Being is a Funny Game

Heideggerian Angst, Levinassian Horror, and Michael Haneke’s Funny Games

A Seminar Paper for Anxiety

The University of Chicago

By Susan Balding
 1

In the era of big-pharma and psychiatry, anxiety is often understood as a psychological

defect, and is depicted as a life-invading ‘attack’ that brings with it an onslaught of shortness of

breath, nausea, pounding heart, insomnia, and an inability to get through everyday tasks. An

equally terrifying onslaught of prescription medication promises an easy solution to this

‘abnormal’ affect, getting you back to ‘normal’ life after a short talk with your primary care

physician and a trip to the pharmacy. Unlike Xanax or Valium commercials, existential

philosophy often renders anxiety inseparable from and indispensable to our very existence.

Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas are two such philosophers who present strikingly

similar but ultimately opposed conceptions of “anxiety” in which anxiety is fundamental to our

ability to exist as intentional beings that can interact with and be about the world we inhabit.

Heidegger’s Being and Time renders Angsti central to understanding what it means to say that

Dasein is ultimately disclosed as cura, or care, and Levinas’s “preparatory” project in Existence

and Existents relies heavily upon the experience of horror, which is put in direct opposition to

“Heideggerian anxiety”, to define what it means for a being to come into contact with the very

reality of Being.

This paper argues that Heideggerian Angst and Levinassian horror offer two radical and

radically opposed conceptions of intentionality and its transcendence. While Heideggerian Angst

serves as a transcendental state-of-mind in which Dasein goes beyond beings as a whole and is

individuated as its utmost self, Levinas’s horror of the there is stands in contrast to the positing

and positioning of consciousness in Being that results in the self, or the hypostasis. This positing

of consciousness is not, however, constitutive of transcendence, for it continues to remain in the

Existence that it is attempting to escape. In radical opposition to Heidegger, Levinas argues that
i
I have refrained from translating Angst as “anxiety” in this paper to emphasize it as a specific and unique
mood in Heidegger’s philosophy, and to distinguish it from the “everyday” experience of anxiety, which,
in Heidegger’s conception, is merely an instance of fear.
 2

true transcendence, or excendence, occurs only through the Other, which presents the possibility

of escaping existence by not being’s oneself at all.

In Being and Time, Heidegger presents Daseinii as that Being which is always about the

world by virtue of its state-of-mind, and which can only transcend the world and become its

utmost self, or realize its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, through a basic state-of-mind such as

Angst. Dasein’s transcendence of beings as that Being which is brought before the nothing in

Angst serves to radically individualize Dasein by bringing Dasein to stand before itself as “its

ownmost potentiality-for-Being.”1 When Dasein stands before the nothing, its stands before the

utmost possibility of its impossibility, and therefore the reality of its Being-towards-death. This

vision of transcendence as radical individuation is radically opposed in Levinas’s corresponding

examination of the horror of the there is, which reveals the impossibility of death and the ever-

present inescapable fact of Being. Consciousness is that which posits itself against the being

through a positioning, but is not transcendent of Being because it continues to exist as Being.

Levinas conceives of a radical transcendence through excendence, in which the only way for

consciousness to rise above Being is for consciousness to leave itself altogether and shift its

locus into the Other.

Furthermore, an examination of Heidegger and Levinas as espousing radical and radically

opposed conceptions of Being, intentionality, and transcendence reveals that Heidegger’s

philosophy lends no importance to the figure of the Other. Heidegger’s conception of Dasein’s

ii
Dasein, which Heidegger occasionally breaks down into the term Da-sein, can be translated as “Being-
there”, an existential characteristic fundamental to understanding Angst. Dasein is ultimately the Being
whose own Being is an issue for itself, and is distinct from entities within the world that are merely
“present-at-hand”, i.e., entities that are “such that their Being can be neither a matter of indifference to
them, nor the opposite.” Heidegger further differentiates the specific Being of Dasein as an entity that is
necessarily involved in the world and that is therefore characterized by care or concern. Dasein’s
involvement in the world of its concern makes it synonymous with Being-in-the-world, and this
characteristic also makes it vital that in order for Dasein to understand something, that thing must be
disclosed to Dasein. In Angst, it is precisely Dasein that is disclosed to itself.
 3

transcendence as a phenomenon by which Dasein is affirmed as the possibility for being itself

not only radically individualizes Dasein, but also renders other Beings-in-the-world uimportant

to Dasein’s self-realization. Evil thus manifests itself in defect or deficiency; in that which is not

enough. On the other hand, Levinas’s idea of the horror of the there is makes evil positively and

implicitly manifest in Being; in order to escape it, one must escape Being entirely. By positing

the Other as that through which consciousness can exit itself and achieve escape from Being,

Levinas presents a possibility for the Good, and thus makes possible a philosophical project

characterized by ethics.

In this paper, I propose that understanding the radical and radically opposed projects of

these two philosophers can be accomplished not only through a careful examination of their

primary works, but also through a thought experiment involving each philosopher’s potential

interpretation of Michael Haneke’s 2007 film Funny Games.iii The experience of the Farber

family, who have been trapped in their own home by two polite and inscrutable antagonists, is

not that of Heidegger’s individualizing, death-revealing Angst. In the context of Heideggerian

intentionality and Angst, I argue, Funny Games is rather a depiction of the fear that hits us when

we are most at-home in the world, as Paul and Peter assault the Farbers and other families in the

comfort of their lakefront houses. From a Levinassian view, however, Funny Games can be

interpreted as a close depiction of horror of the there is. That Funny Games focuses on the

experience of a captive family makes its relationship with Levinas’s Existence and Existents,

written while Levinas was a prisoner at a Nazi work camp, even more poignant. The film’s

diegetic sound serves to convey that the family has no means of escape from their ever-present

antagonists, even in their absence, and the numerous two- and three-shots throughout the film
iii
Because it is a shot-for-shot remake and because Haneke originally wanted the film to star Naomi Watts
and be set in America, I am only referencing the American version of Funny Games and not the 1997
Austrian film of the same name.
 4

emphasize the idea of being watched by that there is, as one is in Levinas’s description of

insomnia. Additionally, the home-centric mise-en-scene serves to emphasize that this horror can

take place in the very heart of our at-homeness, and does not need to rend the individual from it

for horror to occur. Ann, George, and Georgie do not seem to realize the necessity of dying their

own deaths that Heidegger envisions as a part of Angst. Rather, the family faces the reality that

regardless of whether they die or survive—and there really is no question that they will die—the

horror wrought by their terrorizers, Paul and Peter, will go on without them.

I. “Whether by Knife, or Whether by Gun, Losing Your Life Can Sometimes Be Fun…”:

State-of-mind, Angst, and the Radical Individuation of Dasein

State-of-mind is the way in which Dasein is disclosed as a Being that is fundamentally

intentional, and manifests onticallyiv as various moods that disclose to Dasein in various ways

the world of its concern. However, while an everyday mood such as fear discloses to Dasein

entities in the world of its absorption specifically as fearsome or fearful, Angst is a fundamental

mood that draws Dasein out of the world of its everyday concern and reveals to Dasein Being-in-

the-world as such. This Being-in-the-world as such is precisely what Dasein evades in everyday

states-of-mind by virtue of its absorption in the world. The experience of Angst is ultimately

transcendent because it allows Dasein to transcend beings as a whole and come face-to-face with

the possibility of its absolute impossibility, to Dasein the possibility of its absolute

impossibility—Death. This allows for the radical individualization of Dasein by revealing

Dasein as “Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.”2 Therefore,

Angst is a basic state of mind because “it amounts to the disclosedness of the fact that Dasein

iv
“Ontological inquiry is concerned primarily with Being; ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with
entities and the facts about them,” BT, 31n.3.
 5

exists as thrown Being towards its end,” or as Being-towards-death, and displays to Dasein the

nothing beyond Beings as a whole.3

This section will begin by examining the architecture of Dasein’s intentionality as state-

of-mind, and then move to elucidate the difference between fear and Angst as everyday and

fundamental moods, respectively. As Heidegger does, I will take falling—the phenomenon

which designates Dasein’s evasion of itself by virtue of becoming absorbed and lost in the

world—as the point of departure in analyzing the difference between fear and Angst v and thus

explain Heidegger’s claim that “fear is anxiety, fallen into the ‘world’, inauthentic, and, as such,

hidden from itself.”4 I end this section by arguing that, in the context of Heideggerian

philosophy, the Farber family experiences not Angst but fear in the face of their terrorizers; their

ordeal does not bring them out of their home, but locates them specifically within it, and does not

disclose to them their potentiality-for-Being by bringing them face-to-face with death, but rather

causes them to fear for themselves in the face of that death. Haneke’s home-centric mise-en-

scene serves to convey the Farbers as Being-at-home in the world, and that this terror is attacking

them at the heart of that Being.

1. State-of-Mind and Moods

Dasein’s intentionality, or its Being-there, is disclosed through its state-of-mindvi

[Befinlichkeit], which is “a basic existential way in which Dasein is its ‘there.’”5 State-of-mind

has three essential characteristics that ultimately disclose Dasein’s Being-in-the-world and

Being-there: (1) state-of-mind discloses Dasein’s thrownness [Geworfenheit]; (2) it discloses

v
“Since our aim is to proceed towards the Being of the totality of the structural whole, we shall take as
our point of departure the concrete analyses of falling which we have just carried through,” BT, H.184.
vi
State-of-mind can also be translated as “the state in which one may be found,” further emphasizing the
fact that in having a state-of-mind, Dasein finds necessarily itself related to the world of its absorption,
BT, 172n2.
 6

Dasein’s “submission to that world which is already disclosed with its own Being”; and (3) it

discloses itself as “the existential kind of Being in which Dasein constantly surrenders itself to

the ‘world’ and lets the ‘world’ matter to it in such a way that somehow Dasein evades its very

self.”6

Dasein’s state-of-mind manifests ontically as various moods [Stimmung] that serve to

disclose Dasein’s openness or attunedness to the world in which it finds itself. Because “Dasein

is its disclosedness,” Dasein is always that which discloses it—state-of-mind and its ontical

moods—and therefore always has a mood and is always disclosed as Being-there. Even the most

“pallid, evenly balanced lack of mood…is far from nothing at all,” for it is in such a mood “that

Dasein becomes satiated with itself,” and therefore becomes a burden unto itself.7 By examining

how state-of-mind discloses Dasein as “there,” one can understand the difference between an

everyday and basic mood, and why it is only through a basic mood such as Angst that Dasein can

confront the reality of its Being-in-the-world as such, and the possibility of its impossibility.

State-of-mind discloses Dasein’s thrownness, which refers to the fact that Dasein is “that

entity to which it has been delivered over in its Being; and in this way it has been delivered over

to the Being which, in existing, it has to be.”8 State-of-mind discloses that Dasein “is thrown in

such a way that, as Being-in-the-world, it is the there” and therefore is the Being that is alongside

the world of its concern.9 State-of-mind discloses this thrownness not by being a way “in which

we look at thrownness, but one in which we turn towards or turn away”; it discloses by

comporting Dasein toward or away from itself as Being-in-the-world as such.

While a basic state-of-mind such as Angst reveals Dasein to itself and causes it to shrink

back in the face of its potentiality for Being, everyday moods result in Dasein’s turning away

from “the burdensome character of Dasein which is manifest in it [a mood],” 10 therefore causing
 7

Dasein’s thrownness to be disclosed “in the manner of an evasive turning-away.” Ultimately, it

is Dasein’s very evasion of itself in these everyday moods that is disclosive of Dasein as Being-

there: “In the evasion of itself the there is something disclosed.”11 On the other hand, in Angst,

Dasein’s thrownness will be disclosed even more specifically as thrownness towards its end, and

Dasein will come face to face with the possibility of its impossibility.

State-of-mind also discloses Dasein’s “submission to the world which is already

disclosed in its own Being” and therefore makes it possible for Dasein to be directed towards

something, specifically other beings in-the-world.12 Thus, the world becomes something not only

toward which Dasein is oriented or comported, but also something Dasein is open to and

something with which Dasein can potentially interact: “The world which has already been

disclosed beforehand permits what is within-the-world to be encountered.”13 State-of-mind

allows Dasein to be about the world—it is what makes Dasein intentional. Furthermore, moods

are not “reflected upon,” and come “neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside,’ but arise out of

Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being.”14 State-of-mind is a necessary part of Dasein’s

status as a Being that is related to the world. Dasein always has a mood, and therefore is always

about something in-the-world and is always Being-in-the-world itself; “world, Dasein-with, and

existence are equiprimordially disclosed,” vii and “state-of-mind is a basic existential species of

their disclosedness” by virtue of its “essentially Being-in-the-world.”15

Finally, it is through states of mind that Dasein’ “constantly surrenders itself to the

‘world’ and lets the ‘world’ matter,” and therefore states of mind disclose Dasein’s Being as

concernful Being-alongside.16 States-of-mind disclose the world not only as something toward

which Dasein is comported and with which Dasein can interact but also as something which

vii
I.e., disclosed as equally primordial.
 8

matters to Dasein as a result of Dasein’s involvement in the world. Because of Dasein’s

submission to the world, the world is that “out of which we can encounter something that matters

to us.”17 The fact that Dasein encounters the world as something that matters to it allows the

different modes of state-of-mind (for example, fear) to manifest; without mood, there would be

no world toward which to direct affects and volitions. Subsequently, because the world has been

disclosed as something that matters to it, Dasein can even more fully evade itself in these

everyday states-of-mind; it can fall into inauthentic everydayness, into fascination with the world

and the Others (“they”).

2. Falling and the Everyday Mood of Fear

The phenomenon of falling is precisely the point at which the moods of fear and Angst

diverge, for “fear is anxiety, fallen into the ‘world’, inauthentic, and, as such hidden from

itself.”18 Falling [Verfallen] characterizes the everyday mode of Being as absorbed in the world

and makes “manifest something like a fleeing of Dasein in the face of itself” that hides from

Dasein its authentic potentiality-for-Being.”19 Dasein that has fallen away from itself “has, in the

first instance, fallen away from itself as authentic potentiality for Being its Self, and has fallen

into the ‘world.”20 This fallenness into, and concern with, the world is manifest in fear because

fear is precisely about entities within the world; Angst, on the other hand, is about the authentic

potentiality for Being from which Dasein has already fallen when it experiences fear. In this

section and the next, the individual moods of fear and Angst and their relationship to Dasein’s

falling will be explored alongside an analysis of Funny Games as ultimately falling short of

Heidegger’s vision of Angst. Funny Games is, instead, a depiction of fear, for it takes place and

regards something very much in the world, and does not allow the Farber family triumph over
 9

evil and Being in death; rather, their deaths reveal the Levinassian reality that despite an

individual’s end, Being goes on.

Heidegger asserts that the term falling “does not express any negative evaluation,” but is

instead meant to signify what the three essential characteristics of state-of-mind reveal about

Dasein and the worldhood of the world; specifically, “that Dasein is proximally and for the most

part alongside the ‘world’ of its concern.”21 Dasein’s fleeing in the face of itself causes Dasein to

become absorbed in the world and the “they,” which is the term Heidegger uses to denote “the

everydayness of Being with one-another” or Dasein-with others.22 “This ‘absorption in…’ has

mostly the character of Being-lost in the publicness of the ‘they,’” in which Dasein is lost

because it has “fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being itself and has fallen

into the ‘world’.”23 In other words, Dasein becomes characterized by falling as a result of its

turning and falling away from itself. Dasein’s subsequent absorption in the world causes Dasein

to become alienated from itself and thus to take up its status as concernful Being-alongside the

world. It is precisely this concern with the world and Dasein’s existence as Being-in-the-world

as a whole Angst discloses.

By virtue of its status as Being-in-the-world and as Being characterized by fallenness into

the world, Dasein is ultimately Being-lost in the world. Heidegger alternatively terms this

“inauthentic everydayness,” in which “Dasein plunges out of itself into itself” but which also

veils Dasein’s authentic potentiality-for-Being from itself. It is through such a fundamental state-

of-mind as Angst that Dasein can access this authentic self. In order to better understand

Dasein’s existentiality as a result of this fall—Dasein’s specific Being as Being-in-the-world

with a state-of-mind—one can examine the everyday state-of-mind that is fear.

 10

Heidegger takes fear as a mode of state-of-mind to explicate a specific way in which it

discloses the world Dasein finds itself in. In fear, the world is disclosed specifically as that from

which the fearful may arise, and Dasein is disclosed specifically as that which fears for itself in

the face of the fearful. Heidegger examines fear in a tripartite arrangement as (1) that in the face

of which we fear, (2) fearing, and (3) that about which we fear. Everyday moods such as fear

“bring us face to face with beings as a whole” and “conceal from us the nothing” revealed by

fundamental states-of-mind such as Angst.24 In other words, everyday moods are about the

definite and are about the objects and Beings encountered by Dasein in the world into which it is

fallen.

Because Dasein is inherently Being-in-the-world, “that in the face of which we fear, the

‘fearsome’, is in every case something which we encounter within-the-world.”25 The threat in the

face of which we fear has the character of detrimentality, which reveals the threatening to be

some definite entity within-the-world that comes near Dasein yet has the potential to “stay away

and pass us by.”26 The possibility of the fearsome coming close by or staying away is the result

of Dasein’s falling into the world; it is a result of Dasein’s concern with and Being-alongside

that world. Thus, that in the face of which we fear is something definitely in the world and which

may encounter Dasein. By fearing the threatening, or “in fearing as such, what we have thus

characterized as threatening is freed and allowed to matter to us.”27 Fear as a potential mode of

state-of-mind discloses the world to Dasein in such a way that things “like the fearsome may

come close. The potentiality for coming close is itself freed by the essential existential spatiality

of Being-in-the-world.”28
 11

In addition to disclosing the world as something from which the fearsome may emerge

and as something that can be feared by Dasein, fear also discloses the world as something that

matters to Dasein by disclosing Dasein as concernful Being-alongside the world.

Fear discloses this specific Being of Dasein because “that which fear fears about is that very

entity which is afraid—Dasein.”29 When Dasein fears something—whether for house or home,

or even for the Other—Dasein is really fearing about itself, because “Dasein is in terms of what

it is concerned with.”30 Dasein is so handed over to and absorbed in the world that to fear about

anything is to fear about itself, just as when each Farber fears about the death of their family

members they necessarily fear their own demise. When Paul offers Ann not only the choice of

whether she or her husband George can die first, but whether the chosen person dies by knife or

gun, Ann fears her own death no matter what; regardless of who she chooses, she will eventually

die, and she fears this in fearing for George’s life.

In summary, Fear is inherently fear of something in-the-world and is inherently fear

about Dasein: “fearing about something, as being-afraid in the face of something, always

discloses equiprimordially entities within-the-world and Being-in—the former as threatening and

the latter as threatened” and both as inseparable from one another. Dasein’s inauthentic

everydayness, therefore, is characterized precisely by this concernful Being-alongside. Like all

everyday states-of-mind, fear is only possible because of Dasein’s fallenness, which is in turn

characterized by the turning-away of Dasein from itself that occurs because of a basic state-of-

mind such as Angst.

3. Angst, Nothing, and Transcendence

Angst is the basic state-of-mind in which Dasein comes face to face with itself as Being-

in-the-world as such, and thus comes to understand itself as that Being-in-the-world which is
 12

specifically Being-towards-death. Heidegger terms that which is encountered in Angst nothing,

or “the negation of the totality of beings; it is nonbeing pure and simple.”31 Because that which is

encountered in Angst is precisely nothingness, one can say that in Angst, the possibility of the

impossibility of Being—Death—is disclosed to Dasein. Being is brought into stark relief with its

negation, and subsequently Dasein’s potentiality-for-Being—Dasein’s “Being-free for the

freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself—is disclosed.32

This encounter with the nothing also constitutes Dasein’s transcendence of the world and

the beings within it: “Being held out into the nothing—as Dasein is—on the ground of concealed

anxiety is its surpassing of beings as a whole.”33 This transcendence ultimately serves to radically

individuate Dasein by revealing “its Being towards its potentiality-for-Being—that is, its Being-

free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold of itself.”34 This freedom is a positive

freedom for Dasein; it is a freedom to take up either its authentic or inauthentic Being. As

previously stated, the analysis of falling serves as the point of departure from which Heidegger

begins his examination of Angst as a basic state-of-mind. While everyday moods disclose to

Dasein the entities of the world in a specific way (e.g., as fearful), Angst discloses the entirety of

the world and Dasein’s involvement in it, (Dasein’s Being-in-the-world as such) and thus allows

Dasein to confront its potentiality-for-Being.

In Angst, Dasein shrinks back from itself before turning and falling into the world. The

fact that Dasein shrinks back and turns away from itself in Angst further differentiates Angst

from fear, in which Dasein flees that which is fearsome. While “shrinking back has the character

of fleeing,” the shrinking back that occurs in Angst is distinct from the fleeing that occurs in fear,

because that from which Dasein shrinks back is indefinite Being-in-the-world as a whole. In

other words, in Angst, Dasein confronts itself as Being-in-the-world as a whole, which is not a
 13

thing within-the-world and is therefore not something from which Dasein can flee. The fleeing

that occurs in fear, on the other hand, is “founded upon a fear of entities within-the-world,” and

the ground for its possibility is Dasein’s having fallen into the world as a result of turning away

from itself. “That in the face of which we fear is a detrimental entity within-the-world which

comes from some definite region but is close by and is bringing itself close, and yet might stay

away;” it is located in the world as something which can be encountered and discovered in fear.35

Furthermore, such states-of-mind that “bring us face to face with beings as a whole” within-the-

world “conceal from us the nothing we are seeking,” specifically the nothing that is encountered

in Angst.

Being-in-the-world as such is that in the face of which Dasein has Angst, that which

Being-anxious discloses, and that about which one has Angst. In Angst, Dasein feels uncanny

[unheimlich], or not-at-home. The uncanny serves to bring Dasein “back from its absorption in

the ‘world’” in which it typically feels at home and thus “everyday familiarity collapses.”36 This

not-at-homeness, as will be discussed, is precisely opposite of what is depicted in Funny Games;

the home-centric mise-en-scene (see Figures 1 and 2) situates the Farbers as completely at home

in midst of the terror of Paul and Peter. The death of George and Georgie even occur in the heart

of the home: the living room. Though one could argue that the Farbers are removed from their at-

homeness by the fact that horror is taking place in their home at all, this sense of alienation is not

dwelled upon, and does not lend itself to a depiction of Angst. The Farbers may ultimately stand

at odds with death in their ordeal, but this experience does not individualize them and reveal to

them the “errors of their ways” in-the-world, as one might expect from a stereotypical horror

film; their experience rather masks their normal goings-on even more, and reveals the terror of
 14

Paul and Peter’s continued being rather than any triumph or relief the Farbers may hope to find

in death.

Ultimately, in Angst Dasein is made to feel ill at ease by the fact that it comes face to face

withx the opposite of Being: nothing. In the “receding of beings as a whole that closes in on us in

anxiety,” Dasein becomes oppressed by the nothing and thus recedes into the world that has been

disclosed to it as a whole.37 Finally,

Anxiety throws Dasein back upon that which it is anxious about—its authentic
potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world, which as something that understands, projects itself
essentially upon possibilities. Therefore, with that which it is anxious about, anxiety
discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be
of its own accord as something individualized in individualization.38

Because Dasein’s being held out into the nothing constitutes that “Dasein is in each case

already beyond beings as a whole,” the encounter with the nothing that occurs in Angst

constitutes Dasein’s transcendence.39 This transcendence makes possible Dasein’s radical

individuation because “Anxiety [Angst] makes manifest in Dasein its Being towards its ownmost

potentiality-for-Being—that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing itself and taking hold

of itself.”40 In confronting the nothing, Dasein is distinguished as itself apart from the world of

its concern, and is distinguished as that which is free to choose to take hold of itself. Because this

potentiality for being is contrasted with nothing, the nothing becomes the potentiality for

Dasein’s not Being, and therefore for Dasein’s Death. When Dasein shrinks back and turns away

from nothing, it is turning away and fleeing from its own death.

The fear and terror the Farbers experience in their lakeside home at the hands of Paul and

Peter does not represent Heideggerian Angst. Paul and Peter do not draw the Farbers out of

Being-at-home—or Being-in-the-world—or inspire within them Angst about the very fact that

they exist as such; rather, their home and world become the stage for fear and terror, as
 15

emphasized by Haneke’s home-centric shots and mise-en-scene (see: Figures 1 and 2). The

Farbers are trapped in their at-homeness, and have no potential for escape as Dasein does in the

transcendent, freeing experience of Angst. Their objects of fear are very real entities within-the-

world, and do not represent the nothingness encountered in Angst, though they do represent

death. In Angst, however, this possibility of death reveals to Dasein its “potentiality-for-Being-

free,” specifically for Being free to dwell inauthentically in the world or to grasp onto its utmost

authenticity as Being-toward-death. In Funny Games, Paul and Peter inspire no such hope; they

represent death as the consequence for the Farbers capture and nihilation as their end; there is no

freedom for the Farbers to be their utmost selves here.

The Farbers also most certainly do not transcend their worldly situation, as one might in

Angst. The only film angle that can be said to be “transcendent” in Funny Games occurs at the

beginning, when Haneke’s camera hangs high above the Farber’s car. Once it has descended,

however, the camera stays firmly on the Farber’s level, occasionally pulling back to emphasize

their existence in the night or to reveal the homes in which they seek refuge. In a Heideggerian

reading, transcendence would require individuation and a confrontation with nothing that would

ultimately inspire in Ann, George, and Georgie the conviction to freely live as Being-toward-

death. As stated above, there is no such hope for the Farbers in their captivity. They are not the

subjects of their own death. Rather, they are subjected to it without choice. Any say they have in

the matter—whether by knife or whether by gun, for example—is meaningless at best, and lethal

at worst.
 16

Figure 1. Georgie escaping to the neighbor's house

Figure 2. The living room is the scene of horror and fear

Even if the Farbers were to individually have experiences of Angst it is hard to see how

the radical individuation that occurs therein would redeem their situation: as emphasized above,

there is no possibility for dying their own death, for it is not they who have decided they will die,

but Paul and Peter. As will be seen in Levinas, this is indicative of the fact that even after death,

Being goes on; it is not simply an individual Dasein that has it. This is where Levinas’

conception of horror and the there is will come into conflict with Heidegger’s Angst, and serve to

present a radically un-individuated intentionality in which the only possibility of transcendence

from consciousness and Being is excendence.

 17

II. “…Come On, Don’t Fall Asleep”: Horror, the There Is, and the Radical De-

Individuation of the Subject

In Existence and Existents, Levinas gives an account of intentionality, Being, and

transcendence that is radically opposed to Heidegger’s individualizing experience of Angst.

Instead of Angst, Levinas presents the experience of horror, which strips the subject of its very

subjectivity and reveals the anonymous, inescapable Being behind all things, or the there is [il y

a]. While Dasein is that intentional entity which is necessarily burdened by its own Being,

Levinas envisions consciousness and the resulting existent as a refuge that is established or

posited as a defense against the horror of the there is. An existent therefore becomes that which

attempts to demarcate and posit itself as a being against the ever-present fact of Being, or

existence.

Ultimately, Levinas opposes the idea that what Dasein is anxious about in Angst is

nothingness and Death, and instead posits that what an existent encounters in horror is Being

itself, or the there is. His conception of the there is and the experience of the there is in horror is

a stark contrast to Angst, which is a beneficial mood insofar as it allows Dasein to experience the

potentiality of its most true and authentic self. “We shall try to contest the idea that evil is

defect,” Levinas writes, referring to the fact that in Angst “Being contains no other vice than its

limitation and nothingness.”41 In his examination of the horror of the there is encountered in

states such as insomnia, Levinas posits consciousness as that which is taken up by an existent

against existence, and argues that evil is a thing that manifests positively in Being.

The encounter with Being and its impossibility that takes place in Angst is impossible in

the horror of the there is because Being is inescapable and ever present, just as the terror wrought

by Paul and Peter is even in their absence in the middle of Haneke’s film. The inescapability of
 18

Being renders the concept of transcendence as Being going beyond itself impossible; the only

possibility for escape is to be not one’s own self, but an Other completely. This, too, is depicted

in Funny Games, for even when Ann and Levinas’s conception of transcendence presents a

radical de-individuation of consciousness and is therefore radically opposed to Heideggerian

transcendence because it is not transcendence at all—it is excendence. The being that takes up

Being can only break free from the impossibility of death by reaching that which is most

completely not itself, or the Other. This aspect of Levinas’s philosophical project is a radical

contradiction of Heidegger, for whom the other was only an aspect of Dasein’s inauthentic

everydayness in the world, and can be seen even in the “preparatory” project of Existence and

Existents.

1. The Horror of Being: The “There is”

That which one encounters in Levinas’ horror is not the nothingness or the possibility of

the impossibility of Being encountered in Angst, but rather the there is. While Heidegger’s

concept of the nothing entails the possibility of not Being, or death, the there is represents the

inescapability of being, and the impossibility of Being’s nihilation. “The there is, inasmuch as it

resists a personal form, is ‘being in general,’” and is the Being without being, or, in Levinas’s

terms, existence without existents.42 In Funny Games, the ever-present and inescapable character

of the there is revealed in horror is conveyed by the selective use of diegetic music and sound

effects. For example, when Georgie escapes from Paul and Peter and is hiding in the neighbor’s

house, Paul announces his inescapability by blasting metal music throughout the home; similarly,

when George is awaiting Ann’s return after her own escape in Paul and Peter’s absence, any

hopefulness cultivated because of that absence is erased by the simple sound of a golf ball being

dropped on the floor and rolling into view. This sound references Paul’s question from the
 19

beginning of the movie when hinting at the fact that he killed Lucky the dog with the golf club

he begged Ann to try out: Paul holds up the golf ball he supposedly hit with said golf club, and

asks, “What is this?” George’s reaction to the golf ball rolling into view in the latter half of the

movie is an expression of exhausted horror and reluctant acceptance in the face of the

unrelenting fact of Paul and Peter’s presence. His expression conveys what one knows when

experiencing the horror of being: that even death cannot alleviate the suffering caused therein.

In the there is all distinction between subject and object fades, and one is plunged into the

bare fact of being which cannot be escaped; subsequently, the there is is essentially anonymous.

Levinas draws upon Durkheim and Levy-Bruhl’s diverging theories on the sacred and the

profane to illustrate the destruction of the distinction between subject and object that occurs in

the there is: “In Durkheim, if the sacred breaks with profane being by the feelings it arouses,

these feelings remain those of a subject facing an object.” In other words, the distinction between

subject and object remains in the experience of the sacred, though the perception of the object by

the subject may not match up to the emotional power the object emits over the subject.43 In Levy-

Bruhl’s conception of the experience of the sacred, however, the identities of the subject and

object are lost, and they participate in one another. “The participation of one term in another does

not consist in sharing an attribute; one term is the other. The private existence of each

term…loses this private character and returns to an undifferentiated background; the existence of

one submerges the other and is thus no longer an existence of the one. We recognize here the

there is.”44 Subsequently, Levinas characterizes the there is as essentially anonymous. The world

disappears, leaving the ‘I’ depersonalized and adrift in the anonymity and ambiguity of the

nothing, and discloses to the ‘I’ its inescapable complicity in existence:

The disappearance of all things and the I leaves what cannot disappear, the sheer fact of
being in which one participates, whether one wants to or not, without having taken the
 20

initiative, anonymously. Being remains, like a field of forces, like a heavy atmosphere
belonging to no one, universal, returning in the midst of the negation which put it aside
and in all the powers to which that negation may be multiplied.45

Unlike Heidegger’s nothing, the there is is precisely that which springs out of negation, and an

encounter with the there is is not characterized by Angst, but horror. “The rustling of the there

is…is horror” and this experience strips consciousness of its subjective not by “lulling it into

unconscious, but in throwing it into an impersonal vigilance, a participation.”46

For consciousness to be thrown into the impersonal vigilance entailed by horror and the

there is is for consciousness to be reduced to anonymity and for the surveyor to become the

surveyed. Levinas employs the experience of insomnia to illustrate this vigilance. In insomnia,

“one watches on when there is nothing to watch and despite the absence of any reason for

remaining watchful.”47 Impersonal vigilance signifies the destruction of the ego and therefore

attention, which “presupposes the freedom of the ego which directs it; the vigilance of insomnia

which keeps our eyes open has no subject It is the very return of presence into the void left by

absence…”48 In this night’s watch, it is the night itself that watches. “In this anonymous

nightwatch where I am completely exposed to being,” Levinas writes, “all the thoughts which

occupy my insomnia are suspended on nothing. They have no support. I am, one might say, the

object rather than the subject of an anonymous thought.”49 While in Angst, Being would at this

point come into contact with the nothing beyond Being, the encounter between the ‘I’ and the

there is that occurs in insomnia reveals the “indefectibility of being,” in which the possibility of

a void beyond being is impossible and in which participation in being is unavoidable.50

Haneke’s use of two- and three-shots throughout Funny Games illustrates Levinas’s idea

of the night that watches the insomniac. From the moment Paul and Peter arrive, the Farbers are

under their gaze: Paul and Peter can be seen watching George as he asks them to leave at the
 21

beginning of the altercation, and Paul watches on as Ann searches for the Lucky the dog in the

scene revealing the antagonists’ first victim (Figures 3 and 4). As the night goes on the watching

continues, and before the death of Georgie watching television—an activity particularly

associated with insomniacs—even comes into play (Figure 5). As Ann, almost lifeless and

seemingly half-conscious, watches Peter flip through the television channels in Paul’s absence, it

becomes apparent that they are not looking at the object of their gaze—that object is looking

back into them. When Paul and Peter watch their subjects—such as when they regard the nude

Ann and Paul announces pleasantly, “See? No jelly rolls”—they dehumanize them, just as the

night dehumanizes and objectifies the insomniac. The Farber family is a game to these

antagonists, the butt of a joke, and the Farbers’ horror stems from the fact that there is no real

escape from the existence set out for them in this film. The gaze of Paul and Peter watches on

even in the physical absence of the characters. When George watches Anne watching the

cellphone (Figure 6), it is all in the context of one foreboding thought: Paul and Peter can return

any minute, the physical representation of the bodiless gaze that persists in their absence.

Figure 3. George asks Paul and Peter to leave per Ann's request
 22

Figure 4. Paul watches Ann look for Paul’s first victim, Lucky the dog

Figure 5. Ann watching Peter watching the television

Figure 6. George watching Ann watching the ultimately non-redemptive cell phone

For precisely this reason, death offers no respite from the horror of the there is, and

horror of the there is is subsequently not Angst about death, but horror of being. Horror entails

“the impossibility of death, the universality of existence even in nihilation.”51 It is the utter
 23

apathy of being “which returns in the heart of this negation, as though nothing had happened.”52

The power, and perhaps even comfort, of Heidegger’s negation—the nothing standing in sharp

contrast to Being—is null, and the void is voided. This destruction of the ability to die your own

death is emphasized when Paul demands that Ann play his game and choose how George will

die—whether by knife or whether by gun. In this scene, one feels the acute reality of the fact that

regardless of who dies or how, being will go on. George’s pleas to Ann when Paul is pressing her

to play the game “Whether by Knife or by Gun…” reveals this fact: “Don’t answer,” he

whispers. “Let ‘em do what they want.” But Ann cannot escape from her participation in this

game, however sick or absurd. There is no chance for her to exercise her individuality and

redeem herself in death. She is completely at the whim of this funny, awful game of Being.

The inescapability of the Farber’s horror and of Levinassian existence is also underscored

by Haneke’s subversion of ‘Chekhov’s gun’. Early in the film, a knife used by George and

Georgie to rig the sailboat is depicted as dropping out of sight and into the hull. When Paul and

Peter take Ann to the boat in the last minutes of the film, this knife is remembered as one last

potential “exit” for Ann from her captivity. However, when she begins to saw at her bindings

with this knife, Paul and Peter quickly disarm her and subsequently Chekhov’s gun. This

undermining of a traditional mode of escape truly emphasizes Levinas’s conception of the horror

of the there is. Just as the Farbers cannot escape participating in Paul and Peter’s funny games

after they have begun, the horror of the night ‘with no exits’ which ‘does not answer’ is an

irremissible existence,” and by virtue of its very being, consciousness participates in it.53

2. Consciousness, the Other, and Transcendence

If insomnia is an experience which renders the ‘I’ anonymous in the oppressive presence

of the there is, then the subject is distinguished from the there is by its capacity to sleep and
 24

become unconscious. Levinas terms “the suspension of the anonymous there is, the apparition of

a private domain, of a noun,” the hypostasis, or the existent that establishes itself against the

anonymity of the there is.54 The hypostasis is characterized by consciousness, which allows a

being to take up Being by positing and taking refuge in a position against the there is:

“Hypostasis, an existent, is a consciousness, because consciousness is localized and posited, and

through the act, without transcendence, of taking a position, it comes to being out of itself, and

already takes refuge in itself from Being in itself.”55 Levinas’s conception of the establishment of

consciousness in, and therefore intentionality about, the world is made possible by

consciousness’s withdrawal from Being, which establishes the difference between subject and

objects. Unlike Heidegger’s conception of state-of-mind, which characterizes Dasein even after

it has been alienated from world of its concern in Angst, Levinas’s conception of intentionality as

consciousness loses itself completely in the horror of the there is. Consciousness depends on the

world in which it positions itself for its individuality, and in the horror of the there is loses all

individuality whatsoever.

Furthermore, as an act of taking a position in and therefore refuge against Being,

consciousness is not transcendence in the Heideggerian because, in this act, it does not transcend

beings—it merely establishes itself as a being within Being. Levinas instead presents a radical

conception of transcendence that is radically opposed to Heidegger’s conception of Dasein as the

transcendent Being beyond beings. For consciousness to transcend all beings it must escape

Being and therefore itself; it must realize ex-cendence. This excendence can only occur through

the most radical de-individuation of consciousness, and, as shall be seen, is therefore dependent

on the Other and its alterity.

 25

Consciousness can be said to rend itself out of the anonymity of the there is by its ability

to sleep because sleep allows consciousness to take up a position for itself against the bare fact of

existence. It is precisely this ability to take a position against Being that Paul and Peter deprive

Ann and George of as the night goes on. When Ann is unresponsive to Paul’s game of the

Loving Wife, “otherwise known as, whether by knife, or whether by gun, losing your life can

sometimes be fun,” he implores her to stay awake. If Ann were to sleep, she would be able to

forget about and remove herself from the direct reality of Paul and Peter’s terror, even if that

terror might go on regardless.

Like Dasein, consciousness is first and foremost defined by its ability to be located.

Consciousness is not only that which posits things as existent, but is also that very thing which is

posited or positioned as an existent: “There is not only a consciousness of localization, but a

localization of consciousness.”56 Consciousness is posited as a subject because it is here in the

world by virtue of thinking; furthermore, because consciousness is localized as here in the world,

it can think and be about it. This is to say, “the localization of consciousness is not subjective; it

is the subjectivization of the subject.”57

In order to sleep, consciousness must be able to take up a position in the world and

therefore must have the ability to be ‘here’. “To lie down is precisely to limit existence to a

place, to position,” and therefore to take up a definite refuge against the indefinite horror of the

there is.58 The ability to sleep is related to the ability for consciousness to find itself related to

three things: a place, a base, and a space. The place established by consciousness in lying down

and sleeping acts as a base for consciousness. “In lying down, in curling up in a corner to sleep,

we abandon ourselves to a place,” and in abandoning ourselves to a place, that place becomes a

base and therefore a refuge.59 This base is a condition for the possibility of consciousness in
 26

opposition to the there is; without the ability to sleep, consciousness merely enters into insomnia

and loses itself within the anonymity of Being in general. The place qua base is in a geometric

space precisely because consciousness is that which is “here” in the world.

Because the destruction of consciousness’s positioning in the world—the destruction of

its ability to sleep—results precisely in insomnia and the defacing of the subject by the there is,

this relationship between consciousness and the world is strikingly different from that of Dasein

and the world into which it is thrown. “The antithesis of position is not the freedom of a subject

suspended in the air,” as when Dasein is held into the nothing; rather, it is “the destruction of the

subject, the disintegration of the hypostasis.”60 While the Heideggerian world is inherently

disclosed as a part of the “Being-there” of Dasein, and necessarily exists so that Dasein may fall

into it, Levinas argues that the world proceeds from the here that acts as the origin of

consciousness. In other words, the here of consciousness precedes world; here does not imply

that consciousness is that very thing which exists in the world, but “is the very fact that

consciousness is an origin, that it starts from itself, that it is an existent.”61 For a world to be

encountered, consciousness must be embodied in space and place as here. Thus, “place…before

being a geometric space, and before being the concrete setting of the Heideggerian world, is a

base,” and renders “the body the very advent of consciousness.”62

Levinas emphasizes that consciousness is not a transcendent in the same way that

Heidgger’s Dasein is a transcendent, and that the only way for consciousness to truly escape

Being is to escape its own being—to ex-cend. “The act of taking position does not transcend

itself,” as Dasein transcends beings when it encounters the nothing and the possibility of its

impossibility.63 The Being of consciousness cannot go beyond itself as positioned in the world.

Levinas opposes “the notion of an existence, where the emphasis is put on the first syllable,” or
 27

the notion of Dasein, which can rise above its being and simply Be itself.64 Consciousness is that

which “always has one foot caught in its own existence,” and “is forever bound to the existence

which it has taken up.”65 Unlike the triumphant emergence of Dasein into its authentic

potentiality-for-being, consciousness is a tragic existence characterized by imprisonment within

itself. Consciousness is characterized by solitude, and the freedom it is granted by thought and

the ability to engage with the world that proceeds from it is not a positive freedom to ‘be itself’,

but an illusive freedom from engaging in the horror of the there is.

The only true means of escape from the oppression of existence lies in that which is mos

completely not the self—the alterity of the Other. This escape is characterized as breaking

through the solitude of consciousness, and is unprecedented in Heidegger’s Dasein and Being-

with. Reaching the other is “the event of the most radical breakup of the very categories of the

ego, for it is for me to be somewhere else than my self; it is to be pardoned, to not be a definite

existence.”66 While the foundation for the excendence entailed by the Other is laid in Existence

and Existents, its structure can be understood better as it is presented in Transcendence and

Height. As Levinas suggests in the preface to Existence and Existents, the Other presents to the I

the possibility of the Good. “Before the Other (Autrui), the I is infinitely responsible,” and the

Other takes on the dimension of height compared to the I because the I must submit itself to the

Other.67 The responsibility felt by the I in the face of the infinitely other puts the I into question,

and is a shaming of the I in its own consciousness. “Shame is a movement in a direction opposed

to that of consciousness, which returns triumphantly to itself and rests upon itself,” as in sleep;

“to feel shame is to expel oneself from this rest” because it brings to consciousness the reality of

its existence as that which holds power over things.68 The Other becomes the source of

consciousness’s transcendence from itself through excendence because it presents to

 28

consciousness a possibility for not being itself, and it injects into Levinas’s philosophy a

necessity for responsibility which is absent from Heidegger’s Dasein.

Conclusion

The “anxiety” central to the projects of Levinas and Heidegger serves to illustrate their

radical and radically opposed projects of intentionality and transcendence. By understanding

Angst and horror through the lens of the Farber’s captivity in Funny Games, one can see that the

horror of the there is, as a depiction of the terror and evilness implicit in Being, hits closer to

home than Heidegger’s almost triumphant mood of Angst. Though the film does not present a

picture of Levinassian excendence, it does present the downfalls of transcendence as envisioned

by Heidegger. The Farbers do not transcend their situation and find individuality in the face of

their impending deaths. They are rather dehumanized and objectified by this experience in direct

contrast to what occurs in the transcendental experience of Angst. Funny Games emphasizes

Levinas’s claim that Being has no exits except through the sheer realization of not being an

existent at all. It is not death, but the Other, a figure not present in Funny Games, that is the only

possibility for this excendence. Compared to Heidegger, the fact that Levinas’s philosophical

project renders intentionality inherently involved in an ethical world—in a world fraught with

evil that is implicit in its very existence and not sequestered to the realm of nothingness and

negation—is an important feature not necessarily touched upon by many examinations of this

topic. By rendering the self and its Being as something one desires to escape, Levinas makes

room for the Other and for the importance of the individual’s ultimate responsibility to that

Other.
 29

Bibliography

Funny Games. Directed by Michael Haneke. Warner Bros., 2007. Accessed March 12, 2014,
http://amazon.com.

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Maquarrie and Edward Robinson. New
York: Harper Perennial, 1962.

Heidegger, Martin. “What is Metaphysics?” In Basic Writings, edited by David Farrell Krell, 93-
110. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993.

Levinas, Emmanuel. Existence and Existents. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh:

Duquesne, 1978.

Levinas, Emmanuel. “Transcendence and Nothing.” In Basic Philosophical Writings, edited by

Adriaan T. Peperzak, Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi. Bloomington, IN: Indiana,
1996.

1
BT, H.250.
2
BT, H.188.
3
BT, H.251.
4
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper
Perennial, 1962) H.234.
5
BT, H.139.
6
BT, H.139.
7
BT, H.134.
8
Ibid.
9
BT, H.135.
10
Ibid.
11
Ibid.
12
BT, H.139.
13
BT, H.137.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
BT, H.139.
17
BT, H.138.
18
BT, H.189.
19
BT, H.184.
20
BT, H.175.
21
BT, H.176
22
BT, H.138.
23
BT, H.175.
24
Martin Heidegger, “What is Metaphysics,” in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (New York:
Harper Perennial, 1993) 100.
25
BT, H.140.
26
Ibid.
27
BT, H.141.
28
Ibid.
 30

29
Ibid.
30
Ibid.
31
WM, 97.
32
BT, H.188.
33
WM, 106.
34
BT, H.188.
35
BT, H.185.
36
BT, H.188-9.
37
WM, 101.
38
BT, H.187-8.
39
WM, 103.
40
BT, H.188.
41
Emmaunel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne, 1978) 4.
42
EE, 52.
43
EE, 55.
44
EE, 55-6.
45
EE, 53.
46
EE, 55.
47
EE, 61
48
EE, 62.
49
EE, 63.
50
EE, 62.
51
EE, 56.
52
Ibid.
53
EE, 58.
54
EE, 83.
55
Ibid.
56
EE, 66.
57
Ibid.
58
EE, 67.
59
Ibid.
60
EE, 68.
61
EE, 68-9.
62
EE, 69.
63
EE, 81.
64
Ibid.
65
EE, 84.
66
EE, 86.
67
Emmanuel Levinas, “Transcendence and Height,” in Basic Philosophical Writings, ed. Adriaan T.
Peperzak ,Simon Critchley, and Robert Bernasconi (Bloomington, IN: Indiana, 1996), 20.
68
TH, 17.