any reading that interprets
being-toward-death in light of the physical fact of the death of an individual
Da-sein. Instead, I keep the focus on the nothing of Angst, and show how in
being-toward the nothing of death Da-sein experiences a loss of self along
with a loss of everything else that was once deemed significant to it in its
everyday existence. Upholding the distinction between the everyday under-
standing of death as physical demise, and authentic death as a being-toward
the nothing in Angst is crucial. Not only because Heidegger often wavers
between the two definitions in his discussion of death, but because, as
I have already mentioned, the entire notion of a division of Heidegger’s
thought into two parts, one based in a subjectivity of Da-sein and a later
Heidegger who does away with subjectivity, rests in the interpretation of
death in Being and Time.
Nevertheless, the difficulty in making sense of the meaning of both being-
toward-death and finitude is in part a result of Heidegger’s own failure to
distinguish clearly between the ontological and ontic notions of death. On
the one hand, Heidegger seems to indicate that Da-sein must exist in a
linear manner toward the end of its life where it will meet with its factical
death. “The ending that we have in view when we speak of death, does not
signify a being-at-an-end of Da-sein, but rather a being toward the end of this
being” (245/228). More often, however, Heidegger defines death in rela-

tion to the nothingness of Angst. “The nothingness primordially dominant
in the being of Da-sein is revealed to it in authentic being-toward-death”
(306/283). Nevertheless, Carol White has identified six different ways that
Heidegger speaks about death.12 Hubert Dreyfus highlights two of these
ways: the existential loss of the meaning of Da-sein’s possibilities depicted in
Angst, and the factical annihilation of possibilities at life’s end. He believes
that the “deep confusion in the death chapter in Being and Time” lies in the
fact that sometimes Heidegger speaks of death as an overall “existential-
ontological collapse in general,” and at other times he is “giving an account
of the distinctively final character of terminal death.”13
In an attempt to lessen the confusion, Dreyfus suggests that we use Kant’s
notion of an “analogon” to understand the use of factical death as a concrete
example of an existential experience that Heidegger is trying to describe,
but that eludes all representation: the loss of meaning accompanying one’s
life in light of the fact that all will be lost in death. Still, he confesses, “the
usual interpretation is hard to avoid. When Heidegger speaks of existential
death . . . what can this mean but the possibility of just plain dying.”14 While
Dreyfus tries to avoid the ontic definition of death, he ultimately defines
the meaning of finitude by attaching it to the physical fact of death. Thus
for Dreyfus the anxiety that Heidegger describes in the face of the loss of
one’s possibilities at death should be read as
an analogon for living lucidly in such a way that the world is constantly
seen to be meaningless and I am constantly owning up to the fact that
Dasein is not only a null basis as revealed in the anxiety of conscience but
also is a nullity in that it can make no possibilities its own.15
But there has to be more to the meaning of finitude than just that life is
going to end in death. In fact, Heidegger claims that the nothing of death
disclosed in Angst not only detaches Da-sein from all of its possibilities, but
significantly also frees Da-sein for an authentic understanding of its possi-
bilities. “The fundamental possibilities of Da-sein, which are always my own,
show themselves in Angst as they are, undistorted by innerworldly beings to
which Da-sein, initially and for the most part clings” (191/178). But how
can the nothing of Angst disclose to Da-sein any fundamental possibilities
when its significance lies precisely in the receding of all meaningful possi-
bilities for Da-sein? And how can this nothing disclosing being-toward-
death reveal to Da-sein that it is finite? These questions will guide my
reading of being-toward-death below.
The Everyday Inauthentic Understanding of Death
Heidegger begins his discussion of the ontological meaning of death by

contrasting it to what it is not: the everyday understanding of death as a
factical “event.” That Da-sein dies factically is undeniable. In time, every-
body is going to die. But to understand death as a factical event that is going
to befall each and every Da-sein at some unknown, yet definite time in the
future is to be in an inauthentic being-toward death. When understood as
an event, death is encountered in the mode of objective presence and is
turned into “something definite” (258/238). “One says that death certainly
comes, but not right away” (258/238). Death happens to others and “one is
not involved”—at least “not-yet” (253/234).
In reducing death to something definite, Da-sein evades what Heidegger
underscores as the “possibility” of death. This evasion takes many forms.
Da-sein may imagine that it can gain control over its death by calculating
ways to keep it at bay, for example, by eating well and exercising regularly;
or Da-sein may treat death as an event that is to be dealt with only when it
rears its ugly head. Either way death is leveled down to a definite event.
Reducing death to something definite or relegating death to the realm of
possibilities still to come is to flee from the irrefutable fact that death is not
amenable to the order of objective presence. There is no staving death off
and there is no negotiating with death. Death comes when it decides, and
therefore must always be regarded as a possibility, the character of
which Heidegger will specifically describe through the mode of existence
he calls being-toward-death. “Dying is not an event, but a phenomenon to
be understood existentially in an eminent sense still to be delineated more
closely” (240/223).
To be toward death authentically Da-sein must understand “what is pecu-
liar to the certainty of death, that it is possible in every moment” (258/238). Not
that it is possible at this or that moment in time, but that it is possible
always. Leveling down the possibility of death to the fact of physical death,
what Heidegger calls “demise,” is how everyday Da-sein flees from death by
regarding it as an event that is to be encountered only at the time of its
arrival, hopefully in the far distant future. “Everyday being-toward-death
evades this indefiniteness by making it something definite” (258/238).
Thus by underscoring the indefiniteness of death, Heidegger points out
that Da-sein does not control the one most important part of its existence,
its very existence. Understanding that death is possible at every moment
unhinges the self and puts one in the state of Angst. “The indefiniteness of
death discloses itself primordially in Angst” (308/285).
Death is therefore Da-sein’s most essential possibility because it is the one

thing that Da-sein can be certain of yet, paradoxically, this certainty is indef-
inite. But death is not to be understood as demise. Demise cannot encompass
this existential and ontological feature of death, that it is an indefinite
possibility belonging to existence at every moment. “Death as something
possible is not a possible thing at hand or objectively present, but a possibil-
ity-of-being of Da-sein” (261/241). This is why Heidegger turns to Angst.
Indeed, Angst not only discloses an authentic being-toward-death, the flight
from Angst also characterizes the essence of everyday Da-sein’s inauthen-
ticity. “Everyday taking care of things makes definite for itself the
indefiniteness of certain death by interposing before it those manageable
urgencies and possibilities of the everyday matters nearest to us” (258/239).
“Entangled flight into the being-at-home of publicness is a flight from not-
being-at-home, that is, from the uncanniness which lies in Da-sein as thrown,
as being-in-the-world entrusted to itself in its being” (189/177).
By sublimating the Angst that discloses an authentic understanding of
being-toward-death into an “urgency of taking care of things,” inauthentic
Da-sein flees from death. The false sense of security that Da-sein attains in
focusing its energies on what can be accomplished, the tangible and manage-
able affairs of its everyday life, is possible only by covering over the
indefiniteness of Angst. “In this entangled being together with . . .; the flight
from uncanniness makes itself known, that is, the flight from its ownmost
being-toward-death” (252/233). Thus for Heidegger the busyness of the
They’s everyday business as usual is itself a testament to the covering over of
what belongs to Da-sein essentially: Angst. “Uncanniness is the fundamental
kind of being-in-the-world, although it is covered over in everydayness”
(277/256). “This uncanniness constantly pursues Da-sein and threatens its
everyday lostness in the they, although not explicitly” (189/177). Heidegger
therefore concludes: “Being-toward-death is essentially Angst”16 (266/245).
The Formal Definition of Being-toward-death
Formally, Heidegger defines authentic being-toward-death as Da-sein’s

“ownmost, nonrelational, certain possibility not-to-be-bypassed that is, as
such, indefinite” (259/240). The “ownmost” and “nonrelational” features
of death are what lead most scholars to a subjectivist reading of authenticity.
“No one can take the other’s dying away from him . . . Every Da-sein must itself
actually take dying upon itself. Insofar as it ‘is,’ death is always essentially my
own” (240/223). Here caution must be exercised not to understand these
terms subjectively. This ownmost element of death does not refer to a
possession belonging to a personal “I,” but to a way of existing in the world

in relation to possibilities; that is, it pertains to the meaning of authenticity,
which is defined by the character of Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities and
to its being-with others, or its understanding of truth, as I will show later in
Chapter 4. “Da-sein is ‘in the truth.’ This statement has an ontological
meaning. It does not mean that Da-sein is ontically always or at times intro-
duced to ‘all truth,’ but that the disclosedness of its ownmost being belongs
to its existential constitution” (221/203). As death discloses Da-sein’s
ownmost being, it is inseparable from Da-sein’s understanding of truth,
which decides the manner of Da-sein’s relations to itself, to others, and to
its authentic possibilities.
The relationship between being-toward-death and truth also underwrites
the “certainty” of death. This certainty is not guaranteed by the fact that
Da-sein’s life is going to come to an end in physical death. “The fact that
demise, as an event that occurs, is ‘only’ empirically certain, in no way decides about
the certainty of death”17 (257/238). The certainty of Da-sein’s indefinite possi-
bility is grounded in the truth of Da-sein’s disclosedness. “The ownmost
nonrelational possibility not-to-be-by-passed is certain. The mode of being
certain of it is determined by the truth (disclosedness) corresponding to it”
(264/244). Belonging to the disclosedness of Da-sein is its relations to
other Da-seins, to itself, and to its possibilities. Heidegger characterizes
these relations in terms of his notion of truth. Truth defines the manner
and structure of all of Da-sein’s relations, including its relation to its death,
which is made certain once Da-sein is “in the truth” existing in the world as
a being-toward-death, as we shall see.
The “nonrelational” character of death is the other trait that most often
leads interpreters to a subjectivist understanding of being-toward-death. It
is agreed that death is “nonrelational” because it cannot be understood by
encountering it as an event, or as an object in the surrounding world.
Da-sein does not relate to death as a subject relates to an object. Nor, claims
Heidegger, can death be understood in relation to one’s experience or
encounter with the physical death of others (237–240/221–223; 264/244).
This relation also belongs to the subject/object, inner/outer dichotomy
belonging to the understanding of everyday Da-sein and to the reduction of
Being as objective presence. Yet most scholars fail to consistently follow
Heidegger’s characterization of the nonrelational quality of death by attri-
buting to being-toward-death a self-relation. The nonrelational character of
death, I show, pertains particularly to the loss of Da-sein’s own self-relation
in the nothing of Angst disclosing being-toward-death. Indeed, it is precisely
the nonintentional character of Angst that allows it to reveal the
nothingness Heidegger aims to capture through the mode of existence he

calls being-toward-death. This nonintentional character is what constitutes
the nonrelationality of death.
The “indefinite” feature belonging to the formal definition of death is
characterized by Angst. “What Angst is about is completely indefinite”
(186/174). Angst has no object but rather discloses the nothing of death.
In being-toward-death in Angst Da-sein experiences the loss of all certainty
regarding its former relations and stands in a paralysis before the nothing.
A detailed phenomenological description of Da-sein’s being-toward the
nothing of Angst reveals this nonintentional and nonrelational character of
Angst. To grasp the significance of Angst and its manner of disclosing being-
toward-death it is helpful to contrast it to the mood of fear.
The Loss of Self and World in Angst
As attunements, Angst and fear, each in its own way, constitute the being-
toward or comportment of Da-sein to itself, to others and to things in its
being-in-the-world. Attunements open the world up to Da-sein and clear
the space for it to find itself in relation to the possibilities given there (see
Chapter 1 on attunement). “Mood has always already disclosed being-in-the-
world as a whole and first makes possible directing oneself toward something”
(137/129). Indeed, this feature is what is most significant about mood: that
mood discloses the whole of the being of Da-sein’s being-in-the-world
(137/129). Heidegger distinguishes between Angst and fear by virtue of the
different worlds that each attunement opens up, and the character of rela-
tions that each world grounds.
Fear occurs when something threatening in the world approaches Da-sein
in such a way that it encounters itself as the one in fear. As a being afraid for
oneself, or a being afraid about oneself, the self of Da-sein comes to the
fore. “The character of mood and affect of fear lies in the fact that the
awaiting that fears is afraid ‘for itself,’ that is, fear of is a fearing about”
(341/314). “The about which fear is afraid is the fearful being itself, Da-sein”
(141/132). Both what is threatening and Da-sein’s self-relation in fear are
grounded in Da-sein’s comportment to the world that gives meaning to this
or that threatening innerworldy being. “Our interpretation of fear as attune-
ment showed that what we fear is always a detrimental innerworldly being,
approaching nearby from a definite region, which may remain absent”
(185/174). While the explicit meaning of the “define region” from which
something fearful arises remains “absent,” prereflective and unthematic,
this “definite region” nevertheless serves to ground and give meaning to
what is encountered as fearful. Da-sein may not fear a leopard in the context
of a zoo, but if this leopard makes its way into its living room there will most
likely also be fear. The contexts of meaning characterizing the world are
given various names by Heidegger: significance, referential relations, totality
of relevance, and regions (see Chapter 1 for a discussion on the world).
In contrast to the mood of fear, Angst turns away from beings toward the
nothing. In this mood of uncanniness, Da-sein finds itself disengaged from
others and from its everyday involvement with things because the world
that structures its associations with beings has lost all significance. “Nothing
of that which is at hand and objectively present within the world, functions
as what Angst is anxious about. The totality of relevance discovered within
the world of things at hand and objectively present is completely without
importance. It collapses. The world has the character of complete insignifi-
cance” (186/174). The world that had once provided the familiar context
from out of which Da-sein encounters beings is lost in Angst. Angst displaces
the web of relations that gives significance to innerworldly things in directing
Da-sein away from beings and toward the nothing. “In Angst one has an
‘uncanny’ feeling,” a feeling of “not-being-at-home” (188/176). Whereas in
fear, wherein Da-sein is open to a definite region belonging to a definite
world by virtue of being-toward a definite something, in turning away from
things to the nothing in Angst the world too is simultaneously disclosed—but
not as some definite region or as characterized by significance, but as such:
In what Angst is about, the “it is nothing and nowhere” becomes mani-
fest. The recalcitrance of the innerworldly nothing and nowhere means
phenomenally that what Angst is about is the world as such. The utter insig-
nificance which makes itself known in the nothing and nowhere does not
signify the absence of world, but means that innerworldy beings in them-
selves are so completely unimportant that, on the basis of this insignifi-
cance of what is innerworldly, the world is all that obtrudes itself in its
worldliness. (186–187/175)
Both fear and Angst, then, have the structure of “something in the face of
which” and “something about which” one is either afraid or anxious. In fear,
Da-sein is attuned to a definite region out of which it encounters a definite
threatening something. In its relation to what is threatening, Da-sein comes
to view as the one in fear. In contrast to fear, in Angst there is neither an
object toward which Da-sein is anxious, nor a world toward which Da-sein is
attuned. “Everyday familiarity collapses” (189/176). Da-sein is not in a being-
toward any particular region in Angst, nor is Da-sein in a concernful relation
to anything to all. In Angst there is nothing in the face of which Da-sein is

anxious and nothing about which it is anxious. There is only nothing.
In particular, that in the face of which one has Angst is not encountered
as something definite to be taken care of; the threat does not come from
something at hand and objectively present, but rather from the fact that
everything at hand and objectively present has nothing more to “say” to
us. Beings in the surrounding world are no longer relevant (343/315).
In the previous chapter we learned that through his phenomenological

investigation of everydayness, Heidegger shows that the world is prereflec-
tively understood as that which gives the context of meaning to Da-sein’s
everyday activities and its being-with others in the world. In its concernful
taking care of things the world “is there” together with what matters to
Da-sein. “The world . . . ontologically belongs to the being of Da-sein as
being-in-the-world” (187/175). The meaning of its possibilities, its relations
to others, and its own self-understanding are given to Da-sein prereflec-
tively by virtue of its attunement to the world. Da-sein’s attuned comportment
to the world is the ground of its understanding and the horizon of all of its
relations and possibilities.
In Angst, however, Da-sein is not in a being-toward any particular world, or
any particular thing—such as factical death or Da-sein’s own mortality.
Disclosed as such, as nothingness, the world that shows itself in Angst, there-
fore, differs fundamentally from the world belonging to fear in that it can
never be characterized as an actual or definite world on the basis of the
innerworldly things that it makes possible. Stripped of its character of signif-
icance, the world “as such” cannot serve to ground the meaning of beings
because beings belong to a definite world, albeit unthematically disclosed,
but nevertheless characterized by relevance, significance, regions, referen-
tial relations, and so on. “The totality of relevance reveals itself as the
categorial whole of a possibility of the connection of things at hand”
(144–145/135–136). “[T]he discoveredness of innerworldly beings is
grounded in the disclosedness of the world” (220/203). And just as equally,
the world disclosed in Angst cannot be understood on the basis of the possi-
bilities that it gives rise to, for in this disclosure there are no possibilities,
there is only the nothing of Angst. Consequently, without possibilities and
innerworldly beings, the world has no meaning at all, for the world does not
exist apart from the possibilities and relations that Da-sein understands the
world by. “If, however, world can appear in a certain way, it must be disclosed
in general. World is always already predisclosed for circumspect heedfulness
together with the accessibility of innerworldly beings at hand” (76/71).
But then if beings are no longer relevant in Angst, in what way can the
world disclose meaning to Da-sein or be disclosed as meaningful to Da-sein?
In other words, can the nothing that discloses the world as such disclose this
nothing, or world, as significant? Moreover, if the world has no meaning
and is therefore unable to ground any possibilities, and Da-sein, as a being-
in-the-world, always understands itself in terms of the world and the relations
that it grounds, then what are we to make of the character of Da-sein’s
being-toward-death? How does Da-sein come to an understanding of itself
in its being-toward-death when its self-understanding is inseparable from its
understanding of the world and its relations in the world, and in Angst the
world is disclosed as utterly insignificant and cannot ground the under-
standing of anything at all? “The world is disclosed with the factical existence
of Da-sein, if indeed Da-sein essentially exists as being-in-the-world”
(364/333). “Da-sein understands itself and being in general in terms of the
‘world’” (21–22/19).
I want to underscore that in the face of the loss of all possibilities and the
meaninglessness of the world, any sense of self-understanding specific to
Da-sein also goes. Along with the receding of all possibilities and relation to
other Da-seins in light of the utter insignificance of the world, Da-sein loses
its footing with regard to the meaning of its overall existence. “Existing,
Da-sein is its ground, that is, in such a way that it understands itself in terms
of possibilities and, thus, understanding itself is thrown being” (285/262).
In Angst there are no possibilities. Therefore, without possibilities and
being-with others, Da-sein cannot gain any certain understanding of itself
as a being-in-the-world. “As long as it is, Da-sein always has understood itself
and will understand itself in terms of possibilities” (145/136). Faced with
no possibilities, then, there is no particular Da-sein to speak of. Angst
discloses Da-sein in a paralysis such that it is unable to exist in any certain
or particular way at all. This is what makes Angst ideal for characterizing
being-toward-death.
The nearest nearness of being-toward-death as possibility is as far removed

as possible from anything real. The more clearly this possibility is under-
stood, the more purely does understanding penetrate to it as the possibility
of the impossibility of existence in general. As possibility, death gives
Da-sein nothing to “be actualized” and nothing which it itself could be as
something real. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every mode of
being toward . . ., of every way of existing. (263/242)
With the impossibility of “every mode of being toward” and “every way of
existing,” the possibility of every kind of relation belonging to Da-sein
disappears, including, and this point I cannot stress enough, its own self-
relation. When beings lose all relevance, the world is stripped of its
significance. And when the world losses all significance, it cannot provide
the context of meaning for anything at all, including the meaning of
Da-sein’s individual existence. With the irrelevance of all possibilities
our heedful awaiting finds nothing in terms of which it could understand

itself, it grasps at the nothingness of the world. But, thrust toward the
world, understanding is brought by Angst to being-in-the-world as such.
Being-in-the-world is both what Angst is anxious in the face of and what it
is anxious about. (343/315)
Unlike fear, which is in the face of something threatening, on the one hand,
and about the particular Da-sein in fear, on the other, what is distinctive
about Angst is that that which it is about is also that which it is for. The epi-
stemological value of Angst lies in this “existential identity,” which is what
makes Angst ideal for disclosing the totality of the whole of the being of
Da-sein together with the whole of the being of the world.
The existential identity of disclosing and what is disclosed so that in what is dis-
closed the world is disclosed as world, being-in, individualized pure, thrown
potentiality for being, makes it clear that with the phenomenon of Angst a distinc-
tive kind of attunement has become the theme of our interpretation. (188/176)
But what exactly is the character of this “individualized pure, thrown poten-
tiality for being” that is disclosed in Angst ? With nothing to understand and
the loss of all grounding in the world how is one to understand the meaning
of the world as such and Da-sein’s being-in-the-world as such disclosed in
being-toward-death?
The Nothing of Angst and Individuation
In Angst the being of the world is disclosed as stripped of all meaning. Thus
in being-toward-death the being of Da-sein is also disclosed as a “being-in-
the-world as such,” not in any particular world but as being-in-the-world
itself. “What Angst is anxious for is being-in-the-world itself” (187/175).
“That about which one has Angst is being-in-the-world-as-such” (186/174). Angst
is not about being in any definite world or situation, but being-in-the-world
as such. A world in which all possibilities and being-with others have lost
their meaning. It is with respect to the loss of every possibility and relation
to others that death makes its way into the existence of Da-sein as its most
extreme possibility. “Death is the possibility of the absolute impossibility of
Da-sein” (250/232). The impossibility of all thought, action, being-with
others, being-toward possibilities, and therefore being-toward oneself in
any certain way is disclosed in Angst. What Angst makes known is a totality
that is devoid of any kind of relation or being-toward and “every way
of existing.”
In Angst, the whole of the being of Da-sein is disclosed isomorphically
with the whole of the being of the world in an “existential identity” charac-
terized by the nothing. However, this existential identity of the whole of the
world and the being of Da-sein cannot be said to belong to a particular or
individual Da-sein with a definable or identifiable, personal self. In being-
toward-death there is no individual Da-sein to speak of because Da-sein
cannot actualize any possibilities on the basis of the disclosure of the world
as such; and Da-sein is its possibilities, it is the relation of disclosure to what
is disclosed in its relations in the world. “[F]or Da-sein to be able to have
something to do with a context of useful things, it must understand some-
thing like relevance, even if unthematically. A world must be disclosed to it”
(364/333). “When Da-sein factically exists, it already encounters beings
discovered within the world. With the existence of historical being-in-the-world,
things at hand and objectively present have always already been included in the
history of the world” (388/355).
Indeed, essential to the ontological constitution of Da-sein is that it is not
definable apart from its world. Its existence is characterized by its relations
to others and to its possibilities as a being-in-the-world. In Da-sein’s attuned
comportment to the world, possibilities arise and are understood. “In the
mode of ‘being attuned’ Da-sein ‘sees’ possibilities in terms of what it is. In
the projective disclosure of such possibilities, it is always already attuned”
(148/138–139). But in the attunement of Angst there are no possibilities
toward which Da-sein is attuned. Indeed, there is no point from which
Da-sein may stand to act in the world in Angst, as there is no distance for a
relation between Da-sein and the world in the existential identity of the
whole of the being of the world and the whole of the being of Da-sein.
Moreover, in the attunement of Angst there is no world toward which Da-sein
is attuned by which it may come to its own self-understanding, or any under-
standing at all. “Da-sein stands primordially together with itself in
uncanniness” (287/264). This self identical self does not, however, belong
to a particular, self-reflecting Da-sein. Without possibilities, in the face of
nothing, there is no being-in-the-world with others and no being with any
possibilities that Da-sein may understand itself in relation to. Therefore
there is no personal or individual Da-sein either. This is why Heidegger

repeatedly states that being-toward-death is “non-relational” (259/240;
266/249; 307/283). Da-sein is disclosed in Angst and in this disclosure
Da-sein is not in a being-toward anything at all, and certainty not in a being-
toward itself in any mode of subjective self-understanding. In Angst Da-sein
is immobilized and essentially not there. “Its death is the possibility of
no-longer-being-able-to-be-there” (250/232).
By characterizing being-toward-death through the fundamental attune-
ment of Angst, Heidegger answers his question of “how it [death] enters into
actual Da-sein as its possibility-of-being” (248/230). But being-toward-death
not only discloses the loss of Da-sein’s possibilities, it is also “where the char-
acter of possibility of Da-sein can be revealed most clearly of all” (249/231).
Projecting upon possibilities belongs to Da-sein in the mode of under-
standing, and understanding is always attuned. “As essentially attuned
Da-sein has always already got itself into definite possibilities” (144/135).
In the attunement of Angst, however, no definite possibilities lie before
Da-sein. Angst is paralyzing. It “is oppressive and stifles one’s breath—and
yet it is nowhere” (everywhere) (186/174). This is why Heidegger believes
that “‘real’ Angst is rare” (190/177). Angst individuates Da-sein and discloses
it in its totality with the whole of the being of the world, but in such a way
that there is no being-with-others and there is no being-in-the-world in any
concrete or existentiell sense. “This individualizing is a way in which the
‘there’ is disclosed for existence. It reveals the fact that any being-together-
with what is taken care of and any being-with the others fails when one’s
ownmost potentiality-of-being is at stake” (263/243). But if there is no being
with others and no concernful being with things, then there is no individual
“I” or Da-sein to speak of either.
This fact is important because for the most part the individuation disclosed
in being-toward-death is interpreted as constituting the particularity of the
selfhood belonging to Da-sein in freeing it from the nonparticularity of its
They-self and from the world in general.18 For example, in Maria
Villela-Petit’s discussion of space she argues that since space constitutes the
world and the world is a structure of Da-sein’s, the world “would remain
dependent upon Da-sein (and not even, or at least only laterally upon
Mitsein).”19 This leads Villela-Petit to the claim that Heidegger does not
escape from a subjectivism with regard to the being of Da-sein. “One sees
here a subtle continuation of the privilege of interiority over exteriority,
that very privilege which the understanding of Dasein, as being-in-the-
world, tried to place in question.”20 However, the world disclosed to Da-sein
in Angst is the world as such, which does not belong to the interiority of any
particular Da-sein because in this disclosedness there is no interiority or

subjectivity and no certain world to speak of. To the contrary, in being-
toward-death the individuation of Da-sein is characterized solely by the
nothing of Angst. It is therefore unbounded and belongs to no one Da-sein
in particular. In so far as the whole of the being of Da-sein is disclosed in an
existential identity with the whole of the being of the world, being-toward-
death individuates Da-sein and discloses it in its totality. But this individuated
whole is, nevertheless, unbounded and does not belong to any individual
Da-sein in question. Heidegger underscores the nonparticularity of the
being disclosed in Angst in “What is Metaphysics” (1929). “At bottom there-
fore it is not as though ‘you’ or ‘I’ feel uncanny; rather, it is that way for
some ‘one.’ In the altogether unsettling experience of this hovering where
there is nothing to hold on to, pure Da-sein is all that is there.”21
What, then, is the meaning of this “pure” Da-sein, this “individualized
pure, thrown potentiality for being” of Da-sein? (188/176). Hubert Dreyfus
claims, although with some reservation, that in the face of Angst “some-
thing remains aware of collapse and survives to open a new world.”22 But
what is the character of this awareness? As I have pointed out, there is no
evidence for any kind of a self-consciousness in light of the nothingness
that Angst discloses. To the contrary, Angst discloses the loss of all under-
standing and every mode of existence or “being-toward.” “The nothingness
before which Angst brings us reveals the nullity that determines Da-sein in
its ground, which itself is as thrownness into death” (308/285). Miquel de
Beistegui also claims that Angst discloses some sort of a self, apparently the
true self that inauthentic Da-sein overlooks. “It is ourselves that we experi-
ence in anxiety, as if for the first time—the very self we go to so much
trouble to avoid and cover over in everyday dealings and concerns.”23
“[A]nxiety is itself the experience of coming face to face with oneself—and
nothing more.”24 But what Angst discloses is not a self but rather the loss
of self.
In Angst Da-sein is freed from the possibilities of the They. “Angst takes
away from Da-sein the possibility of understanding itself, falling prey, in
terms of the ‘world’ and the public way of being interpreted” (187/175).
But significantly, Angst also simultaneously frees Da-sein from everyone of
its possibilities all at once by putting it in a being-toward the nothing. In
this stage of Angst, where the whole of the being of Da-sein is disclosed
in an existential identity with the whole of the being of the world, there
is no understanding or awareness of anything at all. What Angst discloses
is nothing—the paralysis of Da-sein faced with no possibilities and no
relations to others.
Nevertheless, Heidegger claims that in addition to freeing Da-sein from its

inauthentic possibilities, Angst indicates to Da-sein the character of its
authentic possibilities. “[T]he possibility was shown of the powerfulness that
distinguishes the mood of Angst. Da-sein is taken back fully to its naked uncan-
niness and benumbed by it. But this numbness not only takes Da-sein back
from its ‘worldly’ possibilities, but at the same time it gives it the possibility of
an authentic potentiality-of-being” (344/316). “Angst frees him from ‘null’
possibilities and lets him become free for authentic ones” (344/316). Further-
more, he claims, Angst frees Da-sein for its authentic relations to others.
“As the nonrelational possibility, death individualizes, but only, as the possi-
bility not-to-be-bypassed, in order to make Da-sein as being-with understand
the potentialities-of-being of others” (264/244). In fact, Heidegger states that
the experience of Angst directs Da-sein toward its authentic possibilities with
an assurance that “is absolutely unmistakable to itself[.]” (277/256).
But what unmistakable direction does Angst point Da-sein toward?
According to Heidegger a genuine understanding of death “discloses to
existence that its extreme ownmost possibility lies in giving itself up and
thus shatters all one’s clinging to whatever existence one has reached”
(264/244). But what are we supposed to give ourselves up to? Thus far
Angst ridden Da-sein stands in a paralysis before the nothing. With no world
and no relevant possibilities, Da-sein is not in a being-toward or in an
attuned understanding to anything at all. Da-sein is in a being-toward-death.
In the existential identity of the whole of the being of the world and the
whole of the being of Da-sein disclosed in Angst, Da-sein stands cleared.
Da-sein “is itself the clearing” (133/125). What this individuated totality of
the whole of the being of world and the whole of the being of the Da-sein
points to is what I have called an ontological occlusion. On the basis of this
occlusion Da-sein will be in a complete attuned accord with the whole of
the being of the world on the basis of which it will prereflectively under-
stand all of its possibilities, including the possibility of its own existence.
However, thus far, the being of Da-sein and the being of the world are in an
undifferentiated existential identity characterized by the nothing. Heide-
gger therefore prepares for this occlusion, or the prereflectively attuned
fitting together of the totality of the being of Da-sein with the whole of the
being of the world, by moving from the undifferentiated nothing of Angst
to an understanding of this nothing as a ground.
Indeed, Heidegger claims that the world disclosed as such in Angst entails
“the possibility of things at hand in general, that is, the world itself” (187/175).
The nothing characterizing the world “does not mean nothing; rather
region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world in general for
essential spatial being-in” (186/174). Yet, what kind of a world does the
nothing disclose? Moreover, can the world be understood as a ground, as
region in general, outside of the possibilities that it grounds? Phenomeno-
logically speaking the world shows itself through the relations that it
grounds. Disclosed in Angst the world does not function to structure any
relations. How, then, can Heidegger claim that Angst frees Da-sein for its
authentic possibilities, and how can he claim that the meaning of the world
in general is disclosed in Angst? In other words, how does Heidegger make
something out of the nothing?
In deciding to use phenomenology as the method for investigating the
meaning of the being of Da-sein, Heidegger commits himself to staying
within the boundaries of Da-sein’s lived experiences. “Essentially, nothing
else stands ‘behind’ the phenomena of phenomenology” (36/31). But what
stands behind the nothing? Is nothingness a ground? Is it the authentic
ground of the world disclosed in everydayness? And if it is a ground, how
are we to move from the nothingness of Angst to an understanding of the
meaning of this nothing as the place wherein the possibility of things at
hand in general lay? To simply declare the nothing as a ground is to make
a metaphysical claim.
Heidegger does, in fact, deem the nothing to be a ground beginning with
his lecture “What is Metaphysics?” (1929). There he equates the conceal-
ment of Being with the nothing, and joins the nothing to Da-sein through
the attunement of Angst. “Being held out into the nothing—as Da-sein
is—on the ground of concealed anxiety makes the human being the
lieutenant of the nothing.”25 In his “Postscript to ‘What is Metaphysics?’”
(1943) Heidegger writes: “we must prepare ourselves solely in readiness to
experience in the nothing the pervasive expanse of that which gives every
being the warrant to be.”26 Yet in Being and Time Heidegger does not state
that the nothing discloses Being. In Being and Time the analysis is limited to
the existence of Da-sein. However, in observing how Heidegger moves
Angst-ridden Da-sein, divorced from all relations, back to being in the world
existing alongside others on the basis of its being-toward-death, it becomes
apparent that in Being and Time Heidegger posits the nothing as a ground.
While Heidegger eventually drops all talk of Angst in his later writings he
continues to link death and mortals, and the nothing and Being. But
without Angst serving as a bridge, the relationship between humans and
Being is incomprehensible. To make sense of this relationship it is more
helpful to rather reverse the current trend in Heidegger studies and read
the early Heidegger into his later writings. Angst is the key bridging Da-sein
and Being in this metaphysics of feeling.
Bounding the Nothing of Being-toward-death
Significantly, Heidegger embarks on his discussion of being-toward-death

not only to free Da-sein from the possibilities of the They, but also to point
out the meaning of its finitude and the direction that authenticity is to take
once Da-sein faces its death. But where are the limits to be found in the
boundless nothing of Angst, and where is the basis for a substantive under-
standing of one’s situation in the nothing of Angst?27 Perhaps one may
assume that as the disclosedness of Da-sein in Angst constitutes a totality,
that is, a whole, it must be finite. But there is nothing precluding the possi-
bility that Da-sein’s being, which encompasses the whole of the being of the
world and is inseparable from it, may not expand, as a totality, infinitely out
to all sides. In this case, the existential identity of the being of Da-sein and
the being of the world would be conceived in its totality as infinite, that is,
unbounded by the nothing—for nothing does not itself entail any bounds,
to the contrary, it is boundless. The existential experience of the nothing
that Angst discloses might even eventually lead to an awareness of the unlim-
ited number of possibilities that lie before Da-sein, and not to finitude.
Or, perhaps we may interpret the experience of Angst, or nothingness, as
some Buddhists do, as revealing the process of becoming free of any attach-
ment to an ego or to a world and its possibilities. This understanding is
in line with Dreyfus’ interpretation of Angst as Da-sein’s “openness to
meaninglessness.”28 In light of the ever changing possibilities of existence
he recommends that one entertain a “Zen-like spontaneity” when confronted
with a “unique situation” tempered with the awareness that one’s identity is
never stable.29 However, Heidegger specifically wants death to be something
that Da-sein is most concerned about and not indifferent toward. Neverthe-
less, while Angst may indeed disclose the totality of the whole of the being
of Da-sein and the whole of the being of the world, it does not disclose this
totality as finite. Rather, Angst discloses the nothing—the unbounded
groundless nothing of Being—and not finitude.
Heidegger, perhaps unwittingly, falls back upon the ontic notion of
factical death to declare the finitude of Da-sein. Explicitly, Heidegger simply
asserts that Da-sein is finite because it is going to die. Moreover, this knowl-
edge, he claims, points Da-sein to an understanding of its genuine
possibilities. “Free for its ownmost possibilities, that are determined by the
end, and so understood as finite, Da-sein prevents the danger that it may, by
its own finite understanding of existence, fail to recognize that it is getting
overtaken by the existence-possibilities of others[.]” (264/244). This claim
would be regarded as a mere platitude by scholars other than Edwards were
they to question how Heidegger moves from the declaration of ontic

finitude to a pregnant notion of ontological finitude. “In this being-toward-
the-end, Da-sein exists authentically and totally as the being that it can be
when ‘thrown into death.’ It does not have an end where it just stops but it
exists finitely” (329/303). “Only being free for death gives Da-sein its absolute
goal and pushes existence to its finitude. The finitude of existence thus
seized upon tears one back out of the endless multiplicity of possibilities
offering themselves nearest by—those of comfort, shirking and taking
things easy—and brings Da-sein to the simplicity of its fate” (384/351).
Notwithstanding Heidegger’s emphasis on the term finite and his
declarations that Da-sein exists finitely, there is, in fact, no argument
made for the finitude of Da-sein. And there is certainly no support for
any kind of a message that might be derived from the fact of death or the
nothing of Angst that is unique to an authenticity. Apparently this is not
the first time that Heidegger asserts the notion of finitude without justi-
fication. Francoise Dastur points out that in his 1927 lecture “On the
Concept of Time,” Heidegger claims that time is finite but fails to back
up this claim, unlike, she states, in Being and Time where finitude is
supported by death. “[W]e find no justification of the finitude of time in
the 1927 lecture course since this would require a return to the question
of Being-towards-death . . . which alone permits us to understand . . . that
original time is finite[.]”30 But, in fact, we find no justification for fini-
tude in Being and Time either. Heidegger simply asserts the finitude of
Da-sein by sliding into the inauthentic understanding of death as an
objectively present event that signals the end of life for Da-sein. This end
he translates into finitude, and moreover, into a pregnant meaning of
finitude that is “certain of itself” and of the nature of the possibilities that
Da-sein, as finite, is to project upon.
Anticipation reveals to Da-sein its lostness in the they-self, and brings it face to face
with the possibility to be itself, primarily unsupported by concern taking care of
things, but to be itself in passionate anxious freedom toward death which is free of
the illusions of the they, factical, and certain of itself. (266/245)
However, it is difficult to interpret in any definitive manner just what death

frees Da-sein for. And it is even more taxing to try to make sense of what
kind of existential certainty the indefiniteness of Angst brings to Da-sein.
Far from delivering Da-sein to solid shores, Angst wrests it from any secure
foundations. Nevertheless, Heidegger repeatedly states that death gives to
Da-sein a definite message. “Anticipation of its nonrelational possibility
forces the being that anticipates into the possibility of taking over its
ownmost being of its own accord” (264/243). Angst “brings Da-sein in an
extreme sense precisely before its world as world and thus itself before itself
as being-in-the-world” (188/176). But the world as world is devoid of any
meaning and therefore cannot serve as the horizon of Da-sein’s under-
standing. In being-toward-death the world has the character of insignificance
and therefore all possibilities are meaningless. At the same time, Da-sein is
also disclosed as nothing in its being-toward-death, and as an unbounded
nothing at that, for the world is the ground of its self-understanding.
In order to establish the finitude of death independently of factical death,
which does not shed light on the ontological meaning of death as a mode of
existence, finitude will have to be introduced into the nothing of Angst. But
as Angst is the experience of the nothing, how can we experience in this
nothing something like finitude? By bounding the nothing. If Heidegger
can ground possibilities in the ungrounded nothing of Angst, then the
nothing would be something—the ground of possibilities, albeit a ground-
less ground. The nothing would, then, be the sole and thus finite ground of
all of Da-sein’s possibilities by serving as the horizon of its understanding.
Indeed, as quoted above, Heidegger claims that the “region in general,” and
“the possibility of things at hand in general” are to be revealed in their essence
in the disclosure of the world as such in Angst (186/174; 187/175).
Heidegger does, in fact, open the way for locating the nothing as a ground,
but only by slipping from being-toward-death understood as Angst to the
everyday understanding of death as the factical “end” of life. With the
“endmost” possibility of factical death, Heidegger introduces a limit, an “end”
to all possibilities. Nevertheless, this end is used only as a conceptual limit. In
being-toward-death Da-sein’s possibilities are not limited by its physical death,
or by the irretrievable loss of its earthly possibilities. Rather, factical death
here serves only to establish the nothing as the ground of Da-sein’s possibili-
ties. Through the conceptual use of factical death, Heidegger may claim that
“everything else precedes” death. All of Da-sein’s future possibilities lie
“before the possibility not-to-be-bypassed”—before death, the end beyond
which nothing else exceeds, and “before” which “everything else” is “always
already included.”
In Da-sein, existing toward its death, its most extreme not-yet which every-
thing else precedes is always already included. (259/239, my emphasis)
Becoming free for one’s own death in anticipation frees one from one’s
lostness in chance possibilities urging themselves upon us, so that the
factical possibilities lying before the possibility not-to-be-bypassed can first be

authentically understood and chosen. (264/243–244, my emphasis)
By slipping from the nothing to the everyday understanding of death as the

end, a limit is introduced by the use of linear temporal language. But this
limit serves a very special function. It works to conceptually limit all of
Da-sein’s possibilities to its disclosedness in Angst, and in so doing, to estab-
lish the nothing as a ground. Through the use of factical death understood
as Da-sein’s endmost possibility, Heidegger may claim that “everything else
precedes” this end. But the end beyond which nothing else exceeds, the
end before which all of Da-sein’s possibilities lie, is none other than being-
toward-death disclosed in Angst. Being-toward-death discloses the totality of
the whole of the being of the world and the whole of the being of Da-sein
in an existential identity. Therefore nothing falls outside of this individu-
ated totality for it encompasses the whole. All possibilities fall within the
disclosure of being-toward-death, the disclosure of the nothing that Da-sein
will project as the horizon and ground of its understanding. “Angst indi-
viduates Da-sein to its ownmost being-in-the-world which, as understanding,
projects itself essentially upon possibilities” (187–188/176).
To say that all possibilities lie before death, is to say that Da-sein must
understand them on the basis of its disclosure in being-toward-death.
No possibilities may be grasped outside of this disclosure, for they all fall
before it. Finitude is therefore not based on the fact that Da-sein is going to
die, nor is it to be understood in light of the fact that Da-sein will have actu-
alized a limited number of possibilities before its death. Understanding
finitude in this way results in the leveling down of possibilities to actualities
that are to be lived, or that will have been lived, chosen, or acted upon.
Such an understanding might lead to a strict Sartrean existentialist inter-
pretation of Da-sein where we are the totality of all that we do. However,
Heidegger attributes this kind of thinking to inauthentic Da-sein. “In what
is taken care of in the surrounding world, the others are encountered as
what they are, they are what they do” (126/118). But it is not what we do
that is of concern to Heidegger, only how we do it. Either possibilities are
inauthentically approached from the perspective of Being understood as
objective presence wherein possibilities are leveled down to what is revealed
by the familiar modes of approaching beings determined by the They; or,
possibilities are authentically approached by way of a being-toward the
ground of beings in such a way that beings are let be to show themselves as
they are because they are circumscribed by the nothing. This authentic
manner of approaching possibilities is determined by Heidegger’s notion
of truth as aletheia and is dependent upon the taking up of the nothing as

a ground.
Thus by limiting possibilities to the groundless and unbounded nothing,
the nothing itself gets positioned as a ground, but not as a fixed and deter-
minate ground that Heidegger opposes throughout his critique of Being as
objective presence. The nothing is clearly indeterminate. Rather, Da-sein’s
finitude is grounded in limiting its possibilities to the disclosedness of its
totality, a totality that need not itself be limited. Da-sein is finite because its
horizon, its world, is delimited. Therefore, limiting possibilities to the limit-
less nothing of Angst, the nothing is deemed a ground, albeit a boundless
and indeterminate ground. In the projecting of this ground the nothing, the
existential identity of Da-sein and world, circumscribes the understanding
that Da-sein has of its possibilities, its relations with others, and simultane-
ously Da-sein’s own self-relation. These possibilities and relations, likewise,
point back to the nothing, the being of the world as their ground. The rela-
tionship between Being and Da-sein, then, occurs on the prereflective level
of mood, as a being-toward the nothing in the holding open of Angst. In this
holding open of Angst, Da-sein holds back the self and lets beings be in a
fundamental attunement to Being. Consequently, finitude happens internal
to the nothing by way of the relations that it circumscribes.
To posit the nothing as the certain, yet indeterminate ground of all possi-
bilities, is to locate the nothing as the horizon of understanding, thereby
letting possibility show itself. Angst characterizes the authenticity of Da-sein.
“Da-sein is authentically itself in the mode of primordial individuation of reti-
cent resoluteness that expects Angst of itself”31 (322–323/297). Inseparable
from its authentic disclosedness is Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities. “The
being of Da-sein and its disclosedness belong equiprimordially to the discov-
eredness of innerworldly beings” (221/203). In its projection upon
possibilities, Da-sein projects the nothing characterizing the totality of the
whole of the being of the world to which Da-sein comports itself as a totality
in the attunement of Angst. But it is important to keep in mind that no
particular Da-sein is disclosed in the nothing that is being projected. To the
contrary, the self is held back. Indeed, in the nothing, the boundaries of the
self are dissolved. Da-sein is unhinged. The projecting of the nothing is not
a willing by a subject, but rather, as we shall see in the next chapter, a still-
ness in the enduring of Angst. From out of this nothing, Da-sein temporally
comes back to itself as a self through its relations to others and to its possi-
bilities whereby the world shows itself. “Da-sein is not itself the ground of its
being, because the ground first arises from its own project, but as a self, it is
the being of its ground” (285/262).
In fact, Heidegger will exhort Da-sein to “want,” “expect” and to “endure”

Angst.32 Authentically being-toward-death means to cultivate the indefinite
nothing and to hold open Angst.
In anticipating the indefinite certainty of death, Da-sein opens itself to a

constant threat arising from its own there. Being-toward-the-end must
hold itself in this very threat, and can so little phase it out that it rather
has to cultivate the indefiniteness of this certainty. How is the genuine
disclosing of this constant threat existentially possible? All understanding
is attuned. Mood brings Da-sein before the thrownness of its “that-it-is-
there.” But the attunement which is able to hold open the constant absolute threat
to itself arising from the ownmost individualized being of Da-sein is Angst.
(265–266/245)
Nevertheless, in being-toward-death Da-sein is not in a relation to anything

at all: not to itself, not to others, not to its possibilities, not even to its death
disclosed in Angst. In the existential identity of the whole of the being of the
world and the whole of the being of Da-sein there is no distance or differ-
ence for a relation. Both the world and Da-sein are disclosed as a whole in
an undifferentiated existential identity. However, the stage is set for a rela-
tionship to occur on the basis of a total attunement to the whole of the
being of the world. But for this attunement to happen, Da-sein has to be in
a relation to others, to itself and to its possibilities. Only by way of the rela-
tions that it grounds does the world show itself as a ground. In Da-sein’s
inauthentic, everyday relations in the world, the authentic world is covered
over and Da-sein is directed toward objectively present, leveled down possi-
bilities given to it by the They and its referential relations. Everyday,
inauthentic Da-sein is also, at the same time, always focused on itself in a
mode of conformity, trying to make sure that it stays near to the ways of the
They-self. In a shift away from what is objectively present toward the nothing,
Da-sein is cleared and positioned to be the clearing for possibilities, and the
prescencing of Being.
Yet, without possibilities, all talk of relations and of circumscribing possi-
bilities by the nothing, so that possibilities maintain their character of
possibility is but a fiction. Being-toward-death has been depicted, “but only
as an ontological possibility” (266/246). “The ontological possibility of an
authentic potentiality-for-being-a-whole of Da-sein means nothing as long
as the corresponding ontic potentiality-of-being has not been shown in
terms of Da-sein itself” (266/246). In other words, aside from the relations
that it grounds, there is no other way to guarantee that being-toward-death
has been taken up as an actual mode of existence. Heidegger therefore

wonders: “Does Da-sein ever project itself factically into such a being-
toward-death?” (266/246). Death does not give to Da-sein any possibilities
by which it can understand itself as a being-toward-death: “the factically
disclosed possibilities of existence are not to be taken from death”
(383/350). Quite the opposite, in being-toward-death Da-sein is at a loss of
all possibilities. No possibilities can show themselves in the disclosedness of
being-toward-death, because in the nothing of Angst all possibilities recede
as the world loses all significance.
Thus, if Da-sein is to exist authentically it must maintain a relation to
possibilities, and it must especially be in a relation to others. “Da-sein is
authentically itself only if it projects itself, as being-together with things
taken care of and concernful being-with . . ., primarily upon its ownmost
potentiality-of-being, rather than upon the possibility of the they-self”
(263/243). Heidegger will put Da-sein back into a relation with its possibili-
ties and being-with others by temporalizing Angst and introducing into the
nothing a relation that occurs with respect to directionality. In the transi-
tion from the nothing back to the world of possibilities and Da-sein’s
being-with others, both the being of Da-sein and the ground of its possibil-
ities—the nothing—will be taken up and characterized by a finitude. This
transition from the nothing back to the world happens in the cultivation of
the nothing of being-toward-death in “being-guilty.”
Chapter 3
Being-guilty—Stage two of Angst:

The Temporalization of Angst and how
the Nothing becomes Something
In the previous chapter I argued that being-toward-death, contrary to the

standard reading, is the mode of existence where Da-sein loses rather than
gains itself. Traditionally, being-toward-death has been interpreted as a
mode of disclosure where the personal self of Da-sein comes to view in light
of the singular experience of its individual death. The confrontation with
death forces Da-sein to recognize that it has been abdicating its life-choices
and responsibilities by turning them over to the They. Realizing that its life
is not enduring and that it will one day have to die, death reveals to Da-sein
that it is finite. This finitude marks its individuation and independence of
self from the They self. With the recognition of its finitude Da-sein chooses
to exist authentically by deciding upon its individual possibilities. Yet it is
Heidegger’s own ambiguity over the concept of death that may be faulted
for this widely held interpretation, as he unfortunately slides from the fact
of demise to the assertion of the finitude of Da-sein, and from the loss of all
inauthentic possibilities in Angst to the retrieval of authentic possibilities.
In fact, being-toward-death does not reveal the finitude of Da-sein but, to
the contrary, it reveals the infinitude of Da-sein. While Heidegger does fall
back upon the notion of factical death (demise) to assert Da-sein’s finitude
by the implicit fact that life will end, factical death has no bearing on the
meaning of Da-sein’s finitude. The meaning of finitude for Heidegger lies
in the nature of Da-sein’s understanding of possibilities, and the character
of its relations to others. This understanding and these relations are rooted
in Da-sein’s prereflective understanding of Being. Authenticity, I am
claiming, signals the change from an understanding of leveled down possi-
bilities to an understanding of possibilities rooted in the ground of Da-sein’s
being, its being-toward-death, the nothing. Thus because being-toward-
death is the mode of existence that Heidegger wants Da-sein to project as
the horizon of its possibilities, it cannot be characterized by the fact of
death, which points to the end of all personal existence. Heidegger there-
fore draws upon the phenomenon of Angst to reveal being-toward-death as
the experience of nothingness. “We conceived of death existentially . . . as
the absolute nothingness of Da-sein” (306/283). In Angst Da-sein is “faced
with the nothingness of the possible impossibility of its existence”
(266/245).
Angst allows the nothingness of death to be taken up as a mode of Da-sein’s
actual existence. The nothingness of Angst tears Da-sein away from its
previous relations. The possibilities it once deemed important on the faith
of the They are no longer significant in the nothingness of Angst. Da-sein
stands in a paralysis because the world has lost all meaning. Being-toward-
death therefore shows itself in the loss of every possible “way of existing”
(262/242). This is why Heidegger says that death is “nonrelational”
(264/244). What is revealed in this disclosure is the existential identity of
the whole of the being of the world and the whole of Da-sein’s being-in-the-
world, not in any specific world, but a world disclosed as such and devoid of
all possibilities and every relation to others.
But it is not only Da-sein’s connection to others and to its projects that
disappears in Angst. A strict phenomenological interpretation of the nothing
disclosing being-toward-death shows that along with every other relation,
Da-sein’s own self-relation is also lost in the nothingness of Angst. In a being-
toward the nothing, Da-sein is freed from all of its possibilities and from its
relations to others. But as its personal existence is tied up with its possibili-
ties, Da-sein is not in a relation to itself as an individual either in this mode
of disclosedness. In Angst the world is without significance and therefore
cannot ground the meaning of any possibilities, nor can it ground the
meaning of Da-sein’s own self-understanding. Therefore being-toward-death
points to an initial stage of Angst wherein there are no possibilities and no
relations but simply sheer nothingness. In the nothing disclosing being-to-
ward-death the existential identity of the whole of the being of the world
and the whole of Da-sein are disclosed in an undifferentiated totality that is
individuated. However, contrary to the general reading, this indivi-duation
belongs to no one Da-sein in particular. It belongs to the whole of the exis-
tential identity of the world and Da-sein. And this whole is significantly
unbounded, as it is characterized by the nothing of Angst throughout.
In being-toward-death, then, there are no relations, no possibilities, and
no particular world from which Da-sein may understand itself. Therefore,
there is no individual or personal Da-sein to speak of. This is why Heidegger
concludes his discussion on death by stating that “being-toward-death
remains, after all, existentielly a fantastical demand” (266/246). In the
Being-guilty Stage Two of Angst 71
nonrelational disclosedness of the impossibility of everyway of existing,

Da-sein is essentially immobilized. In Angst there are no possibilities, not
even the possibility of relating to one’s own being-toward-death. It is for this
reason that I have challenged Heidegger’s two main claims that being-
toward-death reveals the finitude of Da-sein, and that this finitude directs
Da-sein toward a “certain” understanding of its authentic possibilities. The
nothing of being-toward-death, he writes, “tears one back out of the endless
multiplicity of possibilities” and frees Da-sein “for its ownmost possibilities,
that are determined by the end, and so understood as finite” (264/244;
384/351 see also 266/245; 329/303; 386/353).
However, neither the finitude of Da-sein nor an awakening to its authentic
possibilities is revealed to it in its being-toward-death. To the contrary, death
is characterized by the loss of a self, the loss of the world, and therefore the
loss of all meaningful possibilities. Being-toward-death reveals the nothing
that arises in the disappearance of all relations and prepares Da-sein for the
realization of a different way of being-in-the-world that overcomes the order
of objective presence characterizing its inauthentic existence. This way will
have everything to do with the nothing and the way in which it grounds
Da-sein’s relations to its possibilities. Thus the possibility for such an over-
turning lies in the taking up of being-toward-death as an actual way of
being-in-the-world. The Angst of being-toward-death alone, then, is not
enough to bring about this change. Da-sein must relate to the nothing in
such a way that it understands its possibilities by virtue of this nothing,
which turns Da-sein to the ground of its “historical possibilities”. “But even
so, as an authentic potentiality-of-being-a-whole, the authentic being-to-
ward-death which we deduced existentially remains a purely existential
project for which the attestation of Da-sein is lacking” (301/277).
Da-sein attests to its being-toward-death in “being-guilty” (Schuld sein),
stage two of Angst, where the potential for regaining the world and the self
are revealed. In stage two of Angst Da-sein must “choose” to relate, to
endure, and to be ready for Angst. Being-guilty, therefore, fulfils the edict of
death: that it must relate to itself. “The most extreme not-yet has the char-
acter of something to which Da-sein relates” (250/231). Paradoxically, however,
being-guilty is also disclosed in Angst by the “call of conscience” (Gewissen-
sruf ). “The call attuned by Angst first makes possible for Da-sein its project
upon its ownmost potentiality-of-being. The call of conscience, existentially
understood, first makes known what was simply asserted before: uncanni-
ness pursues Da-sein and threatens its self-forgetful lostness” (277/256).
Nevertheless, Heidegger will need to show how one and the same Angst
can serve both to disclose Da-sein in death, wherein it stands in a paralysis
before the nothing, and simultaneously take Da-sein back into acting in
the world through the call of conscience belonging to being-guilty. In
other words, he has to show how the nothing of Angst becomes something,
the basis upon which Da-sein exists in the world and with others amidst its
authentic possibilities. He must explain how the Angst of being-guilty
“frees for death the possibility of gaining power over the existence of Da-sein
and of basically dispersing every fugitive self-covering over” (310/286).
Moreover, he must account for how the nothing that characterizes Da-sein’s
authentic disclosure in being-toward-death is to be thought of as finite.
I will argue that Heidegger maintains the character of the nothing
disclosing the existential identity of Da-sein and the world as such, while
also allowing for a difference that makes possible a relation of the nothing
to itself by introducing into the nothing a differentiation in directionality
that constitutes the temporality of Da-sein. In this temporalized relation to
the nothing, an opening is cleared for possibilities to show themselves on
the basis of the total attunement of Da-sein to its world in Angst. By virtue of
this attunement, Da-sein relates to others, itself and to its possibilities in a
manner appropriate to a relation to the nothing that Heidegger describes
with the term “letting-be” (Sein-lassen) belonging to truth as aletheia. Thus it
is not until Angst is yoked to aletheia that the nothing is ultimately posi-
tioned as a groundless ground circumscribing the understanding of
Da-sein’s relations to its possibilities. In this chapter the connection of Angst
to aletheia is established in “resolution” (Entschlossenheit) and being-guilty,
which discloses the “truth of existence” and the certainty of being-toward-
death by asserting the connection between Da-sein’s disclosedness and the
discovery of its possibilities.
The Everyday Understanding of Guilt
Heidegger criticizes the everyday understanding of guilt for the same

reasons that he finds fault with Da-sein’s everyday ideas about death. The
They understand the phenomenon of guilt inauthentically in the mode of
objective presence as an event that may be tangibly dealt with and conve-
niently pushed aside. When the They experience guilt it is usually in relation
to an unfinished exchange between material things, like an “owing some-
thing” to someone. Everyday guilt is awakened in the breaking of a “law.” or
in the failure to fulfil a “demand,” to abide by an “ought,” or to pay back a
“debt.” “This kind of being guilty is related to things that can be taken care of ”
(282/260). It belongs to “the area of taking care of things in the sense of
calculating claims and balancing them off” (283/261).
Understanding guilt in light of what one could have or ought to have

done turns guilt into a matter that may be accommodated for by a definite
response, or through a certain action. Guilt then becomes a thing that may
be easily alleviated, for example, by paying something back to someone.
But it is precisely this understanding of guilt as something responsive to the
mediation of measurable acts—a debt to be paid, a material obligation to
be fulfilled, or a law to be upheld—that characterizes everyday guilt as inau-
thentic. “A lack, as the not being objectively present of what ought to be, is
a determination of being of objective presence” (283/261). In being
directed toward the calculable and manageable objectivity of things—laws,
demands, and oughts—authentic guilt gets buried over. On the basis of
inauthentic guilt no real sense of responsibility or loyalty may arise because
guilt is not experienced in relation to the ground of one’s being or in rela-
tion to the being of an other Da-sein. Guilt is rather understood in terms of
a “thing” that is presumed lacking or left undone within the system of order
belonging to the They.
Authentic guilt must therefore be removed from the leveling down of possi-
bilities that characterizes Da-sein’s everyday being-in-the-world. Understood
as something tangible that is handled according to some objective measure-
ment for success, authentic guilt is reduced to the status of an object. Deriving
guilt from a set of laws and demands that are directed toward tangible and
manageable things that Da-sein either takes care of, or fails to take care of at
any given time, covers over authentic guilt. Guilt is then seen as something
that may be alleviated by reimbursing a debt, or by living according to a set of
laws. Da-sein may even bring about its own guilt by failing to abide by a
command or an ought. “[O]ne may break a law and make oneself punish-
able” (282/260). Indeed, everyday guilt has the character of “making oneself
responsible” by leaving it up to the individual Da-sein in question to decide
when and to whom it is to become responsible toward (282/260).
Most significantly, however, the everyday understanding of guilt relieves
Da-sein of its responsibility to the world and to others living with it in the
world—both past and future others, as well as its contemporaries. By
focusing on what is objectively present, Da-sein passes over the being of
others and fails to authentically take up its Mitda-sein. It assumes that it can
make itself responsible for others in the same way that it can control its guilt
in relation to laws. “This definite ‘making oneself responsible’ by breaking
a law can also at the same time have the character of ‘becoming responsible to
others’” (282/260). As with a debt resulting from a failure to pay something
back, being-with others in an everyday understanding of guilt takes the
form of a lack in the sense of failing to carry out an obligation owed to the
other. “This kind of lacking is a failure to satisfy some demand placed on

one’s existing being-with with others” (282/260). Da-sein may then just as
easily relieve itself of its responsibility to the other by paying him or her
back, or by fulfilling a promise, at which point one’s being-guilty toward the
other ceases and business goes about as usual.
Authentic guilt, however, cannot be assuaged. Da-sein must understand
“being-guilty as something constant” (305/282). Only when Da-seins recog-
nize that “they are guilty in the ground of their being” can there be authentic
guilt and responsibility to the world and to others, a responsibility that
Heidegger believes extends to Da-sein’s ancestors and to the world that
“has been there” into which Da-sein has been thrown (286/264). Indeed,
authentic being-guilty is essentially a recognition of Mitda-sein and Da-sein’s
obligation to the traditions belonging to its world.1
Thus Heidegger not only questions the foundations of the laws, demands
and “oughts” that the They abide by and asks whether they are in keeping
with the authentic kind of being that belongs to Da-sein. Above all, he finds
fault with the idea that guilt may ever be alleviated or pushed aside once
and for all. As with being-toward-death, Heidegger wants guilt to be under-
stood as an existential and ontological possibility of Da-sein and, therefore,
as something constant, enduring and primordial. “Being essentially guilty,
Da-sein is not just guilty occasionally and other times not” (305/282). Da-sein is
guilty “as long as it is” (305/282). The existential and ontological possibility
of being-guilty as a constant of being happens when guilt is detached from
the realm of objective presence. “The idea of guilt must not only be removed
from the area of calculating and taking care of things, but must also be
separated from relationship to an ought and a law such that by failing to
comply with it one burdens himself with guilt” (283/261).
What detaches Da-sein from the realm of calculation and its inauthentic
understanding of guilt is Angst. Only Angst can free Da-sein from the prere-
flective understanding of Being as objective presence that is the basis of its
inauthentic existence. Indeed, the everyday understanding of guilt itself
points to the nothing of Angst through the “not” that is at the heart of inau-
thentic guilt. “Still, the quality of the not is present in the idea of ‘guilty.’ If
the ‘guilty’ is to be able to define existence, the ontological problem arises
here of clarifying existentially the not-quality of this not” (283/261). The
not-quality of guilt finds its voice in the “nullity” of Angst. In busying itself
with taking care of everyday matters that are given their significance by the
They, Da-sein manages to stave off the Angst that “pursues” it and character-
izes its being-toward-death, as well as its being-guilty. Therefore in the Angst
of the “call of conscience,” Da-sein is called back to its death.
Angst and The Call of Conscience
Being-guilty, like being-toward-death, is an existential that constitutes the

being of Da-sein. Being-guilty is the possibility for conscience, but it is never-
theless the “call of conscience” that discloses Da-sein in its being-guilty.
“All interpretations and experiences of conscience agree that the ‘voice’ of
conscience somehow speaks of ‘guilt’”(280/258). Significantly, the “voice
of conscience” (Stimme des Gewissens) says nothing because it is disclosed in
Angst. “Conscience speaks solely and constantly in the mode of silence” (273/252).
Nevertheless, while conscience has nothing to say it “gives us ‘something’ to
understand, it discloses” (269/249). “The peculiar indefiniteness and inde-
finabilty of the caller are not nothing, but a positive distinction” (275/253).
Indeed, the call of conscience speaks in the silence of the nothing because
it reaches him or her who already understands. All listening, according to
Heidegger, is predicated on such a prior understanding. “Discourse and
hearing are grounded in understanding” (164/154).
The call of conscience calls silently but it grabs hold of Da-sein. It reaches
the being who is open to the call and who may understand the silence of the
call. It reaches Da-sein disclosed in death. In the nothing of being-toward-
death rests the potential to hear the silent call that says nothing. It is for this
reason that the call speaks in silence and says absolutely nothing. “What
mood corresponds to such understanding? Understanding the call discloses
one’s own Da-sein in the uncanniness of its individuation. The uncanniness
revealed in understanding is genuinely disclosed by the attunement of Angst
belonging to it” (295–296/272). Conscience calls for the being disclosed in
Angst, which has the potential to understand the call in the mode of silence
because it has already heard it.
The structure of the call of conscience is therefore complex. It shows
itself in three modes that are nevertheless the same: the caller of the call;
the called or the summoned; and what the call says or discloses. All three
are characterized by the nothing of Angst. The caller of the call says nothing.
It calls the being disclosed and characterized by the nothing and calls it to
take over its death or nothingness. Moreover, because the call is disclosed
in Angst, like death, it is beyond Da-sein’s control. “The call is precisely
something that we ourselves have neither planned nor prepared nor wilfully
brought about. ‘It’ calls, against our expectations and even against our will”
(275/254). What does this silent call say? “Strictly speaking—nothing”
(273/252). “The call does not report any facts; it calls without uttering
anything. The call speaks in the uncanny mode of silence” (277/255). Still,
the call calls and it calls always.
Overwhelmed by the “noise” of the They, Da-sein fails to hear this silent
call that speaks constantly. “The fact that they, hearing and understanding
only loud idle chatter, cannot ‘confirm’ any call, is attributed to conscience
with the excuse that it is ‘dumb’ and evidently not objectively present”
(296/273). Therefore to receive the call, a proper mode of listening is
required. Da-sein must turn away from the chatter of the They and attune
itself to a different kind of hearing. “This listening must be stopped, that is,
the possibility of another kind of hearing that interrupts that listening must
be given by Da-sein itself” (271/250). This other possibility is in every
respect the opposite of the listening belonging to the They because it is
directed toward the nothing. Perhaps in a moment of silence, a lull in the
chatter of the They, the call is heard.
When the silent call of conscience reaches out to the being of Da-sein it
calls Da-sein to its uncanniness and “calls it to become still” (296/273). But
the being reached by the call is not a self-reflective, individualized being
that is an “‘object’ for itself” (273/252). “The self summoned remains indif-
ferent and empty in its what” (274/253). It summons Da-sein “‘without
regard to his person’” (274/253). The call calls “solely the self that is in no
other way than being-in-the world” (273/252). The self cleared of all partic-
ularity in the loss of “every way of existing” in its being-toward-death. Only
Angst ridden Da-sein is in no other way than being-in-the-world as such
because this Da-sein lacks all determination, as it is disclosed and character-
ized by the undifferentiated nothing of Angst. “The fact that what is called
in the call is lacking a formulation in words does not shunt this phenom-
enon into the indefiniteness of a mysterious voice, but only indicates that
the understanding of ‘what is called’ may not cling to the expectation of a
communication or any such thing” (273–274/253).
In a moment of silence, then, when objectively present things lose their
grip on Da-sein for whatever reason, the self that is in no other way than
being-in-the-world itself is reached. “Understanding the call discloses one’s
own Da-sein in the uncanniness of its individuation. The uncanniness
revealed in understanding is genuinely disclosed by the attunement of Angst
belonging to it. The fact of the Angst of conscience is a phenomenal confir-
mation of the fact that in understanding the call Da-sein is brought face to
face with its own uncanniness” (295–296/272). Here Heidegger introduces
into the nothing some form of understanding. The Angst of conscience
brings Da-sein before the Angst disclosing its individuation in death. Still, it
is difficult to make sense of what the nothing gets Da-sein to understand, let
alone what the Angst of conscience adds to the Angst of death. Nothing is
still nothing.
Nevertheless, Angst ridden Da-sein is whom the call summons. The call
reaches the self that is in no other way than being-in-the-world itself,
Da-sein disclosed in being-toward-death. But not only is Angst ridden
Da-sein summoned in the call, the caller of the call is also Da-sein in its
uncanniness. “What if Da-sein, finding itself in the ground of uncanniness,
were the caller of the call ?” (276/255). If this were the case then both the
caller and the called would be one and the same mode of Da-sein’s being.
And this happens to be the case. Not only the call and the called but the
caller too “is Da-sein in its uncanniness, primordially thrown being-
in-the-world, as not-at-home, the naked ‘that’ in the nothingness of the
world” (276/255).
The caller, then, is no one familiar. “It not only fails to answer questions
about name, status, origin, and repute, but also leaves not the slightest poss-
ibility of making the call familiar for an understanding of Da-sein with a
‘worldly’ orientation. The caller of the call—and this belongs to its phenom-
enal character—absolutely distances any kind of becoming familiar”
(274/253). And as the called is the self that is in no other way than being-
in-the-world, the caller and the called are both one and the same mode of
Da-sein’s being characterized by the nothing of Angst. Indeed, not only are
they characteristically identical, they are also simultaneous. “Da-sein is the
caller and the one summoned at the same time” (275/254). “Da-sein is at the
same time the caller and the one summoned” (277/256).
Without a distinction, however, the caller would say nothing to the called
(which is, in fact, what it says); the called would hear nothing from the
caller (which is what is heard); and the uncanny assurance that occurs when
the caller reaches the called would be secured by nothing.
In its who, the caller is definable by nothing “worldly.” It is Da-sein in

its uncanniness, primordially thrown being-in-the-world, as not-
at-home, the naked “that” in the nothingness of the world. The caller
is unfami-liar to the everyday they-self, it is something like an alien
voice. What could be more alien to the they, lost in the manifold
“world” of its heedfulness, than the self individualized to itself in uncan-
niness thrown into nothingness? “It” calls, and yet gives the heedfully
curious ears nothing to hear that could be passed along and publicly
spoken about. But what should Da-sein even report from the uncanni-
ness of its thrown being? What else remains for it than its own
potentiality-of-being revealed in Angst ? How else should it call than
by summoning to this potentiality-of-being about which it is solely
concerned? (276–277/255)
We are now back at the paralysis of Angst in the undifferentiated nothing

that discloses the totality of the whole of the being of Da-sein and the whole
of the being of the world in an existential identity in being-toward-death.
In being-guilty, the caller and the called are identical and are both char-
acterized by the nothing of Angst. “Being-guilty belongs to Da-sein and
means: null being the ground of a nullity” (305/282). Paradoxically,
Heidegger claims that since the caller and the called are both Da-sein in the
mode of uncanniness they cannot fail to understand each other. “When the
caller reaches him who is summoned, it does so with a cold assurance that
is uncanny and by no means obvious. Wherein lies the basis for this assur-
ance, if not in the fact that Da-sein, individualized to itself in its uncanniness,
is absolutely unmistakable to itself?” (277/256). But what is the nature of
this self? What is understood in the call? And how are we to distinguish
between the self that is called and the self that is making the call? “Not only
is the call meant for him who is summoned ‘without regard to his person,’
the caller, too, remains in a striking indefiniteness” (274/253).
Taylor Carman thinks that what is disclosed by the call is “the ontological
irreducibility of the first-person point of view.”2 The call and the called, he
recognizes, are identical. “I Want to suggest, the call is identical with Da-sein’s
hearing and responding to it, either by owning up to its guilt or by fleeing
from it into distraction and inauthenticity.”3 The call, Heidegger asserts, says
nothing. Yet Carman claims to hear something specific, the call to choose
yourself. As shown in the previous chapter, he believes that choosing oneself
means to take responsibility not only for the choices one makes but also for
the possibilities that one does not choose. “Da-sein hears the call of conscience
only by freely letting itself hear it, and this amounts to choosing itself as a self.”4
“Conscience, I therefore conclude, is nothing more or less than Da-sein’s
responsiveness to the fact of its own singularity, or mineness.”5
In the identity of the call and the called, then, Carman claims to have
found a self-contained subject that has chosen itself in the hearing of the
call. His understanding of the singularity of the self disclosed in hearing
and responding to the call of conscience is reflected in his definition of
authenticity in contrast to inauthenticity, respectively, as “relating directly to
oneself and relating to or mediated by others.”6 It is no surprise, then, that by
interpreting authenticity as a direct relation of the self to itself, unmediated
by a relation to others, and indeed to the world, Carman runs into the
problem that many before him have of how others may impact Da-sein’s
authentic self-relation. “Apparently, what Heidegger fails to account for is
the intersubjective dimension of selfhood.”7 “How is it possible, indeed is it
possible, to come to understand myself as others understand me, as an
intraworldly character whose life concludes with my eventual earthly

demise?”8
However, by divorcing Da-sein’s authentic self-relation from its relation to
others and from the world, Carman indicates that his understanding of
Da-sein is not as Heidegger conceives it, but as the Cartesian tradition has
depicted the subject. Carman’s reliance on the notion of subjectivity grows
out of his interpretation of death as earthly demise and therefore as
pertaining only to a self-contained Da-sein who has to face the fact that he
or she will at some point have to die. The caller reaches this self in isolation
from others and the world and discloses it as an individual subjectivity. Thus
by claiming that the call reaches and reveals some sort of reflective self, a
“mineness,” Carman exhibits a reluctance to take up the meaning of the
call, its nothingness, and therefore to pay head to the nothing that is related
to in this relation of hearing and responding. He fails to recognize that
divorced from its relations to the world and to others, Da-sein’s own self-
understanding is just as null as that of any other Da-sein’s self-understanding,
and the understanding of each other is therefore just as null.
As I have been stressing, the authentic being of Da-sein disclosed in death
and called in conscience is not a personal self. It is characterized by nothing.
Thus there is no self-attributing subjectivity disclosed in the nothing of
Angst released from its possibilities and relations to others in the world. In
Angst Da-sein does not reflect upon its lost possibilities before a world once
full of possibilities. In Angst there is only nothing. To the contrary of
Carman’s claims then, what is disclosed in the call is nothing I can call
mine, at least not yet, not before Da-sein acts in the world alongside others
amidst shared possibilities.
The question, then, still remains of how we are to distinguish between the
caller and the called, the self that is calling and the self that is called.
Without a distinction no recognition is possible. Da-sein remains in a paral-
ysis in the nothing of the existential identity of the whole of Da-sein and
world in Angst. To exist authentically in the world Da-sein must take up and
relate to its death, which happens only in relation to actual possibilities that
are circumscribed by the nothing and that point back to this unbounded
nothing as their ground. “Angst individuates Da-sein to its ownmost being-
in-the-world which, as understanding, projects itself essentially upon
possibilities” (187/176). But it is only in light of Da-sein’s actual relations in
the world that it is possible to know if the nothing has been taking up and
projected as the ground of Da-sein’s relations and of its own self-
understanding. Yet neither the nothing of the call nor the nothing of death
disclose any possibilities.
The issue of the identity of the caller and the called is also problematized
by Stephen Mulhall. He questions how it is that one and the same mode of
being may both bring about an authentic understanding of the call, and at
the same time be a testament to having authentically heard the call. Mulhall
asks how “an indication of having attained an authentic relation to one’s
Being” may also “function as a means of that attainment.”9 He finds it “ques-
tionable” that Da-sein may bring about a “self-overcoming of a self-imposed
darkness.”10 As a solution to this problem Mulhall suggests that we interpret
the call as the call of a friend that reaches Da-sein and helps it to turn
toward its authentic self. “What, then, if the call of conscience is articulated
by someone else, a friend who diagnoses us as lost in the they-self and has
an interest in our overcoming that inauthenticity and freeing our capacity
to live a genuinely individual life?”11 But Mulhall’s question is steeped in the
thought that the caller and the called are the same self-contained, indi-
vidual subject. Thus he asks how this same inauthentic self may reach itself
as authentic. This is not surprising as even Heidegger claims that Da-sein
as a selfsame being is reached by the call. “Da-sein calls itself in conscience”
(275/254). “[T]he self is brought to itself by the call” (273/252).
Nevertheless, in the identity of the caller and the called disclosed in Angst
there are no possibilities, and therefore nothing determinate, and no partic-
ular Da-sein to speak of. There is only the nothing. Thus neither authentic
nor inauthentic Da-sein is disclosed in the call. The self that Heidegger
speaks of is a selfless self characterized by the nothing of Angst. Still, the
question is not only how one and the same mode of being may bring about
a different mode of existence, which in my reading is the question of how
Angst may bring about any definite change from the nothing. But also, how
one and the same mode of being that had previously precluded “every mode
of behaviour toward” and “every way of existing” in being-toward-death, may
now serve as the basis for authentic existence in being-guilty (262/242).
These two questions are encompassed in the question about a ground. How
does the groundless nothing of being-toward-death become a ground, the
ground of Da-sein’s authentic existence in being-guilty? What is said in the
silent call of conscience? Nothing. What is heard in the silence of the call?
Nothing. How then does the nothing of Angst bring about any certain and
finite understanding, and how is this understanding to serve as the ground
of Da-sein’s authentic existence with others in its being-in-the-world?
As I have been arguing, in the nothing of Angst there is no being with
one’s self in any particular sense, no being with others, and no being with
things in the world. The world loses its significance and all possibilities
recede together with the collapse of the web of relations that characterize
the meaning of the world. In this way death, as the loss of all possibilities, is
disclosed as a mode of existence belonging to Da-sein. However, the call of

conscience is meant to bring Da-sein understandingly before its death so
that it may take it up authentically by existing as a being-toward-death in the
world. By introducing a difference into the nothing that allows for a rela-
tion of death to being-guilty, an opening is created for possibilities to show
themselves. On the basis of this temporally structured opening, Da-sein will
engage with others and with its possibilities in and as a being-toward-death
such that the ground of its existence will show itself as the authentic horizon
of its possibilities. This horizon, as we shall see, is the historical world into
which Da-sein has been thrown.
Angst and the Temporality of Da-sein
To become authentic Da-sein must understand its death and guilt as constant
for as long as it exists. This is why Heidegger wants Da-sein to relate to its
being-toward-death. “The most extreme not-yet has the character of some-
thing to which Da-sein relates” (250/231). But what is it that is to be related to
in the nothing of death and the nothing of the call? Both the caller and the
called are one and the same mode of being: Da-sein disclosed in the nothing
of Angst. Yet, clearly Heidegger wants to make some sort of a distinction
within this sameness disclosed in death and called in conscience. Otherwise
he would not use two different terms for one and the same nothing.
A distinction would allow for a relation of death to itself whereby the nothing
circumscribes Da-sein’s self-understanding and the understanding of its
possibilities in such a way that possibilities are let be to show themselves as
they are. Nevertheless, it is difficult to grasp the way in which the caller
might differ from the called, they are not only both similarly characterized
by the nothing of Angst, but they also occur simultaneously.
Fortunately the terms caller and called themselves point to where a
distinction may be located within this one and the same mode of being.
These terms designate a difference in direction. “Whereas the content of
the call is seemingly indefinite, the direction it takes is a sure one and is not
to be overlooked” (274/253). This difference with regard to directionality
is how being-toward-death and being-guilty are mapped onto the “temporal”
(zeitlich) ecstasies of the “future” and “having-been,” respectively. In a
“calling back that calls forth” Angst is temporalized wherein the nothing is
differentiated with respect to a directionality that reveals the authentic
meaning of the being of Da-sein as temporality.
We have already answered this question in our thesis that the call “says”
nothing which could be talked about, it does not give any information
about factual occurrences. The call directs Da-sein forward toward its
potentiality-of-being, as a call out of uncanniness. The caller is indeed
indefinite, but where it calls from is not indifferent for the calling. Where
it comes from—the uncanniness of thrown individuation—is also called
in the calling, that is, is also disclosed. Where the call comes from in
calling forth to . . . is that to which it is called back. (280/258–259,
Heidegger’s emphasis)
Here a movement forward and a movement backward are introduced into

one and the same mode of being: the uncanniness of thrown individuation
of being-toward-death. Where “the call comes from” and that to which the
called is “called back” to are one and the same: Da-sein individuated in the
nothing of Angst. Moreover, where the call “calls from” in returning to
itself is also where the call calls Da-sein “forth to”—the nothing. In calling
Da-sein forward to its sheer possibility disclosed in Angst, Angst ridden
Da-sein, who is both making the call and the receiver of the call, is disclosed
at the same time. “Da-sein stands primordially together with itself in uncan-
niness. Uncanniness brings this being face to face with its undisguised
nullity, which belongs to the possibility of its ownmost potentiality-
of-being” (287/264).
But as I have been arguing, without possibilities there can be no relation
of the nothing to itself and therefore no taking up of being-toward-death as
a mode of existence in being-guilty. In other words, the movement forward
and the movement back of the temporal ecstasies are indistinguishable
without the present, as they are both characterized by the nothing.
“As thrown, the project is not only determined by the nullity of being the
ground but is itself as project essentially null ” (285/263). For the disclosure
of the relation of the nothing to itself to have meaning, there must be possi-
bilities that testify to the nothing as their groundless ground, thereby
bounding the nothing. Or, as Heidegger stated above, for being-toward-
death to be taken up as a mode of existence it must be attested to, that is,
the future must be distinct from the past so to be in a relation to it. This
means that the nothing must circumscribe the meaning of Da-sein’s possi-
bilities and must therefore be projected in a simultaneous holding back of
the self. Circumscribed by the unbounded ground of the nothing, possibili-
ties remain possibilities as their being is rooted in the world that gives to
them meaning and not in their objectivity, or in the fluctuating interpreta-
tions of the They. In this way the nothing becomes a ground and is bounded
by the possibilities and the relations that it grounds. Although, the nothing
will always maintain its character of possibility and therefore remain
unbounded, even in its bounding by the possibilities that it gives rise to.
This is the meaning of the “outside-itself” that Heidegger attributes to
Da-sein’s temporality.
What, then, is Da-sein called forth to by the call? Conscience summons
the self “to its potentiality-of-being-a-self, and thus calls Da-sein forth to its
possibilities” (274/253). In being called forth to possibilities Da-sein is
understandingly called forth to the realm wherein its possibilities lie—the
groundless ground of its being—and therefore called forth to take over its
death. “The nothingness before which Angst brings us reveals the nullity
that determines Da-sein in its ground, which itself is as thrownness into
death” (308/285). In taking over death as the ground of its being, Da-sein
takes over the nothing as the basis of its understanding of possibilities and
its own self-understanding. This nothing reveals to it the ground of all of its
possibilities and therefore the being of the world into which it is thrown,
and to which it is in a complete and total attunement. “Da-sein understands
itself with regard to its potentiality-of-being in a way that confronts death in
order to take over completely the being that it itself is in its thrownness”
(382/350).
According to Heidegger, the world that authentic Da-sein takes over is a
Western world into which it has been thrown and which stems all the way
back to the “original” Greek experience of the truth of Being as aletheia.
In contrast to this world, the world of inauthentic Da-sein is understood in
terms of its objectivity. Inauthenticity is defined by a being-toward objec-
tively present things that are robbed of their possibility by being uprooted
from the world. Instead they are given their meaning by the fixed opinions
and referential relations of the They. Initially and for the most part, everyday
Da-sein understands its “potentiality-of-being in terms of the ‘world’ taken
care of” (270/250). The world of authentic Da-sein, on the other hand, is
beyond the valuations and measurements of the They, as it is not a thing at
all but is disclosed and characterized by the nothing. Herein lies the
ontological difference between the ground of beings, or Being, which does
not belong to the order of beings, and beings, which are dependent upon
Being for their being. Da-sein straddles this ontological divide. Belonging
to its being is a prereflective understanding of Being inhering in its attune-
ment to the whole of the world that is beyond its conscious grasp. At the
same time, Da-sein’s being is dependent upon Being, which is the basis of
its self understanding and of its relations in the world.
The ontological uniqueness of Da-sein is depicted in the temporalization
of Angst wherein it is at once cleared of its particularity. “Ecstatic temporality
clears the There primordially” (351/321). While at the same time this clearing
or nothing must give rise to possibilities in being temporally distinguished

by a movement “out of ” and a movement “forward to” on the basis of a being
called “forth to possibilities.” In a being called forth to possibilities, project
throws the nothing as the horizon of Da-sein’s possibilities and at the same
time Da-sein meets or receives this nothing in the possibilities that are
circumscribed by it in its understanding. “We showed that and how tempo-
rality constitutes the disclosedness of the there. World is also disclosed in
the disclosedness of the There. . . . The existential and temporal condition of the
possibility of the world lies in the fact that temporality, as an ecstatical unity, has
something like a horizon” (365/333). This movement out of and forward to
unfolds as the ecstatic temporality of the existential identity of Da-sein and
world held in Angst.
The temporalization of death, then, signifies a movement and character-
izes the futural ecstasis of temporality. Being-guilty signifies Da-sein’s past,
or “having-been.” “Letting-come-toward-itself that perdures the eminent possi-
bility is the primordial phenomenon of the future” (325/299). Significantly,
this future that perdures the eminent possibility of death is not an outwardly
moving future. Da-sein does not head toward its future in a forward move-
ment as if it were engaged in a series of immediacies or nows. The future
comes toward Da-sein’s having-been, its being-guilty, in a backward facing
movement. “In the call, Da-sein ‘is’ ahead of itself in such a way that at the
same time it directs itself back to its thrownness” (291/268). In this sense,
Heidegger’s conception of temporality breaks with the linear conception of
time. “What is characteristic of the ‘time’ accessible to the vulgar under-
standing consists, among other things, precisely in the fact that it is a pure
succession of nows, without beginning and without end, in which the
ecstatic character of primordial temporality is leveled down” (329/302).
Authentically understood, Da-sein’s temporality is finite. However, its fini-
tude is not determined by the closing off of its future in the approach of its
physical death, which is a leveled down understanding of death. The fini-
tude of Da-sein is disclosed by the fact that the future points back to the
ground of its possibilities, thereby making it the sole and thus finite ground
from which Da-sein may understand its possibilities. Finitude lies in circum-
scribing the ground of Da-sein’s possibilities.
Theodore Kisiel, on the other hand, interprets temporality in a linear
manner by claiming that Da-sein moves in a forward movement from birth,
“which is precipitating us inexorably toward our death.”12 In this “stretching
itself along between birth and death” the self of Da-sein, he claims, is estab-
lished as temporality.13 But Da-sein does not move forward from its birth to
its death in a linear manner. Da-sein’s future comes toward its history and
converges with it in the present. Moreover, being-toward-death is not an

end toward which Da-sein is inevitably or inexorably on the way to.
Heidegger is explicit: being-toward-death is not a being toward the end of
Da-sein’s life; being-toward-death is a mode of being that belongs to Da-sein’s
actual existence. Being-toward-death is the enduring and the relating to the
nothing of Angst. “Being-toward-the-end must hold itself in this very threat,
and can so little phase it out that it rather has to cultivate the indefiniteness
of this certainty” (265/245). Indeed, Da-sein is rather born from out of its
death. For the future (nothing, death) must first be projected as the horizon
on the basis of which Da-sein will come toward itself understandingly in the
present. This is the meaning of the being of Da-sein as a temporality. Da-sein
finds itself in the convergence of the future and the having-been in the
present. “We call the unified phenomenon of the future that makes present
in the process of having-been temporality” (326/300).
Temporality, therefore, gathers and brings together the relation of being-
toward-death and being-guilty. It is the ontological meaning of the being of
Da-sein. And as the future does not point outwardly but comes toward its
having-been, Da-sein’s having-been is not prior to the future, but rather
arises from out of it. “Da-sein can be authentically having-been only because
it is futural. In a way, having-been arises from the future” (326/299).
Da-sein’s having-been arises from its future because what has been must
constantly be taken up as a possibility for the future in the present in order
for it to be at all. “Having-been arises from the future in such a way that the
future that has-been (or better, is in the process of having-been) releases
the present from itself ” (326/300). But the future is only in the process of
a having-been by virtue of the present. Only by virtue of Da-sein’s relations
to others and to possibilities in its actual existence is the nothing of the
future distinguished from the nothing of having-been. Without being called
forth to possibilities the future and Da-sein’s history remain undifferenti-
ated in the nothing of Angst.
Thus neither the being that comes toward (future, death) nor the being
to which the future comes toward (having-been, guilt) is a personal self.
There is no personal Da-sein in the disclosedness of Da-sein’s potentiality-
of-being, only the general ontological structure of this potentiality that
exists as temporality. As the world is disclosed in an existential identity with
the whole of being of Da-sein in its being-toward-death and being-guilty, the
being of Da-sein is not a part of the world, it is one with the world.
Insofar as Dasein temporalizes itself, a world is, too. Temporalizing itself

with regard to its being as temporality, Dasein is essentially “in a world” on
the basis of the ecstatic and horizonal constitution of that temporality.

The world is neither objectively present nor at hand, but temporalizes
itself in temporality. It “is” “there” together with the outside-itself of the
ecstasies. If no Da-sein exists, no world is “there” either. . . . The world is
transcendent, grounded in the horizonal unity of ecstatic temporality.
It must already be ecstatically disclosed so that innerworldly beings can
be encountered from it (365–366/334).
Against the horizon of the nothing, the world as such, Da-sein comes to
itself in its particularity on the basis of the possibilities that it relates to and
its being-with other Da-seins. “Da-sein, as itself, has to become, that is, be what
it is not yet” (243/226).
In fact, the future is unbounded, for it is characterized by the nothing of
Angst. “The primordial and authentic future is the toward-oneself, toward
oneself, existing as the possibility of a nullity not-to-be-bypassed” (330/303).
This nullity belonging to Angst is without limits. “In the structure of thrown-
ness as well as in that of project, essentially lies a nullity” (285/263). Thus
there are no boundaries inherent to the temporal structure of the ecstasies
belonging to Da-sein. The ecstasies of the future and having-been are null
throughout. The being of Da-sein is therefore open. “This being bears in its
ownmost being the character of not being closed” (132/125). In this way
Da-sein is ahead of itself, as the nothing of being-toward-death is projected as
a ground prior to the individual self-understanding of a particular Da-sein.
Thus with the temporalization of Angst an opening is cleared for possi-
bilities to show themselves on the horizon of the nothing. On the basis of
the ecstatic unfolding of the existential identity of the whole of the world
together with the whole of the being of Da-sein, Da-sein first encounters its
possibilities in the present, along with itself and its being-with others by
virtue of mood. “[F]actical Da-sein, ecstatically understanding itself and its
world in the unity of the There, comes back from these horizons to the
beings encountered in them. Coming back to these beings understand-
ingly is the existential meaning of letting them be encountered in making
them present; for this reason they are called innerworldly” (366/334–335).
Possibilities point back to the nothing of Angst, the opening letting possi-
bilities show themselves as they are. In light of possibilities that are
encountered on the basis of this attunement, being-toward-death shows
itself as a ground.
But it is not the possibilities themselves that determine the world or the
being of Da-sein. Authentic Da-sein is not defined by what it does, or by
the successes or failures of its projects. Such an understanding is steeped
in the leveling down of possibilities belonging to inauthentic Da-sein.

“Being out for something possible and taking care of it has the tendency of
annihilating the possibility of the possible by making it available” (261/241).
Da-sein becomes an authentic self not in the taking up of definite possibili-
ties, but by taking up the ground from which its possibilities and relations
to others are rooted. Relating to its possibilities and to others, the authen-
ticity of Da-sein is disclosed, and it is disclosed as Mitda-sein, for Da-sein’s
selfhood is found among its relations with others amidst shared possibili-
ties on the basis of its attunement to the groundless ground disclosed in
Angst. Da-sein therefore realizes its own potentiality of being together with
“the possibility of letting the others who are with it ‘be’ in their ownmost
potentiality-of-being” (298/274).
Significantly, because the unfolding of the ecstasies of Da-sein’s tempo-
rality occurs as a relation of the nothing to itself it does not happen
dialectically. Nothing is being related in the relation of death to being-
guilty. There is therefore nothing to know in this coming back to, for it is
Angst coming back to Angst. The whole of being-toward-death (nullity,
future, project) comes back to the whole of being-guilty (nullity, having-
been, thrownness) in and as the nothing. Therefore, in a relating of death
to itself that which is relating and that which is being related to are one and
the same—the totality of the disclosedness of world and Da-sein in the
nothing of being-toward-death. Thus there is no sublation (aufgehoben) of
one mode of being into a higher mode of being that incorporates within it
the first mode of being. What Da-sein comes back to is the ground from
which Da-sein leaves—its disclosure in Angst, the uncanniness of the call of
conscience that speaks of nothing. “Just as the present arises in the unity of
the temporalizing of temporality from the future and the having-been, the
horizon of a present temporalizes itself equiprimordially with those of the
future and the having-been” (365/334).
Here is where Da-sein prereflectively meets Being in the stillness that
gives rise to the present through the relation of the nothing (future) to
itself (having-been) in a manner of truth described as a “letting-be”
belonging to aletheia. Coincidently, the same structure of temporality is
depicted in Heidegger’s 1964 lecture, “Time and Being,” where he discusses
the finitude of Being in terms of historical epochs. “Approaching, being
not yet present, at the same time gives and brings about what is no longer
present, the past, and conversely what has been offers future to itself. The
reciprocal relation of both at the same time gives and brings about the
present.”14 The prereflective meeting of Da-sein and Being is prepared for
in the holding open of Angst in “wanting to have a conscience.”
Angst and Wanting to have a Conscience
In “Plato’s doctrine of truth” Heidegger argues that Plato introduces a new

model of truth that founds the correspondence theory of truth by “yoking”
sight to the idea. I have suggested in the Introduction that Heidegger
follows in Plato’s tradition of introducing new models of truth but instead
yokes Angst to aletheia so to reorient Da-sein back to the concealment
belonging to it. Interestingly, Heidegger notes that those initiates who are
to follow on the path of Plato’s reversal of truth must “want” to attune their
sight to the form of the idea. “Whoever wants to act and has to act in a world
determined by ‘the ideas’ needs, before all else, a view of the ideas. And
thus the very essence of παιδεια consists in making the human being free
and strong for the clarity and consistency of insight into essence.”15 Simi-
larly, Heidegger thinks that to exist in an authentic understanding of truth
by taking up a relation to one’s being-toward-death, a desire is needed. This
desire Heidegger identifies as a “wanting to have a conscience” that lies in
a “resoluteness” for Angst, that is, a holding back of the self.
Therefore, it is not enough that Da-sein tarry with the nothing in order to
access the ground of its existence. Da-sein must want to take up its ground
and it must decide to do so by existing in the nothing of Angst. “But making
up for not choosing signifies choosing to make this choice—deciding for a
potentiality-of-being, and making this decision from one’s own self”
(268/248). This decision, which Heidegger will spell out in section 74 as a
loyalty to one’s heritage, is concomitant with the choice to accept and relate
to Angst. Choosing Angst is one with hearing the call. “To the call of
conscience there corresponds a possible hearing. Understanding the
summons reveals itself as wanting to have a conscience” (270/249). Indeed, it
is because Da-sein already has a prereflective understanding of its ground
that Da-sein is able to listen to the call. Still, what is understood in the
summons is not anything definite, but rather the indefinite nothing of Angst.
“Wanting to have a conscience becomes a readiness for Angst” (296/272).
In hearing the silent call of conscience Da-sein is brought to Angst, or
being-toward-death. But this moment is fleeting and says nothing. It leaves
one still. But then it leaves. One is paralyzed in Angst for only so long, and
not as long as one is. “Angst only brings one into the mood for a possible
resolution. The present of Angst holds the Moment in readiness [auf dem
Sprung], as which it, and only it, is possible” (344/316). But to be guilty as
long as one is, to exist as being-toward-death at every moment and constantly,
Da-sein must not only experience Angst but it must make Angst an everyday
part of its life. For this, Da-sein must be resolute. It must attest to its
being-toward-death in a readiness for Angst. “We shall call the eminent,

authentic disclosedness attested in Da-sein itself by its conscience—the
reticent projection upon one’s ownmost being-guilty which is ready for Angst—
resoluteness” (296–297/273). To be ready for Angst, then, is not simply to be
open to the possibility of hearing the call. A readiness for Angst is to attune
one’s listening to the nothing from wherein the call arises.16 Seeing the
world through the nothing of death is to open up a world revealed in silence
by the call. It is to attune one’s hearing to the world that one already prere-
flectively understands and therefore may hear in silence. In resoluteness
Da-sein maintains this kind of listening by holding open the nothing of
Angst and by demanding Angst of itself. “Resoluteness was characterized . . .
as demanding Angst of oneself” (305/282).
Therefore the ability to take up death and guilt as constant and ever
present modes charactering Da-sein’s existence as temporality lies in reso-
luteness. “Resoluteness understands the ‘can’ of its potentiality-for-being-
guilty only when it ‘qualifies’ itself as being-toward-death” (306/283 see also
305/282). Authenticity, then, occurs in the “anticipation” and the readiness
for the nothing in resoluteness, that is, in the enduring and holding of
Angst. “The indefiniteness of death discloses itself primordially in Angst. But
this primordial Angst strives to expect resoluteness of itself” (308/285).
“Although it always becomes certain in resoluteness, the indefiniteness of
one’s own potentiality-of-being, however, always reveals itself completely only
in a being-toward-death” (308/285).
In the taking up of Angst, of death, in resoluteness, the structure of the
authentic meaning of Da-sein is established as temporality. “In its death,
Da-sein must absolutely ‘take itself back.’ Constantly certain of this, that is,
anticipating, resoluteness gains its authentic and whole certainty” (308/284).
Angst clears Da-sein in its being-there in the sense of freeing it from what is
objectively present, and directs Da-sein toward that which is indefinite, the
nothing, the existential identity of Da-sein and world. In taking itself back
in death Da-sein holds open the nothing by demanding Angst of itself in a
movement forward and a movement back that converges in the present.
Holding open the nothing creates a space that will allow possibilities to
arise as they are in the open or clearing that is the totality of Da-sein and
world disclosed and endured in the stillness of the nothing and the holding
back of the self in Angst. This stillness allows for the stance of Sein-lassen
belonging to Heidegger’s model of truth as aletheia. By enduring and
holding open Angst Da-sein is cleared and allows for possibilities to arise as
they are by virtue of a total attunement to the world, or what I have charac-
terized as an ontological occlusion. This interpretation of resolution is in
line with Heidegger’s later account of resoluteness in “The Origin of the

Work of Art,” a self-interpretation that, according to Michel Haar, does
“hermeneutic violence.”17 There Heidegger writes: “The resoluteness
intended in Being and Time is not the deliberate action of a subject but the
opening up of a human being, out of its captivity in beings, to the openness
of Being.”18
The violence Haar speaks of in Heidegger’s retrospective interpretation is
linked to the widely held view that Heidegger’s endorsement of German
National Socialism is rooted in his notion of resolution.19 Johannas Fritsche
believes that the freedom for death that Heidegger speaks of in being-to-
ward-death is the death of a soldier who must resolutely fight and be willing
to die for Deutschland. He links Heidegger’s discussion of historicity in Being
and Time to the rhetoric of politics definitive of Heidegger’s age and argues
that Germans would have easily understood Heidegger’s call to take up the
German destiny during the time of its publication.20 This debate is beyond
the scope of this book. But the ontological underpinning that may support
this tendency in Heidegger’s thinking is found in Heidegger’s configuration
of the relation of Being to Da-sein in mood. In this configuration the whole
of the being of Da-sein is mapped onto the whole of the being of the world
and held together in mood. This existential identity of the world and Da-sein
are fitted together in an ontological occlusion as the whole of Da-sein’s
attunement to the whole of the being of the world. However, while this rela-
tion prereflectively bounds Da-sein inseparably to its world in mood, it
simultaneously occludes, closes Da-sein off, from a relation to other worlds
that it is not attuned or fitted for. I will discuss this twofold sense of occlusion
more in the following two chapters in relation to Mitda-sein.
Thus with the move towards resoluteness, Heidegger aims to cement a
shift from a being-toward what is objectively present to a being-toward the
nonpresent, concealed ground of meaning that releases and circumscribes
possibilities. This shift, which signals the move from inauthenticity to
authenticity, is made possible by deciding to relate to, expect, endure,
demand, and embrace Angst. But because the transition from inauthen-
ticity to authenticity is brought about by a decision on Da-sein’s part, some
commentators have argued that it points to a lingering subjectivism in Being
and Time that vanishes in Heidegger’s later writings, where it is Being that is
the saving grace.21 However, to say that Angst must be chosen is to say that
Da-sein must hold itself out into the nothing and endure this nothing as its
ground—the groundless ground—from which it receives its possibilities
and by which its possibilities are understood.22 This means that Da-sein
must be still, holding back its subjective self-assertion so to allow beings and
others to show themselves as they are from out of the world, the “truth of
Being”, into which it has been thrown.
The decision to endure Angst and hold open the nothing is therefore a
choice to hold back the subjective self. This activity of holding back the self
is of a passivity that is akin to the “trace of willing” that disappears in what
the so-called later Heidegger states is the proper approach to “release-
ment,” “letting be,” and the “openness to the mystery” in his Memorial
Address (1959). “[R]eleasement toward things and openness to the mystery
never happen of themselves. They do not befall us accidentally. Both
flourish only through persistent, courageous thinking.”23 This courageous
or “meditative thinking does not just happen by itself any more than does
calculative thinking. At times it requires a greater effort. It demands more
practice.”24 In Conversation On a Country Path about Thinking (1959),
Heidegger describes the practice of meditative thinking as a “waiting” and
a willing of nonwilling.25 “Non-willing means, therefore: willingly to
renounce willing.”26 This waiting is indeed akin to the stillness belonging to
the holding open of the nothing and the enduring of Angst in Being and
Time. In accepting death as its horizon, the indeterminate nothing circum-
scribes possibilities that are now no longer understood in terms of their
objective presence, nor in terms of the interpretations of the They or the
They-self, but in light of what gives to them presence—Being.
Resoluteness, then, does not suggest to Da-sein any definite possibilities
but only the world from which possibilities are to be understood and the
certain manner or relation toward possibilities. To present and suggest
possibilities is the business of inauthentic Da-sein. “On what is it to resolve?
Only the resolution itself can answer this. It would be a complete misunder-
standing of the phenomenon of resoluteness if one were to believe that it is
simply a matter of respectively taking up possibilities presented and
suggested” (298/275). Resoluteness, to the contrary, is a matter of taking
up a world. In resoluteness, Da-sein “frees itself for its world” (298/274).
Not the world of things but the authentic ground of the world into which
Da-sein has been thrown. It is to this world that Da-sein is in a complete
attunement with, an attunement that it brought into accord through the
relations that it gives rise to once Da-sein is “in the truth.”
Nevertheless, an understanding of this shift can only be guaranteed by
Heidegger’s conception of truth as aletheia. Without “discovery,” which is
the term Heidegger uses to discuss the activity of Da-sein’s relations to its
possibilities, Da-sein is immobilized in Angst. Without aletheia there is no
Da-sein, neither resolute nor irresolute. Only by virtue of possibilities can
the undifferentiated and indeterminate nothing get determined as a
ground, albeit an unbounded or groundless ground that is bounded by the

possibilities and relations that it supports. “As self-understanding in one’s
ownmost potentiality of being, wanting-to-have-a-conscience is a mode of
disclosedness of Da-sein. . . . But the potentiality-of-being is understood only
by existing in this possibility” (295/272). To exist in this possibility is to be
with others amidst shared possibilities in a relation of disclosedness to
discovery. “Being-true (truth) means to be discovering” (219/201). This is
why Heidegger immediately introduces the notion of primordial truth,
which characterizes both Da-sein’s disclosedness and the character of its
relation to possibilities, after introducing Entschlossenheit. “With the phenom-
enon of resoluteness we were lead to the primordial truth of existence”
(307/284).
Once Da-sein is “in the truth,” it attests to the certainty of death and to
the truth of this disclosure as its authenticity in resoluteness. “Now in reso-
luteness the most primordial truth of Da-sein has been reached, because it
is authentic” (297/273). Indeed resoluteness leads directly to aletheia. Conse-
quently, Heidegger identifies resoluteness with the truth. “[T]he analysis of
anticipatory resoluteness led us to the phenomenon of primordial and
authentic truth. . . . [P]rimordial and authentic truth must guarantee the
understanding of the being of Da-sein and of being in general” (316/292).
In resoluteness, then, the fantastical demand of being-toward-death is taken
up as an actual mode of existing characterizing authentic Da-sein. “As
authentic being a self, resoluteness does not detach Da-sein from its world,
nor does it isolate it as free floating ego. . . . Resoluteness brings the self
right into its being together with things at hand, actually taking care of
them, and pushes it toward concerned being-with the others” (298/274).
This concern for others happens in the yoking of Angst to aletheia where
Da-sein comports itself to the groundless ground of the nothing and lets
what presences come to be in its being-in-the-world with others amidst
shared possibilities that are of concern to those mutually attuned. Moving
out of its paralysis in Angst, Da-sein stands resolutely, “letting what presences
in the surrounding world be encountered in action” (326/300). In letting
what presences come to be from out of the world, Da-sein is in the truth
discovering. “As a being that is disclosed and disclosing, and one that
discovers, Da-sein is essentially, ‘in the truth’” (256/236).
Aletheia brings the whole of the being of Da-sein back to its possibilities in
discovery in such a way that the stillness of the holding open of Angst clears
the being of Da-sein as an opening for possibilities wherein its relations to
others will unfold. “In the summons, Da-sein gives itself to understand its
ownmost-potentiality-of-being that is characterized by the relation of death
to itself. Thus this calling is a keeping silent. The discourse in conscience

never comes to utterance. Conscience only calls silently, that is, the call
comes from the soundlessness of uncanniness and calls it to become still”27
(296/273). In the stillness of the nothing, Da-sein takes up the comport-
ment of letting-be (Sein-lassen) belonging to aletheia. In this comportment
Da-sein keeps open the character of possibility in its relation to beings, and
especially to others, by encountering them through an understanding
circumscribed by their ground where they may show themselves as they are
in the stillness that comes with the holding open of the nothing and the
holding back of the self.28 Later Heidegger will use the concept of Gelassen-
heit to characterize this stillness in Da-sein’s relation to Being.
But before turning to the next chapter we must ask an obvious question.
Why should Da-sein want or desire Angst, let alone pursue and hold it open as
its ownmost possibility? The existentialist response is that Angst, the nothing,
is at the root of human existence and once Da-sein has had the experience of
Angst there is no turning away from the knowledge that existence is ground-
less. Authentic Da-sein must therefore constantly choose itself and in doing
so it pays heed to the nothing that the Angst of being-toward-death discloses.
Assuming full responsibility for its choices, Da-sein acknowledges that there is
no ground to its possibilities aside from its own choosing.
In complete opposition to this interpretation, Heidegger’s ontological
response is that the holding open the nothing of Angst allows Being to
“presence,” and allows Da-sein to respond to what shows itself, instead of to
the projections of its world that are given to it by the interpretations of the
They. This response is guided by Heidegger’s belief in the “historicity” of
Da-sein and its world. What shows itself in an authentic understanding of
Being are possibilities that belong to the world characterized by genera-
tions past and future generations yet to come. This world has been covered
over by the machinations of the They and the hold that the understanding
of Being as objective presence has gained over everyday thought and activity
rendering only what is present in the “now” meaningful. Reversing this
course of Metaphysics initiated by Plato is crucial for Heidegger. Indeed,
the existentialist idea that humans can be the ground of their own choices
and determine their own destiny is itself an outgrowth of technological
thinking rooted in an understanding of Being as objective presence.
Returning Da-sein back to the world as such is how Heidegger aims to
free Da-sein from the grip of subjectivity and the consequences of techno-
logical existence that I discussed in Chapter 1. By dissolving the boundaries
of subjectivity into the nothing of Angst and refiguring the self in relation to
the possibilities that it understands on the basis of the ground of its being
(the world)—the nothing—Heidegger conceives the self’s boundaries as

integrally tied to the boundaries of the world and to other Da-seins. However,
there can be no certainty without joining disclosedness to discovery, as in
the projection of the nothing no possibilities are to be found. Yoking Angst
to aletheia is the first step toward this reconfiguration of self in relation to its
world and it is the precondition for finitude, which happens internal to the
nothing by way of the relations that it gives rise to and circumscribes.29
In joining Angst to aletheia a new alliance to possibilities is established that
links Da-sein’s self-understanding to its understanding of others and to its
taking up of shared possibilities on the basis of its prereflective attunement
to Being.
Chapter 4
Angst and Aletheia: Finitude and the

Nondialectical Relation of Da-sein and Being
In the previous two chapters I argued that the totality of the being of
Da-sein disclosed in being-toward-death and characterized by the nothing
of Angst frees Da-sein not only from its inauthentic possibilities, as
Heidegger intends, but from everyone of its possibilities all at once,
including the possibility of its own self-relation, which necessitates a rela-
tion to the world. Being-toward-death exposes the whole of the being of
world, emptied of significance and meaning, together with the whole of the
being of Da-sein, uprooted from all of its relations and possibilities. In this
“existential identity” where the whole of the being of the world and the
whole of the being of Da-sein are disclosed in their totality in the undiffer-
entiated nothing of Angst, Da-sein stands in a paralysis. This is why Heidegger
repeatedly states that Da-sein’s “ownmost possibility is nonrelational ”
(263/243).
In the resolute taking up of being-toward-death in being-guilty, stage two
of Angst, the undifferentiated nothing of the identity of the whole of Da-sein
and the whole of the world is configured temporally. The existentiales of
being-toward-death and being-guilty are mapped onto the temporal ecsta-
sies of the future and having-been, respectively. Temporality structures this
relation of the nothing to itself as a future (being-toward-death, pro-ject)
that comes toward a having-been (being-guilty, thrownness) whereby the
present is both released and understood between this movement. This
movement is characterized by a stillness, as temporality unfolds as a relation
of the nothing to itself—an enduring of Angst. The temporality of Da-sein
prepares for a certain kind of finitude where the nothing remains
unbounded yet, paradoxically, is limited by the understanding that it
bounds through the opening it creates for possibilities to show themselves.
With the temporalization of the nothing, the “nonrelational” disclosure
of stage one of Angst is overcome and death fulfills its demand to be “culti-
vated as possibility, and endured as possibility in our relation to it” (261/241).
Temporality, then, clears the being of Da-sein as an individuated totality

that is open as a ground for possibilities. Nevertheless, this individuation is
characterized through and through by the undifferentiated nothing of
Angst and is therefore boundless. And while Angst is resolutely taken up as
a way of existing in being-guilty through the projection of the nothing in
temporalization, it is still the nothing that is being related to in the unfolding
of ecstatic temporality. For John Paul Sartre, this nothing signifies the root-
lessness of all foundations and therefore frees the subject to create his or
her own life situations independent of any external ground. For Heidegger,
to the contrary, the world bounds the freedom of an individual Da-sein.
The nothing is not an empty nothing, but rather points to the being of the
world, the truth of Being.
In being-toward-death I have shown that the boundaries of Da-sein’s
subjectivity dissolve into the nothing together with the boundaries of the
world in Angst. The foundation, therefore, is set to reconfigure the being of
Da-sein along with the being of the world. This occurs in the reestablish-
ment of Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities and to others as a
being-in-the-world. Da-sein is put back into these relations with others and
with its possibilities by aletheia, which structures and gives meaning to the
temporalization of the nothing of being-toward-death and positions it as a
ground. The possibilities that are circumscribed by being-toward-death in
Angst are what point to the nothing as their ground. Still, possibilities do
not arise from the nothing, neither from the future of being-toward-death,
nor from the having-been of being-guilty.
Yet, in order for Da-sein to exist authentically it must exist as a being-
in-the-world and it must, therefore, be in a relation to possibilities and to
others. “Summoning the they-self means calling forth the authentic self to
its potentiality-of-being as Da-sein, that is, being-in-the-world taking care of
things and being-with others” (280/258). By virtue of these relations, the
undifferentiated nothing prereflectively manifests as the horizon of the
world in Da-sein’s attunement to the world. In other words, without arising
possibilities in the present given by the future that is in the process of a
having-been, the temporal ecstasies of the future and having-been, both
disclosed and characterized by the undifferentiated nothing of Angst,
remain indistinguishable. In this undifferentiated nothing there is no move-
ment; only nothing.
It is by yoking Angst to aletheia that Heidegger takes Da-sein out of its
paralysis in the nothing and back to being-in-the-world. The existential
identity of the whole of the being of Da-sein and the whole of the being of
the world in death are brought into an occlusion in the attunement of Angst
Angst and Aletheia 97
to the whole of the world disclosed in the nothing. Aletheia is what brings
the whole of the being of Da-sein into an accord with the whole of the being
of the world. Indeed, truth underwrites the certainty of Da-sein’s being-to-
ward-death as the groundless ground of all possibilities. Without truth, the
certainty of being-toward-death cannot be guaranteed. “Holding death for
true . . . Da-sein is certain of being-in-the-world” (265/244). Heidegger
adamantly asserts that the empirical certainty of factical death “in no way”
guarantees the existential “certainty” of being-toward-death (257/238).
The existential and ontological certainty of being-toward-death lies in reso-
lutely taking up death in being-guilty such that possibilities, including the
possibility of Da-sein’s own self relation, are understood by virtue of its
being-toward-death. Authenticity, therefore, lies in the yoking of Angst to
aletheia, or in the relation of disclosedness to discovery. “The mode of being
certain of it is determined by the truth (disclosedness) corresponding to it”
(264/244). Indeed, the circumscribing of possibilities by the nothing is
how beings are “let be” to show themselves as they are, free from subjective
projection and objective reification, in the truth known as aletheia.
By yoking Angst to aletheia Heidegger asserts the equiprimordiality of
Da-sein’s disclosedness and its being-toward possibilities. “The being of
Da-sein and its disclosedness belong equiprimordially to the discoveredness
of innerworldly beings” (221/203). “Truth in its most primordial sense is
the disclosedness of Da-sein to which belongs the discoveredness of inner-
worldly beings” (223/205). In discovery Da-sein manifests its prereflective,
attuned understanding of truth in the relations that it has to its possibilities.
Consequently, Heidegger asserts that truth must be understood as a way of
being belonging to Da-sein. “Truth must be understood as a fundamental
existential of Da-sein” (297/273). “Discovering is a way of being of being-
in-the-world” (220/203).
What is at stake, then, with regard to truth is the character and manner of
Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities, to other Da-seins and to its own self.
In what Da-sein cares for, concerns itself with and in what matters to Da-sein,
the whole of its being is disclosed simultaneously with the whole of the being
of the world. Truth, therefore, characterizes both the totality of Da-sein’s
disclosedness, and the way in which this disclosedness is disclosed in Da-sein’s
projection upon its possibilities. By virtue of its disclosedness Da-sein
discovers beings, and already in its disclosedness is a relation of discovery to
beings, to itself and to other Da-seins. Consequently, what defines existence
as either authentic or inauthentic is the particular relation of disclosedness
to discovery that reveals the manner of Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities,
and therefore its prereflective understanding of Being.
It should come as no surprise, then, to find that the criticism that

Heidegger wages against the everyday understanding of truth is the same as
that which he wages against both the everyday understanding of being-to-
ward-death and being-guilty. Initially and for the most part, everyday Da-sein
stands in an inauthentic relation to truth because it understands Being in
the mode of objective presence. “But because objective presence is equated
with the meaning of being in general, the question whether this kind of
being of truth, and its initially encountered structure, are primordial or not
can not arise at all” (225/207).
Da-sein’s everyday, inauthentic prethematic understanding of Being as
objective presence manifests itself in the projection upon leveled down
possibilities. On the basis of this pre-reflective understanding of Being,
Da-sein comports itself in a being-toward the manageable and calculable
possibilities that are most readily available to it in its everyday being-in-the-
world. In circumscribing its understanding of possibilities by the world
given to it by the They and the They’s understanding of Being on the order
of objective presence, primordial truth is covered over. “The understanding of
being of Da-sein which was initially dominant, and still has not been overcome today
in a fundamental and explicit way, itself covers over the primordial phenomenon of
truth” (225/207 Heidegger’s emphasis). In section 44 of Being and Time,
Heidegger sets out to uncover this primordial phenomenon of truth as
aletheia. Aletheia, he claims, is the originary notion of truth that the pre-
Socratics understood prior to Plato’s reversal. According to Heidegger, this
notion of truth is the ontological basis of the everyday understanding of
truth as correspondence. “Our analysis starts from (a) the traditional concept
of truth and attempts to lay bare its ontological foundations. In terms of
these foundations the primordial phenomenon of truth becomes visible.
On the basis of this, (b) the derivativeness of the traditional concept of truth
can be indicated” (214/197).
The Ontological Foundation of the Everyday

Understanding of Truth
The traditional concept of truth that Heidegger seeks the ontological foun-
dations for is propositional truth. Propositional truth is based on an
agreement (adaequatio) between the knowledge of something asserted in a
proposition and the thing or matter that the proposition refers to in the
world. “The essence of truth lies in the ‘agreement’ of the judgment with its
object” (214/198). Working, then, to arrive at the ontological foundation
of this everyday understanding of truth as agreement, Heidegger gives the
example of a picture hanging on the wall that one judges to be crooked.

To verify this judgment Da-sein checks it with the actual picture on the wall.
Here the demonstration of the veracity of the judgment falls upon the
speaker who turns to see if indeed the picture is hanging crookedly on the
wall. The judgment is true if a correspondence exists between the judgment
and the fact or reality represented in that judgment. When an agreement is
demonstrated between the statement and the object of the statement one is
said to have knowledge of the truth. Therefore the “‘locus’” of the tradi-
tional model of truth lies in the judgment that either is, or is not, in a
correspondence with that which the judgment is about (214/198). The
locus of truth lies in the assertion of a statement made by a subject about an
object.
But Heidegger underscores, with respect to the above example, that what
comes into a relation under the aegis of propositional truth are not two
representations, one captured in the statement and the other of an image
of what is seen on the wall. “What one has in mind is the real picture and
nothing else” (217/201). This is because, according to Heidegger, what is
captured in the statement is a not an object, but rather Da-sein’s “being-
toward” that which the statement is about. What is spoken about is
understood in its enrootedness in the world and its relations arising from
out of this world. As Heidegger points out in his reading of Plato’s “Allegory
of the cave,” what the freed prisoner sees through the “yoking” of sight to
the truth revealed by the idea is accompanied by an education in the soul
that reorients the prisoner’s being to a different ground of truth that makes
possible the sighting of what is seen through Plato’s idea.1 This emphasis on
Da-sein’s being as a “being-toward” is at the root of Heidegger’s conception
of Da-sein as a being-in-the-world that has a prereflective understanding of
Being and is at the root of the ontological understanding of truth. Da-sein
does not name an isolated and independent self that then acts in the world
or relates to its possibilities. Da-sein is the very relation that it has to its
possibilities, in the above example, it is the relation that it has to the picture
on the wall.
The ontological foundation of the everyday understanding of truth for
Heidegger, therefore, rests not in the subject’s ability to reach out to an
object, or to know whether this object is as it is represented to, or by, the
subject. The ontological foundation of the everyday understanding of truth
is characterized by a being-toward, a relation of knowing to what is known.
The everyday understanding of truth thinks of this relation as one between
two objects: a statement and what the statement is about. Heidegger points
out, to the contrary, that the relation of agreement is epiphenomenal and
dependent upon a prior relation. This prior relation that characterizes the
ontological basis of truth is rooted in Da-sein’s being-toward or attunement
to the world, which circumscribes the meaning of what is captured in the
assertion. What is captured in a statement about something is therefore
Da-sein’s being-toward that something by way of its prereflective being-
toward the world and not the thing in its isolation, or objectivity. “Making
statements is a being toward the existing thing itself” (218/201). Repeating
as true something that Da-sein has not seen, or recycling the opinions of
the They by reiterating its interpretations, are only two ways that Da-sein
may be in a being-toward matters by virtue of its being-toward the world
where these issues have relevance and are of concern. “Even when Da-sein
repeats what has been said, it comes into a being toward the very beings that
have been discussed” (224/206).
Therefore the ontological foundation of propositional truth lies not in
the agreement between the statement and the thing, as generally presup-
posed. Agreement between the proposition and the thing referred to is
secondary and based upon a prior relation. What makes a correspondence
or an agreement possible in the first place is Da-sein’s being-toward, or
prereflective attunement to the world. Thus what Heidegger finds to belong
to every model of truth as its “essence” is the structure of a relation. “The
agreement of something with something has the formal character of the
relation of something to something. Every agreement, and thus ‘truth’ as
well, is a relation. But not every relation is an agreement” (251/199).
What determines Da-sein’s authenticity or inauthenticity, then, is the
character of Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities based in its attuned under-
standing, or being-toward the ground of its possibilities. When Da-sein
passes over the being of the world in projecting upon the leveled down
possibilities given to it by the referential relations of the They, it is in
“untruth.” Inauthentic Da-sein covers over the ground of its being and
attunes itself instead to the tangible and manageable things that are under-
stood on the order of objective presence. This is why in the relation
characterizing the everyday understanding of propositional truth both the
proposition and the thing referred to are reduced to the status of objects.
When the statement has been expressed, the discoveredness of beings

moves into the kind of being of innerworldly things at hand. But to the
extent that in this discoveredness, as a discoveredness of . . ., a relation to
things objectively present persists, discoveredness (truth) in its turn
becomes an objectively present relation between objectively present
things (intellectus et res). (225/206)
When the relation is between the judgment and the thing referred to in
isolation from the ground of truth, truth is reduced to the order of objec-
tive presence. In being-toward what is objectively present captured in the
judgment, both parties of the relation exist on the plane of objectivity,
passing over Being. “The statement is something at hand. The beings to
which it has a discovering relation are innerworldy things at hand or objec-
tively present. Thus the relation presents itself as something objectively
present” (224/206). This inauthentic understanding of truth as a corre-
spondence between objectively present things is the basic condition of
Da-sein thrown into a world determined by the They who understand Being
as objective presence. “Because it essentially falls prey to the world, Da-sein is in
‘untruth’ in accordance with its constitution of being” (222/204). “The existen-
tial and ontological condition for the fact that being-in-the-world is
determined by ‘truth’ and ‘untruth’ lies in the constitution of being of
Da-sein which we characterized as thrown project” (223/205).
Taken in by the world of the They that is understood in terms of its objec-
tivity, inauthentic Da-sein relates to itself and to others in the same manner
as it relates to objectively present things.2 The advantage to this mode of
existence is that Da-sein gains a sense of subjective certainty as it simultane-
ously relates to fixed and measured possibilities that have been given their
status and meaning by the calculations of the They. The disadvantage,
according to Heidegger, is that what escapes objectification, Being, the
world, the nothing, the being of others, Da-sein’s own being, is passed over
as insignificant. “Every mystery loses its power” in the They’s leveling down
of possibilities (127/119). Being-toward-death returns Da-sein to the
mystery, to the nonobjective groundless ground of its being. In the relation
of death to itself in being-guilty Da-sein shifts its attunement away from
objectively present things to the nothing. In the relation of the nothing of
Angst to aletheia, this nothing gets taken-up as a ground that shows itself
through the relations that aletheia structures, as we shall now see.
Truth and Being
The significance of truth to the overall project of Being and Time lies in how
it reveals Da-sein’s understanding of Being by virtue of the relations that it
structures (later Heidegger will amend the text of Being and Time to
introduce the notion of the “truth of Being,” see 35/31). “From time
immemorial, philosophy has associated truth with being” (212/196). And
this is because “being actually ‘goes together’ with truth” (213/197). “‘There
is’ [Es gibt] being—not beings—only insofar as truth is. And truth is only
because and as long as Da-sein is. Being and truth ‘are’ equiprimordially”
(230/211). Truth is the way in which Being is made manifest through the
manner of relations, or discovery, that Da-sein is engaged with in its being-
in-the-world. As the ground of all beings, Da-sein has a prereflective
understanding of Being that is revealed in its being-toward beings and rela-
tions towards others. In “what initially and for the most part shows itself,”
Being is there. (35/31). This is why Being and truth are inseparable. Being
is the ground of the beings discovered in truth, and Being is the ground of
Da-sein’s disclosedness by virtue of which it discovers beings in its being-in-
the-world. Being shows itself in the possibilities that it grounds, in the
relation of Da-sein’s disclosedness to its discovery. And truth shows the char-
acter of Da-sein’s understanding of its possibilities, which is rooted in its
prereflective understanding of Being. Thus in the truth, the ontic and onto-
logical, the existentiell and existential, come together in Da-sein’s relation
to beings and to others rooted in its attunement to Being.
Indeed, from the beginning of Western Philosophy onwards, Heidegger
consistently argues, Being and truth have been integrally related to each.
“In ontological problematics, being and truth have been brought together
since ancient times, if not identified. This documents the necessary connec-
tion of being and understanding, although perhaps concealed in its
primordial grounds” (183/172). Under the auspices of truth, then, Da-sein
relates to its possibilities, and in this relation it reveals its preconceptual
understanding of Being. “But if ‘there is’ [es gibt] being only when truth ‘is,’
and if the understanding of being always varies according to the kind of
truth, then primordial and authentic truth must guarantee the under-
standing of the being of Da-sein and of being in general” (316/292).
Truth is therefore integral to the understanding of Being, and it is also
inseparable from the being of Da-sein. “Da-sein expresses itself; itself—as a
being-toward beings that discovers” (224/205). Truth, or discovery charac-
terizes the how of Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities. “With and through it is
discoveredness; thus only with the disclosedness of Da-sein is the most primor-
dial phenomenon of truth attained . . . In that Da-sein essentially is its
disclosedness, and, as disclosed, discloses and discovers, it is essentially
‘true.’ Da-sein is in the truth” (221/203).
As I have argued in the previous chapters, without possibilities, without
discovery, or truth, there is no Being and there is no Da-sein. There is only
nothing. Truth therefore puts Da-sein back into a relation to beings and to
others through discovery. This is why Heidegger says that truth underwrites
the certainty of Da-sein’s being-toward-death and, consequently, the possi-
bility of the nothing being projected as a ground. Yet at the same time,
Heidegger implies on numerous occasions that truth, and by extension

Being, is dependent upon Da-sein. Statements he has made to this effect
have fueled the subject-centered interpretation of Da-sein in Being and Time
that I have been arguing against.
But truth means discoveredness of beings. All discoveredness, however, is

ontologically based in the most primordial truth, in the disclosedness of
Da-sein. (256/236)
Being-true as discovering is in turn ontologically possible only on the

basis of being-in-the-world. This phenomenon, in which we recognized a
basic constitution of Da-sein, is the foundation of the primordial pheno-
menon of truth. (219/201)
[O]nly so long as Da-sein is, that is, as long as there is the ontic possibility
of understanding being, “is there” [gibt es] being. (212/196)
Attempting to combat the plethora of misinterpretations of this latter

passage, Heidegger underscores in his “Letter on Humanism” (1946) that
“The sentence does not say that Being is the product of man.”3 He continues:
“Being is illuminated for man in the ecstatic projection [entwurf]. But this
projection does not create Being.”4 Indeed, as Da-sein’s project is null
throughout, characterized by the nothing, it cannot be said to determine
Being, or anything at all. Rather the nothing clears an opening for Being to
show itself by virtue of the possibilities that it reveals. Still, it is important to
guard against the subjectivist interpretation of Da-sein that asserts that
Heidegger reduces truth and Being to the being of Da-sein.5 William Blattner
claims that in Being and Time Heidegger puts forth a “subjectivist” notion of
Da-sein and Being because the understanding that Da-sein has of its possi-
bilities is “embedded in Da-sein’s comportment.”6 Despite the fact that
Heidegger does not reduce the meaning of beings to the decision of Da-sein,
Blattner believes that he does reduce Being to Da-sein’s disclosedness and
therefore may be regarded as privileging subjectivity. “My basic suggestion is
this: Heidegger’s early philosophy of being is focused in his ontological
idealism, the thesis that being (but not entities) depends on Da-sein.”7 Thus
he concludes that Heidegger may be categorized by his “temporal idealism”
and his “ontological idealism” because “being depends on Da-sein.”8 John
Haugeland also argues that ontical truth is independent of Da-sein. Da-sein’s
comportment is “beholden to the entities toward which they are comport-
ments.”9 Nevertheless he, like Blattner, claims that “ontological truth” is
under the domain of Da-sein since the being of entities belongs to Da-sein’s
disclosure.10 “Discovery of entities does indeed presuppose—hence is ‘rela-
tive’ to—Da-sein’s disclosure of their being (or a ‘paradigm’), which is
historical. But whether a way of life with its ontical comportments works or
not is not ultimately up to Da-sein, either individually or historically.”11
Therefore both Blattner and Haugeland argue that Heidegger is an onto-
logical idealist because Being is dependent on the disclosedness of Da-sein,
but that he is not an ontical idealist because Da-sein does not determine the
meaning of beings. Indeed, Heidegger does not claim that those matters
that we judge to be true are dependent upon human perception and inves-
tigation. For example, Newton’s laws of motion are not false or meaningless
without human recognition. Nor could one claim that these laws did not
exist prior to Newton’s discovery. The laws are only said to have come into
the framework of truth through Newton’s formulation of them and their
cultural acceptance. “As we have noted, being (not beings) is dependent
upon the understanding of being, that is, reality (not the real) is depen-
dent upon care” (212/196). Here Heidegger admits that Being is dependent
upon Da-sein. He also states clearly that without Da-sein truth as we know
and use it would have no purpose. “Before there was any Da-sein, there was
no truth; nor will there be any after Da-sein is no more” (226/208). Never-
theless, the charge of ontological idealism that Blattner and Haugeland
accuse Heidegger of is false. Being and Da-sein are interdependent. This
interdependency is laid out by the existential identity of the whole of the
being of Da-sein with the whole of the being of the world in being-toward-
death, a whole that is unbounded and characterized by the nothing, that is,
by the possibilities that are grounded by this whole.
While Heidegger does, in fact, join the fate of Da-sein’s disclosedness to
the disclosedness of Being, he does not reduce Being to the subjectivity of
Da-sein. This reading is rooted in a failure to adequately account for the
phenomenon of Angst, and the Mitda-sein of Da-sein. Being is not subordi-
nate to the being of a particular Da-sein because in the ground of Da-sein’s
being as being-toward-death there is no subjective Da-sein to speak of. The
whole of Da-sein and the whole of the world are disclosed in an undifferen-
tiated totality in the nothing of Angst. Therefore, Heidegger does not
subscribe to temporal idealism or to ontological idealism. The temporal
disclosure of Da-sein that constitutes its projection upon possibilities is
characterized by the unbounded nothing. The structure of Da-sein’s tempo-
rality is null project throughout. As such, the subjectivity of Da-sein does
not determine its possibilities nor does it determine Being. Rather, both the
selfhood of Da-sein and its prereflective understanding of Being are
dependent upon the relations that are actualized in the attunement of

Da-sein to its world.
In the holding open of Angst in temporality, Da-sein is a clearing,
characterized by the groundless ground of the nothing. This ground,
however, is not determined by a particular Da-sein, it is determined by
Da-sein’s relation to its possibilities, and its relations with others. In the
temporality of the present, which is circumscribed by the projection of the
nothing, Da-sein’s attunement to its world is manifest in the understanding
that Da-sein has of its possibilities and its being-with others. Indeed, Da-sein’s
own self-understanding is dependent upon this attunement. Thus what
reveals itself in the present belongs first to the world and to Da-sein’s rela-
tions in the world before it belongs to any one particular Da-sein, as the
individual selfhood of Da-sein happens alongside its relations in the world
with others. We will now see how the whole of the being of Da-sein and the
whole of the being of the world are brought into an occlusion (fitted
together) through the relation of Da-sein’s disclosedness in Angst to its
discovery of possibilities in truth.
The Primordial Meaning of Truth as Aletheia in Being and Time

and “On the Essence of Truth”
Heidegger argues that the essence of truth lies in the notion of a relation.
Truth, or discovery is defined by “a discoveredness of . . ., a relation to”
(225/206). In the traditional model of propositional truth the relation is
between two objectively present things: a statement and what is referred to
in the statement. With the concept of aletheia, Heidegger introduces a
different kind of relation to possibilities that complements Da-sein’s disclos-
edness in Angst. Heidegger’s conception of truth as aletheia arises from what
he says is “the oldest tradition of ancient philosophy” that originates with the
early Greeks. Aletheia, he claims, is the ontological foundation of the everyday
understanding of propositional truth. However, referring to his discussion of
truth in Being and Time in “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking”
(1964), Heidegger admits that raising the question of aletheia is not the same
as raising the question of truth. “For this reason, it was inadequate and
misleading to call aletheia in the sense of opening, truth.”12 Heidegger is also
forced to acknowledge that the ancient Greeks prior to Plato did not have an
understanding of truth as aletheia, as he had always claimed.13
Nevertheless, he continues to maintain that aletheia, understood as “the
opening of self-concealing” that grants presence to what is unconcealed, is
the precondition for any model of truth and belongs primordially to the
relation of Da-sein and Being.14 Essentially, Heidegger maintains that for
there to be any kind of truth wherein beings are to be put into a relation,
for example, of agreement, there must be a manifestation of beings.
Da-sein’s disclosedness, which entails its relation to Being, is the possibility
for such a manifestation. Still, by declaring that it was wrong to claim in
Being and Time that aletheia is the root of the correspondence theory of
truth, Heidegger confesses that he does not arrive at the interpretation of
truth as aletheia by adhering to his phenomenological method wherein
aletheia is found to lie at the basis of the everyday understanding of propo-
sitional truth. However, this fact only underscores Heidegger’s commitment
to aletheia, which is the model of truth that he upholds throughout all of his
writings. It also testifies to the significance of the nothing disclosed in Angst,
as aletheia demands an attunement to the nothing and away from objective
presence so that Da-sein’s relations may take the form of a “letting be” (sein-
lassen) belonging to aletheia.
In Being and Time Heidegger does little more than lay out the skeleton of
his notion of truth. Nevertheless, there he does refer to aletheia’s essential
features: “concealment,” “unconcealment” and the stance of “letting-be.”
These aspects are the keystone to understanding Heidegger’s notion of
aletheia and are the foundation of every discussion of truth that Heidegger
embarks upon after Being and Time. Ernst Tugendhat, who has written one
of the most influential articles on Heidegger’s notion of truth, which I will
return to below, agrees: “the essential decisions, those which remain funda-
mental for everything that follows, are already taken here [in Being and
Time] and can therefore best be grasped here.”15 In “On the Essence of
Truth” (1943), where Heidegger expands upon the meaning of aletheia, he
supports this claim stating that the decisive steps are accomplished in Being
and Time through a challenge to the reign of subjectivity in the shift from a
focus on beings back to the ground of beings understood as aletheia.
The decisive question (in Being and Time, 1927) of the meaning of, that is,
of the project-domain (see p. 151), that is, of the openness, that is, of the
truth of Being and not merely of beings, remains intentionally
undeveloped . . .. Nevertheless, in its decisive steps, which lead from truth
as correctness to ek-sistent freedom, and from the latter to truth as con-
cealing and as errancy, it accomplishes a change in the questioning that
belongs to the overcoming of metaphysics.16
Indeed, Heidegger does not hide the fact that his entire project in
Being and Time is guided by the “presupposition” of truth. “Why must we
presuppose that there is truth? . . . ‘We’ presupposes truth because, ‘we,’

existing in the kind of being of Da-sein, are ‘in the truth’” (227/209). Still,
while Heidegger indicates the way to the truth of Being in his discussion of
aletheia in Being and Time, it remains undeveloped there. It may therefore be
helpful to draw on Heidegger’s later essay “On the Essence of Truth” to
situate the meaning of truth as aletheia first introduced in Being and Time.
At the same time, however, what Heidegger says about truth in that essay
has its roots in his discussion of Da-sein’s authentic disclosedness in Being
and Time. Therefore, it is not only this later essay, where a “turn” in Heide-
gger’s thinking is presumably made, that will help to shed light on his
notion of aletheia developed in Being and Time. I will equally draw on Being
and Time to help clarify the ideas discussed in this essay on truth and to
show the significance of Angst in making sense of the general meaning of
the truth of Being and its relation to the being of Da-sein.
Just as in Being and Time, Heidegger argues in “On the Essence of Truth”
that aletheia belongs to the root of Western thinking on truth. Aletheia, he
claims, “contains the directive to rethink the ordinary concept of truth in
the sense of the correctness of statements and to think it back to the still
uncomprehended disclosedness and disclosure of beings.”17 In Being and
Time, Heidegger identifies the notion of a relation as the lynch pin that
identifies all modes of truth. In “On the Essence of Truth” he continues to
seek out the one thing that distinguishes every form of truth as truth and
arrives at the same conclusion. “The essence of the correspondence is
determined rather by the kind of relation that obtains between the state-
ment and the thing. As long as this ‘relation’ remains undetermined and is
not grounded in its essence, all dispute over the possibility and impossi-
bility, over the nature and degree, of the correspondence loses its way in a
void.”18 In an attempt, then, to “transpose us in advance into the originally
essential domain of truth” Heidegger searches after the meaning of this
relation belonging to the primordial concept of truth.19
For the purposes of this discussion I will talk about truth, which equally
belongs both to Da-sein and to Being, with respect first to Da-sein then to
Being. On the side of Da-sein, truth names an openness that is character-
ized by an attunement that designates Da-sein’s comportment to, or
being-toward Being, the world, beings, itself and others. Openness
belongs to comportment and comportment, or attunement, is always
both a being-toward something and at the same time, and more primor-
dially, a being toward “being as a whole,” or Being, the ground of all
possibilities. “Comportment stands open to beings. Every open related-
ness is a comportment.”20 Heidegger portrays this open relatedness
belonging to comportment by the stance of letting-be. “Freedom for what
is opened up in an open region lets beings be the beings they are.

Freedom now reveals itself as letting beings be.”21
Allowing beings to presence in unconcealment through the openness of
Da-sein’s comportment to the ground of beings is how Da-sein lets beings
be as a “way of comportment” belonging to aletheia.22 Heidegger explains
that letting-be is not a mode of “indifference,” nor is it a mode of “neglect.”
“To let be is to engage oneself with beings.”23 To engage with beings in the
manner of letting-be means Da-sein “withdraws in the face of beings in
order that they might reveal themselves with respect to what and how they
are.”24 This withdrawal characterizes human freedom and comportment as
being “free for what is opened up in an open region.”25 “Freedom now
reveals itself as letting beings be.”26 It “is engagement in the disclosure of
beings as such.”27 And this engagement is possible only by virtue of a being-
toward beings as a whole, or Being. Indeed, this freedom speaks to an ease
with which Da-sein engages in its relations by being in an attunement with
the whole of the being of the world. Freedom, comportment and letting be
come together in the ek-sistent disclosure of Da-sein in relation to its possi-
bilities. “Ek-sistence, rooted in truth as freedom, is exposure to the
disclosedness of beings as such.”28 Here we can already see how being-to-
ward-death in Angst makes possible the withdrawal of self-assertion that
allows for the stance of letting-be belonging to aletheia in a comportment to
the nothing.
On the side of truth, or Being, the open is characterized by “being as a
whole” and “beings as a whole.” “[T]ruth is disclosure of beings through
which an openness essentially unfolds [west].”29 This openness, which also
belongs to Da-sein, is the region wherein beings show themselves. And as
Being is not itself a being the disclosure of “being as a whole” is not measur-
able and it cannot be calculated. “[F]rom the point of view of everyday
calculations and preoccupations this ‘as a whole’ appears to be incalculable
and incomprehensible. It cannot be understood on the basis of the beings
opened up in any given case, whether they belong to nature or to history.”30
This is why Being is characterized by the nothing and is concealed as the
ground of all possibilities. What Heidegger stresses here is that the concepts
and tools belonging to rationality cannot capture or describe Being.
However beings as a whole, including the totality of Da-sein’s relations, do
point to Being and to its presence in this whole. Being shows itself in the
manner of relations that hold together beings as a whole. Heidegger char-
acterizes this bringing together by the term “accord” (stimmen) which means
attunement. Being brings beings “into definite accord, still it remains indef-
inite, indeterminable.”31
Thus in the openness of truth, beings are unconcealed, they are brought
into the open. But not all beings are unconcealed at once. Only “this or that
being” that Da-sein comports itself toward.32 Still, truth belongs to Being
and Being is the ground of the understanding of “beings as such as a whole,”
and not just this or that being, or the ground of this or that understanding
belonging to a particular Da-sein.33 Concealment belongs to truth as the
dark side of the open. In Da-sein’s comportment to a particular being lies
Da-sein’s comportment to Being as such, and therefore to the whole of
beings and, consequently, to the whole of Being. In authentically relating to
any one particular being, Da-sein is relating to the ground of the whole of
the possible relations of meaning belonging to the world and so to “being
as a whole.” Therefore the unconcealment of a particular being has the
effect of unconcealing beings as a whole, and of concealing beings as a
whole at the same time. “Precisely because letting be always lets beings be
in a particular comportment that relates to them and thus discloses them,
it conceals beings as a whole.”34
Da-sein engages with the concealment of truth every time it discloses or
unconceals beings in its relation to “being as a whole” and “beings as a
whole.” “Letting-be is intrinsically at the same time a concealing. In the
ek-sistent freedom of Da-sein a concealing of being as a whole propriates
[ereignet sich]. Here there is concealment.”35 Concealment, being as a whole,
is therefore at the ground of all beings, including the being of Da-sein.
Under the aegis of truth, beings are brought into an accord with each other
and Da-sein is brought into an attuned accord with beings. “Man’s comport-
ment is brought into definite accord throughout by the openedness
of being as a whole.”36 Thus, the link between Da-sein and aletheia is
characterized by the accord between Da-sein’s openness and the openness
characterizing “being as a whole.” This accord shows itself in Da-sein’s rela-
tions to possibilities and being-with others in the manner of letting-be.
Attunement joins together the open region of truth where beings are
discovered along with others, with the open belonging to Da-sein’s comport-
ment to the concealment of truth. “As this letting-be it exposes itself to
beings as such and transposes all comportment into the open region.
Letting-be, i.e., freedom, is intrinsically exposing, ek-sistent. Considered in
regard to the essence of truth, the essence of freedom manifests itself as
exposure to the disclosedness of beings.”37
As “Ek-sistent,” Da-sein comports itself to the open region whereby beings
arise out of the free stance of letting-be. In this comportment, Da-sein is
itself the open. Withdrawing all sense of its particularity, Da-sein stands as
the clearing for possibilities to show themselves as they are, enrooted in a
world, and lets beings be. “To let-be, that is, to let beings be as the beings
which they are—means to engage oneself with the open region and its
openness into which every being comes to stand, bringing that openness, as
it were, along with itself.”38 In bringing the openness along with it in its
comportment toward beings, Da-sein preserves the openness and the
concealment belonging to truth by holding itself open in the stance of
letting-be. This is how Da-sein engages with beings and with the open—in
holding itself open. “Disclosedness itself is conserved in ek-sistent engage-
ment, through which the openness of the open region, i.e., the ‘there’
[‘Da’], is what it is.”39 This holding open of the openness of truth is reminis-
cent of the holding open of the nothing of Angst in Being and Time that
discloses the openness of the world in the enduring, relating, and readiness
for Angst in resoluteness and wanting to have a conscience.
But when Heidegger poses the question regarding the actual relationship
of Da-sein to the concealment of truth in “On the Essence of Truth,” his
answer is blatantly mystifying.
What conserves letting-be in this relatedness to concealing? Nothing less

than the concealing of what is concealed as a whole, of beings as such,
i.e., the mystery; not a particular mystery regarding this or that, but rather
the one mystery—that, in general, mystery (the concealing of what is
concealed) as such holds sway through man’s Da-sein.40
Heidegger does not describe what this concealing that holds sway “through
man’s Da-sein” and belongs to truth is, or how it happens. But he does say
how it does not happen.
[T]o reside in what is readily available is intrinsically not to let the con-
cealing of what is concealed hold sway. Certainly, among readily familiar
things there are also some that are puzzling, unexplained, undecided,
questionable. But these self-certain questions are merely transitional,
intermediate points in our movement within the readily familiar and thus
not essential.41
As in Being and Time where Heidegger also associates the forgetting of Being
with the kind of familiarity belonging to everydayness, in the essay under
discussion familiarity is rooted in not letting the concealing of what conceals
holds sway. To explain the holding sway that takes over Da-sein and brings
it into an accord with the concealment of “being as a whole,” Heidegger
draws upon the notion of attunement. “Letting beings be, which is an
attuning, a bringing into accord, prevails throughout and anticipates all the
open comportment that flourishes in it. Man’s comportment is brought

into definite accord throughout by the openedness of being as a whole.”42
In the proper attunement, then, Da-sein comes into an accord with being
as a whole. The concealed ground that gives meaning to all that is uncon-
cealed in Da-sein’s projection upon its possibilities is, therefore, manifest to
Da-sein in attunement. “As engagement in the disclosure of being as a
whole as such, freedom has already attuned all comportment to being as a
whole.”43 Heidegger is careful to stress that attunement should not be inter-
preted in a manner that would support the idea of a self, as if it were a
quality adhering to a subject.
However, being attuned (attunement) can never be understood as “expe-

rience” and “feeling,” because it is thereby simply deprived of its essence.
For here it is interpreted on the basis of something (“life” and soul”) that
can maintain the semblance of the title of essence only as long as it bears
in itself the distortion and misinterpretation of being attuned.44
Attunement does not arise from the depths of a self, but is what first
gives rise to a self. It is always together with the world to which Da-sein is
attuned. “Being attuned, i.e., ek-sistent exposedness to beings as a whole,
can be ‘experienced’ and ‘felt’ only because the ‘man who experiences,’
without being aware of the essence of the attunement, is always engaged in
being attuned in a way that discloses beings a whole.”45
Essentially, the debate about whether Heidegger undergoes a turn in his
thinking from a subjectivism in Being and Time to an emphasis on the influ-
ence of Being in his later writings may be cast as a question about
attunement. Is it Da-sein or the concealment belonging to truth that is
doing the attuning to being as a whole? The early Heidegger, it is said,
leaves it up to Da-sein to attune itself to the world. In the later Heidegger,
as the above quotations indicate, it is Being that is doing the attuning.
Without being aware of it “man” is “being attuned in a way that discloses
beings as a whole.” However, as I have shown, in Being and Time the inter-
dependency of Da-sein and Being is also established through the
dependence of both upon possibilities that allow Being to show itself
through Da-sein’s attunement. But I have been claiming not only that the
thinking of the later Heidegger is found in Being and Time, but also that
this early work helps to explain the thinking in his later writings on the
relationship between Da-sein and Being, specifically with regard to the
holding back of the self that is a requisite for the letting-be belonging to
aletheia. This holding back can most clearly be made sense of through the
enduring of the nothing in the cultivation of Angst, as I have described it.
While Heidegger brings in attunement to try to explain the relationship

of humans to Being as a whole in “On the Essence of Truth,” he merely
asserts the relationship as one of openness. In Being and Time we see more
clearly how it is that attunement may gain access to “being as a whole,” and
how by way of the attunement of Angst Da-sein stands in a comportment
characterized by the letting-be of truth belonging to aletheia. Indeed, the
openness of Da-sein and truth referred to in “On the Essence of Truth” has
its correlate in the clearedness of Da-sein introduced in Being and Time and
in Da-sein’s being as “not being closed” (132/125). This openness is made
possible by Angst, which clears the being of Da-sein in exposing it to the
nothing of its there divorced from all relations, including Da-sein’s own
self-relation and being-with others. But can we transport this openness, this
clearedness that exposes the totality of authentic Da-sein in the temporal
unfolding of its ecstasies to Being in general? Yes, because the being of the
world is included in the being of Da-sein disclosed in an existential identity
characterized by the nothing of being-toward-death.
Angst and Aletheia
In his “Letter on Humanism” (1946) Heidegger explains that the meaning

of “existence” in Being and Time is Da-sein as the clearing of Being. “On the
contrary the sentence says: man occurs essentially in such a way that he is
the ‘there’ [das ‘Da’], that is, the clearing of Being. The ‘Being’ of the Da,
and only it, has the fundamental character of ek-sistence, that is, of an
ecstatic inherence in the truth of Being.”46 I have claimed that the notion of
a clearing for the presencing of Being is first developed in Being and Time
through the temporalization of Angst, which “clears the There primordially”
(351/321). Moreover, it is in Being and Time that one may understand most
clearly how Being may presence to Da-sein in the holding open of the
nothing. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the role of the attunement
of Angst in bridging together the relation of disclosedness to discovery in
Being and Time, as well as how Angst opens the way for the comportment of
letting-be belonging to aletheia that positions Da-sein as the recipient of
Being in Heidegger’s later writings.
Da-sein stands as the clearing of Being in its resoluteness to cultivate and
to endure the nothing of Angst. This decision allows Da-sein to let beings be
in the holding open of Angst. Letting beings be from out of the stillness that
the relation of the nothing to itself indicates, frees Da-sein from its asser-
tion of subjectivity. In keeping the self back in the holding open of the
nothing, Da-sein engages with Being as a whole. This engagement is an
attunement. Temporally holding apart the ecstasies of the future and having
been creates an opening for Being. In this attuned holding open of Angst a
clearing is cleared for Being to presence. This is what it means to “want to
have a conscience,” it is the readiness to “hold open the constant absolute threat”
of the nothing disclosed in Angst (265–266/245). Circumscribed by the
groundless ground of the nothing of Angst, possibilities are let-be to show
themselves as they are from out of the open region of the truth.
Letting be is how beings presence from out of a concealment that belongs
to the primordial notion of truth as aletheia. To be in the truth discovering
means “to let beings be seen in their unconcealment (discoveredness),
taking them out of their concealment” (219/202). In the directional
holding apart of the ecstasies of temporality, an opening is created for possi-
bilities to show themselves from out of the groundless ground of the
nothing. Holding apart the temporal ecstasies is characterized by an
enduring of the nothing, which is the possibility for the world to manifest
itself in the relations that it grounds. This enduring in stillness is how
Da-sein prereflectively attunes itself to the being of the world as a whole,
which is prior to its individual selfhood. On the basis of this prereflective
attunement, Da-sein is in a prereflective being-toward the (concealed)
ground of its possibilities.
[T]he project character of understanding means that understanding

does not thematically grasp that upon which it projects, the possibilities
themselves. Such a grasp precisely takes its character of possibility away
from what is projected, it degrades it to the level of a given, intended
content, whereas in projecting project throws possibility before itself as
possibility, and as such lets it be. As projecting, understanding is the mode
of being in which it is its possibilities as possibilities. (145/136)
Thus in letting beings be, Da-sein is not exclusively in a being-toward possi-

bilities themselves, but in a being-toward the ground of possibilities—the
groundless ground that circumscribes its understanding on the basis of
which it will come to itself as a self through its relations with others. Da-sein
takes over being its own ground when it is in the truth projecting upon
possibilities in the relation of disclosedness to discovery. In the truth, then,
in projecting upon possibilities, Da-sein is in a being-toward the ground of
its possibilities. “In projectedness of its being upon the for-the-sake-of-which
together with that upon significance (world) lies the disclosedness of being
in general” (147/138). Referring to Being and Time in his “Letter on
Humanism,” Heidegger corrects the misinterpretation of projection as a
projection of the self-assertion of subjectivity and explains it as the opening

out to the clearing of Being.
If we understand what Being and Time calls “projection” as a representa-

tional positing, we take it to be an achievement of subjectivity and do not
think it in the only way the “understanding of Being” in the context of the
“existential analysis” of “being-in-the-world” can be thought—namely as
the ecstatic relation to the clearing of Being.47
In Being and Time possibilities are thus authentically understood as possibili-

ties and not as objectively present things because the understanding that
grasps these possibilities, or that circumscribes them, is a projection of the
nothing—a holding open of Angst. This kind of a relation to possibilities
that occurs simultaneously with a holding back of subjectivity, Heidegger
characterizes as a letting be. No longer directed toward objectively present
things, or the distractions and interpretations of the They, Da-sein lets its
possibilities be as they are from out of the ground of its being—the nothing,
the world as such. But what does it mean to base truth on a letting be? And
in what way is one able to distinguish between the validity or falsehood of a
situation through the stance of letting be belonging to the stillness of the
enduring of Angst?
The Finitude of Being and Da-sein
Heidegger’s notion of truth has come under keen criticism by Ernst

Tugendhat in his influential article “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth.” Tugendhat
argues that Heidegger does not provide any insight into the traditional
concept of truth but instead puts forth a new meaning of truth as uncov-
ering or unconcealment.48 The problem that Tugendhat identifies with this
new model of truth is that, for Heidegger, both what is true and what is
untrue, are equally unconcealed or disclosed. He therefore finds it impos-
sible to critically distinguish between the way in which something shows
itself to Da-sein as unconcealed, and the distinctive way it might appear “as
it actually manifests itself.”49 Tugendhat surmises that the only way that one
might be able to distinguish between truth and untruth on this model is in
a “quantitative” way, that is, with respect to the degree of uncoveredness.50
Thus he concludes: “there remains absolutely no possibility of determining
the specific sense of falsehood, and therefore also of truth” because essen-
tially everything that Da-sein uncovers and concerns itself with becomes a
form of truth.51 Da-sein’s “concern is in general characterized as a mode of

truth.”52
From the perspective of the traditional scientific model of truth based on
correspondence, Tugendhat’s concern about the loss of a critical capacity for
distinguishing between truth and untruth in Heidegger’s model of aletheia is
well founded.53 For Heidegger, truth is what is uncovered from out of the
relation between Da-sein’s disclosedness and the ground of possibilities that
Da-sein attunes itself to in discovery. And if truth lies in the unconcealment
of beings, and only that, then Heidegger fails to provide an adequate account
of how one can explicitly distinguish between what has been correctly uncov-
ered and what has not. Or, as Tugendhat puts it: “If truth means
un-concealment, in the Heideggerian sense, then it follows that an under-
standing of the world in general is opened up but not put to the test.”54
I want to propose that the difference between truth and untruth in
Heidegger’s model is based more on something like a qualitative distinction
rather than a “quantitative” distinction, suggested in passing by Tugendhat.
The accord (stimmen) of disclosedness to discovery characterizing truth, which
I have been arguing is struck in mood (stimmung), is itself an indicator of the
certainty of a situation. In this case the distinction between truth and untruth
lies in whether or not an accord has been struck between the whole of the
being of Da-sein and the ground of its possibilities. It lies in the ontological
occlusion of the fitting together of the whole of the being of Da-sein with the
whole of the being of the world. This fit shows itself in the ease by which possi-
bilities are let to be as they are. Truth would then lie in the seamlessness of, or
the letting be, of the possibilities that this accord grounds. And it would best
be verified through Da-sein’s relations in the world, or more specifically,
through its Mitda-sein in Da-sein’s relations to others and their mutual concerns.
When Da-sein is not in an accord with the world, Da-sein’s mood will come to
the fore, like the broken hammer, in its alienation from others and their
concerns and possibilities. Here is where the concealed and familiar back-
ground to which Da-sein is prereflectively attuned shows itself in its complete
unfamiliarity. Therefore, while Heidegger’s model of truth does not provide
an universal or empirical framework for distinguishing between truth and
untruth, mood does provide a means for making distinctions on the basis of
what matters to Da-sein, or more precisely, on the basis of what is not brought
before Da-sein as a matter in its attuned being-with others amidst shared possi-
bilities. This attunement to the whole of the being of the world characterizes
Da-sein’s finitude, that is, its fittedness to the horizon of its possibilities.
In being-toward-death an existential identity between the whole of the
being of the world and the whole of the being of Da-sein is established.
Joined to truth, this existential identity is transformed into an ontological

occlusion where the whole of the being of Da-sein is fitted in an attuned
accord to the whole of the being of the world that is struck in the relations
that this accord grounds. On the basis of this accord, Heidegger unites the
being of Da-sein to the horizon of its possibilities by virtue of the possibili-
ties that Da-sein is attuned to. Held open as the enduring of the nothing,
this horizon belongs to no one Da-sein in particular. Yet this prereflective
ground of the nothing endured as Angst nevertheless belongs to the being
of Da-sein, circumscribing the manner of Da-sein’s being-toward its possi-
bilities and itself as a being-in-the-world relating to others. Da-sein has, so to
speak, two selves, the prereflective self that is unbounded and felt as an
attunement, and the personal self that is epiphenomenal and arises out of
the relations supported by the prereflective, groundless and boundless self
that is attuned to the world. When the whole of the being of Da-sein, its
prereflective self that is in a total attunement to the whole of the world,
circumscribes relations that point back to its attuned being-toward the
world, then the totality of the self of Da-sein—its prereflective and its reflec-
tive self—exists seamlessly in the world with others in the stillness of
sein-lassen belonging to aletheia.
Heidegger characterizes the being of Da-sein by temporality. Temporality
structures Da-sein’s relations to its possibilities, and just as equally to itself
and to its being-with others. The nothing characterizes the “outside-itself”
of the temporal ecstasies of the future and having-been. But without
possibilities, the temporal ecstasies of Da-sein’s temporality remain indistin-
guishable. Without possibilities there is no ground. It is therefore in the
present that the nothing, the future (being-toward-death) and past (being-
guilty), are bound internally in converging in the possibilities that they
bound. In the present, Da-sein is in a relation to its possibilities and to other
Da-seins on the basis of the accord struck between the total attunement of
Angst to its world. In the possibilities that Da-sein takes up in the present the
influence of the past and the path of the future are opened up. But these
temporal moments show themselves only in the present, in the possibilities
that are viable for Da-sein to project upon and to be toward, possibilities
that underscore Da-sein’s historicity in being taken up by its future.
Consequently, a relation to what is not present (having-been, future) and
can never be rendered objectively present characterizes authentic truth
and the truth of Da-sein’s finite existence. The finitude of Da-sein is not
definable in light of anything that one can point to as a definite something,
for example, the fact of death. Such a move fails to take into account
Heidegger’s fundamental criticism of the understanding of Being as
objective presence. Even to understand finitude by way of a juxtaposition to

the infinite, as falling short of divine wisdom, or as any type of a lack on
Da-sein’s part, is to understand finitude in relation to something, and thus
to cover over authentic truth by falling into the everyday model of truth as
a relation of objective presence.55
Rather, it is on the basis of letting beings be from the temporalization of
the nothing of Angst that the finitude of Being and of Da-sein are estab-
lished in the accord that allows beings to be as they are. Circumscribed by
the nothing, Da-sein’s relations show themselves as they are from the
attunement that Da-sein has to its world. Free of Da-sein’s self-projection of
the They-self and its interpretations, Da-sein lets things and others show
themselves from the ground of their being in its being-toward Being. This
stance of letting be is similar to the Taoist principle of Wu Wei, doing without
doing, nonaction, or nondoing, found in section 3 of the Tao Te Ching:
“Practices non-action, And the natural order is not disrupted.”56 Heidegger
did not complete his own translation of Lao-Tzu into German in 1946, but
this idea, which resonates with his adoration for the teachings of Meister
Eckhart on nonactivity, is the same thought behind the “letting-be” of
aletheia, and of his later concept of “releasement” (Gelassenheit).57 This
stance, I have argued, is found in Being and Time in the holding open of the
nothing of Angst whereby beings are let be from out of the concealment
belonging to aletheia, the nothing of Being. It manifests in the effortlessness
of the understanding that Da-sein has of its possibilities and of its being-
with others by virtue of its prereflective and total attunement to the world.
In this attunement, the horizon of Da-sein’s possibilities is in a complete
accord with the being of Da-sein.
Therefore, the discussion of Angst in Being and Time may help to bring
about an understanding of the relation of Da-sein and Being that
Heidegger merely asserts in his later writings. In “What is Metaphysics”
Heidegger declares the relationship between Da-sein and Being, but he
does not explain it. He states that “Being and the nothing do belong
together” because “being itself is essentially finite and manifests itself only
in the transcendence of a Da-sein that is held out into the nothing.”58
In Being and Time we can see how Da-sein is held out into the nothing and
how this nothing belongs to Being and is finite. The nothing is bound by
the possibilities that it makes present in the opening created in the enduring
of the nothing of Angst. Limiting the nothing from the inside by virtue of
the possibilities that is grounds is how the world is bounded by the relations
that Da-sein engages with in its being-in-the-world. Finitude, therefore, does
not belong solely to Da-sein, but equally to the ground of its possibilities, or
to the nothing. Angst clears Da-sein and positions it as the opening,

circumscribing the meaning of its own self, and of its relations in the
world through the manner of letting-be belonging to aletheia. Da-sein’s
attunement to the world can be gauged by the ease with which it assumes its
familiarity with others amidst shared possibilities. Indeed, the certainty of
Da-sein’s attunement to the world will lie in its Mitda-sein, in the certainty of
being in a prereflective accord with others surrounded by possibilities
understood fluently on the basis of a prereflective comportment to the
world. Heidegger will ultimately argue that what shows itself with ease are
the traditions and cultural practices of the world into which Da-sein has
been thrown. These traditions belong to Da-sein’s having been, which,
when taken up in the present, bring Da-sein’s having-been into a relation
with its future. The meaning of temporality, for Heidegger, lies in Da-sein’s
historicity.
Conclusion
Angst and Historicity: From the

“They” to the “We”
In a letter to William J. Richardson, Heidegger expresses his exasperation

over commentators’ fixation on what appears to be a turn (Kehre) in his
thinking. “Up to now I know of no attempt to reflect on this matter and
analyse it critically. Instead of the groundless, endless prattle about the
‘reversal,’ it would be more advisable and fruitful if people would simply
engage themselves in the matter mentioned.”1 The matter mentioned is, of
course, Being, specifically the finitude of Being. Still, Heidegger is willing
to entertain the notion of a turn in his thought, a turn that he himself had
claimed to undertake, with one restriction.
The distinction you make between Heidegger I and II is justified only on

the condition that this is kept constantly in mind: only by way of what
[Heidegger] I has thought does one gain access to what is to-be-thought
by [Heidegger] II. But the thought of [Heidegger] I becomes possible
only if it is contained in [Heidegger] II.2
The division of Heidegger’s thinking into two parts turns around the relation-
ship between Da-sein and Being and the meaning of finitude. In the traditional
reading of Heidegger I, Being is reduced to the being of Da-sein, but in Heide-
gger II, Da-sein is dependent upon Being for the status of its existence. Thus
in Heidegger I, finitude belongs to the being of Da-sein, and in Heidegger II,
finitude belongs to Being, which gives to Da-sein the meaning of its finite
being. The fundamental problem that Heidegger has with this division is that
it fails to recognize the early break that he makes with the Cartesian tradition
of subjectivity, and the necessary dualisms between inner and outer, and
subject and object that this tradition entails. It also disregards Heidegger’s
essential starting point: that Being is the foundation of every relation, including
Da-sein’s own self-relation, and that Being is not reducible to a being. Indeed,
Heidegger not only turns against “the dominance of subjectivity” as early as
in Being and Time, but it is also in this text that the being of Da-sein is
first stripped of its subjectivity and positioned as the clearing of Being.3
Through a strict phenomenological interpretation of being-toward-death,

I have shown how Heidegger dissolves the boundaries of the subjectivity of
Da-sein into the nothing of Angst so to reestablish it as the clearing of Being
in its relation to others and to its possibilities. The majority of Heidegger
scholars interpret being-toward-death as the mode of being wherein the
selfhood of an individual Da-sein is constituted in its breaking free from the
They-self, which is characteristically defined by its flight from death. Once
Da-sein authentically faces the fact that it is going to die, it is believed,
Da-sein sees that it must set its own path through life and take responsibility
for its individual choices. Authenticity, I want to stress, is rather a matter of
a shift in the understanding of the ground of one’s possibilities and rela-
tions to others, and not a move toward strengthening the boundaries of a
self-contained subject.
Prior to linking Angst to aletheia, I have argued that Da-sein stands in a
paralysis in its being-toward-death. In the nothing of being-toward-death
Da-sein is disclosed in an existential identity with the whole of the being of the
world. This whole is undifferentiated and unbounded, as it is characterized by
the nothing of Angst through and through. Therefore, there are no distinc-
tions and there is no possibility for action in Angst. It is for this reason that I
have questioned Heidegger’s claim that entailed in the nothing of being-
toward-death is an understanding that leads Da-sein to its authentic possibilities
and to its finitude. The nothing does not generally reveal something partic-
ular, and certainly not a finite something. To the contrary, it is characterized
precisely by the disappearance of everything that used to mean something
through the receding of all possibilities into the nothing. Consequently,
Heidegger cannot phenomenologically situate being-toward-death as the
ground of the being of Da-sein, and as that which it projects in its under-
standing of possibilities, because the nothing disclosing being-toward-death is
defined rather by severing Da-sein from all of its relations and possibilities,
including its own self-relation. Heidegger’s declaration that Da-sein’s mean-
ingful possibilities can be opened up to it by the nothing of its being-toward-death
is therefore dubious. Nevertheless, Heidegger consistently asserts that Angst
puts Da-sein on an “unmistakeable” path (277/256). “Together with the sober
Angst that brings us before our individualized potentiality-of-being, goes the
unshakeable joy in this possibility. In it Da-sein becomes free of the enter-
taining ‘incidentals’ that busy curiosity provides for itself, primarily in terms
of the events of the world” (310/286, see also Chapter 2).
Da-sein is brought back from the nothing to a relation with the world in
resoluteness by virtue of Da-sein’s being “in the truth” discovering. However,
while the relation between disclosedness and discovery is formally depicted
Angst and Historicity 121
through the yoking of Angst to aletheia, it is surprisingly not yet established.

The accord brought about by aletheia between the world and Da-sein that is
struck in mood is made manifest only in Da-sein’s relations to its possibili-
ties and being-with others in the world. Without possibilities, the world
cannot show itself as a ground and Da-sein cannot understand itself as a
being-in-the-world. Therefore the nothing of being-toward-death disclosing
the totality of the whole of the world with the being of Da-sein is under-
stood as a ground only by virtue of the relations and possibilities that its
grounds. However, it is not until section 74, at almost the conclusion of the
text that Heidegger begins to discuss the source of authentic possibilities
that the nothing of Angst prepares Da-sein for.
While Heidegger wants Angst to direct Da-sein toward its authentic possi-
bilities, he grants that possibilities are “not to be taken from death”
(383/350). “Nevertheless, we must ask whence in general can the possibilities
be drawn upon which Da-sein factically projects itself ?” (383/350). Heide-
gger’s answer is tradition, a return to the book’s starting point. Temporality
returns Da-sein back to its tradition and to its heritage. Angst clears the
ground so that the world that has always been there, the historical world
into which Da-sein has been thrown, may show itself. At least this is the story
that Heidegger is trying to tell. “Authentic being-toward-death, that is, the fini-
tude of temporality, is the concealed ground of the historicity of Da-sein” (386/353).
The finitude of existence just ceased upon tears one back out of the end-
less multiplicity of possibilities offering themselves nearest by—those of
comfort, shirking and taking things easy—and brings Da-sein to the sim-
plicity of its fate. This is how we designate the primordial occurrence of
Da-sein that lies in authentic resoluteness in which it hands itself down to
itself, free for death, in an possibility that it inherited yet has chosen.
(384/351)
But contrary to Heidegger’s assertions, the awareness of finitude is not

brought about by Da-sein’s being-toward-death, nor is Angst able to point
the way to any inherited fate. Being-toward-death discloses rather the infini-
tude of Da-sein, as the nothing characterizing this disclosure is unbounded.
Divorced from its relations to others and from the world of its possibilities
in Angst, Da-sein is worldless and therefore without selfhood. It is not until
Angst is yoked to aletheia that death is established as a ground by virtue of
the possibilities and relations that it temporally structures. And these possi-
bilities and relations that the future comes toward in meeting the past in
the present are rooted in Da-sein’s heritage. It is in relation to these
possibilities that the selfhood of Da-sein is born, significantly together with

that of its fellow Da-seins in the community of those who find themselves
attuned to the same ground.
From the They to the We
Initially and for the most part, Heidegger repeats throughout Being and
Time, Da-sein is thrown into an inauthentic world that has forgotten about
Being—the hidden ground of the truth of its authentic possibilities. Fixated
only on beings and what can be apprehended on the order of objective
presence, Da-sein fails to understand its possibilities and relations with
others in terms of the historicity belonging to the authentic world into
which it has been thrown. This world is the world of its ancestors and of its
descendents to come. It is opened up by Angst whereby Da-sein is reborn:
“‘birth’ is taken into existence in coming back from the possibility of death
(the possibility not-to-be-bypassed) so that existence may accept the thrown-
ness of its own There more free from illusion” (391/357). Thus Da-sein
finds its way back home from the homelessness of Angst in handing itself
over to its historical possibilities. The truth that resoluteness reveals to
Da-sein is ultimately the meaning of its possibilities understood in terms of
it heritage. “The resoluteness in which Da-sein comes back to itself discloses
the actual factical possibilities of authentic existing in terms of the heritage
which that resoluteness takes over as thrown” (383/351).
The meaning of temporality, therefore, unfolds as the taking-up of tradi-
tion. Encompassing the historicity of the world, temporality shows itself as
a “retrieve which is futurally in the process of having-been” (391/357).
The existential identity of the whole of the being of the world and the
whole of the being of Da-sein now unfolds as a prereflective attunement to
the historical world into which Da-sein has been thrown and must
“retrieve.” “The occurrence of history is the occurrence of being-in-the-world. The
historicity of Da-sein is essentially the historicity of the world which, on the
basis of its ecstatic and horizonal temporality, belongs to the temporal-
izing of that temporality” (388/355). Indeed, it is because the being of
Da-sein shows itself in the manner of temporality established by
Heidegger that its tradition is open to it as a ground that it must take over:
“only a being that, as futural, is equiprimoridally having-been” can be deliv-
ered over to its “inherited possibility” (385/352). This same structure of
temporality is depicted in Heidegger’s later lecture of “Time and Being”
(see note 15 in Chapter 3).
In the taking-up of the nothing of death as nothing in being-guilty, I have

shown how the equiprimordiality of the future and having-been is charac-
terized by the identity of the nothing and the enduring of this nothing.
By enduring, or holding open the nothing, a clearing is created for Da-sein’s
authentic possibilities. Through the temporalization of Angst, Da-sein takes
up its historicity by coming toward its possibilities from the horizon of its
heritage—this is the meaning of Heidegger’s notion of the world as such.
But to hand oneself over to tradition is not to try to bring back the past or
be toward past possibilities per se. This would be a levelling down of possibili-
ties belonging to inauthentic Da-sein. Being ahead of itself in such a way
that Da-sein directs itself back to its thrownness means “handing oneself over
to traditional possibilities, although not necessarily as traditional ones”
(383/351). It means handing oneself over as a totality to the world of tradi-
tional possibilities belonging to one’s ancestors. It is from this world that
“has-been there” that Da-sein must “retrieve” its authentic possibilities.
Thus it is not the relics or remnants of the past housed in a museum, for
example, that are historical and that are to be related to as Da-sein’s
authentic possibilities, but “the world within which they were encountered
as things at hand belonging to a context of useful things and used by Da-sein
existing-in-the-world” (380/348). Buildings, bridges, vases, all things have a
history, even nature “as a countryside, as areas that have been inhabited or
exploited, as battlefields and cultic sites” (389/355).
Authentic historicity means to take up a being-toward the world that has
been there. Significantly, in Da-sein’s attunement to this world Da-sein is
also attuned to the others that have been there. These others belong to its
Mitda-sein. Authenticity, therefore, lies in Da-sein’s ability to respond to the
others that have been there through a loyalty to the world that has been
there. “Retrieve is explicit handing down, that is, going back to the possibilities
of the Da-sein that has been there” (385/352). To retrieve possibilities,
then, is not to relate to things dead and past. “Rather retrieve responds to the
possibility of existence that has-been-there” (386/352–353, Heidegger’s
emphasis). Thus to take up one’s historicity authentically means to be in a
dialogue with those who have been there before by way of responding to
the world from which these others understood their possibilities, a world
whose influence is there in the remnants and ways of being that have been
left behind. Authentic historicity moves Da-sein from the They to the We.
To choose handing oneself down to traditional possibilities is how Da-sein
exists futurally as fate: “in the basis of its being it is fate” (384/351). Fateful
Da-sein is resolute in its decision to retrieve the world that has been there
and to understand its present possibilities on the horizon of its heritage.

“As resoluteness ready for Angst, loyalty is at the same time a possible rever-
ence for the sole authority that a free existence can have, for the possibilities
of existence that can be retrieved.” (391/357).
Inseparable from Da-sein’s fate is its “destiny.” It is in conjunction with
Da-sein’s destiny, its community, that Heidegger discusses the personal
identity of an individual Da-sein, or what he calls the “occurrence of Da-sein,”
the constancy of the self, or “the who of Da-sein” (375/344). “But if fateful
Da-sein essentially exists as being-in-the-world in being-with others, its
occurrence is an occurrence-with and is determined as destiny. With this
term, we designate the occurrence of the community, of a people”
(384/352). In sharing a world with others, past, future and present, and in
being-toward possibilities that tradition has bequeathed, Da-sein’s authentic
self is born as Mitda-sein. “Destiny is not composed of individual fates, nor
can being-with-one-another be conceived of as the mutual occurrence of
several subjects. These fates are already guided beforehand in being-with-
one-another in the same world and in the resoluteness for definite
possibilities” (384/352).
Ironically, Heidegger is often criticized as failing to account for a
genuine relation between authentic Da-sein and being-with others. Michael
Theunissen represents the standard interpretation. He writes that
Mitda-sein is arrived at “purely formally,” as individualized (authentic)
Da-sein is in the world and, as such, in the world with others.4 However,
Theunissen arrives at this interpretation because he believes that authentic
Da-sein is individuated into an “unique ego” that is alone in its being-to-
ward-death. Authenticity, he argues, occurs through “the dissolution of all
direct connection between others and me” and, therefore, “others can only
be freed for themselves inasmuch as they are freed from me.”5 Consequently,
he states, “should authentically existing Da-sein also exist formally as being-
with-Others, this latter can still never work its way into its ownmost being.”6
But as I have shown, being-toward-death brings about not only the dissolu-
tion of Da-sein’s relation to others and to its possibilities, but also, and more
significantly, the dissolution of Da-sein’s own self-relation. The standard
interpretation follows Theunissen’s in stopping short at interpreting the
effects of Angst by limiting its power of dissolution to all relations except for
the relation that Da-sein has to its own self.
In being-toward-death the being of Da-sein is first disclosed in its totality
as an individuated whole. This whole, however, belongs to no one Da-sein in
particular. Rather, it constitutes the whole of the being of Da-sein in an exis-
tential identity with the whole of the being of the world. This whole is
individuated, it stands alone, yet it is without boundaries, characterized

throughout by the existential identity of the world and Da-sein in the nothing
of Angst. Da-sein becomes a self and returns to a definite world through its
relations to others and to its possibilities. By virtue of these relations the
world shows itself to Da-sein, and Da-sein discloses itself as a being-in-the-
world with others. “Being a self, Da-sein is the thrown being as self. Not
through itself, but released to itself from the ground in order to be as this
ground” (285/262). Da-sein takes up its ground in taking up its death, which
circumscribes the understanding of its possibilities, its relations to others
and equally its own self-relation. Authentically understood, these possibili-
ties are Da-sein’s traditional possibilities that are given to it with the destiny
of its community. “The fateful destiny of Da-sein in and with its ‘generation’
constitutes the complete, authentic occurrence of Da-sein” (385/352). The
community, then, is what holds together the personal identity of Da-sein. As
a member of the community, Da-sein struggles to preserve its world—what
Heidegger calls “the loyalty to what can be retrieved” (385/352).
Indeed, from the inception of Being and Time, critics have accused
Heidegger of failing to account for an authentic relation to others. Max
Scheler also criticizes Heidegger for failing to account for a genuine model
of being-with others. He suggests that Heidegger’s model of Da-sein is solip-
sistic, as it is not at all clear why Heidegger should assume that all Da-seins
share a world. “How does Heidegger know that there is only one world?”7
“How does Heidegger know at all that he and I are in one world?”8 Scheler
recognizes that Heidegger claims that Da-sein is not only a being-in-the-world
but also always being-with others. But this does not satisfy his concerns, for he
argues: “There could just as well be being-with-each-other if every solus ipse
lived in his world and his alone.”9 The world, however, is bound by the possi-
bilities that it makes available for Da-sein. Therefore, for Heidegger to be
accused of solipsism one would have to argue that Da-sein’s possibilities exist
for it alone, not only with respect to their significance, but also with regard
to their meaning. But as I think Heidegger’s analysis of everydayness convinc-
ingly shows, Da-sein initially finds itself in what it takes care of “in what it
does, needs, expects” in concerns that are embedded in a context of signifi-
cance belonging to the surrounding world where Da-sein exists alongside
others (119/112). Indeed, people are in the same world so long as they share
a prereflective cultural background understanding and care of their world.
Contrary to the standard interpretation, then, Heidegger does not fail to
account for Mitda-sein, or for being-with others in his model of authenticity.
The self of Da-sein, which is dissolved into the nothing of Angst, is
inseparable from the being of other Da-seins, as it is authentically
reconstituted from the nothing in its relations to others in a loyalty to its

traditional possibilities. Rather, the problem is quite the opposite and of a
different order. The question is How does authentic Da-sein relate to indi-
viduals who are steeped in a different set of traditions belonging to a
different world? How is it possible to respond to this other if, as Heidegger
underscores, recognition is rooted in a prereflective understanding that is
ontologically grounded in the being of the world that one shares with
others? Is there an ontological basis for possibly failing to understand or be
open to others who belong to a world with a different set of possibilities that
one is not attuned to?
The Finitude of Being and the relationship of Da-sein

and Being
Richard J. Bernstein introduces the term “Cartesian Anxiety” to explain a

fundamental tendency of some thinkers to follow Descartes in the search
for firm and secure foundations. Encouraging us to read the Meditations as
a “journey of the soul,” Bernstein guides us through Descartes’ quest for a
safe place to stand:
if we follow the precarious stages of this journey without losing our way,
then we discover that this is a journey that is at once terrifying and liberat-
ing, culminating in the calm reassurance that although we are eminently
fallible and subject to all sorts of contingencies, we can rest secure in the
deepened self-knowledge that we are creatures of a beneficent God who
has created us in his image.10
Having overcome the divisions between the subject and object, the world and
beings, and God and humans, Heidegger thinks the relation of the ground to
humans as one of interdependency. Thus neither a transcendent God, nor a
detached cogito can provide Heidegger with any kind of certainty or truth that
is not immanent to human existence. For Heidegger, Being is rather depen-
dent upon the actual historical existence of a people.11 “World is only in the
mode of existing Da-sein, that is, factically as being-in-the-world ” (380/348).
Nevertheless, Heidegger’s desire for certainty is just as pressing as Descartes,’
although of an entirely different nature. Heidegger’s anxiety, if we may speak
of such, is rooted in a fear of losing his world, the world in which his ancestors
dwelled, and the world in which he hopes his descendants will take up as a
dwelling. Tradition and heritage are, for him, reassurances that support
existence through all of its contingencies. Indeed, preserving tradition is the
burden of authenticity. “Because it has not laid the ground itself, it rests in the
weight of it, which mood reveals to it as a burden” (284/262).
In his “Memorial address” (1959), as in the majority of his writings,
Heidegger laments the uprootedness of modern existence.
All that with which modern techniques of communication stimulate,

assail, and drive man—all that is already much closer to man today than
his fields around his farmstead, closer than the sky over the earth, closer
than the change from night to day, closer than the conventions and cus-
toms of his village, than the tradition of his native world.12
The same critique is raised in Being and Time. The “information services,”
“public transportation” and other means of mass communication are how the
“inconspicuousness” of the They “unfolds its true dictatorship” (126/119).
Yet, David Farrell Krell voices his disappointment over Heidegger’s later
turn toward the notion of “home.” He argues that Heidegger forgets his
observation of the fundamental homelessness of human existence tri-
ggered by the anxiety over being-toward-death that he so clearly described
as the ontological distinction of humankind in his earlier writings. Refer-
ring to Heidegger’s 1966 Der Spiegel interview that the editors agreed to
publish only after Heidegger’s death, as per his request, Krell claims,
Heidegger “cheats his own thought.”13 “He loudly laments the rootlessness
and homelessness (die Heimatlosigkeit) of contemporary existence, as though
the extirpation of rootlessness and homelessness had always been the
concern of his thought.”14
But in so far as homelessness indicates for Heidegger an uprootedness
from one’s historical roots, the plight of homelessness has always been
Heidegger’s main concern. Just as in his later writings, in Being and Time the
way to authenticity is a return to traditional roots. In fact, ontological home-
lessness is at the center of Heidegger’s notions of authenticity and
inauthenticity. The essence of Da-sein’s inauthenticity lies in its forgetting
of the meaning of Being, which is, according to Heidegger, a kind of home-
lessness. This link is explicitly made in the “Letter on Humanism” (1946).
“Homelessness is the symptom of the oblivion of Being. Because of it the
truth of Being remains unthought.”15
As in Being and Time, in the “Letter on Humanism” the forgetfulness of
Being is manifest in the human being’s uprootedness from the ground of
beings revealed in its comportment to only beings. “The oblivion of Being
makes itself known indirectly through the fact that man always observes and
handles only beings.”16 In Being and Time, Heidegger attributes inauthentic
Da-sein’s singleminded fixation on beings to its understanding of Being as
“objective presence” (293/270). On the basis of this understanding, inher-

ited from Plato, Da-sein concerns itself solely with the everyday available
matters at hand. “The irresolute person understands himself in terms of
events and accidents nearest by that are encountered in such making
present and urge themselves upon him in changing ways” (410/377).
Secure in this “tranquillized self-assurance,” everyday Da-sein believes itself
at home in the “obviousness” of the averageness of being belonging to the
world of the They (189/176).
In being-toward-death, Da-sein moves from its inauthentic existence to its
authenticity. Angst unhinges Da-sein and reveals to it that its past stability is
rooted in nothing solid and may be taken away from it at any moment.
Indeed, throughout Being and Time Heidegger implies that once Da-sein is
shown the darkness of the nothing it will immediately recognize the light of
the truth, and it will recognize this light as finite. Like the prisoner released
from Plato’s cave who cannot deny the warmth of the sun on his back,
Heidegger claims that what the nothing reveals is “unmistakeable.” For
Sartre, the nothing that is at the heart of human existence means: “‘You’re
free, choose, that is, invent.’”17 The nothing reveals the fact that there is no
support or foundation for a free person’s action outside of that action itself.
This is why he thinks freedom is a burden. But for Heidegger freedom is also
a burden. However, the burden is not due to the heavy weight of responsi-
bility that comes with the acceptance that one’s choices are completely one’s
own and that they will determine who one is. The burden for Heidegger is
rooted in the responsibility that Da-sein has to respond to its ancestors and
to the historical world into which is has been thrown. To feel this burden to
others is to be authentic. It is to discover possibilities in terms of heritage as
a response to those who have been there and to feel the weight of this
responsibility to others as the meaning of one’s finitude. Joan Stambaugh
asserts the relationship between preservation and finitude in Heidegger’s
later writings. “Ultimately, the ‘appropriate’ meaning of the finitude of being
would appear to lie in its preserving and sheltering capacity.”18 But preserving
the world that has been there in the loyalty to what can be retrieved is
possible only by way of an attunement to the world that has been there
opened up by Angst. In this way the weight of the nothing is spread across
generations.
Ontological Occlusion
From the call to remember Being in Being and Time to the instruction to
attend to Being in his later writings, Heidegger has always thought Da-sein
together with Being. In his “Letter on Humanism”, Heidegger asserts that

Da-sein must care and watch over Being. “Man is the shepherd of Being.”19
To assume this position as the shepherd of Being humans must hold back
the self-assertion of their subjectivity. “But if man is to find his way
once again into the nearness of Being he must first learn to exist in the
nameless.”20 Still, Heidegger never explains what it means to exist in the
nameless, which, if successful, would position Da-sein as an opening wherein
beings are let be to show themselves as they are in being circumscribed by
the concealment belonging to Being. In Being and Time, however, the role
that Heidegger attributes to Angst does reveal how Da-sein may exist as the
shepherd of Being, and how Da-sein may be in the truth such that its being
has its roots in the limits of Being. In the temporalizing of Angst Da-sein is
prereflectively attuned to the whole of the being of the world in a harmony
that may be experienced as a stillness wherein Da-sein exists in the
namelessness of the nothing.
While in his later writings Heidegger does not explicitly draw upon the
concept of Angst to root Da-sein to its world, death nevertheless continues
to serve as the defining feature of a human being, and it continues to be
characterized by the nothing throughout all of his writings. In his essay
“The Thing” (1951), Heidegger writes:
Death is the shrine of Nothing, that is, of that which in every respect is
never something that merely exists, but which nevertheless presences,
even as the mystery of Being itself. As the shrine of Nothing, death har-
bors within itself the presencing of Being. As the shrine of Nothing, death
is the shelter of Being.21
Also in his essay “Language” (1959), he states: “These mortals are capable
of dying as the wandering toward death. In death the supreme concealed-
ness of Being crystallizes.”22 But what does it mean for Da-sein and Being to
crystallize into a shrine?
Heidegger does not explain how the nothing, or death, unites Da-sein to
Being, nor does he discuss the uniqueness of the finitude of this bond in his
later writings. In my reading of Being and Time, I hope to have shown how
the whole of the being of Da-sein is fitted to the whole of the being of the
world, the groundless ground of all possibilities, in an attuned accord to the
nothing that makes possible the pre-reflective relation of Da-sein to Being.
This fitting together of Da-sein and Being I have described through the
term ontological occlusion. On the basis of this occlusion, the finitude of
the being of Da-sein occurs together with the being of the world—a
finitude that is secured in mood in the accord that supports the prereflective
certainty of Da-sein’s relation to others and to its possibilities. The finitude
of Da-sein is therefore twofold, it occurs reflectively, through Da-sein’s
particular self-relation and relations in the world, which are supported by its
prereflective attunement to Being. But finitude also occurs prereflectively,
on the basis of the total accord between attunement and Being, a mooded
accord that is at the foundation of Da-sein’s individual finitude and the
ground of all of its relations. This latter finitude belongs to Being.
Indeed, built into the very structure of Heidegger’s conception of the
finitude of Being and the truth of Being, or aletheia, is this ontological occlu-
sion. On the one hand, Being loves to hide and entails within it a closing off
in relation to a revealing, a concealment engulfing what is unconcealed.
On the other hand, Being is revealed only to the true initiates of the
nothing, those belonging to and accepting the destiny of Being. The “self-
hiding” of the hidden, the lethe belonging to aletheia, point to the mystery of
Being, and to the fact that only those who are properly attuned may
encounter “the enigmatic possibility of experiencing being.”23 Heidegger’s
model of Being therefore points to the totalizing quality of the nothing,
where there is nothing that is outside of the relationship of concealment
and unconcealment belonging to aletheia. Being loves to hide and contains
within itself all of what is disclosed or made present out of and in relation
to all that is not present—the nothing. It seems then, that an ontological
occlusion is what holds together a historical people. I have introduced this
term as a useful expression to try to make sense of the obscure relation
between humans and Being that Heidegger asserts, but fails to explain in all
of his writings. Here again, in the “Origin of the Work of Art” (1935),
Heidegger writes:
This is the earth and, for a historical people, its earth, the self-secluding
ground on which it rests together with everything that it already is, though
still hidden from itself. But this is also its world, which prevails in virtue of
the relation of human being to the unconcealment of Being. For this
relation, everything with which man is endowed must, in the projection,
be drawn up from the closed ground and expressly set upon this ground.
In this way the ground is first grounded as the bearing ground.24
The relation of the human being to the concealment of Being can best be
understood as occurring prereflectively, on the level of mood, by the yoking
of Angst to aletheia. By yoking Angst to aletheia, Heidegger unites the whole of
the being of Da-sein, “everything with which man is endowed,” with the whole
of the horizon of its possibilities, “the bearing ground.” The totality of the
being of Da-sein is fitted to the whole of the being of the world in an attuned
accord that is struck in mood. The fitting together of the being of Da-sein with
the whole of the being of the world is what allows the common background
practices of language, culture and meaning to remain hidden and tacit in
Da-sein’s everyday relations in the world with others. On the basis of its attuned
accord to the meaning of the whole, Da-seins live together in a world that is
perfectly in tune with what they care about. Indeed, the occlusion I am
speaking of shows itself in the ease with which Da-sein relates to others and
goes about its everyday affairs. When this ease is upset, Da-sein’s mood, like
the broken hammer, comes to the fore. Here the occlusion is disrupted.
For the most part, however, in being fitted to the being of the whole a
harmony is established that shows itself imperceptibly in the tacitness of the
background practices and prereflective understanding that guide Da-sein’s
everyday being-in-the-world with others. In being-toward-death and the
temporalization of Angst the boundaries of the self are dissolved into the
boundaries of the community, which extends to those who have been there
before, and are yet to come in the future. In the future that comes toward
the world that has been there, Da-sein finds itself with its community in a
loyalty to what is retrieved. This accord with the community is struck in
mood and held in the stillness of the nothing. According to Heidegger, it is
indubitable, “absolutely unmistakable to itself[.]” (277/256).
In the Introduction I pointed to a mode of certainty that occurs on the
level of mood as belonging to an unspoken tradition that may be desig-
nated as a metaphysics of feeling. Diotima teaches Socrates in the Symposium
that there is a midpoint between knowledge and ignorance that imparts a
kind of true knowing that is perhaps felt but cannot be logically validated or
empirically verified. She describes this kind of certainty as a mode of
opinion. In a different translation of the passage that I quoted in the Intro-
duction, Diotima explains:
“Don’t you know” she said “that to opine correctly without being able to
give an account [logos] is neither to know expertly (for how could expert
knowledge be an unaccounted for [alogon] matter?) nor lack of under-
standing (for how could lack of understanding be that which has hit upon
what is)? But surely correct opinion is like that, somewhere between intel-
ligence and lack of understanding.”25
Plato’s notion of correct opinion is gained through bridging eros to divine

or Absolute Beauty, his ground of truth. For Heidegger, Angst is what
verifies this prereflective certainty of being-in-the-world through the yoking

of Angst to aletheia. This certainty is felt in mood, which is present throughout
the accord of the whole of the being of Da-sein with the whole of the being
of the world. In the holding open of the stillness of the nothing, relations
happen by way of a letting-be that arises from the harmony of being in tune
with others in a world. This attuned stillness lets beings be as they are. How
they are is, for Heidegger, a matter of heritage and tradition, a tradition
that he believes belongs to the authentic history of the world, a Western
world that goes back to the Western tradition of Greek ontology. In an
attuned accord to the ground of this world, Da-seins exists among other
Da-seins with a certainty that is guaranteed by the weight of tradition. As a
historical member of the community, Da-sein can let beings and relations
be in a “doing without doing” that does not require reflection or thought,
but rather allows these relations to happen in the way that they have always
happened. By sharing in the same ground of possibilities in the traditions
and heritage belonging equally to the living, the dead, and those still to be
born, Da-sein is in a being-toward the death of others in a way that extends
beyond memory to encompass the entirety of its ontological, historical exis-
tence as a being-in-the-world. In the taking-up of its being-with others
through generations, authentic Da-sein understands itself as Mitda-sein.
What seems to be at stake with attunement, then, is the possibility of
listening to, or caring for someone who is differently attuned and engaged
in “foreign” possibilities, that is, someone living in a different world who is
not part of one’s Mitda-sein, or even someone living in the same world who
does not benefit from the gift of the ease of relations that comes with being
in an attuned accord with the whole of the being of the world. W. E. B.
Du Bois depicts this lack of ease in the “double consciousness” of being a
black American, always aware of a skin color that compromises one’s Ameri-
canism. “It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of
always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s
soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”26
What I am suggesting is that the notion of belonging and, equally, the
openness to listen to someone in the community to which one belongs are
prereflectively determined beforehand by a fitting together of mood to the
whole of the being of the world—a fitting together that is reflected in Mitda-
sein. According to Heidegger, being attuned together to the same world is
the possibility for discourse. On the basis of this attuned discourse, Mitda-
sein is disclosed, even and especially in silence (162/152). This is why
Heidegger claims that Mitda-sein belongs to one’s own self-knowledge as a
being-in-the-world (124/116; 137/128). “In the explicit hearing of the
discourse of the other, too, we initially understand what is said: more

precisely, we are already together with the other beforehand, with the being
which the discourse is about” (164/153). Indeed, without Mitda-sein there
is no basis for a true friendship.27 “Hearing even constitutes the primary
and authentic openness of Da-sein for its ownmost possibility of being, as in
hearing the voice of a friend whom every Da-sein carries with it. Da-sein
hears because it understands” (163/153). A predisposition to hear, then,
accompanies one’s listening.
Hannah Arendt was a friend to Heidegger. But this friendship did not
come from being attuned to the totality of a shared world. The abyss
between their worlds indeed prohibited friendships and destroyed friend-
ships that had once been there, as with that between Heidegger and his
teacher Edmund Husserl, whom he had initially dedicated Being and Time
to and later republished without the dedication. In a letter written to Heide-
gger in August of 1928, Arendt paraphrases from a poem written by
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the poem that starts with the famous opening
line: “How do I love thee, let me count thy ways.”28 Arendt writes: “And if
there is a God, I will love you better after death.”29 In invoking God, Arendt
perhaps leaves open the possibility of the unknown. Yet, despite Heide-
gger’s best attempts at trying to safeguard the dignity of the unknown, he
ends up circumscribing the hidden by a certain horizon in yoking Angst to
aletheia.
Nevertheless, we are indebted to Heidegger’s analysis of Da-sein for
revealing the prereflective kinship of an attunement in mood that arises
with the daily practices of everyday living, be it the inauthentic living of the
They, or the authentic living of the We, who belong to the destiny of the
community of those authentically attuned. In this kinship the possibility for
hearing one another lies in “being-with-one-another in the same world and
in the resoluteness for definite possibilities” (384/352). As Carol White
indicates, a shared attunement is the basis for the possibility of having an
authentic community. “Dasein’s fate as authentic historicality depends on
having a community of like-minded people.”30
A shared attunement to the ground of possibilities belonging to a certain
world is what likens the minds of the members of Heidegger’s community.
But for those who are not like-minded, or whose minds are not liked,
membership in the community is difficult. In this case, it may not simply be
a matter of information or education about the other that makes us care;
that is, the possibility of listening to others living in a different world may
not only be dictated by politics, race, gender, sexuality, economic status,
and other interests. There may, indeed, be a prereflective predisposition
not to care for those to whom one is not ontologically attuned. An onto-
logical occlusion explains the affective foundation for the prereflective
understanding that “we” have of our cultural horizons, and the hidden and
background understanding of “our” everyday practices and being-with
others. But the occlusion has two sides and equally works to describe the
prereflective basis for being closed off to those who are differently attuned.
Here, it may be more than “mere” mood that opens up a world. What may
be needed is a genuine enduring of the nothing, as a traveller, far from
home must learn to endure Angst so to approach the stillness that will allow
him or her to be open to a new land and its people in the hope of being
welcomed by it. What may be needed is the openness belonging to ques-
tioning, which Heidegger later attributes to the stillness of Gelassenheit.
“O wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here! How beauteous
mankind is! O brave new world. That has such people in’t.”31
Notes
Introduction
1
Martin Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” tr. Thomas Sheehan, in William
McNeill, ed., Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 177.
2
Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” in Pathmarks, 179.
3
4
5
6
Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” in Pathmarks, 168–172.
7
8
9
See Book One of Aristotle’s Metaphysics where he speculates on the origin of the
practice of philosophy concluding, “it is through wonder (thaumazein) that
men now begin and originally began to philosophize” (982 b12). Aristotle, Meta-
physics in Jonathan Barnes, ed., The Complete Works of Aristotle, vol. 2 (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1984) p. 1554. See also Plato’s Theaetetus 155d. Plato,
Theaetetus, in Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, eds, The Collected
Dialogues of Plato: Including the Letters, trs. Lane Cooper and others
(Prin-ceton: Princeton University Press, 1989) pp. 845–919.
10
Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” in Pathmarks, 168–172, 166.
11
Martin Heidegger, “Postscript to ‘What is Metaphysics?’ (1943),” in William
McNeill, ed. and tr., Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 234.
12
All embedded page numbers are from the Joan Stambaugh translation of Being
and Time. (Suny Press, 1996). The first number refers to the German pagination,
the second number to the page number in Stambaugh’s English translation.
13
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, tr. D. F. Pears and
B. F. McGuinness (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), proposition 6.43.
14
Plato, The Symposium, tr. Christopher Gill (New York and London: Penguin
Books, 1999), 204b.
15
Plato, The Symposium, tr. Christopher Gill, 203e.
16
Plato, The Symposium, tr. Christopher Gill, 202a.
17
Plato, The Symposium, tr. Christopher Gill, 210b.
18
Quentin Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World: A Metaphysics of Feeling (West
Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 1986), 17.
19
Smith, The Felt Meanings of the World, 23.
136 Notes
20
Mood has the ability to disclose the whole. Klaus Held describes the same
distinctiveness of exposing the whole belonging to Heidegger’s notion of Angst
in his description of the role of thaumazein in Greek thought. “The wonder that
awakens philosophy . . . concerns the background of the familiar itself. This
previously self-evident and concealed background itself steps now to the fore
and appears as what is utterly non-self-evident and unfamiliar.” Klaus Held,
“Wonder, Time and Idealization: On the Greek Beginning of Philosophy,” in
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, Volume 9, Number 2 (Spring
2005), 187.
21
William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1974), 624.
22
Michel Haar, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, tr. William McNeill (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1993), 51.
23
Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, 637.
24
See, for example, Hubert L. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world: A Commentary on Heide-
gger’s Being and Time, Division I (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1991).
25
Robert Bernasconi, Heidegger in Question (Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press,
1993), 25.
26
Frederick A. Olafson, Principles and Persons: An Ethical Interpretation of Existen-
tialism (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1967), 172.
27
Jonathan Dollimore, Death, Desire and Loss in Western Culture (New York:
Routledge, 1998), 162. Olafson also interprets Heidegger’s discussion of death
as factical death. He claims that the objective fact of death is the condition of
Da-sein’s understanding of itself as a self-choosing individual existence.
From one point of view, it is just a fact that human beings die, although it is,
as Heidegger points out, a very peculiar sort of “fact” that is quite unlike the
empirical “endings” to which we all tend to assimilate it. In any case, whatever
its peculiarities as a special kind of fact, it is certainly independent of our will
and confronts us as a final negation of human effort and purpose. (Olafson,
Principles and Persons, 173)
28
William J. Richardson, “Heidegger’s Way through Phenomenology to the
Thinking of Being,” in Heidegger, The Man and the Thinker (Chicago: Precedent,
1991), 89–90.
29
Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning), tr. Parvis Emad
and Kenneth Maly (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press,
1999), 165.
30
Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, proposition 6.4311.
31
Reiner Schurmann, Heidegger: On Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 13.
32
Martin Heidegger, “On the Origin of the Work of Art,” tr. Albert Hofstader, in
David Farrell Krell, ed., Basic Writings (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers,
1993), 186.
33
Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” tr. Frank A. Capuzzi and J. Glenn
Gray, in David Farrell Krell, ed., Basic Writings, (San Francisco: HarperCollins
Publishers, 1993), 262.
Notes 137
34
Martin Heidegger, “On the Question of Being (1955),” in William McNeill,
ed. and tr., Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 309.
35
Heidegger, “On the Question of Being,” 308, 310.
36
John Caputo, Against Ethics (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1993), 2.
Chapter 1
1
Carol J. White, Time and Death: Heidegger’s Analysis of Finitude (Burlington: Ashgate
Publishing, 2005), 122.
2
Hubert Dreyfus’ introduction to White, Time and Death, xii.
3
Dreyfus’ introduction to White, Time and Death, xii.
4
Charles B. Guignon, Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing Company, 1983), 70.
5
Martin Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” tr. John Sallis, in David Farrell
Krell, ed., Basic Writings (San Francisco: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 132.
6
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth”, 132.
7
Stephen Mulhall notes that Heidegger is here attacking the attempt made to
understand other minds through the argument from analogy. The idea is that
there are bodies that behave in certain ways and there are minds that are related
to these bodies in specific ways. The question of other minds is rooted in whether
the connections we make between our mind and body can be applied to our
understanding of the minds of others based on our observations of their bodies
and behaviors. This “compositional understanding of other persons,” however,
presupposes what it sets out to prove: that there is a similarity between the
connections I make between my mind and body and that between the mind and
body of another. Mulhall highlights Heidegger’s passage on empathy as testi-
fying to the futility of this dualistic understanding of the mind/body problem
and the problem of other minds. Stephen Mulhall, Heidegger and Being and Time
(London and New York: Routledge, 1996), p. 64.
8
Stephen Mulhall, Inheritance and Originality: Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Kierkegaard
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 260.
9
John Paul Sartre, “Existentialism,” in Gordon Marino, ed., Basic Writings of
Existentialism (New York: Random House, 2004).
10
Heidegger refers to Tolstoy’s story in a footnote to his discussion of “Being-to-
ward-death.” See Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. Joan Stambaugh (Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1996), 409, footnote 12.
Chapter 2
1
Joseph Kockelman, Martin Heidegger: A First Introduction to His Philosophy
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1965), 82.
2
Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, 76.
3
Haar, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, 5.
4
Jeff Malpas, “Death and the Unity of a Life,” in Jeff Malpas and Robert Solomon,
eds, Death and Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 134.
138 Notes
5
Julian Young, “Death and Authenticity”, in Jeff Malpas and Robert Solomon, eds,
Death and Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 116.
6
Taylor Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic: Interpretation, Discourse and Authenticity in
Being and Time (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 290.
7
Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic, 298.
8
Mulhall, Inheritance and Originality, 259.
9
Paul Edwards, Heidegger’s Confusions (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2004), 80–81.
10
Edwards, Heidegger’s Confusions, 81.
11
Edwards, Heidegger’s Confusions, 115.
12
Carol J. White identifies six different kinds of meanings belonging to end
used by Heidegger to depict being-toward-death: perishing; demise; dying;
being-at-the-end; the possibility of the impossibility of existing; and being-
toward-the-end. White, Time and Death, 68–91.
13
Dreyfus, foreword to White, Time and Death, xxxv.
14
15
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world, 311.
16
In an addendum to this quotation Heidegger qualifies this claim by underscoring
that Angst is not a mere emotion. In Being and Time Heidegger states: “I.e., but
not only Angst and certainly not a mere emotion” (266/245).
17
“The certainty of death cannot be calculated in terms of ascertaining cases of
death encountered.” (264/244)
18
See, for example, Grene, who also identifies finitude with factical death.
Yet it is only in such resolve as limited by death—in the realization of my
existence as essentially and necessarily being to death—that I can rise out of
the distracting and deceiving cares of my day to day existence. Only in such
recognition of my radical finitude, in sinking dread with which I face my own
annihilation, can I escape the snares of a delusive present, to create, in a free
resolve, a genuine future from a genuinely historical past. Marjorie Grene,
Dreadful Freedom: A Critique of Existentialism. (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1948), 53
The temporality of Da-sein, however, is inseparable from Being, which does not
belong to an individual alone but to the world and being-with others as well.
19
Maria Villela-Petit, “Heidegger’s Conception of Space,” in Christopher Macann,
ed., Critical Heidegger (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 138.
20
Villela-Petit, “Heidegger’s Conception of Space,” 138.
21
Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?” (1929), tr. David Farrell Krell, in
William McNeill, ed., Pathmarks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1998), 89.
22
23
Miquel de Beistegui, The New Heidegger (London and New York: Continuum,
2005), 21–22.
24
Beistegui, The New Heidegger, 70.
25
Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics”, 93.
26
Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics,” 233.
27
Alejandro A. Vallega conceives of finitude as a sort of humbleness before all
that cannot be known to thought signified by the not-yet future of Da-sein
Notes 139
brought forth by death. This not-yet is the otherness, “absence” or “beyond

presence” that marks the alterity within Da-sein, or the exilic aspect of its
thought. Alejandro A. Vallega, Heidegger and the Issue of Space: Thinking on Exilic
Grounds (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), 152.
“In short, the exilic character of thought is figured by the impossibility of
thought’s return to ever-present, unchanging ideas or origins, and in the trans-
formative motion enacted by its events.” (158) In Being and Time, Vallega argues,
this exilic character of thought never quite penetrates beyond the transcen-
dental horizon of Da-sein’s disclosedness as it does in Heidegger’s later works
where the self loses its footing to otherness. (160–161)
28
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world, 339.
29
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world, 335, 333.
30
Francoise Dastur, “The Ekstatico-horizonal Constitution of Temporality,” in
Christopher Macann, ed., Critical Heidegger (London and New York: Routledge,
1996), 164.
31
Affixed to the word Angst in this sentence is a note at the bottom of the page of
Being and Time. It reads: “That is, the clearing of being as being.” (323/297)
I have been stressing this reading of Angst all along, that it is mood that reveals
the clearing of Being.
32
Macomber incorrectly claims that “Heidegger conceives mood as the revelation
of a process in which man opens himself to the determining power of things and
in which he is, through all his incessant and inescapable activity, ultimately
passive.” W. B. Macomber, The Anatomy of Disillusion: Martin Heidegger’s
Notion of Truth (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), 120. While
Angst does indeed open Da-sein up to the world, it is not a passive attunement,
on the contrary, it must be “endured.” (261/241)
Chapter 3
1
For a discussion on Da-sein’s responsibility to others as integral to its own self-
responsibility see Francois Raffoul, “Heidegger and the Origins of Responsibility,”
in Francois Raffoul and David Pettigrew, eds, Heidegger and Practical Philosophy
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 205–218. For a discussion on
empathy in Being and Time see Lawrence J. Hatab, “Heidegger and the question
of Empathy,” in Francois Raffoul and David Pettigrew, eds, Heidegger and Practical
Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 249–279.
2
3
4
5
6
7
Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic, 268. See also 269, 271, 301, 312, 313.
8
9
10
11
140 Notes
12
Theodore Kisiel in an article meant to correct Seigfried’s reading of Kisiel’s
diagram, “The schematism of existence,” “Professor Seigfrieds Misreading of my
Diagram and its Source,” Philosophy Today, Vol. XXX, No. 1/4 (Spring 1986), 75.
13
Kisiel, “Professor Seigfrieds Misreading of my Diagram and its Source,” p 76.
14
Martin Heidegger, “Time and Being,” in On Time and Being, tr. Joan Stambaugh
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 13.
15
Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” 176. The German passage reads “Wer in
einer durch « die Idee » bestimmten Welt handeln soll und will, bedarf allem
zuvor des Ideenblicks. Und darin besteht denn auch das Wesen der παιδεια, den
Menschen frei und fest zu machen für die klare Beständigkeit des Wesens-
blickes.” Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit mit eiem Brief uber den « Hümanismus », 40.
16
Macomber incorrectly claims that “Heidegger conceives mood as the revelation
of a process in which man opens himself to the determining power of things and
in which he is, through all his incessant and inescapable activity, ultimately
passive.” Macomber “The anatomy of disillusion,” 120. To the contrary, mood is
something that must be projected and endured, especially the mood of Angst.
17
Haar, Heidegger and the Essence of Man, 56.
18
Martin Heidegger, “On the Origin of the Work of Art,” 192.
19
A classic book on the topic of Heidegger’s politic and its link to his philosophy is
Victor Farias, Heidegger and Nazism, eds. Joseph Margolis and Tom Rockmore
(Temple University Press, 1971).
20
Johannes Fritsche, Historical Destiny and National Socialism in Heidegger’s Being and
Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 140–141.
21
See John. D. Caputo, “Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and the foundering of Meta-
physics,” in Robert L. Perkins, ed., International Kierkegaard Commentary: Fear and
Trembling and Repetition (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1993), 222.
22
In his inaugural lecture to the Freiburg University faculties in 1929 Heidegger
says “If Dasein can adopt a stance toward beings only by holding itself out into
the nothing and can exist only thus, and if the nothing is originally manifest only
in anxiety, then must we not hover in anxiety constantly in order to be able to
exist at all?” Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?”, 91. Heidegger does not answer
this question. Instead he states that original anxiety is rare. “And have we not
ourselves confessed that this original state is rare?” (91).
23
Martin Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” in Discourse On Thinking, tr., John M.
Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 56.
24
Heidegger, “Memorial Address”, 46–47.
25
Martin Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking,” in Discourse
On Thinking, tr. John M. Anderson and E. Hans Freund (New York: Harper &
Row, 1969), 62.
26
Heidegger, “Conversation on a Country Path about Thinking”, 59.
27
Heidegger also characterizes Angst by a certain calmness. “Anxiety does not let
such confusion arise. Much to the contrary, a peculiar calm pervades it.” Heide-
gger, “What is Metaphysics?”, 88. He also states “That in the uncanniness of
Anxiety we often try to shatter the vacant stillness with compulsive talk only
proves the presence of the nothing,” 89.
28
Walter Brogan discusses the idea of a community of people who all know they
are going to die and therefore who relate to each other as singular and finite
Notes 141
beings coming together as a collective that is different from the traditional

models of community built on a fusions of individuals. In this community, he
explains, Da-seins will encounter each other from the perspective of a holding
back that allows each person to show him or herself as a free individual. “It is the
very condition of holding back and keeping silence that makes possible the
sovereignty (Herrschaft) of the singular beings Heidegger describes as the future
Da-sein.” Walter Brogan, “The Community of those Who are Going to Die,” in
D. Pettigrew and F. Raffoul, eds, Heidegger and Practical Philosophy (Albany: State
University of New York Press, 2002), 242.
29
Joan Stambaugh explains: “The finitude of being is an inner, intrinsic finitude.”
The Finitude of Being, 167.
Chapter 4
1
See my Introduction where I discuss Heidegger’s reading of the Allegory of
the Cave.
2
See discussion in Chapter 1 on Da-sein’s concern for others and Heidegger’s
notions of leaping in and leaping ahead.
3
Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism,” 240.
4
5
Jacques Taminiaux is a notable exception. He argues that the presupposition of
truth in Being and Time guarantees and constitutes Da-sein’s authentic disclo-
sure. “Dasein is enmeshed in the presupposition of truth. In other words, Dasein
is not constitutive of its own openness; rather, this openness, the very openness
of the world of Being, is what destines Dasein to himself. Truth is one and cannot
be without the disclosive projection; yet this very projection presupposes truth,
for it is, as Heidegger says, a ‘thrown’ projection.” “Finitude and the Absolute:
remarks on Hegel and Heidegger,” in Thomas Sheehan, ed., Heidegger, The Man
and The Thinker (Chicago: Precedent, 1981), 201.
6
William D. Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1999), 18, 303.
7
Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism, 18, 290.
8
Blattner, Heidegger’s Temporal Idealism, 27.
9
John Haugeland, “Truth and Finitude: Heidegger’s Transcendental Existen-
tialism,” in Mark A. Wrathall and Jeff Malpas, eds, Heidegger, Authenticity and
Modernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 54.
10
Haugeland calls Da-sein’s commitment to uphold the integrity of entities its
“bindingness.” Haugeland, “Truth and Finitude”, 74, 46, 73.
11
Haugeland, “Truth and Finitude,” 75–76. It is not entirely clear whether Hauge-
land thinks that “systematic breakdowns” in a way of life occur for an individual
or for a historical epoch. The bulk of Haugeland’s article lies in his effort to
explain Heidegger’s “historicism” by referring to Kuhn. However, he falls upon
being-toward-death and Angst to signal the breakdown issuing forth a new
cultural paradigm and interprets being-toward-death in light of the subjectivity
of an individual Da-sein. “A failure of ontological truth is a systematic breakdown
that undermines everything . . . So the only responsible response (eventually) is
142 Notes
to take it all back; which means that life, that life, does not ‘go on’” (75). But as
Angst is the mechanism that breaks down a way of life for an individual Da-sein,
according to Haugeland, it is unclear whether the life he speaks of that no longer
goes on belongs to an individual or to a cultural way of life.
12
Martin Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” in On
Time and Being, tr. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago and London: The University of
Chicago Press, 2002), 70.
13
Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” 71–72.
14
Heidegger, “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking,” 71–72.
15
Ernst Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s idea of truth,” in Christopher Macann,
ed., Critical Heidegger (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 228.
16
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 138.
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
Heidegger, “On the Essence of Truth,” 129–130.
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s idea of Truth,” 236.
49
50
Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s idea of Truth,” 233. According to Tugendhat a mean-
ingful sense of falsehood would have to explain exactly how the false was still
Notes 143
covered over in contrast to the way “it is itself.” There would have to be a way to
validate “the giveness with reference to the subject-matter” (234).
51
52
53
See also Daniel O Dahlstorm’s argument against Tugendhat’s notion that Heide-
gger does not distinguish between givenness and how a thing appears in itself in
Heidegger’s Concept of Truth. Dahlstorm supports Heidegger’s claim that Da-sein’s
disclosedness is prior to judgment and assertion, while also noting that “Heide-
gger does not provide a sufficient account of the principles governing his
analysis.” Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2001), 455.
54
Tugendhat, “Heidegger’s Idea of Truth,” 238.
55
While Haugeland provides an argument for finitude, which other scholars gener-
ally assume is entailed by the fact of death or mortality, as I have discussed in
Chapter 2, his notion of finitude appears to be dependent upon a juxtaposition
of human and divine knowledge. Divine knowledge is supposed to shore up
human knowledge and show it to be finite in contrast to the “infinite (divine)
knowledge.” Haugeland, “Truth and Finitude,” 76–77.
56
Lao-Tzu, Tao Te Ching, tr. Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishers, 1993), section 3.
57
For a remarkable comparison between Heidegger’s discussion of the being of a
jug in his essay “The Thing” and Chapter 11 of Lao-Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, see
Reinhard May, Heidegger’s Hidden Sources: East Asian Influences on his Work, tr.
Graham Parkes (London: Routledge, 1996), 30–33.
58
Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics?”, 95.
Conclusion
1
Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, xviii.
2
Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, xxii.
3
4
Michael Theunissen, The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger,
Sartre and Buber, tr. Christopher Macann (Massachusetts and London: The MIT
Press 1984), 189.
5
Theunissen, The Other, 191.
6
Theunissen, The Other, 190.
7
Max Scheler, “Reality and Resistance: on Being and Time, section 43,” in Thomas
Sheehan, ed., Heidegger: The Man and The Thinker (Chicago: Precedent,
1981), 136.
8
Scheler, “Reality and resistance,” 141.
9
Scheler, “Reality and resistance,” 136.
10
Richard Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and
Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983), 17.
11
For a discussion on the anarchical elements of Heidegger’s thought see Reiner
Schurmann, Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy. See
also Peg Birmingham, “The Time of the Political” in Graduate Faculty Philos-
ophy Journal, Volume 14, Number 2 – Volume 15, Number 1 (1991), 25–48.
144 Notes
12
Heidegger, “Memorial Address,” 48.
13
David Farrell Krell, “Unhomelike places: architectural sections of Heidegger and
Freud,” in Walter Brogan and James Risser, eds, American Continental Philosophy:
A Reader (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2000), 184.
14
Krell, “Unhomelike Places,” 184.
15
16
17
Sartre, “Existentialism,” 352.
18
Stambaugh, The Finitude of Being, 166.
19
20
21
Martin Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Albert Hofstader
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 178–179.
22
Martin Heidegger, “Language,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, tr. Albert Hofstader
(New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 200.
23
Heidegger, “Plato’s Doctrine of Truth,” 166, 171.
24
Heidegger, “The Origin of the Work of Art,” 200.
25
Plato’s Symposium, tr. Seth Bernardette (section 202a). In the Introduction
I quoted the same passage from the Chris Gill translation, The Symposium.
26
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Signet Classic, 1969), 45.
27
Heidegger illustrates his own inability to hear certain voices, to make friends
with certain people, in taking up the Enlightenment view of the origins of
Western philosophy. Through this view Heidegger fails to recognize the pre-
Hellenic influences and friendships that were acknowledged by the Greeks prior
to the modern era. For the relation of the Greeks to the Egyptians see Plato’s
“Timaeus,” translated by Benjamin Jowett, in Plato: The Collected Dialogues 1158,
23d. For a study of the Afro-Asiatic roots of Greek philosophy and the systematic
covering over of this link see Martin Bernal, Black Athena: The Afroasiatic roots of
Western Civilization (Piscataway: Rutgers University Press, 1989).
28
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Sonnets in the Portuguese, (New York: St Martin’s
Press, 2007).
29
Quoted in Seyla Benhabib, The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt (Lanham:
Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 120. The original by Browning is:
“And, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.”
30
White, Time and Death, 125.
31
William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987),
180–197.
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Index
accord 4, 12, 97, 109, 116, 121, 129–30 and co-Attunement 31, 92, 115, 118
see also truth, whole see also Mitda-sein
and Angst 116–17 Authenticity/inauthenticity
and community 131–2 (Eigentlichkeit) 9, 16, 19, 32–3,
and Mitda-sein 115, 118, 132 35, 49–50, 66–7, 79–81, 91–2,
and mood 108–11, 132 96–7
and ontological occlusion 3, 115–17 and Angst 90, 97, 123
Agape see love and choice 93
aletheia see truth, concealment/ and finitude 63
unconcealment, letting be and historicity 121–3, 127
“allegory of the cave” 1–2, 99 and Mitda-sein 87, 124–5, 128,
“analogon” (Kant) 48 132–4
ancestors 74, 122–3, 126, 128 and possibilities 60–1, 65, 68–9,
Angst see also nothing, the 71–3, 79, 114, 120
and Being 3, 5, 14, 16, 60–1, 66, 83, and temporality 85–7, 89
86, 90, 93, 96, 107–10, 112–14, and truth 16, 100–2, 107, 109
129–1
choosing Angst (resoluteness) 88–9 background practices 14
demanding Angst of oneself 89–90, Beaufret, Jean 10
93 Being 1, 3–11, 13–21, 25, 30, 32, 34–6,
enduring and holding open 40–1, 44, 51, 61, 62, 65–7, 69, 74,
Angst 66–7, 71, 85–9, 95, 105, 111 83, 87, 90–1, 93–4, 96–8, 101–4,
and fear 52–3 107–9, 111–14, 116–17, 119,
and finitude 10–11, 64–6, 115–18 126–30 see also nothing, the
and historicity 121–5, 128 being-guilty 69, 71–2, 78, 81, 85, 87,
and loss of self 8–9, 45, 47–9, 56–8, 95–8, 116, 123
79, 91, 93–4, 111, 121, 125, 128, and Angst 71, 74–6
and Mitda-sein 87, 131 being-in-the-world 21–3, 25, 27, 31, 50,
and mood 3–4, 6 52, 55, 57, 61, 64, 71, 76, 96, 101,
and ontological occlusion 3, 105, 103, 124–6, 131
132–3 being-toward 99–100, 113
and paralysis 60, 78, 88, 91–2, 95, 120 being-toward Being 117
and temporality 84, 121 being-towards-death 5–8, 10–11,
Arendt, Hannah 133 35, 43–8, 49–52, 55–61, 62, 64–5,
Aristotle 2 67–8, 69–72, 74–6, 78, 80–2,
attunement 25–9, 31, 44, 52–4, 110–12, 85–7, 88–90, 92–3, 95–8, 102,
115–18, 123, 130, 132–4 104, 108–9, 112, 115–16, 120–1,
and Angst 56–8, 61, 66–7, 75–6 128, 131
and Being 72, 83, 86–7, 89, 91 being-towards-the-end 63, 67
150 Index
being-with 9, 11–12 83–5, 87, 91, 95, 116, 122–3, 129,

being-with others 30–1, 39, 47, 54, 68, 138n.17
115, 117, 124–5 “definite region” 52–3
Being and Time (Heidegger) 2, 7–9, 13, demise see factical death
19, 32, 38–41, 43, 47–8, 61, 63, Demske, Father 46
89–91, 98, 101, 103, 106–7, Der Spiegel interview 1966
110–14, 117, 119, 122, 127–9, (Heidegger) 127
133 Descartes, René 20–1, 79, 119, 126
Being of being 6 desire 88
beings 14–16, 26–7, 86, 100, 106–7, destiny 90, 93, 124–5, 130, 133
113, 117, 119 destructuring 16–17
being(s)-as-a-whole 108–10 difference see nothing, the
Beistegui, Miquel de 59 Diotima 5
Bernasconi, Robert 7 disclosedness 25, 120
Bernstein, Richard J. 126 discourse 25, 30–1
birth 122 discovery 91, 103, 120
Blattner, William 103–4 “disinterested pleasure” 6
Brogan, Walter 140n.28 disposition 99
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 133 “divine beauty” 5
burden, of authenticity 127–8 Dollimore, Jonathan 8, 136n.27
Dreyfus, Hubert 14, 48, 59, 62
call-of-conscience 71–6, 78, 80, 88 Du Bois, W. E. B. 132
caller/called 75–83 dwelling 126
Caputo, John 10
“care” 40 ecstasies see temporality
Carman, Taylor 45–6, 78–9 Edwards, Paul 46, 63
“Cartesian Anxiety” 126 ek-sistent 106–11
Clearing of Being 67, 89, 92, 105, empathy 24
112, 120 “End of Philosophy and the Task of
cogito 20 Thinking, The” (Heidegger) 105
community 4, 122, 124–5, 131–3 equiprimordiality, of Being and
comportment 107, 109, 118 Da-sein 97
concealment/unconcealment 106–17 eros 2, 5–6
conscience 88–9, 92–3 existence 18, 32
and Angst 71, 75–7 existential identity 45, 56–7, 59–60,
“Conversation On a Country Path” 65–7, 78–90, 95–6, 112–16,
(Heidegger) 91 122–5
Contributions to Philosophy (From existentialism 34–5, 65, 93
Enowning) (Heidegger) 8 “existentiell” 34–5, 58
Critique of Judgment (Kant) 6
culture 14, 134 factical death 64–5, 69
“facticity” 34, 97
Dahlstorm, Daniel O. 143 falling-prey 25
Da-sein 18–19 fate 121, 123–5, 133
death 8, 35, 39, 44–8, 49–52, 57–8, fear 27–8, 35, 52–3, 56
60, 62–5, 67, 69–70, 75, 79, 81, Felt Meanings of the World, The (Smith) 6
Index 151
finitude 64–5, 69, 84, 117, 119, 121, 130 inheritance 121–2
“fore-having” 29 innerworldly 86
freedom 34, 108, 128
Fritsche, Johannas 90 joy 120
future 85–6, 116
Kant, Immanuel 6, 48
Gelassenheit 93, 111, 117 Kierkegaard 137n, 140n
and Angst 87, 117, 134 Kisiel, Theodore 84, 140n.12
generation 32, 93, 125, 128, 132 knife 27–8
German National Socialism 90 Kockelman, Joseph 45
Germany 90 Krell, David Farrell 127
Greeks 15–17, 105, 132
Grene, Marjorie 138n.18 “Language” (Heidegger) 129
ground 29 see also Being Lao-Tzu 117
groundless ground 16, 43–5, 59, leaping in/leaping ahead
62, 64–6 see also Being, (solicitude) 38
nothing, the “Letter on Humanism” (Heidegger)
Guignon, Charles B. 14 10, 103, 112, 114, 127–9
guilt 72–4, 75 letting-be 12, 72, 87, 89, 91, 93,
106, 108–10, 112–13,
Haar, Michel 7, 9, 45, 90 116–18
hammer 21–2, 31, 115, 131 leveling down 32, 36–7, 44–7, 49, 65–7,
Haugeland, John 103–4, 141–2n.11, 69, 73, 84, 87, 98, 100–01, 113,
143n.55 123 see also possibilities
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm 6 life 45, 48
Heidegger, early/late (Heidegger listening 31, 75–6, 88–9, 132–3
I, II) 7, 43, 47, 61, 90–1, 103, love 5, 6
111, 119, 127–9 “lover of wisdom” 5
“Heidegger’s idea of truth”
(Tugendhat) 114 Macomber, W. B. 138n.32, 140n.16
Held, Klaus 136n.20 Malpas, Jeff 45
heritage 17, 88, 121–32 “Memorial Address” (Heidegger) 127
hermeneutic 29 “metaphysics of feeling” 6, 61
hiddenness/unhiddenness 1–4, 42 “metaphysics of reason” 6
see also concealment/ methodology 16–20, 61, 106
unconcealment Mit-sein 20, 22
historicity 90, 93, 116, 118, 121–3 Mitda-sein 9, 11–12, 22–4, 25, 27, 30,
and Being 126 38, 73–4, 87, 90, 104, 115, 118,
homelessness 127 123–5, 132–3
human beings 10, 18, 34, 88, mood 4, 9, 25–8, 31, 52, 67, 115,
129–30 131–4
Husserl, Edmund 133 Mulhall, Stephen 31, 46, 80, 137n.7
mystery 1, 15
individuation 58–9, 66, 69, 70, 75–6,
96, 124–5 “needful usage” 10
and Angst 65, 67 Newton, Isaac 104
152 Index
Nietzsche vi pre-reflective see Being, mood

nonactivity 117 “presence” 1
non-dialectical 87, 95 “presence-at-hand” 21
non-relational, death 50–2, 60, 63 primordial truth 92
“not being closed” 112 project 24, 28–9, 93–4
nothing, the 5–12, 61–2, 64–5, 70, 72, “projection” 114
75–6, 79–80, 82, 87, 91, 93, 105, propositional truth 14, 98–100, 105
112–13, 123, 128–30
and difference, 72, 81 rational subject 20
nullity 78, 82–3, 86–7 “ready-to-hand” 21
real 36
objective presence 1, 3, 11, 19, 33–4, reason 20
40, 44, 51, 66, 93–4, 98, 101, reborn 122
127 region see world
Olafson, Frederick A. 7 relation 66–8, 100
“On the Essence of Truth” “releasement” 91, 117
(Heidegger) 7, 98–112 relevance see world
ontic 34–5, 47, 63, 102–3 resoluteness 88–92, 95–6, 110–12,
ontological 34, 47, 63, 98–9, 102–4, 120–4, 133
115–16, 126, 129, 133 “resolution” 72, 91
ontological difference 83 retrieve 122–5, 131
“ontological occlusion” 3–4, 11–12, 32, Richardson, William J. 7, 9, 119
60, 89–90, 96, 105, 115–16,
128–34 Sartre, Jean-Paul 8, 34–5, 65, 96, 128
ontology of mood 3 Scheler, Max 125
“On the Question of Being” Schlegel, Friedrich 6
(Heidegger) 10 Schurmann, Reiner 9
“Origin of the Work of Art, The” Sein-lassen see letting-be
(Heidegger) 9–10, 89–90, 130 self 124 see also Mitda-sein, Angst, and
other, the 3–4, 8–12, 122, 133 loss of self
outside-itself 83 Shakespeare 134
shepherd of Being 129
personal self 51, 58, 69–70, 79, silence 30, 75–6, 89, 132
85, 116 Smith, Quentin 6
personal identity 124–5 Socrates 5
phenomenology 17–18, 54–6, 61 solipsism 23, 125
Phenomenology of Spirit (Hegel) 6 “something like being” 14
“Philosophical fragments” (Schlegel) 6 space 58
Plato 1–5, 14–15, 44, 88, 93, 98–9, Stambaugh, Joan 128
128, 131 stillness 12, 87, 89, 91–3, 95, 112–16,
“Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” 129–34 see also Gelassenheit,
(Heidegger) 1–7, 14, 88, 98–9 Angst
possibilities 69, 83, 91, 97, 114 see also style 14
leveling down subjectivity 43, 45–7, 50–1, 58–9, 79,
“Postscript to ‘What is Metaphysics’” 90–3, 101,103–4, 106, 111–14,
(Heidegger) 61 119–20
potentiality-of-being 77, 85, 87–8, unhinged 49, 66, 96, 128
92, 120 Symposium (Socrates) 5
Index 153
Taminiaux, Jacques 141n.5 presupposition of 106

Tao Te Ching 117 and relation 105
technology 16 “in the truth” 51, 92, 120, 129
temporality 66, 68, 72, 81–9, 95–6, “truth of existence” 72
103–5, 112–13, 116–18, 121–3, Tugendhat, Ernst 106, 114–15,
129, 131 142–3n.50
linear 65, 84 “turn” (kehre) 7, 111, 119
thaumazein see wonder see also Heidegger, early/late
“The thing” (Heidegger) 129
There, the 26, 29, 83–4, 86 uncanny see Angst
Theunissen, Michael 124 understanding 25, 28–30
They, the 16, 32–7, 40, 59, 65, 69, 72–3, “untruth” 100–1, 114–15
76, 82–3, 91, 100–1, 114,
127–8 Vallega, Alejandro A. 138n.27
They-self, the 37, 91, 117 Villela-Petit, Maria 58
thrownness 33, 67, 82–3, 87, 95, 101,
122–3 We, the 122–3
time 63 Western ontology 13, 16–17, 83
“Time and Being” (Heidegger) 87, 122 “What is metaphysics” (Heidegger) 7,
Time and death (White) 14 59, 61, 117
totality 39–41, 43–4, 53–4, 56–60, 62, White, Carol 14, 48, 133
65–6, 87, 95–7, 104, 108, 112, whole, of Da-sein and world 43–7,
116, 124, 131 see also whole, 56–67, 70–1, 78–9, 83–92, 95–7,
individuation 104–16 see also totality,
toward-oneself 86 ontological occlusion
“trace of willing” 91 willing 91
tradition 16–17, 40, 121–32 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 4, 6
transcendence see projection wonder 2, 3, 6–7
transcendent God 126 world 21–4, 25, 28–31, 39–42, 54–8,
truth 1–3, 5, 7, 9–11, 13, 14–15, 19, 60–1, 87, 89, 115–16, 121–3,
35, 42, 66, 87–9, 91–4, 96–103, 125–6, 131–2
105–10, 113–17, 120–1, 122, 126, ancestors 122–4
131 loss of 54–7, 67–8, 79, 104, 121
of Being 83, 91, 96–7, 101–3, shared with others 125–34
127, 130 Wu Wei 117
correspondence theory 98–100
openness 107 Young, Julian 45

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Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy

Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from

Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan

The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane

© Sharin N. Elkholy 2008

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9875-2

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Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India

The Yoking of Angst to Aletheia : Heidegger

to reorient the human being toward an understanding of beings in relation

together in a total and complete accord. All understanding, of oneself, of

discussion of “being-toward-death.” As quoted above, eros allows for a

regarding the Being of a being or of the outward appearance of a thing, is

drawn from the section on “being-toward-death,” where Heidegger first

confrontation with the nothing of Angst. Later Heidegger reestablishes

finitude of Da-sein is established in an inseparable relation of mood to

existence. However, paradoxically, being-guilty is also revealed to Da-sein

Introduction to the Project and Method of

The Question Regarding the Meaning of Being and the

if being had the character of a possible being” (6/5). The nothingness

tradition of Western ontology entails an understanding of the meaning of

if an understanding of being is, are beings accessible as beings; only if

The Ontological Structure of the Being of Da-sein:

Heidegger breaks from the tradition of Cartesian subjectivity by coining the

are possible only as modes of being-in-the-world” (365/334). To indicate

means that the understanding of others already lies in the understanding

Da-sein’s Existentiales: Attunement, Understanding,

“Indeed,” says Heidegger, “we must ontologically in principle leave the

a world that it then tries to understand. In its projective understanding,

Projecting has nothing to do with being related to a plan thought out,

Therefore, what is projected in the understanding is a prereflective

[T]he project character of understanding means that understanding

The third existential belonging to the being of Da-sein is discourse.

being-in-the-world. The world as a whole within which sounds and words

It requires a very artificial and complicated attitude in order to “hear” a

As discourse belongs to the being of Da-sein as being-in-the-world and the

conclusion through a discussion of ontological occlusion where it is shown

Inauthentic Da-sein and the Leveling Down of Possibilities

The world and being-with others belong to Da-sein’s being as a being-in-

referential context of significance. The world of Da-sein frees the beings

Da-sein’s relation to Being and the concealment belonging to the truth of

discloses to Da-sein its being-toward-death. By reducing possibility to what

The leveling down of the possibilities of Da-sein to what is initially availa-

The They transform their Angst about the indefiniteness of death by

possible by making it available” (261/241). Relating to possibilities that

In utilizing pubic transportation, in the use of information services such

Lost in the They, Da-sein is relieved of all responsibility. It takes care of

In a rather obscure passage in section 26 of Being and Time, “The

With respect to the above example, to authentically recognize the other

The evasion of death which covers over, dominates everydayness so stub-

Through a confrontation with a certain mode of death that is made phe-

Moving from Division One and the Inauthentic being of

and the being of the world in an inseparable and reciprocal relationship to

One thing has become unmistakable. Our existential analytic of Da-sein

more than the inauthentic being of Da-sein, of Da-sein as fragmentary.

In other words, if Heidegger is going to get to the root of the meaning of

Being-toward-death—Stage one of Angst:

The role that “being-toward-death” plays in revealing the meaning of the

as a being-in-the-world with others: attunement, understanding, and

its subjectivity. Understood, as I am going to show, in light of the nothing of