Being There: Heideggers Formally Indicative

Concept of Dasein
1

Sren Overgaard

Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research

1. Introduction

The concept of Dasein is one of the most important concepts in Heideggers magnum opus, Sein und Zeit (1927). The reason why Dasein takes the pride
of place in that work is fairly straightforward. Heidegger makes it clear from the
beginning that his overall aim is to pose anew a question concerning being
that has allegedly remained unasked since Aristotle.2 If being is what we want to

1. This paper has been under way for a long time. I am grateful to Thomas Schwarz
Wentzer for his encouragement and comments on the first draft (ca. 2001). A second version
of the paper was presented at the first annual meeting of the Nordic Society for Phenomenology in Helsinki, 2003. I benefited from many comments on that occasion, though I no
longer remember who made them. At a much later stage, I benefited from comments by
Steven Crowell and an anonymous reviewer for The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy.
2. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 17th edition (Tbingen: Max Niemeyer, 1993), 2. Henceforth
references to this text will be made using the abbreviation SZ. Let me at once introduce the
other works of Heidegger to which reference will be made more than once in the present article (with abbreviations in square brackets): Gesamtausgabe Band 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte
des Zeitbegriffs [GA 20], ed. Petra Jaeger (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979); Gesamtausgabe Band 24: Die Grundprobleme der Phnomenologie [GA 24], ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975); Gesamtausgabe Band 26: Metaphysische
Anfangsgrnde der Logik [GA 26], ed. Klaus Held (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann,
1978); Gesamtausgabe Band 27: Einleitung in die Philosophie [GA 27], eds. Otto Saame and Ina
Saame-Speidel (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996); Gesamtausgabe Band 29/30: Die
Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik [GA 29/30], ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a.
M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983); Gesamtausgabe Band 60: Phnomenologie des religisen Lebens [GA
60], eds. Matthias Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1995); Gesamtausgabe Band 61: Phnomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles [GA
61], eds. Walter Brcker and Kte Brcker-Oltmanns (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann,
1985); Gesamtausgabe Band 63: Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizitt [GA 63], ed. Kte BrckerOltmanns (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1982); Wegmarken [WM], ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, 3rd edition (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1996).
The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and
Phenomenological Philosophy V (2005): 145-163
ISSN 15337472 ISBN 0-9701679-5-4

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investigate, so Heidegger argues, then we must direct our phenomenological

gaze at that place where being manifests itself, and that place is the understanding of being that belongs to the entity (Seiende) we ourselves are. Heidegger
labels the entity in question Dasein. It seems, then, that the inquiry into
beingwhat Heidegger calls ontologydemands a preliminary investigation of
the entity to which an understanding of being belongs, since the only way to access the ontological topic is through an analysis of the understanding in which
the topic manifests itself.3 Put in Heideggers terms, the preliminary investigation, the fundamental ontology, must take the shape of an analytic of Dasein (SZ,
13). Hence it is not that Heidegger views the human life as philosophically important as suchhe has no interest in the noisy preoccupation with ones own
life of the soul (GA 26, 21)rather, he is exclusively dedicated to the pursuit
of being, and focuses on Dasein because it is the entity that already stands in an
understanding relation to being. This is the reason why Sein und Zeit grapples
throughout with the question of the being of the human being (see SZ, 372).
But why the concept of Dasein as opposed to, say, transcendental subjectivity? It is tempting to interpret Heideggers introduction of the concept of
Dasein as a clear indication that he has abandoned the notion of the subject
altogether.4 However, this interpretation would not only make it very difficult to
approach the concept of Dasein and the phenomenological investigations of
the entity so designated without simply repeating Heideggers statements on the
issue, it is even in obvious tension with some of Heideggers own remarks on
Daseinat least from the phenomenological decade.5 In the Freiburg lecture
course from the winter of 1928-29, for example, Heidegger unambiguously
states that Dasein is his term for the subject, and that his reason for avoiding the
traditional concept is precisely that he intends to perform a thorough revision
of the hitherto reigning concept of the subject [des bisherigen Subjektbegriffes]
(GA 27, 115). This suggests that it is by focussing on the traditional notion of
the subject, or subjectivity, that one becomes able to fully appreciate what the
notion of Dasein is intended to accomplish.
My reflections on the concept of Dasein will be divided into four sections.
In the first I shall take Husserls paradox of subjectivity as my point of departure, aiming to show how it becomes necessary to pose the question of the being

3. Heidegger has never expressed this point more lucidly than in his lecture course of the
summer semester of 1927: When we take on the fundamental problem of philosophy, [i.e.,] ask
about the meaning of and foundation [Grund] for being, then we mustif we do not want to
fantasizemethodically focus on that which makes something like being accessible: on the
understanding of being that belongs to Dasein (GA 24, 319; see SZ, 372).
4. This is the contention, e.g., of Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann in his Subjekt und Dasein: Interpretationen zu Sein und Zeit, 2nd edition (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann,
1985), 10.
5.The expression is from Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 59.

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(Sein) of subjectivity. In the second section, I shall briefly outline Heideggers

method of formal indication, and in the third the notion of Dasein will be
unearthed as a formally indicative notion of the entity we have traditionally
called subjectivity. In the fourth and final section, I shall briefly recapitulate the
most important conclusions. In opposition to the claim that the notion of Dasein signals Heideggers complete abandonment of subjectivity, I shall attempt
to show that the concept of Dasein in fact allows us, perhaps for the fist time,
to conceptually approach in something like an adequate way that very being that
has traditionally been labeled (transcendental) subjectivity.
2 . T h e Pa r a d o x o f S u b j e c t i v i t y

After claiming in his phenomenological breakthrough work Logische Untersuchungen (1900-01) that the transcendental ego of the Neo-Kantians was something he had never been able to find, Edmund Husserl admitted some ten years
later that now he had indeed discovered it. In his second major work, Ideen zu
einer reinen Phnomenologie und phnomenologischen Philosophie I (1913), he formulated
a transcendental phenomenology in which the notion of the pure, or transcendental ego became crucial. Husserl now viewed the constitution of the
world as something that had to take place in, or for this transcendental subjectivity. Alongside this transcendental subjectivity, Husserl acknowledged the
existence of a human, mundane subject that belonged to the realm of the
constituted. It is characteristic of Husserls transcendental philosophy that the
transcendental subjectivity is seen as identical with the mundane subject.6 All of
us, according to Husserl, incorporate transcendental subjectivities; we are all
both entities in the world, amidst other mundane entities, and subjects to whom
the world manifests itself.
Husserl realized that this account must appear paradoxical. He himself referred to this as the paradox of subjectivity:7 how can I both be a human
being in the worldsomething constitutedand a subject in whom the world
constitutes itself, all at the same time? How can something that is an insignifi

6. See, e.g., Edmund Husserl, Husserliana IX: Phnomenologische Psychologie [henceforth: Hua
IX], ed. Walter Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1962), 292. As Derrida once put it,
this duplication of sense must correspond to no ontological double. Husserl specifies, for
example, that my transcendental ego is radically different from my natural and human ego;
and yet it is distinguished by nothing, nothing that can be determined in the natural sense of
distinction. The (transcendental) ego is not an other. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on
Husserls Theory of Signs, trans. David B. Allison (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1973), 11-12. What Derrida calls an ontological double here is of course what Heidegger would call an ontic double, another entity. That the transcendental ego might very well
be an ontological double in Heideggers sense will appear from the present discussion.
7. Edmund Husserl, Husserliana VI: Die Krisis der europischen Wissenschaften un die transzendentale Phnomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel, 2nd edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 182,
265-266.

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cant part of the world be that in which the whole world is constituted?
Husserl never stopped believing that he could dissolve this paradox by carefully
distinguishing between the transcendental subject and the mundane subject, and
only attributing world-constitutive powers to the former. He further believed he
could show the necessity of every transcendental subject constituting not only
its own private mundane double, but itself as mundanized. But clearly these
moves do not make all difficulties disappear. A certain fundamental puzzle remains, one that it is unlikely that Husserl should have been able to solveespecially since he seems never to have recognized the problem. To a reader more
familiar with Heidegger than Husserl was, the problem is evident, as can be illustrated by briefly turning to Husserls discussion with Eugen Fink in the margins of the latters manuscript, the VI. Cartesianische Meditation.
Fink, at that time Husserls closest collaborator and most important critical
interlocutor, claims at one point in the manuscript that the transcendental cannot as such be regarded as existing, but can only be regarded as the becoming of what truly is, viz. the world. What transcendental phenomenology
thematizes, according to Fink, are only stages of pre-being [Vorseins] in
which that which is (the world) constitutively builds itself up.8 Husserl is clearly
uncomfortable with this claim, as his marginal comments to Finks manuscript
document. Husserl argues that whereas the transcendental does not exist in
the natural-naive sense of the word, this does not mean that it has no being whatsoever. According to Husserl, we have here a reformation (Umbildung) of the
concept of being, rather than an instance where this concept has no application at all.9 The discussion with Fink makes it evident that Husserl wants to
claim that transcendental subjectivity is something that exists, something that
has being, but that the concept of being which is applicable to this transcendental
subjectivity is fundamentally different from the one that applies to the world and
to mundane entities.
Thus, the following questions seem to become urgent: If the (mode of)
being of the mundane subject is the same as that of other mundane entities,
while the mode of being of transcendental subjectivity is of a fundamentally
different kind, then doesnt the task of describing these modes of being become
crucial? And would we not have to say that no single mode of being corresponds
to the notion of the subject? Is it not the case, rather, that two incompatible
modes of being (Sein) belong to that being or entity (Seiendes) that we ourselves
are? And is this not a deeper paradox, a fundamental difficulty at the heart of
Husserlian phenomenology, a difficulty whose only solution lies in the explicit
posing of the question of the being of subjectivity? Even if Husserl can show the
necessity of a self-mundanization on the part of transcendental subjectivity,

8. Eugen Fink, VI. Cartesianische Meditation, Teil 1, eds. Hans Ebeling, Jann Holl, and Guy
Van Kerckhoven (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 137.
9. Ibid., 137, notes 441-442.

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one paradox, the paradox of being, remainsunless Husserl wants to claim

(which he does not) that with the mundanization of transcendental subjectivity,
the latter disappears, becomes eradicated by a mundane subject that tolerates
no rival. In short, isnt Husserl forced to pose the question of the being of subjectivity?
As is well known, these questions are the very questions Heidegger confronted Husserls phenomenology with. The question of being, Heidegger said
in his Marburg lecture course of the summer of 1925with special emphasis
on the question of the being of the subjectmust be the most urgent question (GA 20, 158) for phenomenology. Accordingly, it was a question that Heidegger himself set out to contemplate, and perhaps in due course answer.
Before we turn to Heidegger, let us pause for a moment and ask how come
Husserl did not see this problem of being.10 It is not as if Heidegger didnt take
pains to make it intelligible to Husserl, as the letter from Heidegger to Husserl,
dated October 22, 1927, shows. The letter clearly employs a Husserlian idiom
transcendental constitution being one of the key termsand it culminates in
the attempt to make the question of the being of transcendental (constituting) subjectivity appear necessary to Husserl. Heidegger writes: This, the concrete human being is as suchas an entity never a worldly real fact, because
the human being is never merely occurrent, but rather exists. And the amazing
thing is that the existence-mode of Dasein makes possible the transcendental
constitution of everything positive (Hua IX, 602). And further on: The constituting is not nothing, thus it is somethingalthough not in the sense of the
positive. The question of the mode of being [Seinsart] of the constituting is not
to be avoided (ibid.).
How did Husserl respond to this? Judging from the written comments
Husserl kept together with his shorthand copy of Heideggers letter, it seems
that Husserl concentrated on Heideggers suggestion that the concrete human
being might be the place of constitution. Husserl thus emphasizes that man is
an occurrent entity (Vorhandenheit) in the world, a real object like any
otherwith the important difference that certain properties (Eigenheiten) belong
to the human being, properties that mere material things lack (Hua IX, op. cit.,
603). It appears, then, that the idea that one could unveil the human being as
something with a mode of being that makes possible transcendental constitution could not make sense to Husserl. It seems, more precisely, that Husserl perceives as self-evident the description of the human being as an occurrent
entity with additional properties or layers other than those of mere material en
10. I assume that Husserl did not see the relevance of Heideggers question of being.
This does not entail, however, that Husserl did not inquire into beingin fact, I am convinced that his phenomenology is ultimately concerned precisely with questions of being. I
cannot argue these points here, but see Sren Overgaard, Husserl and Heidegger on Being in the
World (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), especially chapters 2 and 6.

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tities, viz. first and foremost cognitive abilitiesand that considering this sort of
description self-evident, Husserl cannot accommodate any question about the
mode of being of the human being, and he certainly cannot ask whether that
mode of being might be such as to render the human being the place of the
transcendental.
Clearly, then, we need to re-conceptualize the entity we ourselves arethe
entity that, according to Husserl, is both something occurrent and the constituting subjectivityif we want to pose the question of the being of this entity.
Years before the collapsed collaboration on the Encyclopaedia Britannica article,
Heidegger had been struggling to develop just that: a new way of conceptualizing entities, a way that would allow one to pose the question of their modes of
being.
3 . Fo r m a l I n d i c a t i o n

The recent publication of Heideggers early Freiburg lectures has shed considerable light on the hitherto rather obscure question of Heideggers phenomenological method. Unfolding in some detail the important notion of formal
indication (formale Anzeige),11 these lectures in fact not only illuminate the years
preceding Heideggers Marburg appointment, but also Sein und Zeit itself. In the
latter work the notion of formal indication appears several times, yet is never
explained in any remotely satisfactory way.12
Formal indication, Heidegger tells us, is a certain methodological stage
in phenomenological explication (WM, 29). In his posthumously published review of Jaspers Psychologie der Weltanschauungen, Heidegger repeatedly reproaches
Jaspers for his naive reliance upon mere observation (WM, 42-43). Heidegger
argues that one must take the problem of method much more seriously, if one
is to successfully carry out the kind of investigation of human existence that
Jaspers intends (WM, 28, 36-37). It is within this more complicated methodolog
11. The method of formal indication has attracted considerable attention among Heidegger-scholars. See, e.g., Otto Pggeler, Heideggers logische Untersuchungen, in Martin Heidegger: Innen- und Auenansichten, eds. Siegfried Blasche, Wolfgang R. Khler, Wolfgang
Kuhlmann, and Peter Rohs (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1989), 75-100, especially 82-89; Th.
C. W. Oudemans, Heideggers logische Untersuchungen, Heidegger Studies 6 (1990): 85-105;
Daniel O. Dahlstrom, Heideggers Method: Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications,
Review of Metaphysics 47 (1994): 775-795; Ryan Streeter, Heideggers Formal Indication: A
Question of Method in Being and Time, Man and World 30 (1997): 413-430. Formal indication
plays a major role in Theodore Kisiels The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time, as well as in
other recent treatises on Heidegger, such as John van Burens The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the
Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), especially 324-341, and Daniel O.
Dahlstroms Heideggers Concept of Truth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), especially 242-252, 435-445.
12. See SZ, 114, 116-117, 313. Formal indication still plays an important role in Heideggers thinking as late as 1929/30. See GA 29/30, 425, 428-432, 435, 441, 491, and passim.

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ical structure, which Heidegger presses for, that the notion of formal indication
represents a stage. Since I cannot here deal with all aspects of Heideggers
method and project, but must rather focus exclusively on formal indication, this
latter notion will unavoidably appear somewhat amputated in the following discussion.13
Formal indication has to do with the choice of proper concepts in a philosophical investigation. More precisely, it refers to the kind of concepts that one
must use when beginning a philosophical investigation. The method of formal indication is thus a philosophical method of beginning (Ansatzmethode) (GA 60,
62; GA 61, 141). Heidegger is convinced, on the one hand, that tradition and
everyday truisms can lead a philosophical investigation astray if it uncritically
employs traditional or everyday concepts. Yet, on the other hand, he seems to
acknowledge the fruitlessness of inventing a wholly new language. Therefore, he
suggests as an alternative that we start out by using concepts that are sufficiently
empty of content not to lend themselves easily to traditional patterns of
thinking about that which is to be the topic of the philosophical investigation.
These empty concepts may then be given content at a later stage, when the investigation is well under way in the desired direction (GA 60, 82).
The formally indicative concepts must be empty in the sense that they do
not directly contribute to the phenomenological description proper. But this
does not mean that they are totally devoid of content. Rather, one can discern
both a negative and positive aspect of formal indication. First, we must employ concepts that fend off undesired connotations: The formal indication [ . . .
] possesses [ . . . ] a prohibiting (deterring, preventing) character (GA 61, 141).14
However, we need more from our Ansatzmethode; in addition to the negative
warning we need a positive approach to our future theme. This is also supplied
by formal indication:
There resides in the formal indication a very definite bond; this bond says
that I stand in a quite definite direction of approach [Ansatzrichtung], and it points
out the only way of arriving at what is proper [Eigentlichen],15 namely, by exhausting and fulfilling what is improperly [uneigentlich] indicated, by following

13. For a fuller treatment of Heideggers method in the twenties, See Theodore Kisiel,
The Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time.
14. When quoting from this volume I use Richard Rojcewiczs translation, Phenomenological
Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).
15. The notions authentic and inauthentic (eigentlich, uneigentlich), as they are used in
these lectures, carry none of the connotations they have in Sein und Zeit. Heidegger, rather,
appropriates Husserls distinction between authentic and inauthentic thought (eigentlichen und
uneigentlichen Denkakten), i.e., between thoughts which only signify and lack intuitive fulfillment
and thoughts which have fulfillment, or rather, are fulfilling acts. See Husserliana XIX/2: Logische Untersuchungen, Zweiter Band, II. Teil, ed. Ursula Panzer (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff,
1984), 722. In the same sense, Husserl speaks in his 1907 lectures on thing and space of

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the indication. (GA 61, 33)

The method of formal indication, then, is supposed to keep undesired connotations at bay, and at the same time indicate the itinerary we must follow in
order to reach the right phenomenological description of the matter at hand.
Let us focus on this positive aspect of formal indication first. What is the
matter at hand? What is the Sache of phenomenology? As is well known, Heidegger thinks philosophys proper theme is being (Sein), and he insists that philosophy as a whole is nothing other than ontology. Therefore, what formal
indication indicates, what it leads us towards, must be being: Being is what is indicated formally and emptily, and yet it strictly determines the direction of the
understanding (GA 61, 61). Formally-indicative concepts, then, are concepts
that somehow indicate being, lead us in the direction of being.
As for the negative aspect, it is quite natural to assume that formal indicationinsofar as it is supposed to direct us to being (Sein)must prohibit any
exchange of the ontological theme with an ontic theme, i.e., must counter any
tendency to focus on entities and their properties rather than being. That this is
indeed the prohibition Heidegger has in mind is indicated by the following passage:
The formal indication prevents every drifting off into autonomous, blind,
dogmatic attempts to fix the categorical sense, attempts which would be detached from the presupposition of the interpretation, from its preconception,
its nexus, and its time, and which would then purport to present an sich determinations of an objectivity, which has not been discussed with regard to its
meaning of being [Ansichbestimmtheiten einer auf ihren Seinssinn undiskutierten
Gegenstndlichkeit]. (GA 61, 142)

This passage is extremely revealing, if not exactly beautiful. First of all, it

reveals what is perhaps the greatest obstacle to Heideggers phenomenological
ontology, namely that we never discuss something like modes of being, neither in everyday life nor in philosophical treatises. We tend, rather, to view
everything as either itself an object, or a property of an objectan object
whose mode (or meaning) of being has never been inquired about. In other
words, we tend to overlook the ontological issue, and focus exclusively on ontic
issues, issues regarding entities and their properties. As we will see in more detail

the authentic manifestation (eigentliche Erscheinung) and the inauthentic manifestation (uneigentliche Erscheinung), the two modes of manifestation attributed to the front side and the
back side, respectively, of the perceived spatial object. See Husserliana XVI: Ding und Raum,
ed. Ulrich Claesges (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1973), 50. Heideggers notion of formal
indication is thus closely associated with Husserls theory of empty and fulfilled intentions
from the VI. Logische Untersuchung. See to this Daniel Dahlstrom, Heideggers Method, and
Steven Galt Crowell, Question, Reflection, and Philosophical Method in Heideggers Early
Freiburg Lectures, in Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001), 129-151 and 282-287, especially 137-144.

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later, overlooking or ignoring the question of being does not ensure ontological
neutralityquite the contrary. If we fail to explicitly raise the issue of being,
we are sure to take a certain inherited notion of being for granted, according to
which to be means to be present-at-hand or ocurrent (vorhanden): that is, to
be there in space and time, located among other spatio-temporal entities, or to
merely occur in some non-spatial way (e.g., as a psyche, a bearer of mental
states). Second, the passage is clear that it is precisely the method of formal indication that is supposed to prevent us from drifting off into ontologically blind
and dogmatic ontic ways of conceptualizing entities.
At this point, both the negative and the positive aspects of formal indications should be clear to us. On the one hand, formal indication prevents us from
discussing ontic matters for as long as we are doing ontological phenomenology.
It prevents us, one could say, from falling victim to a metabasis eis allo genos, substituting the matter at hand with a completely different Sache. To put it differently,
formal indication commands ontic silence for as long as we are doing ontological phenomenology.16 On the other handto turn to the positive aspectit points towards
being, it helps to direct our gaze towards the ontological problematic. Employing formally indicative concepts, then, means employing concepts that both make it difficult to conceptualize entities in terms of their properties, strata, or even
Spinozan attributes, and point towards a thematization of the modes of being
of entitiesconcepts that, as it were, lock our target on the theme of being.
One may feel that there is something suspicious about this notion of formal indication, the way I have presented it here. For example, it might be
claimed that what I have said is tautological, or at the very least obvious and trivial given Heideggers ontological question. When aiming to do ontology, we
should prevent an ontic problematic from interfering, while we strive to focus
on the ontological problematicsurely, this goes without saying? Of course it
does, but we must not forget that the problems we are dealing with here are
problems of language. Since being is the subject of neither everyday nor explicit philosophical discussion, according to Heidegger, not only do we need to
bring it into view, but we also need to use concepts that will further this thematization and allow us to remain focused on it. There is something obvious in this
it goes without saying that one should always describe something using those
concepts that are most suited to such a descriptionbut the crucial point is that
it is very far from obvious which concepts to use in ontological phenomenology.
At this point, however, one could introduce another sort of objection.
How does one go about determining which formally indicative concepts to
choose, given that the concepts themselves are supposed to be what direct our
gaze? And further, how is the mere use of a particular word supposed to direct

16. In John van Burens words, formal indication remains ontically non-committal. The
Young Heidegger, 337.

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our gaze at something like being in the first place?17 There are no easy answers
to these questions. But I think the proper replies to both questions should be
sought by way of spelling out in detail other aspects of the phenomenological
method Heidegger is working with. Remember that Heidegger says formal indication is a certain methodological stage in phenomenological explication
(WM, 29); it alone is not the whole method of phenomenology. Formal indications, I would claim, should be introduced only when we already have something
like modes or manners of being in view. When we already have some grasp of
phenomena in terms of their being, then we also have some rough notion of
what concepts to avoid. And Heideggers final claim is that if we have come that
far, then we are also able to pick out concepts that (positively) help us to stay focused on the ontological problematic. Of course, the big question then becomes
what methodological tool might be used to get us in the position of having
manners or modes of being in view. I think something like Husserls epoch
makes a significant contribution to bringing this about; but the issue is controversial to say the least. In lieu of providing what in the context of this paper is
bound to be a superficial and sketchy argument for the claim that the epoch is
important here,18 I will put the matter to a side with a quotation from Heideggers Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs:
This bracketing of the entity [i.e., the epoch] takes nothing away from the
entity itself, nor does it purport to assume that the entity is not. This reversal
of perspective has rather the sense of making the being [Seinscharakter] of the
entity present. This phenomenological suspension of the transcendent thesis
has but the sole function of making the entity present in regard to its being.
(GA 20, 136)

In the hope that the basic idea behind formal indication is now somewhat
less mysterious, I will turn next to Heideggers concept of Dasein. Although
Heidegger does not seem to state this explicitly anywhere, Dasein is, as I will
attempt to show, a paradigmatic example of a formally indicative concept.19
4. The Concept of Dasein

Dasein, Heidegger says, is the entity (Seiendes) we ourselves are (SZ, 7),
the entity usually labeled the subject or the human being. In other words,
Dasein is an ontic notionit does not denote being, or a mode of being, but a

17. These objections were brought to my attention by Steven Crowell.

18. A more extensive argument for the claim is found in Overgaard, Husserl and Heidegger
on Being in the World, chapter 3.
19. As examples of formal indications, Heidegger gives existence and death, but not
Dasein, as far as I know. However, he does emphasize that all his philosophical concepts
should be understood as formal indications (GA 29/30, 430), so Dasein is obviously included. Daniel Dahlstrom has argued that Dasein is a formally indicative concept, but not
in connection with the points that I am pursuing here. See Dahlstrom, Heideggers Concept of
Truth, 290.

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particular entity. It does so, however, in a formally indicative way. In order to

bring this point into focus, it might be advisable first to discuss briefly why Heidegger thinks the usual way we conceptualize the human being or the subject is
ontologically problematic.
Heidegger is well aware that human being (Mensch) does not necessarily
have the connotation of animal rationale. There are other ways of conceiving the
entity we ourselves are, notably those associated with the notion of the person (SZ, 48; GA 63, 21). Although this latter conception of the human being
incorporates an important insight into the being of the human being (namely,
into its transcending character), both these ways of conceptualizing the kind
of entity we ourselves are have in common a curious lack of interest [Bedrfnislosigkeit] in posing the question concerning the being of the so conceived entity
(SZ, 46). And ignoring ontological questions does not in the least ensure ontological neutrality, as Heidegger attempts to demonstrate. Take the conception of
the human being as a unity of body and consciousness, for instance. Neither the body nor consciousness is explicitly interrogated regarding its
mode of being (SZ, 48, 56), so the unity made up of these (the human being) is
bound to be ontologically obscure (SZ, 56). This does not mean that no mode
of being is presupposed, however, but rather that the idea of being underlying
this conception remains that of simply occurring, either in terms of occupying
some space in the physical world or in terms of being some non-spatial and
non-material substance underlying non-material states and qualities. Implicitly,
Heidegger charges, the guiding idea is always that of a pre-given thing of some
sort (GA 63, 21), and the manner of being attributed to it as a matter of course
is invariably that of presence-at-hand or onhandness (Vorhandensein) along
the lines of non-human things (SZ, 49). According to Heidegger, the notion of
subject fares no better. Regardless of whether one dismisses the soul-substance as well as the thingliness of consciousness and the objectivity of the person, it still amounts ontologically to positing something the being of which,
explicitly or not, retains the meaning of presence-at-hand (SZ, 114). One can
insist ever so uncompromisingly that the subject is no thing; in the absence of
an explicitly posed question of being, this amounts only to ontic noise, and the
ontology of Vorhandensein silently retains its sovereignty (see SZ, 46, 320).
How is the concept of Dasein supposed to improve on this situation? The
first thing to notice about this concept is its prohibitive character. Dasein
there-being, being-there, being-herewhat does it mean? We cannot immediately say, and that is precisely the point. This concept in no way facilitates,
in fact it obstructs, any thinking about this entity in terms of parts, properties, layers, states. It does not even hint at consciousness, or body, or
anything of that sort. In short, it makes impossible any immediate lapse into

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ontic characterizations of the entity we ourselves are.20 Subject and human

being, in contrast, easily invoke ideas of consciousness, mental states, a body, a
soul, and the like. That is, they lead immediately to considerations of an ontic nature, considerations that are all the more ontologically loaded because of their
ontological silence. Although an ontic notion in the sense that it denotes an entity
rather than a mode of being, the concept of Dasein has the special feature of
being ontically silent, in fact hindering any ontic consideration of the entity we
ourselves are. Dasein, therefore, displays the negative aspect characteristic of a
formally indicative concept.
But, Heidegger points out, this does not mean that Dasein has only a
negative function. As he explains, [t]his label Dasein for the mentioned outstanding entity does not denote any what; it does not distinguish this entity according to its what, like a chair in contrast to a house, but rather it expresses, in
its own way, the manner of being [die Weise zu sein] (GA 20, 205). In other words,
Dasein not only prohibits ontic considerations, but also leads the way to the
specific question of the being of the entity thus labeled. It denotes the entity we
ourselves are (ontic) in such a way that we are denied any recourse to ontic characterizations at the same time as we are directed towards the question of the
mode of being (ontological) proper to the human being. The concept of Dasein, accordingly, displays the positive as well as the negative trait characteristic
of formally indicative concepts.
What, then, does Dasein indicate about the mode of being of the human
being, about the subjectivity of the subject (see GA 27, 72)? First of all, let us
recall that formal indications are not themselves descriptions, but rather the kind
of concepts to be used at the outset of a phenomenological investigation, so as
to prepare the ground for the descriptive phenomenological-ontological work
proper. That is to say, we may not expect the positive content of the concept
of Dasein to constitute a complete theory of the being of the subject. To be
sure, it expresses, in its own way, the manner of being, but its own way is the
formally indicative way. With this caution in mind, however, it is in fact possible
to indicate several aspects of the being of the human being using nothing but
the concept of Dasein as a guiding clue. Etymology aside, Dasein is, in Heideggers use of it, to be read as a conjunction of the two concepts of Da and
Sein. Neither of these is supposed to be understood in any even remotely
profound manner, in fact they can be perfectly adequately translated here (or

nd
20. John Sallis, Delimitations: Phenomenology and the End of Metaphysics, 2 , expanded edition
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995), 109: But why Dasein and not simply man
(Mensch)? Certainly there could be no beings with the character of Dasein who would not also
be men, nor conversely. The point is that the designation Dasein is open to a radically different
way of thematizing the being so designated, in contrast to a designation such as man, in which
a virtually uncontrollable complex of presuppositions is operative, most notably, those connected with the determination of man as rational animal.

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157

there) and being.21 So the human being is a there, i.e., a locus, a

placebeing (sein) human is being that place (Da) (see GA 20, 349). A place,
of course, is something that can be occupied by someone or something. For instance, in the place where my desk now stands there was an armchair previously.
A there is something in which something can manifest itself (a desk, an
armchair), it is a sphere of dis-closedness (Erschlossenheit) into which something
like desks and armchairs can enter. As Heidegger says, [t]he expression there
indicates this essential disclosedness (SZ, 132). So being-there, accordingly,
indicates that disclosedness simply is the manner of being characteristic of the
human being. Dasein is the entity that is something like a there (GA 27, 136).
To be human is to be a there, that is, to be a sphere of disclosedness (SZ, 132133). This, on Heideggers account, formally indicates a number of further specifications of the being of the human being. Of the three indications Heidegger
mentions, let me consider two.22
First, a human being is a dimension of disclosedness in the sense that other
entities, whether with the mode of being of equipment (Zeug) or mere occurrent entities (Vorhandenes), or indeed other humans, are manifest to a human
being. These entities, moreover, are manifest in and through a nexus of referencesin order to and for the sake of or what Heidegger calls the world
(see SZ, 74-75, 364). Being a there, then, means being the peculiar place for
the whole of what is (GA 27, 360), or to put it differently, being-in-the-world
(In-der-Welt-sein) (SZ, 53). Because Heidegger believes that entities can only manifest themselves if their mode of being is understood, then by implication, being
the place where all that is manifests itself means being the site of the understanding of being (Sttte des Seinsverstndnisses).23 Although Heidegger does
notas far as I knowexplicitly endorse this reading anywhere, Da-Sein
could then perfectly well be understood to signify the place of being, the place
(Da) where (modes of) being (Sein) and therefore also entities manifest them

21. See Dahlstroms comments on the proper translation of this concept, Heideggers Concept of Truth, xxiii-xxv.
22. An aspect I shall not take into account is the dimension of disclosedness to ones own
Dasein: Not only is the world disclosed in its significance [Bedeutsamkeit] in the letting-be-encountered [Begegnenlassen] of concern, [disclosed] as an oriented Wherein of the being of Dasein, but Dasein is itself, in its being-in, there, itself for itself there (GA 20, 348). Also when a
Dasein resides alone amidst something occurrent is its being amidst . . . manifest; and precisely also when the Dasein in question does not notice [erfat] itself and reflect upon itself at
all [ . . . ], also when it, in its being-amidst the occurrent, does not think of itself. The being
amidst . . . is thus manifest before all objectification through others and for itself [fr sich selbst] (GA 27, 134). For a recent study of Heideggers account of subjectivity that lays special
emphasis on this problem of self-awareness, see Steven Crowell, Subjectivity: Locating the
First-Person in Being and Time, Inquiry 44 (2001): 433-454.
23. Sein und Zeit, 439, marginal note b to p. 8. In the Niemeyer edition of the book (the
one I am using here), the marginal notes are only printed in the 15th and later editions.

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selves.24 Clearly, on this reading, the indication inherent in the concept of Dasein displays a deep structural kinship with Husserls concept of transcendental subjectivity, rather than (as Husserl thought) with the latters notion of the
mundane subject, the human being.25 Indeed, to quote once again from Heideggers 1927 letter to Husserl, Dasein indicates nothing but the place of the
transcendental (Hua IX, 601). The crucial point to keep in mind, however, is
that we may not take this to mean that a Dasein could be there, could merely
occur, without this transcendental disclosedness. Nor is the disclosedness
any relation that becomes established between the human subject and being,
or the world, but rather, disclosedness is the very manner of being of the human being,
as pointed out above (see WM, 138).
A second indication implied in the concept of Dasein is that the dimension of openness or disclosedness that constitutes being-there is essentially
also an openness to others. As Heidegger puts it, as being amidst occurrent entities Dasein is itself manifest [ . . . ]; qua Dasein, it is unhidden, also when no
other Dasein in fact notices it (GA 27,129). The disclosedness of Dasein is
also a manifestness to an external perceiver, whether in fact one is present or
not; as a sphere of openness, Dasein has already entered into the others manifestness [Offenbarkeit] (GA 27, 138). How this insight naturally leads Heidegger
into a discussion of intersubjectivity, or Mitsein, need not concern us here. The
point I am trying to illustrate is simply that Heidegger uses the Da of Dasein to
convey not only the disclosedness of a world, and of being, and uncoveredness
of entities to the human being, but also how that entity in its being is itself disclosed or, even better, exposed. Not only in the sense that it is exposed to an external perceiver, but also in the sense that it is exposed to the world, i.e.,
vulnerable. We humans, as Heidegger observes, are together with [in eins mit] the
manifestness of the present-at-hand also manifest (GA 27, 134).
Now if the first mentioned indication could, in some sense, be interpreted
as a redefinition of transcendental subjectivity, then this last mentioned aspect
seems only to belongin a Husserlian opticto the mundane subject. After
all, Husserls transcendental subjectivity may perfectly well be the place of the
manifestation of all that is, the dative of manifestation,26 but as such, it is
hardly itself something manifest. Surely, only the mundane subject is manifest in
this manner. But Heidegger, we recall, was highly critical of this differentiation
between a transcendental and a mundane, or human subject, arguing instead

24. For some corroboration of this reading, see John Sallis, Delimitations, 112-118. Similarly, Otto Pggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 4th edition (Stuttgart: Gnther Neske, 1994),
259-260.
25. For Husserls anthropological understanding of Heideggers concept of Dasein,
see Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der
Metaphysik, ed. Roland Breeur, Husserl Studies 11 (1994): 3-63, especially 12-13.
26. This expression is from Thomas Prufer, Heidegger, Early and Late, and Thomas

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159

that the concrete human being could not have the being of a worldly real fact,
but should precisely be conceived as having a mode of being that (this is the
amazing thing) makes possible the constitution of such worldly real facts
(Hua IX, op. cit., 602). To put it differently, Dasein might signify being-in-theworld, but it does not signify being-intraworldly (innerweltlich) (GA 24, 240).27 This
is precisely what the concept of Dasein indicates to us: being a there is not
being on hand, is not merely occurring, but rather being a place of disclosedness
of being (Sein) and of a world, yet a place of disclosedness that is itself disclosed.
The Da carries both these meanings. Dasein never has the being-mode
[Seinsart] of within the world merely at-hand (SZ, 43), but on the other hand it
is, in a quite literal sense, in the world and not just related to the world. Being
a there, Dasein is also exposed.28 As Heidegger puts it in his first Marburg lecture course, Dasein is in the world in the way that it has the world visible. Havingvisible means the co-visibility [Mit-sichtig-sein] of that entity that is in the world.
This co-visibility is expressed in the Da.29
To accentuate how this amounts to an important revision of the notion of
the transcendental subject (more precisely, of that subjects mode of being), let
me briefly reintroduce a more traditional conception of subjectivity. For
Husserl, to be sure, the mundane subject, the human being, is the subject insofar as it is in the world. Considered as a transcendental subjectivity, however,
the subject is not in the world, but the one to whom the world and everything
intra-mundane (including the same subject, considered as mundane) manifests
itself. Yet from very early on, Husserl was working his way towards conceiving
the transcendental subject as a bodily subject, an effort that Merleau-Ponty would

Aquinas in Edmund Husserl and the Phenomenological Tradition, ed. Robert Sokolowski (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 197-215, especially 200.
27. As one recent commentator puts it, while the traditional modern interpretation
seems to adhere to a notion of subjectivity as a thing that is not in the world, Heidegger introduces an interpretation according to which subjectivity is a Being-in-the-world that is not a
thing; Einar verenget, Seeing the Self: Heidegger on Subjectivity (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1998), 2.
Two cautions, however. First, Heidegger insists that even those who resist ever so stubbornly
the interpretation of subjectivity as a thing fall prey to the interpretation of subjectivity as
on hand, as merely occurrent (SZ, 46, 114). Second, I am not sure that Husserl would agree
with the traditional modern interpretation that verenget outlines. After all, Husserls transcendental subject eventually turns out to be a bodily subject.
28. The key concept that Heidegger employs to capture part of this exposedness is, of
course, the concept of Befindlichkeitone of the existentials of Dasein. I shall not, however,
address the particulars of Heidegger analysis of Befindlichkeit and moods, but instead focus on
the broad issue of how Dasein constitutes an apt formally indicative reformulation of transcendental subjectivity.
29. Heidegger, Gesamtausgabe Band 17: Einfhrung in die phnomenologische Forschung, ed.
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), 288-289.

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later develop into a full-blown phenomenology of incarnate existence.30 As a

bodily subject, the transcendental subject would seem not to be extra-mundane
in any strong sense, and it would certainly be exposed to the gaze of other
transcendental subjects. Indeed, it is through this bodily existence of the subject
that Husserl, in the Cartesianische Meditationen, is able to establish the existence of
transcendental intersubjectivity.31 In his analysis of the body, then, Husserl
would seem to redefine transcendental subjectivity along precisely the same lines
as Heidegger, perhaps even in a more concrete and lucid manner. 32 Does not
bodily subject convey much more lucidly what Heidegger struggles to bring
out in his abstract reflections on the there? It appears quite understandable
that Husserlians are happy to emphasize that Heidegger explicitly refuses to give
any account of the body in Sein und Zeit (see SZ, 108).
But let us view the matter with ontological eyes. Is Husserls and MerleauPontys talk of the body in fact an apt way to indicate the being of the subject?
Is it not rather the case that in order for the phenomenology of the embodied
subject to be ontologically adequate, an ontological elucidation of the human
being must be presupposed? Even Merleau-Pontywho more than anyone else
has emphasized that we are our body,33 rather than some thinking substance
somehow connected with a bodystill occasionally speaks of consciousness as
having or inhabiting a body.34 That is, he falls back, at times, into a manner
of expressing himself that strongly resembles the dualistic position he has already overcome. Of course, these few references taken out of their context will
suffice for a criticism of Merleau-Ponty, but they may serve to bring to light

30. For Husserls early reflections on world-constitution and kinesthetic body, see Husserliana XVI: Ding und Raum, and Husserliana IV: Ideen zu einer reinen Phnomenologie und phnomenologischen Philosophie, zweites Buch, ed. Marly Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952).
Merleau-Ponty knew some of Husserls manuscriptsamong them Ideas IIfrom first-hand
studies at the Husserl-Archive in Leuven, Belgium, and Husserls presence is felt throughout
the pages of Merleau-Pontys Phenomenology of Perception.
31. See Edmund Husserl, Husserliana I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vortrge, ed.
Stephan Strasser, 2nd edition (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1991), 121-178. For arguments to the effect
that the theory of the experience of the other presented in the Cartesian Meditations should
not, in fact, be seen as establishing intersubjectivity, but ratheraccording to other Husserlmanuscriptsas presupposing more original forms of intersubjectivity, see Dan Zahavi, Husserl
und die transzendentale Intersubjektivitt (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996) and James G. Hart, The Person
and the Common Life (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1992). At any rate, it can hardly be contested that, if
not in all relevant texts, then at least in the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl attempts to establish
intersubjectivity through an experience of the bodily presence of the other subject.
32. Daniel Dahlstrom concedes that Husserls account of the kinesthetic movements of
the body clearly indicates a tangible level of transcendence [ . . . ]indeed, a level of transcendence, in relation to which, Heideggers talk of being-in-the-world or being-here has an
oddly abstract, even gnostic ring (Heideggers Concept of Truth, 164).
33. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge 1962), 206.
34. See, e.g., Phenomenology of Perception, 351.

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161

what Heideggers concern ultimately is. There are, I believe, places in Sein und
Zeit where Heidegger hints that his reason for refusing to discuss the body could
be precisely his desire to avoid anything resembling Cartesian dualism with its
fateful ontological consequences. Let us recall that the there of Dasein meant
both the disclosedness of world, entities, and their being, and an exposedness, a
disclosedness to an external perceiver. Now as Heidegger points out in Sein
und Zeit, it is tempting to construe the first characteristic as belonging to the
soul, and the other as having to do with the bodily nature (Leiblichkeit) of the
subjecta Leiblichkeit easily conceived as founded in corporeality (Krperlichkeit).35 We have then essentially returned to a dualistic stance. The human
being is construed as a union of (physical) body and soul, and the being of the
thus composed entity as such is all the more obscure (SZ, 56). Even if the body
is not construed as founded in a physical body, the ontological problem of how
to understand the being of the whole human being (des ganzen Menschen) is
bound to appear utterly perplexing (see SZ, 48; GA 20, 173). In Heideggers
view, this inevitably remains the curse of the theories of the embodied subject, as long as the ontological question has not been explicitly posed. We are
left with a number of different domainsconsciousness, body, sensuousness,
and so onbut what holds them together? What is the being-character of the
whole being [des ganzen Seins]?this is what Heidegger wants to know.36 Husserl
and others might be on the right track, but they lack the proper terminology to
make intelligible how a human being, after all, is one entity, with one mode of
being. Heidegger, in other words, ignores the body in Sein und Zeit precisely in
order to be able to thematize the being of the human (transcendental, bodily)
subject.37
With the formally indicative concept of Dasein we have paved the way
for a phenomenological elaboration of precisely this question: what manner of

35. The distinction between Leib (lived body) and Krper (physical body) has been
made famous by Husserl. See Husserliana VI: Die Krisis der europischen Wissenschaften und die
transzendentale Phnomenologie, 109.
36. Martin Heidegger, Wilhelm Diltheys Forschungsarbeit und der gegenwrtigen
Kampf um eine historische Weltanschauung, ed. Frithjof Rodi, Dilthey-Jahrbuch fr Philosophie
und Geschichte der Geisteswissenschaften 8 (1992-93): 143-180, 162. This article consists of ten lectures Heidegger gave in Kassel in 1925.
37. That Heidegger is by no means oblivious of the phenomenon of embodiment is argued by David Michael Levin in his The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment: Heideggers Thinking of Being, in The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Donn Welton
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 122-149. See also Sren Overgaard, Heidegger on Embodiment,
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology 35 (2004): 116-131. A completely different perspective is adopted by Lilian Alweiss in her book The World Unclaimed: A Challenge to Heideggers Critique of Husserl (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2003). Pace Alweiss (The World Unclaimed,
87), Heidegger is quite clear that Dasein should not be conceived of as disembodied: the
whole being of the human being [is] characterized in such a way that it must be grasped as the
bodily being-in-the-world [leibmige In-der-Welt-sein] of the human being. Heidegger, Gesamtaus-

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being belongs to the human being? With the notion of there, we are equipped
to understand how being human means both to be a place of disclosedness
where everything that appears appears, and to be a place of disclosedness that is
itself disclosed. We can understand this, moreover, as aspects of the one single
mode of being of this entity. In other words, we are not forced to construe the
subject as tormented by a split personality, as having two, completely different
modes of being, and yet at the same time we can bring to light both how the
subject is literally in the world, and is in the world precisely as the dative of manifestation of this world. With the formally indicative concept of Dasein, then,
we are conceptually equipped, perhaps for the first time, to approach the subjectivity of the subject (GA 27, 72).38 And if we do so, we might discover how
our insights into the being of Dasein converge with Husserls (and MerleauPontys) deepest insights into the bodily nature of transcendental subjectivity.
5. Conclusion

In kind of a zigzag fashion (a term both Husserl and Heidegger applied to

their phenomenological method), moving continuously back and forth between
a traditional notion of the subject and Heideggers formally-indicative concept of Dasein, I have tried to substantiate the claim that with the concept of
Dasein we become able to understand, in a deeper way, perhaps, than was hitherto possible, the kind of entity we ourselves are. With the concept of Dasein
we have the conceptual means to make intelligible how (to express the point in a
Husserlian idiom) we can both be mundane entities, in the world, and transcendental subjectivitiesand how we can exhibit both these traits in one and the
same mode of being. Human beings are never merely on hand within the world, but
rather, we are there in the double sense of being the sphere of disclosedness
of a world (and of being, and entities), and being ourselves disclosed. It is
wrong, at this point, simply to introduce the body into the account. The concept
of body invokes the notion of the presence of a particular entity distinguishable from other entities, and even if one is ever so emphatic that consciousness is not related to the body like the sailor to the ship,39 the dualistic picture
tends continually to assert itself anew. Rather than preparing the ground, then,
for an adequate ontology of the subject, the bodyif prematurely intro
gabe Band 18: Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, ed. M. Michalski (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), 199.
38. See, too, Heideggers Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann, 5th
edition (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1991), 87.
39. As Descartes, of course, would be the first to emphasize. Nature also teaches me [ . .
. ] that I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very
closely joined and, as it were, intermingled with it, so that I and the body form a unit. The
Philosophical writings of Descartes, Vol. II, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald
Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 56.

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ducedonly obscures the ontological question. It is starting from the formal indication of Da-Sein that one should attempt to reach the problems of consciousness and embodimentnot vice versa. On the basis of Heideggers
concept of Dasein, it is possible to make intelligible the phenomena of body
and consciousness, but starting from either of the last mentioned, the chances
of reaching an ontologically adequate understanding of the entity we ourselves
are, are poor (see SZ, 207).40
Yet we must bear in mind that Dasein is only a formally indicative concept, and in fact all that has been said in the present article must be understood
as nothing but formal indications. What I have said about the being of the
human being has, at best, pointed to a direction for takeoff, and, ideally at
least, it should be cashed in and fulfilled subsequently (GA 61, 33). At any
rate, it is important that one does not rest content with extracting theses out
of Heideggers discussion of Daseine.g., that Heidegger dismisses the notion of the embodied subject and replaces it with the notion of Dasein, or that
Heidegger dismisses the notion of a transcendental subjectivity altogether.
Rather, in a dialogue with the tradition that Heidegger is himself in constant
dialogue with, one should try to probe ever deeper into the issue of how, if at
all, Heideggers re-conceptualization of the subject might constitute a genuine
breakthrough. We must take Heideggers phenomenology of Dasein as providing only hints that it is up to us to develop and critically evaluate. Perhaps this is
the right place to recall an old and resigned Heideggers reply to William
Richardsons questions:
I hesitate with my answers, for they are necessarily no more than indications
[Hinweise]. The lesson of long experience leads me to surmise that such indications will not be understood as an invitation to engage personally in the
business of thinking the matter through for oneself. [Instead,] the indications
will be taken up as opinions expressed by me, and will be propagated as
such.41

40. See Otto Pggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 260: When Heidegger thus thinks
the human beings as the place, the There of being [Da des Seins] [ . . . ], then the questions of
the body-soul-spirit-union of the human beings, and of the organization of society and history are not therefore precluded; the point is precisely to find the foundation upon which these
questions must be posed. See, too, Steven Galt Crowell, Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of
Meaning, 212-213.
41. Heidegger, Preface/Vorwort, in William J. Richardson, S. J., Martin Heidegger:
Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), VIII-XXIII. The quotation is from VIII/IX. The translation is in part that of William J. Richardson.