Being There: Heidegger's Formally Indicative Concept of Dasein

Being There: Heidegger’s Formally Indicative Concept of “Dasein” 1 Søren Overgaard Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research § 1. Introduction The concept of Dasein is one of the most important concepts in Heidegger’s 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 (Tübingen: 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 Phänomenologie [GA 24], ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1975); Gesamtausgabe Band 26: Metaphysische Anfangsgründe 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: Phänomenologie des religiösen Lebens [GA 60], eds. Matthias Jung, Thomas Regehly, and Claudius Strube (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995); Gesamtausgabe Band 61: Phänomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles [GA 61], eds. Walter Bröcker and Käte Bröcker-Oltmanns (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1985); Gesamtausgabe Band 63: Ontologie: Hermeneutik der Faktizität [GA 63], ed. Käte BröckerOltmanns (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 1533–7472 • ISBN 0-9701679-5-4 146 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 being—what Heidegger calls ontology—demands 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 Heidegger’s 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 such—he has no interest in the “noisy preoccupation with one’s 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 Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s statements on the issue, it is even in obvious tension with some of Heidegger’s own remarks on Dasein—at 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 Husserl’s “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 must—if we do not want to fantasize—methodically 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 Heidegger’s Being and Time (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 59. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 147 (Sein) of subjectivity. In the second section, I shall briefly outline Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s 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 Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen 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 Husserl’s 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 world—something constituted—and 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: Phänomenologische 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 Husserl’s 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 Heidegger’s sense will appear from the present discussion. 7. Edmund Husserl, Husserliana VI: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften un die transzendentale Phänomenologie, ed. Walter Biemel, 2nd edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 182, 265-266. 148 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 solve—especially 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 Husserl’s discussion with Eugen Fink in the margins of the latter’s manuscript, the VI. Cartesianische Meditation. Fink, at that time Husserl’s 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 Fink’s 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 doesn’t 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. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 149 one paradox, the paradox of being, remains—unless 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, isn’t Husserl forced to pose the question of the being of subjectivity? As is well known, these questions are the very questions Heidegger confronted Husserl’s phenomenology with. The question of being, Heidegger said in his Marburg lecture course of the summer of 1925—with special emphasis on the question of the being of the “subject”—must 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 didn’t 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 terms—and 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 such—as 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 something—although 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 Heidegger’s letter, it seems that Husserl concentrated on Heidegger’s 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 other—with 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 Heidegger’s question of being. This does not entail, however, that Husserl did not inquire into being—in fact, I am convinced that his phenomenology is ultimately concerned precisely with questions of being. I cannot argue these points here, but see Søren Overgaard, Husserl and Heidegger on Being in the World (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2004), especially chapters 2 and 6. 150 SØREN OVERGAARD tities, viz. first and foremost cognitive abilities—and 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 are—the entity that, according to Husserl, is both something “occurrent” and the constituting subjectivity—if 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 Heidegger’s early Freiburg lectures has shed considerable light on the hitherto rather obscure question of Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s 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 Jasper’s 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 Pöggeler, “Heideggers logische Untersuchungen,” in Martin Heidegger: Innen- und Außenansichten, eds. Siegfried Blasche, Wolfgang R. Köhler, 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, “Heidegger’s Method: Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications,” Review of Metaphysics 47 (1994): 775-795; Ryan Streeter, “Heidegger’s 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 Kisiel’s The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time, as well as in other recent treatises on Heidegger, such as John van Buren’s The Young Heidegger: Rumor of the Hidden King (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), especially 324-341, and Daniel O. Dahlstrom’s Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s thinking as late as 1929/30. See GA 29/30, 425, 428-432, 435, 441, 491, and passim. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 151 ical structure, which Heidegger presses for, that the notion of formal indication represents a “stage.” Since I cannot here deal with all aspects of Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s method in the twenties, See Theodore Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time. 14. When quoting from this volume I use Richard Rojcewicz’s 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 Husserl’s 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 152 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 philosophy’s 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 indication—insofar 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 Gegenständlichkeit]. (GA 61, 142) This passage is extremely revealing, if not exactly beautiful. First of all, it reveals what is perhaps the greatest obstacle to Heidegger’s 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 object—an 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. Heidegger’s notion of formal indication is thus closely associated with Husserl’s theory of empty and fulfilled intentions from the VI. Logische Untersuchung. See to this Daniel Dahlstrom, “Heidegger’s Method,” and Steven Galt Crowell, “Question, Reflection, and Philosophical Method in Heidegger’s 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. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 153 later, overlooking or ignoring the question of being does not ensure ontological “neutrality”—quite 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 hand—to turn to the positive aspect—it 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 entities—concepts 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 Heidegger’s ontological question. When aiming to do ontology, we should prevent an ontic problematic from interfering, while we strive to focus on the ontological problematic—surely, 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 description—but 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 Buren’s words, “formal indication remains ontically ‘non-committal’.” The Young Heidegger, 337. 154 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 Heidegger’s 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 Husserl’s epoché 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 epoché is important here,18 I will put the matter to a side with a quotation from Heidegger’s Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs: This bracketing of the entity [i.e., the epoché] 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 Heidegger’s 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 notion—it 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, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, 290. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 155 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 [Bedürfnislosigkeit] 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-here”—what 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 156 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 Heidegger’s 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’.” HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 157 “there”) and “being.”21 So the human being is a “there,” i.e., a “locus,” a “place”—being (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 Heidegger’s 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 references—“in 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” (Stätte des Seinsverständnisses).23 Although Heidegger does not—as far as I know—explicitly 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 Dahlstrom’s comments on the proper translation of this concept, Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, xxiii-xxv. 22. An aspect I shall not take into account is the dimension of disclosedness to one’s 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 [erfaßt] 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 [für sich selbst]” (GA 27, 134). For a recent study of Heidegger’s 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. 158 SØREN OVERGAARD selves.24 Clearly, on this reading, the indication inherent in the concept of “Dasein” displays a deep structural kinship with Husserl’s concept of “transcendental subjectivity,” rather than (as Husserl thought) with the latter’s notion of the mundane subject, the “human being.”25 Indeed, to quote once again from Heidegger’s 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 other’s 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 belong—in a Husserlian optic—to the “mundane” subject. After all, Husserl’s 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 Pöggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 4th edition (Stuttgart: Günther Neske, 1994), 259-260. 25. For Husserl’s “anthropological” understanding of Heidegger’s 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 HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 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 subject’s 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 Øverenget, 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 Øverenget outlines. After all, Husserl’s 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 Befindlichkeit—one 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: Einführung in die phänomenologische Forschung, ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), 288-289. 160 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 Husserl’s and MerleauPonty’s 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-Ponty—who more than anyone else has emphasized that we are our body,33 rather than some thinking substance somehow connected with a body—still 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 Husserl’s early reflections on world-constitution and kinesthetic body, see Husserliana XVI: Ding und Raum, and Husserliana IV: Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie, zweites Buch, ed. Marly Biemel (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1952). Merleau-Ponty knew some of Husserl’s manuscripts—among them Ideas II—from first-hand studies at the Husserl-Archive in Leuven, Belgium, and Husserl’s presence is felt throughout the pages of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. 31. See Edmund Husserl, Husserliana I: Cartesianische Meditationen und Pariser Vorträge, 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 rather—according to other Husserlmanuscripts—as presupposing more original forms of intersubjectivity, see Dan Zahavi, Husserl und die transzendentale Intersubjektivität (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 “Husserl’s account of the kinesthetic movements of the body clearly indicates a tangible level of transcendence [ . . . ]—indeed, a level of transcendence, in relation to which, Heidegger’s talk of ‘being-in-the-world’ or ‘being-here’ has an oddly abstract, even gnostic ring” (Heidegger’s Concept of Truth, 164). 33. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge 1962), 206. 34. See, e.g., Phenomenology of Perception, 351. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 161 what Heidegger’s 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 subject—a Leiblichkeit easily conceived as founded in corporeality (Körperlichkeit).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 Heidegger’s 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 “domains”—consciousness, body, sensuousness, and so on—but 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 Körper (“physical body”) has been made famous by Husserl. See Husserliana VI: Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, 109. 36. Martin Heidegger, “Wilhelm Diltheys Forschungsarbeit und der gegenwärtigen Kampf um eine historische Weltanschauung,” ed. Frithjof Rodi, Dilthey-Jahrbuch für 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: Heidegger’s Thinking of Being,” in The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. Donn Welton (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 122-149. See also Søren 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 Heidegger’s 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 [leibmäßige In-der-Welt-sein] of the human being.” Heidegger, Gesamtaus- 162 SØREN OVERGAARD 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 Husserl’s (and MerleauPonty’s) 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 Heidegger’s 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 subjectivities—and 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 body—if prematurely intro—————— gabe Band 18: Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, ed. M. Michalski (Frankfurt a. M.: Vittorio Klostermann, 2002), 199. 38. See, too, Heidegger’s 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. HEIDEGGER’S FORMALLY INDICATIVE CONCEPT OF DASEIN 163 duced—only 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 “embodiment”—not vice versa. On the basis of Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s discussion of Dasein—e.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, Heidegger’s re-conceptualization of the subject might constitute a genuine breakthrough. We must take Heidegger’s 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 Heidegger’s reply to William Richardson’s 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 Pöggeler, 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.