HEIDEGGER ON THE QUESTION ABOUT THE MEANING OF BEING

The question of Being is at the center of Heidegger’s thought. His philosophical project

starts from the situation where he finds himself in an experience of a certain kind of confusion

and perplexity concerning the matter on what does being actually mean. In Being and Time,

Heidegger begins by remembering Plato's puzzling character of to on - being or what is: “‘For

manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression “being”.

We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed.” 1 This

perplexity refers to the dissatisfaction of the traditional view of ontology which causes our

inability to understand Being. Thus, Heidegger observes that at present we no longer really know

what the expression being mean. How did this perplexity come about? First, Heidegger goes

back to Plato’s ancient question about the meaning of the expression ‘being’ and relates it to our

present understanding. The conclusion is that in the early period philosophers are occupied in the

investigation of the meaning of Being and after a long time that impulse of wonder and awe has

been forgotten. We have forgotten Being because we no longer bother to have a sense of wonder

and ask the question about Being. “What is Being?... This question has today been forgotten.” 2

There is an experience of forgetfulness of Being [Vergessenheit]. Heidegger’s observation about

our forgetfulness has not simply come out from jumping into conclusion but rather this particular

philosopher knows the history of philosophy itself. The age of forgetfulness can be traced back

to its origin in history.

1
Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Henceforth referred to
as BT. (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), quoted as epigraph in Preface; 19.
2
BT §1, 2; 21.
 The question what is Being has already been raised and preoccupied the ancient Greek

philosophers among the so called Presocratics in the like of Parmenides and Heraclitus. Starting

from them, there was already the initial impulse of the understanding of Being. However, that

initial impulse which is also the genuine questioning about Being has been lost or forgotten. How

did this forgetfulness of Being happen? According to Heidegger, the forgetfulness of Being

started when the Greek philosophers who had been glorified by the West for over two thousand

years approached Being only in the academic discipline and was heard only in the academic

world. These philosophers in particular are Plato and Aristotle. Heidegger says, “What these two

men achieved was to persist through many alterations and ‘retouching’ down to the ‘logic’ of

Hegel.”3 The words alterations and retouching refer to the series of thinking and rethinking about

the meaning of Being where it only becomes a subject matter, a theme, and only a matter of

speculation among intellectual men. Each philosopher who is interested in metaphysics ontology

makes his own ontological construction. In the parlance of Friedrich Nietzsche, western

rationalization only emphasizes the Apollonian side of culture while it disregards the Dionysian.

Apollonian is the principle of reason, order, and to an extent it is the principium individuationis

(‘principle of individuation’) because reason is structured to have a distinction. Thus, Apollonian

is concerned on science while Dionysian is on art. Nietzsche’s criticism offers a new image of

what it is to be a philosopher, that is, not the Apollonian academician but Dionysian. So

Nietzsche criticizes Plato for the latter’s condemnation on the role of the poet. Just like

Nietzsche, Heidegger also reacts to the history of the West as the history of rationalization and

abstraction and so his later thought has a trace of Nietzschean thought especially in What are

Poets for?. However, I should not go beyond from his metaphysics to aesthetics.

3
Ibid.
 What is clear is that we are suffering from the age of forgetfulness, that is, we no longer

know what Being is. Who should be blame for this forgetfulness of ours? At first, it is our fault

because we no longer take the courage in confronting the question and we make excuses to

escape by hiding behind the unquestioned presuppositions. However, these presuppositions are

actually not our own making but a product of all the layers and conceptual trappings which have

been the product of the history of ontology. In this case, we can say that it is not only our fault

but also from the history of traditional ontology itself that conditioned us to forget the meaning

of Being. This is the contention of Heidegger as he criticizes the early philosophical tradition in

their great regard for reason.

Plato introduces the dualism between appearance and reality which shapes the thinking of

the next generation. This dualism is depicted in one of the most cited chapters of Plato’s

Republic, The Allegory of the Cave. He conceives reality as something which is unchanging and

eternal that cannot be found here but only in the World of Ideas. This true reality can only be

grasped by the rational part of the human soul. On the other hand, this world is considered as the

appearance only. And so Being as unchanging must not be in time but something outside time

and contingency.

Aristotle defines metaphysics or the First Philosophy as “a science which inquires into

the ultimate causes, principles, and reason of all things in the light of human reason alone.” 4

This means that through reason, science has been founded. Though this science, it shapes and

dominates the history of civilization while at the same time science marginalizes the

humanitarian side in the quest for truth and the meaning of our existence. How did the dream of

the Greeks which is science leads us to the estrangement to ourselves? One great factor was

Aristotle who used the method of abstraction in order to define Being. According to this method,
4
Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. W.D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), 982a.
the activity of abstraction happens when “the intellect denudes the phantasm or the image of its

individuating notes and thereby grasping or apprehending only the essence of the thing. The end

result of the activity is but an abstract idea.” In the degrees of abstraction, metaphysics which is

concerned on Being is the most abstract of all. That is why human nature is rationality in order to

grasp those ideas.

Rene Descartes introduces to the West the dualism between mind and body. Just like

Aristotle before him, he defines man as a “thinking substance” by his statement “Cogito ergo

sum,” I think therefore I am.5 In this case, humans are autonomous conscious subject in the

objective world thereby he is an independent entity. Further, Leibniz calls Being as Monad,

Spinoza refers it as a Substance, and finally Hegel considers Being as the Geist. The meaning of

Being becomes “trivialized” so much so that when one is asked what does Being mean, one

simply employs any of those ontological structures to answer what has been asked.

In such case, Heidegger provides two dogmas that has been developed that cause this age

of forgetfulness. The first is that “the question about the meaning of Being is superfluous.” 6 This

means that there is no need to ask about it in the sense that there are already constructions of

meaning that have been made by intellectual philosophers. The second dogma is that “there is a

sense of neglect on the inquiry about the meaning.”7 There is a neglect because the inquiry itself

is done only by those intellectuals who are only few in the society. The inquiry about the

meaning of Being is not applicable to the common people who have not been educated. In that

case, people will just rely on what has been handed down to them by the academician. What is

5
Rene Descartes, Key Philosophical Writings, (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Edition Limited, 1997),
Principle 7, p. 279.
6
BT §1, 2; 21.

7
Ibid.
this something that has been laid down to us throughout history? Heidegger calls that something

which contributes to the two dogmas as presuppositions which consist of three kinds.

The first presupposition is the upholding that “‘Being’ is the most universal concept.” 8 If

Being is considered as a universal concept, this indicates that Being is already apprehended

whenever a person thinks of something because the particular entities are subsumed in the

universal abstraction of concept. Let us say the individual species such as a dog, cat, monkey,

and snake. When all of these are grouped together, all of them can be called as animals. The

classification in general is known through abstraction such as the definition of man as a rational

animal as a denominator of what is common found in Joseph, Peter, and Andrew. How much

more if we talk about Being? Being is all that which one can or cannot think of. And so it is

universal and it is put at the very top of what Stephen Mulhall calls “ontological family tree.” 9

With this in mind, whatever people think and say is Being and so this all-inclusiveness of Being

leads a person not to bother anymore.

The second presupposition maintains that “‘Being’ is indefinable.” 10 The “undefinability”

of Being resides in the proposition by which Heidegger maintains. “‘Being’ cannot indeed be

conceived as an entity, nor can it acquire such a character as to have the term “entity” applied to

it.”11 In other words, ‘Being’ is not a thing. If that is the case, the term Being has no particular

phenomenon or entity by which one can find a concrete object of reference in order to define

‘Being.’ As such it cannot be formulated and defined. The third presupposition is the notion that

8
BT §1, 3; 22.

9
Stephen Mulhall, Routledge Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time, (New York: Routledge, 2005),
p. 9.
10
BT §1, 4; 23.

11
Ibid.
‘Being’ is self- evident.12 When we say self-evident, it refers to the individual understanding of

Being as a result of the person’s everyday experience. In summary, the three presuppositions

propose that it is acceptable to forget our initial impulse on how to ask the question about the

meaning of ‘Being’.

Heidegger is not happy to accept and to live in an age of forgetfulness. Thereby he

criticizes all the three presuppositions by referring to them only as an excuse in not confronting

the question of ‘Being.’ In confronting the first presupposition, Heidegger says: ‘Being’ is the

most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the one which is clearest or that it needs no

further discussion. It is rather the darkest of all.” 13 If it is the darkest of all, then it must be

clarified and to do such task is to formulate the question of ‘Being’ once again. In confronting

the second presupposition, “The indefinability of Being, says Heidegger, “does not eliminate the

question of its meaning; it demands that we look that question in the face.” 14 In this proposition,

it seems that there is an important question to consider. How can we find out the meaning of

‘Being’ granted that ‘Being’ cannot be defined? This ambiguity can be resolved further as we go

through in this work and arrive at the ontological difference. To look forward, the access to

Being is through a special entity that is open to the disclosure of its meaning. But what is that

entity with which we are to begin in order to have access to Being will be discussed later. The

point is that Heidegger does not accept excuse implies by the second presupposition. Again, the

question of Being has to be raised again. Concerning the disagreement against the third

presupposition, Heidegger insists that there is a need to take up the question of Being again.

Though many regarded Being as self evident, as something understood by the individual

12
Ibid.

13
BT §1, 3; 23.

14
Ibid., 4; 23.
experience, it does not guarantee that Being is understood in the deeper sense because what

seems to be obvious to us in our everyday living might lead us astray. Heidegger argues: The

very fact that we already live in an understanding of Being and that the meaning of Being is still

veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle to raise this question again.” 15 This

veiled of darkness refers to the trappings that serve as the masks which cause the hiddeness of

Being and to raise the question again means formulate the question about Being. In this case, I

see the passion that is to be found in the task of Heidegger in his restlessness to unveil the

enigma about Being in the sense that he does not happy to be complacent with what the West has

already achieved.

The task that awaits us after the realization that we have forgotten to ask about the

question of Being is “to raise anew the question of the meaning of Being!”16 This means that we

must recover our sense of forgetfulness so that we may be able to keep in touch to that which is

fundamental in us, that is, Being. Heidegger criticizes the construction of the meaning of Being

started by Plato and Aristotle and down to Hegel up to the present. Not only because of the

inability to answer the meaning but also the forgetfulness that the question about the meaning of

Being is a question at all. With this in mind, it is not just a simple question that simply comes out

from a vacuum but indeed it is “the fundamental question.” 17 It is a matter of importance. “The

question of the meaning of Being must be formulated.” 18 It must be formulated because the

discipline of questioning reawakens us from our deep slumber by being at home at one’s

cherished beliefs without subjecting them into criticisms. What makes us into the state of

15
Ibid.

16
Ibid.

17
Ibid., §2, 5; 24.

18
Ibid.
reawakening by way of a question is that there is something that has been found anew to us

which has not been realized at the state of our deep slumber. Our forgetfulness cannot be

completely solved but can only be overcome. Questioning thus is a way of finding something.

Heidegger also gives an importance to the discipline of questioning. “Every inquiry is a seeking

[Suchen]. Every seeking gets before-hand by what is sought. Inquiry is a kind of cognizant

seeking for an entity.”19 This means that when we inquire into something we are aware of what

we are seeking. Inquiry as a cognizant seeking means that there is a direction of the inquiry. But

before an inquiry begins there is already a prior conception of something to be sought and

without such a priority there will be no questioning at all. That which is to be sought is already in

the consciousness. To make clear about this cognizant seeking, Heidegger presents in Section 2

about how questioning will lead us into something to be sought. The act of questioning or

inquiring about something is characterized by four following aspects. First, every question is

rooted from the pre-understanding of what it is aiming to seek about. Second, the inquiry has its

content to be identified specifically. This content is “that which is asked about” (das Gefragtes).

Third, aside from what is asked about, there is “that which is interrogated” (das Befragte). The

fourth is the attainment of the goal of the questioning that lies in “that which is to be found by

the asking” (das Efragte).

Heidegger illustrates further the three aspects but not on the last aspect. In first aspect,

though the inquirer has already the preliminary conception of that which is asked, it is not yet

clear. To quote Heidegger: “We do not know what ‘Being’ means. But even if we ask, ‘What is

“Being”?’, we keep within an understanding of the ‘is’, though we are unable to fix conceptually

what that ‘is’ signifies.”20 It shows that our understanding of Being is only our experience of

19
Ibid.

20
Ibid., 5; 25.
everydayness where our understanding is only focused on how to live as it is emphasized in the

word “to be.” For the second aspect, the content (das Gefragt) is Being itself by which Heidegger

classifies into two: a) “that which determines entities as entities, b) that on the basis of which

entities are already understood.”21 The first classification refers back to Plato’s conception of

Being as eternal and unchanging while the entities are just a mere copy of it. In that case, Being

exists outside time and contingency that can be known only through reason or the rational part of

our soul. The latter classification deviates from what is the former by the proposition that states

“entities are already understood”. Here, entities are no longer understood that its essence will

subsist and be determined by an existent Being outside time. The entities are considered as they

are on how they appear to us accordingly and nothing can be known beyond space and time.

Who begins to understand entities as such? Was it Kant? As far as I know, it was Kant who made

a big deal against the unchallenged ontology. He is like a philosopher with a hammer as he uses

the hammer of critique which is expressed in his critical philosophy. Kant’s Critique of Pure

Reason directly attacks to Plato and most especially to Aristotle’s metaphysics as it is founded

“in the light of human reason alone.” Following Descartes’ analogy of philosophy as a tree

where metaphysics is the root and all the sciences are the branches and have their nourishments

from metaphysics, Kant is revolutionary in attacking the very foundation of metaphysics in the

sense that it would have shaken the very foundation of all sciences. With that kind criticism,

philosophers realize on the experience of standing on the ground made up of clay. For Kant,

metaphysics which deals on the question about God, freedom, and immortality cannot be

subjected to human knowledge. By knowledge, Kant means: “Concepts without contents are

empty. Intuitions without concepts are blind.” For there to be knowledge at all both sensibility

and understanding must go hand in hand and, without the other, it is impossible to claim that we
21
Ibid., 6; 25-26.
know of something. Each is necessary in constituting knowledge for “without sensibility objects

would not be given to us, without the understanding they would not be thought by us.” 22 But the

question of metaphysics is a question which we cannot know because the concept of God,

freedom, and immortality cannot be accessed through sensibility. So Kant concludes that “no

matter how deeply we try to know the things in themselves we can only know the things as they

appear to us.” We can only know the phenomena but not the noumena. That is why in the case of

proving God’s existence, ours is only a proof of reason which we can either prove or disprove.

The big term between the two is the term existence. The big contribution of Kant to Heidegger is

the conclusion that “existence is not a real predicate.” 23 This means that we must not consider

that something ontically exists in order to supplicate the term that something exists. Following

this line of thought, Heidegger’s statement that “The ‘Being’ of entities ‘is’ not itself an entity”

[Da Sein den Seiendes ist nicht selbst ein Seiendes]24 is a traced of Kantian criticism against the

ontological proof of God’s existence. When we say that ‘Being’ is not an entity, it means that

‘Being’ cannot be regarded as an object to be studied or a subject of a predication. As Heidegger

points it out, there is an ontological difference between Being (Sein) and beings or entities

(Seiendes). Heidegger, including us, is after ‘Being’ (Sein) which has the priority over the

entities. This priority as Heidegger calls it is the ontological priority of the question of Being

[Der ontologische Vorrang der Seinsfrage].”25

In this section, Heidegger points out that ontological inquiry about the meaning of Being

is more fundamental than the ontic inquiry by which the positive sciences are concerned. In order
22
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Pual Guyer and Allen Wood (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1997), A51=B75.
23
Ibid., A592=B619

24
BT §2, 6; 26.

25
Ibid., §3, 8; 28.
to explicitly present the priority of ontology over the ontical, let us first deal on how Heidegger

passes judgment on the positive sciences. With his criticism on the ontical inquiry of positive

sciences, it is also his undeveloped philosophy of science. In my reading, Heidegger’s criticism

on the ontical inquiry of the positive sciences was influenced by his mentor, Husserl and at the

same time looking forward at Kuhn’s notion of a scientific progress by means of a revolution. In

considering Husserl’s critique of science for having its own subject matter or domain of

investigation where every science only becomes a science of facts, Heidegger also attacks the

foundationalism that is to be found especially in the domain of mathematics and science. To

quote Heidegger,

“The totality of entities can, in accordance with its various domains, become a
field for laying bare and deliminating certain definite areas of subject-matter.
These areas, on their part (for instance, history, Nature, space, life, Dasein,
language, and the like), can serve as objects which corresponding scientific
investigations may take as their respective themes. Scientific research
accomplishes, roughly and naively, the demarcation and initial fixing of the areas
of subject-matter.”26
What Heidegger attacks is the specialization of every science which is only confined on a limited

concept from the specific field of study. When these limited concepts change, then that is the

start of the real improvement of the sciences. And so Heidegger anticipates the scientific

revolution of Thomas Kuhn’s notion of “paradigm shift.” 27 The former says, “The real

26
Ibid., 9; 29.

27
The notion of paradigm shift is similar to Heidegger’s undeveloped philosophy of science. Heidegger’s
major work Being and Time was published in 1927 while Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was
published in 1962. In that long span of years, I think, there is a conjecture whether Kuhn was able to read Heidegger.
The notion of Kuhn’s paradigm shift attacks the very conventional view of progress in science as
evolutionary where what has been discovered will be accumulated. Kuhn calls this viewpoint as “the concept of
development- by-accumulation.” According to Kuhn, a scientific progress occurs in a different way whereby one
scientific paradigm is questioned, challenged, and replaced by a very different paradigm. See Thomas Kuhn, The
Structure of Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), p. 2.
‘movement’ of science takes place when their basic concepts undergo a more or less radical

revision which is transparent to itself.”28 This means that a true science must be able to articulate

its own subject-matter by being critical to its own accepted notion and the task of philosophy

comes in as it tries to help in clarifying the grounds of knowledge. Heidegger further continues:

“The level which a science has reached is determined by how far it is capable of
crisis in its basic concepts. In such immanent crises the very relationship between
positively investigative inquiry and those things themselves that are under
interrogation comes to a point where it begins to totter.”29
The basic concepts of every domain of investigation are called into question and its legitimation

of knowledge becomes in crisis. Thus, Heidegger mentions about the crisis experienced in the

field of mathematics, physics, biology and even theology. Though the positive sciences deal only

with the entities, they are able to stand as a science because its basic concepts are founded on the

ontology of the specific domain of being which is in itself a priori.

“Basic concepts determine the way in which we get an understanding

beforehand of the area of subject-matter underlying all the objects a science takes
as its theme, and all positive investigation is guided by this understanding.”30
Ontical sciences survive because it is founded with the ontology of its domain and its basic

concepts are nothing else than “an interpretation of those entities with regard to their basic state

of Being.”31 Positive sciences deals primarily with calculative thinking but when the moment that

it tries to question the meaning of its own ground, it is already a meditative thinking and that

kind of thinking is characterized as ontological. Let us take for example in the domain of

mathematics. There is no problem when we only refer to the application of its rules but a certain

28
BT §3, 9; 29.

29
Ibid.

30
Ibid., 10; 30.

31
Ibid.
crisis may arrive if the legitimacy of its foundation is questioned such as the debate between the

formalists and intuitionists. What these two opposing teams dealing about is on the matter of

ontological question. Influenced by Heidegger’s critique of metaphysics, Allain Badiou claims in

Being and Event that “mathematics is ontology.”32 In his other works, he mentions:

“We have a complex relation between ontology and science, in my case

ontology and mathematics, in the case of Kant between ontology and physics.
There is a complex relation between ontology and science because there is an
ontological status of science itself.”33
The ontological status of ontical science is grounded when science asked about the mode of

Being as that which determines entities as entities but only in the confined domain of

investigation. Granted the fact that those sciences are founded on ontologies, these ontologies are

lacking if the meaning of Being is not clarified. Thus, Heidegger’s task comes in as he tries to

the last attempt on the reflection of the most fundamental of all ontologies which he calls the

fundamental ontology. And so Heidegger argues:

“Ontological inquiry is indeed more primordial, as over against the ontical inquiry
of the positive sciences. But it remains itself naïve and opaque if in its researches
into the Being of entities it fails to discuss the meaning of Being in general….The
question of Being aims therefore at ascertaining the a priori conditions not only for
the possibility of the sciences which examines entities as entities of such and such
type, and, in so doing, already operate with an understanding of Being, but also for
the possibility of those ontologies themselves which are prior to the ontical
sciences and which provide their foundations.”34
In this way, the three fields can be classified in ascending order: ontical sciences, ontologies, and

fundamental ontology. The latter is the most basic because it seeks to ask the question of Being
32
Allain Badiou, Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (New York: Continuum, 2006), §4; 9.

33
___________, Infinite Thought: Truth and the Return to Philosophy, trans. Oliver Feltham & Justin
Clemens (New York: Continuum, 2005), p. 138.
34
BT §4, 11; 31.
in general. The ontological priority aims primarily at Being. So the first question to be raised is

“What is ‘Being’”. This question is the question of metaphysics.

However, there is a problem because the metaphysics that has been known throughout the

history are dominated by the series of theoretical constructions of meaning. These constructions

consist the history of ontology. In this particular case, when a person is asked about the meaning

of Being, he would have to answer from what he has learned through those ready-made answers

to the question of Being. In order not to succumb to the intellectual answers about Being,

Heidegger puts forward in §6 of Being and Time his via negativa with the task of “destroying the

history of ontology.”35 Heidegger comes to the understanding that the Western tradition of

metaphysical thought is primarily dominated by the so called “metaphysics of presence.” Since

the days of Plato and Aristotle, the West considers Being as permanence that subsists in

permanence. They have considered that the expression “to be” as eternal. These two

philosophers had constructed an ultimate ontology where the concepts such as “essence” and

“categories” are beyond time. And so these supernal entities are considered as eternal and

unchanging. The moment that such concepts are in time, then they are always in flux as

Heraclitus would say. Being is considered as the essence and so it is also the nature of an entity.

In that case, the nature of an entity can be categorized. Since Being subsists in permanence in a

way that Being is always is and also makes the thing as it is, Being is always present and subsist

in the eternal “now” which at the same time that Being as presencing takes cover our human and

finite “now.” Thus, Heidegger observes that “our treatment of the meaning of ‘Being’ must

enable us to show that the central problematic of all ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of

time.”36

35
Ibid., §6, 19; 41.

36
BT §5, 18; 40.
Western religion adopted this notion such as the concept that there is a God whose time is always

present and also science in its notion that there exists an eternal law of science which governs the

working of the whole universe. Starting from the Greek, they use reason in order to grasp those

supernal entities. That is why man is necessarily a rational animal and the life that is being lived

to the fullest is the cultivation of his rationality so that he can be able to grasp those eternal,

unchanging, perfect, and supersensible realities.

Just like as science which employs calculative thinking, Western tradition of metaphysics

as “The First Philosophy” employs another type of thinking which is called representational

thinking [vorstellendes Denken]. The first thing that will come into mind when the word

representation is heard is the magnum opus of Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and

Representation. However, Heidegger goes back to its origin which was started by the Greek.

This type of thinking proposes, first and foremost, an object to be known while on the other side

there is a conscious subject as a knower. To think through representation is to take the world as a

picture (Bild) being place before the subject. Plato’s notion of the World of Ideas represents

Being as an Idea. Since then, modern science takes necessarily the picturing of the world so that

our world can be easily manipulated and controlled by the use of the formulated laws that is

being injected to reality. Through the rationalization of the West and the notion of man’s nature

as rational, human beings are consumed by intellectual achievement which culminated in the

inquiry concerning science and technology. “Entities are grasped in their Being as ‘presence’,

this means that they are understood with regard to a definite modes of time- the Present.” 37 In

particular, our technology today is the full achievement of what was the goal of the ancient

Greek metaphysics. This does not mean that we must go against such invention but they must be

used with a certain limits. This metaphysics of presence can also mean the enslavement and the
37
Ibid., §6, 25; 47.
threatening of human being by the availability of technology to be used and at the same time

exalting him as the independent entity that lords over the earth. Thus, Heidegger comes to this

conclusion: In truth, however, precisely nowhere does man today any longer encounter himself,

i.e., his essence.38

These problems are the result of the history of ontology and the task of the destruction is

the way to overcome these problems. In this way, Heidegger wants to regain the glory that is

enjoyed by philosophy before as the “the queen of all sciences”39 and at the same time to make

our way of asking and philosophizing genuine particularly in the task of asking the meaning of

Being. By the term destruction or destroying the history of ontology, it is not an act of barbarism

whereby the destroyer simply destroys the much labored comprehensive system of thought

without any realization that it is no longer tenable. In other words, one cannot simply destroy the

history of ontologies without any understanding at all. The destroyer must have mastered the

history of ontological constructions and surpasses them in order to have a new dawn that awaits

us that will serve as our fresh beginning. Heidegger’s task of destruction means the end of

Western metaphysics, i.e., Platonism. What awaits us is Nietzsche’s proclamation of the ‘death

of God’ as the ‘death of Western metaphysics’ and the experience of being as “the last breath of

a vaporizing reality”40 by way of a question: “Do we not feel the breath of an empty space?” 41

The task of the destruction then is not at all a complete negative because it gives us a new way to

38
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings: from Being and Time (1927) to The Task of Thinking (1964), trans. &
ed. David Farell Krell (New York: Harper & Row, 2008), p. 30
39
Charles Bambach, Heidegger’s Root: Nietzsche, National Socialism, and the Greeks, (New York: Cornell
University Press, 2003), p. 99.
40
Nietzsche, quoted in Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts, trans. Gary E. Aylesworth (Indiana: Indiana
University Press, 1993), p. 39.

41
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York:
Random House, 1976), §125.
the disclosure of Being and the character of the destroyer as the one who understands the history

of ontology is equal to Heidegger himself.

As it is mentioned in the ontological priority that what we are after is the question of

Being. The task of the destruction of all ontologies as the via negative also left us no ready-made

ontology. When one is asked what is Being, he can neither answer nor he cannot go back to the

intellectual manuals that say something about what Being is in the sense that they are no longer

accepted after the destruction. We are left with nothing except the experience of the forgetfulness

of Being. With this in mind, we are not in the position to inquire right away into the ontological

priority. What is needed is the humility to accept our sense of forgetfulness of Being. Otherwise,

the task of formulating once again the question about the meaning of Being would be

unsuccessful. Since we cannot start with ontology, Heidegger is still hopeful to try the second

best way by what he calls the ontical priority of the question of Being. This way is also his via

positiva.

“The Being of an entities is not itself an entity.” 42 Being means the Being of entities but

that Being is not an entity to be predicated or a subject for predication. However, we have

forgotten Being (Sein). I have already mentioned before that the only access to Being is through

being. This way of access to Being is the concerned of the ontical priority. It is a de tour, there is

a shift from one route to another route; there is a shift from the inquiry of Being (Sein) into the

inquiry of Being through being (Seiendes). Instead of inquiring directly to Sein, this de tour is

also called a pre-ontology that hopes that Seiendes will reveal to us Sein. The entites are now put

in questioned because our inquiry start only at where we are, i.e., forgetfulness, or from where

and what I am at present. Thus, we will begin only at what we know about the entities that

surround us. That is why it is ontical. The primary question “What is Being?” have become
42
BT §2, 7; 26.
reformulated into the question “What is being?” The second question does not also solve the

problem of our inquiry. Indeed, the question “What is being?” is still problematic because we are

surrounded with many entities of which I am it. There is a necessity to specify what particular

being or entity that the disclosure of Being made to possible. Heidegger once articulates:

“But there are many things which we designate as ‘being’ [“seiend”], and we do so in

various senses. Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which

we comport ourselves in any way, is being; ‘what we are’ is being, and so is how we are.”43

This indicates that all things that surround us are being such as this pen that I am holding

as write this work, the books that I am reading as my resources, erasers, chairs, table, and also

this paper before me and more than that I myself am a being who is currently writing and

reading. Granted the fact of these things as being, the burden lies on what particular thing or

entity should be chosen for our inquiry hoping that this particular entity will reveal Being. Once

again Heidegger asks, “In which entities is the meaning of Being to be discerned? From which

entities is the disclosure of Being to take place its departure?” 44 This questioning implies that we

must select the best of all entities to be interrogated to the extent that it will reveal to us the

meaning of Being. Accordingly, there are two questions to consider: 1) what specific entity

should be chosen? 2) Whose concern is the disclosure of Being? Let us begin to answer the

second question. The only entity that is concerned about the disclosure of Being is the inquirer

himself with his capacity to ask himself about himself. Heidegger mentions that inquirer is

concerned on the question of Being when he says, “The very asking of this question is an entity’s

mode of Being.”45 Dogs and cats may play but only human being asks. Hence, our first clue on

43
Ibid., 6-7; 26.

44
Ibid., 7; 26.

45
Ibid., 7; 27.
what entity to be chosen is ourselves, that is, human being or the being called man. That man is

the entity to be chosen is not enough because it does not guarantee that all men will have to

bother to ask the question about the meaning of Being. Granting the generalization that humans

are capable of questioning as true, the word capability is not yet done but it is only a possibility

to be made; it is a formalistic preconception which lacks concreteness. Thereby, we are not yet

done in answering on what particular entity because the answer is not just simply man being

defined as a rational animal. There must be even more specific entity and not just simply man.

Heidegger coins the term Dasein as the particular entity to be chosen and this entity is no other

than the being that I am. Since Dasein is the entity being chosen, the question of “what is

Being?” is shifted into the question “What is Dasein?” In this de tour, there is an exceptional

relation between Being in general and the Being of Dasein as the Seinsfrage, the Question of

Being, is replaced by the inquiry about Dasein.

The task of inquiring the meaning of Being lies in the individual. It is existential because

the disclosure of Being is not to be decided through the inquiry of things, seeking answers from

our friends, parents, relying on textbooks, and not even the concept of God but only through

asking my true selfhood being emptied with masks of pretensions. I myself as the inquirer do not

let others to ask the meaning of Being for me. The one who asks the question of Being is the one

responsible to answer the question for himself. At this point, there is a kind of reversion of the

inquiry. I am the one who asks about Being as I raise the question and at the same time I am the

one that is being interrogated. The inquirer inquires into his own being, the being of the inquirer

himself. I inquire into the being that I myself am. As he is mainly influenced by Heidegger’s

existential philosophy, Jean-Paul Sartre writes in Being and Nothingness:

 “Every question presupposes a being who questions and a being which is
questioned. . . This question is a kind of expectation, that is, I expect from this
being a revelation of its being or of its way of being.”46
From the passage above, there is an expectation in questioning because it is a kind of “cognizant

seeking”47 and the revelation that Sartre is talking about is the disclosure of Being to being. The

inquirer is an open-ended being in a way that he is the inquirer about himself. There is no

dichotomy between the subject as the inquirer and the object being inquired. I myself as a subject

is at the same time become an object that is to be interrogated. The object of my own inquiry

about the meaning of Being is myself as Dasein. This task is the reminiscence of the Socratic

imperative that says “Know Thyself” which challenges everyone to ask about himself in his true

selfhood.

Dasein as the chosen entity in revealing Being has therefore an ontical privilege when it

is compared to the other entities. Heidegger asserts something of these privileges when he says,

“Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities.” 48 It is ontically privilege for

three bases. The first is that Dasein understands Being. It is an entity which does not simply

there but the one raises the question of its own being. The preliminary act of questioning raised

by Dasein is its a priori conception of Being. “Dasein understands itself in its Being.” 49

Furthermore, its understanding is not limited only in its own being but also in that of other

entities such as the entities of the world and the world itself in general.

46
Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, trans. Hazel
E. Barnes (New York: Philosophical Library, 1943), p. 35.

47
BT §2, 5; 24.

48
Ibid., §4, 12; 32.

49
Ibid.
 “Thus Dasein’s understanding of Being pertains with equal primordiality both to
an understanding of something like a ‘world’, and to the understanding of the
Being of those entities which become accessible within the world.”50
Because of the understanding of its own being, the world, and the worldly entities, Dasein is

capable and will be able to create those ontical sciences. The inquiry into the being of Dasein is

prior to any inquiry. Let us take for example in the case of the world renowned physicist Albert

Einstein. He is able to formulate a new theory in physics which is known as the theory of

relativity. So what? What is the fundamental is not that of what is being discovered but to reflect

about the man behind the discovery on how he is able to do so. It is because of his own being

that understands and is capable of making the novel theory in physics.

The second ontical privilege of Dasein is its own mode of Being which Heidegger calls

existence [Existenz]. The word existence is equivalent to the Latin word “existere” which means

“to stand out.”51 If this is the basis of what it means to exist, Heidegger claims that only Dasein

exist and the other actual entities such as glass, birds, and fish cannot be considered to exist. The

claim that only Dasein exists changes the traditional conception of existence as something we

simply see, touch, hear, feel, taste, in the world. The novel conception is that existence is only

for Dasein (human existence) in a sense that once thrown into this world, Dasein is the only one

who can stand out his own existence by the possibilities that is open to him. Only Dasein exists

in critical and reflective manner which other entities cannot be expected to do the same. And

Heidegger’s claim that “Dasein’s essence lies in its existence”52 means that any human being

who recognizes his various possibilities and deliberately carve himself in the course of his whole

life can be considered as Dasein. The authentic individual as Dasein is the recognition of his own
50
Ibid., 13; 33.

51
I learned the definition from class discussion in Philosophy of Man.

52
BT §9, 42; 67.
possibilities that he is going to make in his life. These possibilities can either be recognized or

disregarded and it follows the third ontical privilege of Dasein over other entities.

The third ontical privilege of Dasein is his capacity “to be itself or not itself.” 53 In other

words, Dasein is the only being that has the capacity to choose whether he will act on the various

possibilities that he has or he will refuse those possibilities. The choice is left to human reality

whether he is going to be Dasein of das Man. In either case, what is common is human freedom

that is born out of his own emptiness as a being that is ahead of itself. Other entities are fixated,

already defined as it is, thereby they are not free. These three ontical privileges, i.e.,

understanding, existence, and freedom, constitute the Being of Dasein. To argue that the Being

of Dasein has a special connection with Being in general is to agree with Heidegger that Dasein

is ontico-ontologically prior. Dasein is ontically prior because of all entities it is the one that is

chosen and at the same time each of us has an access to it because “we are it.” 54 Likewise, Dasein

is ontologically prior. Though it is farthest from Being in general it will hopefully open the

disclosure of Being. Dasein as the ‘being that I myself am’ is the closest to me in the ontical

sense but it is also the most difficult to know. Thus, there is a need for a kind of method for the

basic and most fundamental understanding of Dasein’ Being. That method we call it

phenomenology.

Phenomenological Analytic of Dasein

The great name behind the method of phenomenology is Heidegger’s mentor, Edmund

Husserl. Why does Heidegger use the phenomenology of Husserl in answering the question

“what is Dasien”? Why is it that the best way is to use the phenomenological method? In order to

53
Ibid., §4, 12; 33.

54
BT §5, 15; 38.
arrive at the clearer understanding, let us not make a sudden leap to answer directly to the

question but rather let us explicate the origin of phenomenology in the thinking of Husserl. Let

us focus for a while on how does Husserl view phenomenology. Edmund Husserl still wants to

continue the project of modernity which is science. However, he tries to have a new way so that

his approach may not be led to the same pitfalls experienced by the modern thinkers before him.

He established a new method which he calls pure phenomenology. According to Husserl,

phenomenology is “essentially a new science.” 55 He agrees with Aristotle only on a particular

ground that there are essences. The point of their disagreement is on how are essences to be

attained. Aristotle uses the method of abstraction where the essence of a thing is after all an

abstract idea as the end product of the long series of thinking and rethinking. Husserl rejects the

method of Aristotle because for him essences must be concrete and be seen from the things

themselves. Thus, Husserl calls philosophers “to go back to the things themselves” [Zu den

sachen selbst].56 The essence must not be formulated but rather they must be seen from

themselves as what they are through description. The things themselves show their own

essences. The cry for going back to the things themselves is similar for going back to the idea or

eidos (Wesen or essence). The essence is only a phenomenon because it is only seen on how

thing appears to us. Thus it is only phenomenology, and not noumenology. In order to make the

task of going back to the things themselves possible, Husserl has to access differently and in a

novel way. So, the method must no longer be abstraction for it only allows us to theorize. He

uses the method of intuition. It is the immediate access to the thing itself. When we say

immediate access, the act of seeing is not mediated by something else or there is no medium used

Edmund Husserl, Ideas for a Pure Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. W.R.
55

Boyce Gibson (New York: Mcmillan, 1931), p. 41.

56
_____________, Logical Investigations, trans. J.N. Findlay (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), p.
252.
such as using a microscope to magnify microorganisms and telescope to look at the heavenly

bodies from a long distance. Intuition is the direct seeing on something. Further, the act of direct

seeing is of two kinds. The first kind is a way of seeing from a natural standpoint by the naïve

consciousness. For instance, I see a chair but not actually looking it as a chair or simply I am not

paying attention to it. I just simply see. The other kind of seeing is to see things from a reflective

consciousness. It is only at this kind of seeing where the essence is possible to attain. Thus

phenomenology, as a method, aims at the establishment of certitude by letting the essence to be

shown itself from itself (Wesensschau).

After presenting Husserl’s phenomenology, let us examine Heidegger’s understanding of

phenomenology. The main influence left by Husserl to Heidegger is his battle-cry: to go back to

the things themselves! Heidegger conforms in §7 saying, “To the things themselves.”57 This

means that we must acknowledge what is only given to us through our immediate intuitive

experience of things that surround us and also including ourselves. At the same time, we must do

away all those ready-made theoretical construction and theories whether they are given

scientifically or philosophically. We must not accept those pre-given answers handed down by

the history of ontology. We must even destroy them. Accordingly, phenomenology is neither

guided by history nor it is a discursive thinking and argumentation to clarify something.

Heidegger’s notion of going back to the things themselves is similar to going back to the

original experience of Being such as the original impulse of questioning that is experienced

originally by the pre-Socratics. In disclosing the path of Being, Heidegger uses the power of the

original experience of the word. For instance, Heidegger mentions philosophy. He encourages us

to listen to the word and its origin. It is from the Greek. In the same manner, he examines the

word phenomenology. Listen! The word is from the two Greek words: phaenomenon and logos.
57
BT § 7 50; 28.
The Greek word phaenomenon comes from the verb “to show itself” (phainesthai).58 Thus for

Heidegger, the Greek word phaenomenon (phenomenon) means “that which shows itself in

itself, the manifest.”59 However, an entity itself can show itself in various ways depending on

how is our way of accessing it. An entity sometimes shows itself as what it is not such as in the

cases of mere appearance, semblance, and illusion. According to Heidegger, these are only

secondary to the real meaning of the phenomena. Similarly, Heidegger also does not accept all

kind of phenomenalism including the formal concept of phenomenon such as the illustration of

Kant’s forms of intuition by grasping only the appearance of things but not as what as they are.

Since the entity does not always show what it is in the phenomenon, Heidegger wants to

make a science of phenomena, that is, phenomenology. In other way of saying it, Heidegger

wants phenomena to be “_____logy.” Thus, he examines the second Greek word- logos. In the

traditional philosophy, the Greek word logos are defined normally by the West as thought,

reason, word, judgment, or concept. According to Heidegger, “those competing significations are

only a semblance.” He translates or interprets logos as “discourse”- “to make manifest what one

is ‘talking about’ in one’s discourse.”60 How discourse manifests something that is to be seen?

Let us take for example in my case of having a dialogue with a friend. The moment that I talk to

my friend about something, I am actually showing what I am talking about. What I am talking

about will be revealed. Logos as discourse “lets something be seen.”61 In this case, I am reminded

of the ethics of Jurgen Habermas as discourse. In this kind of ethics, every individual is allowed

to show what he wants to show from himself including his own interest and needs. The purpose

58
Ibid.,, 51; 28.

59
Ibid.

60
BT §7, 32; 56.

61
Ibid.
of discourse is to bring into light something that is hidden. So for Heidegger, phenomenology

means “to let that which shows itself (phaenomenon) be seen (-phainesthai) from (apo-) itself in

the very way in which it shows itself from itself.” 62 This formulation is the conformation to the

short maxim: “To the things themselves.”63 Furthermore, the phenomenology of Heidegger does

not specify what are the objects or subjects of the research; it is just only on the how but not on

the what of the research. “Phenomenology neither designates the object of its researches, nor

characterized the subject matter thus comprised. The word merely informs us of the “how.”64

Applying phenomenology in the analysis of human existence will lead to the disclosure

of the Being of Dasein. As Heidegger writes, “Only as phenomenology, is ontology possible.” 65

How? This can be done through phenomenological description of Dasein, that is, to show what is

to be seen from Dasein itself. Since the concern of phenomenology is to bring into light what has

been hidden, that which something to be brought into light and to be seen from Dasein is its own

Being. In so far as the concern is on the disclosure of Being, it is phenomenology. Hence,

phenomenology is not to be taken simply as description because the disclosure of Being also

needs Dasein’s openness to the way of Being. Description must also take the structure of

interpretation, hermenuein. Thus, phenomenology is also a hermeneutic. Heidegger affirms as

follows, “The phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of the

word, where it designates this of interpreting.” 66 This interpretation is a form of analysis on the

nature of human existence or to the openness of Dasein to Being. In view of that, the

62
Ibid., 34; 58.

63
Ibid.

64
Ibid., 35; 59.

65
Ibid., 35; 60.

66
Ibid., 37; 62.
phenomenological analytic of Dasein is also the existential analytic of Dasein and the

hermeneutic analytic of Dasein.

Let us now focus on the phenomenological analytic of Dasein. Where shall we begin?

What circumstance will we start? Concerning about phenomenology as mentioned above, it is

based only from what is given by our direct intuitive experience, it must begin on the daily

concrete situation of human reality which Heidegger calls as “Dasein’s average everydayness.” 67

The term Dasein refers to the human beings as the entity which “each of us is himself.” 68

Heidegger also identifies Dasein as “in each case mineness”[Jemeinigkeit].69 As the original

German word suggests, it is simply Being (Sein)- there (da) or Being-there. Being-there is

similar to Being-in. Being-in what? Heidegger primarily refers Dasein as Being-in-the-world.

Dasein as in each case mine is my certitude that I am concretely here in the world. That the

certitude which I cannot put to doubt. But what does it mean to be in the world?

The first existential character of Dasein as Being in the world is his own facticity of being

thrown into the world. Dasein is present in a certain situation as like as I am here in my study

room doing a research. The question on how do I get here in this world is not what matters most.

I am simply thrown for no reason. Dasein or human reality’s existence is a kind of throwness

(Geworfenheit). This throwness refers to the contingency of its own existence. Human reality did

not choose exactly when and where he is going to be born, nor did he not choose his own

parents. He is just thrown into the world in certain time and place. Due to the facticity of his own

throwness, the basic primordial experience is the immersion among entities. First and foremost,

the world is neither something to be known nor human reality is a knower nor he has a

67
Ibid., §9, 44; 69.

68
Ibid. §2, 7; 27.

69
Ibid., §9, 42; 68.
spectator’s view on it. Heidegger’s notion of the unitary phenomena of Dasein and the world is

his rejection to the notion that human being is primarily a self conscious subject. If we take

human being primarily as a thinking substance, it would lead to the point of disengagement in

the world because this particular substance can exist independently from the physical world.

What Heidegger rejects is the very notion that thinking is the primordial mark of human

existence. If thinking is primordially our character, then, it would miss the point on how we

actually in fact exist. Once thrown into this world, human reality is not primarily a thinking

being or a Cartesian cogito but rather as something immersed in the world among other entities.

In this case, the world is not a thing to be analyzed and to be distinguished from human reality

but rather as equipment. The world is ready to hand in the sense that once we are thrown we do

not ask scientifically about it but rather we are just engaged in getting the task done. Thus, the

first existential character of Dasein as Being-in-the-world is throwness, that is, Dasein is already-

in-the-world and essentially immersed and has the sense of being at home on it.

The second existential character of Dasein goes beyond from the first. In the case of

Dasein’s throwness, there are many entities which can also be considered as being-in-the-word.

They are also thrown into the world. Is there any difference between Dasein and the other

entities at all? Heidegger further explains on what does the word “in” found in the expression

Being-in-the-world. The normal understanding of the word “in” indicates a purely spatial

relationship such as the example given by Heidegger like “the water is ‘in’ the glass, and the

garment is ‘in’ the cupboard.” 70 These entities including other entities which just occur in the

world only in the spatial sense are what Heidegger calls Being-present-at-hand. Their sense of

70
Ibid., §12, 54; 79.
‘Being-in’ is simply occurring with other entities and nothing more. “They are of such a sort as

to belong to entities whose kind of Being is not of the character of Dasein.”71

Heidegger wants to emphasize that the ‘Being-in’ of Dasein is no longer spatial but rather

a “state of Dasein’s Being.”72 The word ‘in’ derives from the word innam which means “to

reside” or habitare which means “to dwell.”73 In this case, Dasein is neither simply situated at

the world in spatial relation nor the world is just simply his location but rather the world is his

own dwelling and at the same time constantly consider the world as a place for his own making

towards the future. It is existential. This means that Dasein’s facticity of its being delivered over

can never predetermined Dasein’s state of Being because Dasein understands even his own

facticity. He is not simply thrown alongside with other entities but he also understands that he is

thrown into this world. Dasein can speak for himself that he is. Thus, the second existential

character of Dasein as Being-in-the-world is understanding.

Only Dasein is conscious of his own existence as throwness. Dasein understands that he

is born in a certain condition, i.e., cultural, social economic, environment, etc. At the same time,

there is a sense of acceptance. In this case, Dasein has already a defined world but he creates a

meaning into the world in so far as he re-interprets those conditions in terms of its open horizon

of the future project that he is going to make. There is a realization of being-ahead-of-itself in a

sense that human existence is an activity of an endless transcendence. Dasein understands

himself in relation to the temporal horizon of its own being. This sort of understanding is a kind

of projection of something to be made in the future out of the many possibilities. Understanding

as mode of Dasein’s existence is existential before it is philosophical or intellectual. Human

71
Ibid.

72
Ibid.

73
Ibid., 54; 80.
reality is conscious and that consciousness makes him understand. This understanding is not

confined to calculative thinking, analytic, and reflective consciousness. It primarily refers to

those pre-reflective moods of our lived experience such as anguish, fear, concern and wonder.

They are pre-reflective in a sense that they simply come to us without thinking them. In this case,

understanding will also open the possibility of experiencing suffering as long as human reality is

aware of his own experience. Similarly, many existentialist thinkers would not regard

consciousness not as a gift being given to us but rather it is a kind of condemnation. For

example, the condemnation experienced by Camus’ existential tragic hero, Sisyphus, who

ceaselessly rolling the rock going to the top of the mountain despite the fact that whenever it

reaches to the top the rock will eventually fall down. As Albert Camus would emphatically say,

“If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious.” 74 Thus for Camus, consciousness

will lead to the understanding of the absurdity of life.

In the case of Heidegger, Dasein’s understanding of Being does not only come from the

tragic experience as what Camus says but also from moments of great rejoicing. In an important

lecture series Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger starts with the question “why are there

beings at all instead of nothing?”75 He also mentions the concealed power of this questioning

that might lead us to the understanding of Being as we experience the pre-reflective moods such

as the experience of great despair, boredom, and great rejoicing. This question [‘Why is there

something rather than nothing’] comes out in moments of great despair, when all weights tends

to dwindle away from things and the sense of things or its meaning grows dark…. It is present in

the moments of heartfelt joy, when all things are transformed…as if it were easier to grasp that

74
Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays (New York: Vintage Press, 1995), p. 89.

75
Martin Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Gregory Fried & Richard Polt (London: Yale
University Press, 2000), p. 1.
they were not, rather than they are, and are as they are…. The question will occur to us in a spell

of boredom, when we are equally distant from despair and joy, but when the stubborn

ordinariness of beings lays open a wasteland in which it makes no difference to us whether

beings are or are not.”76 These moods are not psychological state but it is a concrete lived-

experience such as the experience when things do not make sense at all like doing my best in me

in the examination and yet I failed to pass. The experience of despair, boredom and great

rejoicing are the experiences that will lead us to ask the fundamental and the most originary

question that will eventually make us to transcend from the totality of entities to their ground,

that is, Being. If all things are just all right and we are not aware of it, we do not mind to bother

to raise such question. Thus, the experience of the question ‘why is there something rather than

nothing’ is made possible only when we have an understanding of human existence and at the

same time we already know what we are seeking for, that is, Being, however vaguely. We raise

the question only when we experience those moods and the question ‘what is Being?’ will

become an issue for our existence. They come to us as an immediate powerful occurrence.

The experience of despair, boredom, and great rejoicing as a result of understanding are

not an end in themselves but rather they open us to the other possibilities. Let us say the

experience of ‘Angst’- the experience of uneasiness of what is at present. In this particular

experience, there is an experience of freedom. How free is Dasein? Dasein or human reality is

free according to the resoluteness to his decision to make in the future. “Dasein is free for its

own necessity, that its authentic freedom is revealed in its ability to take up and take over the

necessity of its own condition.” 77 This resoluteness comes from the understanding of the

76
Ibid., p. 1-2.

77
Miguel de Beistegui, Heidegger and the Political: Dystopias, (London: Routledge, 1998), p. 16.
temporality of Dasein’s existence. As Heidegger says, “time, needs to be, explicated primordially

as the horizon for the understanding of Being, and in terms of temporality as the Being of

Dasein, which understands Being.”78

Dasein understands itself as the being both thrown into the world and projected against its

own end. The freedom of Dasein is expressed in being-ahead-of-itself because he is able to

recognize his project of understanding. In this case, Dasein’s understanding of his own

temporality is also his understanding of a certain certitude to come which is the understanding

that all human existence is a “Being-toward-death.” Heidegger writes,

“Death is a possibility-of-Being which Dasein itself has to take over in

every case. With death, Dasein stands before itself in its ownmost potentiality-for-
Being. This is a possibility in which the issue is nothing less than Dasein’s Being-
in-the-world. Its death is the possibility of no longer being-able-to-be-there. If
Dasein stands before itself as this possibility, it has been fully assigned to its
ownmost potentiality-for-Being. When it stands before itself in this way, all its
relations to any other Dasein have been undone. This ownmost non-relational
possibility is at the same time the uttermost one.”79
Human existence end up in death and death is the ultimate possibility of Dasein. Understanding

that human existence is characterized by finitude and the realization that we are going to die

soon, there is an experience of anguish on how should we act on our existence. The task is to

resolve in order to live our existence authentically. In this case, we cannot just afford to take

things or to consider our existence carelessly. Our understanding that we are a ‘Being-towards-

death’ will lead us to care our existence. To care is to be concerned with one’s personal life

project to be done throughout the course of life. The existential character of Dasein as

understanding will lead the third essential character which is Discourse (Rede).

78
BT §5, 17; 39.

79
Ibid., §50, 250; 294.
As human reality understands his own existence, the speech will become more meaningful.

Conversation with others makes sense because it discloses what Dasein is talking about, that is,

Being. Through language, the truth of Being can be attained. Language must be neither be taken

as simple as we commonly use it in our everyday communication nor be regarded a script or

writings being made by speakers for the purpose of communication. The basic character of our

expression through language is to externalize what has been the internal in us. This means that

language is an activity of revealing or coming about of something as the result of talking or

speaking. Heidegger speaks of language as follows: “Language is the house of Being in which

man exist by dwelling, in that he belongs to the truth of Being, guarding it.” 80 It is in language

that each of us finds the house of our existence. This means that we are not the inventor of

language. “Language is the collective historical and linguistic dwelling that man resides within

even before he learns to speak its tongue.” 81 In this case, language as the house of Being needs

the role of human reality for he has a great role to play for the disclosure of Being. In this way,

our way of using language is primordially existential, that is, it is more than communication.

Language is about the disclosure of Being.

The call to become Dasein as a call to excellence and authenticity is not easy. What is

easy is to fall. By way of contrast the state of being Dasein is opposite to das Man. The German

word man refers to “one.” It does not refer to anyone in particular, to any particular authority, to

law, to the person speaking, to any group, etc. Das Man, as a noun, refers to the one who is not

Dasein. It is a reference to the unanimity of the group. Das Man’s self is the anonymous self

found in the crowd. Heidegger presents a contrast between throwness and ambiguity. Ambiguity
80
Martin Heidegger, Basic Writings, p. 213.

81
Wei Zhang, Heidegger, Rorty and the Eastern Thinkers: A Hermeneutics of Cross-Cultural
Understanding, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006), p. 52.
is attributed to das Man in the sense that this “one” does not know where to stand as it is

manifested in the ambiguity of its own decision. Understanding is contrasted with curiosity. The

inauthentic das Man only asks about something that is new without having understood on what

he just knows. He is just simply curious to know something. The last is the comparison between

the expressions of language. Das Man is concerned only on idle talk as a result of his own

curiosity about something while Dasein expresses himself in the language through discourse

which is also called a meaningful conversation. It is a conversation that makes sense.

Thus for Heidegger, Being will be disclosed to us only when each of us will become

Dasein. “Dasein is also a possibility.” The call to become a Dasein is what Heidegger is calling

to each and every one of us, that is, to reawaken in us that which in us is authentic. To live

authentically is to take hold of ourselves and to behave ourselves in a certain way. Dasein’s

special existence is his capacity of being himself. In the first person stand point, to live

authentically is to be myself, that is, to be ontological. Being ontological means to ask question

about our own existence: who am I? what am I? This question will lead to the understanding of

ourselves and the way of Being.

Conclusion

Thus for Heidegger, the task of inquiring into the meaning of Being must be formulated

in order to overcome the suffering from the age of forgetfulness Being. Since we cannot go

directly to ontology by inquiring into the meaning of Being, let us have a de tour by inquiring

into the entities which we know, that is, the ontical priority. The task must begin by destroying

the history of ontology by attacking primarily the very notion that man by nature is a rational

animal. There must be a transformation of human reality from being rational to Dasein. Dasein is

an entity in which we are it. Human reality are called first to be Dasein in order to have an

understanding of Being. To be Dasein is to inquire into the being that we are, to our true selfhood

being devoid of any pretensions and masks. Therefore, the task is existential in a sense that

everybody is encourage to ask the self-questioning question: Who am I in my true selfhood?

Other people cannot do such task to give answers for you, for him and for me. Only by living

authentically, i.e., Being myself or Being one’s own, that human reality is open to the disclosure

of the meaning of Being. The main question is: Are you Dasein? This is not our authority to

judge others whether they are Dasein or not. That is why Heidegger’s Being and Time does not

have a continuation in a sense that if it has another volume then the task of memorizing again on

the definition of Being will repeat itself. What is fundamental in understanding Being is to be

Dasein and it is attainable only when we experience Being itself.