{"id":687,"date":"2024-07-03T19:12:47","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T16:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/?p=687"},"modified":"2025-11-20T19:44:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-20T16:44:50","slug":"martin-heidegger-own-and-improper-existence-caring-for-the-world-and-the-people-in-it-is-the-meaning-of-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planeta21vek.ru\/artemiada\/eng\/2024\/07\/03\/martin-heidegger-own-and-improper-existence-caring-for-the-world-and-the-people-in-it-is-the-meaning-of-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Martin Heidegger. Own and improper existence. Caring for the world and the people in it is the meaning of existence"},"content":{"rendered":"

Martin Heidegger was born in 1889 in the town of Messkirch in southern Germany, and studied at the Jesuit college in Constance and at the gymnasium in Freiburg im Breisgau, from which he graduated in 1909. There he entered the university, where he studied theology for the first two years, then philosophy, the humanities and the natural sciences. After completing his course in 1913, he defended his dissertation on the topic of “The Doctrine of Judgment in Psychologism”, then began teaching at the same university. In 1915, for his work “Duns Scotus’s Doctrine of Categories and Meanings”, he was promoted to associate professor. In the same year, he was drafted into the army (until 1918), but did not end up at the front. In 1923, he transferred to the position of extraordinary professor in Marburg (until 1928). In 1927, Heidegger’s main work, Being and Time, was published. In 1928, he was invited to Freiburg to head the department that became vacant after Husserl’s resignation.<\/span><\/p>\n

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In the spring of 1933, he was elected rector of the same university. On May 27, upon taking office, he delivered a speech entitled \u201cThe Self-Affirmation of the German University,\u201d in which he outlined a large-scale program for the reform of university education in accordance with the principles of his philosophy. Since control over spiritual life at that time was already completely in the hands of the Nazis, Heidegger had to use the appropriate phraseology in his speech. Subsequently, and to this day, this speech serves as the main basis for accusing Heidegger of having ties to the Nazis, and his philosophy of being close to Nazi ideology. In 1934, realizing the impossibility of implementing his reform, Heidegger resigned from the rectorship. In the following years, the style of Heidegger\u2019s works changed dramatically, so that 1933\u20131935 is commonly called the \u201cTurn\u201d in his philosophizing. From 1945 to 1951, the occupation authorities prohibited Heidegger from teaching. In the following years, the philosopher’s life proceeded without any special external events, in teaching, reading reports, and speaking. Martin Heidegger died in 1976.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heidegger and Phenomenology.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The philosophical collaboration between Husserl and Heidegger lasted from 1919, when Heidegger began studying and teaching under Husserl at the philosophy department of the University of Freiburg, until 1929. After the publication of Being and Time in 1927, it took Husserl two years to realize how far Heidegger had departed from phenomenology in his own understanding in this work.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Heidegger, \u201cPhenomenology can only be perceived phenomenologically, i.e., not simply by repeating its principles or believing in school dogmas, but by pushing away from it\u201d (14: 74). This \u201cpushing away\u201d is expressed in the fact that Heidegger does not accept in phenomenology:<\/span><\/p>\n

1) a phenomenological attitude as the position of an \u201cuninterested observer\u201d;<\/span><\/p>\n

2) the doctrine of transcendental subjectivity as absolute (\u201cpure\u201d) consciousness;<\/span><\/p>\n

3) reduction method.<\/span><\/p>\n

Critique of the phenomenological attitude.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Husserl demanded that the phenomenologist become a transcendental subject, a disinterested observer, somewhat naively believing that any scientist, as an honest and selfless person, is easily capable of this. At the same time, he realized that such a change in cognitive attitude should also affect a person\u2019s life, leading him to \u201clive according to the truth.\u201d The only thing he did not take into account was the inertia of human consciousness. Heidegger did not idealize human nature at all and saw that \u201cpretense and lies constitute the elements of human existence\u201d (1: 33). Heidegger understood the struggle against this and the desire for a \u201cpositive disclosure of the essence of things\u201d in a completely different way than Husserl, and he understood the \u201cthings\u201d that are subject to disclosure differently.<\/span><\/p>\n

In German, a \u201cthing\u201d can be called Sache or Ding. In his appeal \u201cto things themselves,\u201d Husserl used the word Sache, while Heidegger focuses on \u201cthings\u201d in the sense of Ding: \u201c\u201cTo things\u201d (Sache) means both \u201cto the very essence of the matter,\u201d and to that \u201csomething\u201d with which a certain scientific discipline is occupied, but it does not mean primarily\u2014to the \u201cthingness\u201d or \u201cthingness\u201d of those \u201cthings\u201d with which it is occupied\u2026\u201d (2: 196). Sache is more of an \u201cobject\u201d than a \u201cthing.\u201d In Russian, one can say that both phenomenology and hermeneutics are oriented toward things themselves, but the former\u2014to Sache, the latter\u2014to Ding.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cObjects are not primarily objects of theoretical knowledge, but those things that I am concerned with, with which I deal \u2013 they contain references to what they serve, to their application, to their usefulness\u2026 The nearest world is the world of practical concerns\u201d (2: 162\u2013163). It is precisely the \u201cworld of practical concerns\u201d that becomes for Heidegger the \u201cfield of phenomenological analysis\u201d; here he separates \u201clife according to truth\u201d from \u201cinauthentic life,\u201d and therefore he does not intend to take the position of an \u201cuninterested observer.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Critique of transcendental subjectivity.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The change in attitude to the world is connected with the change in approach to man as a subject of experience. Here Heidegger opposes the Cartesian and generally rationalistic approach to the subject shared by Husserl. \u201cThis understanding,\u201d writes Heidegger, \u201cas if first and foremost only the I is given \u2013 uncritically. As a premise it uses approximately the following: consciousness is something like a box, with the I inside and reality outside. Natural consciousness, in fact, has not the slightest knowledge of anything like that\u201d (2: 163). The subject does not have some initial self-knowledge, the light of whose evidence would then spread to knowledge of the world. \u201cCognition has only the possibility of concealing what is initially revealed in non-cognitive activity\u201d (1: 172).<\/span><\/p>\n

Heidegger sets the task of \u201cvisually revealing the entire being of man\u201d in his vital, practical existence, accordingly, in place of transcendental subjectivity in the same role of the unifying center of experience and the only source of all meanings, he puts the category of Dasein.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dasein.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Heidegger already in his early works strove for an \u201cinterpretation of language\u201d, loading the words of the natural German language with philosophical meaning. The term Dasein in colloquial language means \u201clife\u201d, \u201cexistence\u201d, and in the aspect of temporality, finitude \u2013 as \u201clifetime\u201d. But at the same time, the word Dasein also contains the root Sein, \u201cbeing\u201d, which makes possible its ontological interpretation. Heidegger uses this feature of the word Dasein in order to reveal the plane of being as the original basis of existence in the very temporality of human life. According to Heidegger\u2019s definition, Dasein is a special kind of existence, the essence of which lies in its being, existence.<\/span><\/p>\n

The replacement of transcendental subjectivity with Dasein makes unnecessary the fundamental phenomenological method of reducing natural consciousness to the transcendental Ego. Heidegger replaces this method with the method of interpreting the \u201cbeing characteristics\u201d of Dasein, so the hermeneutic method becomes his main method. Heidegger\u2019s hermeneutics reflects the desire to fight the meaninglessness of the world of the \u201cnatural attitude\u201d, not turning away from it, but through interpretation creatively filling it with the reality of living and genuine meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Being and Time”.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The publication of this work in 1927 immediately made Heidegger one of the most prominent philosophers in Germany. None of Heidegger’s subsequent works caused such resonance, so that sometimes the entire work of the philosopher is viewed through the prism of this work, which Heidegger himself did not welcome at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

The publication of Heidegger’s lecture courses, delivered by him in 1923-1925, showed that the main part of Being and Time is made up of the materials of these lectures. In Being and Time, the “phenomenological hermeneutics” of Dasein takes the form of a system of “fundamental ontology”. In connection with this, Heidegger sets the task of “destructing the history of ontology” – on the grounds that, in his opinion, the question of being has not been posed in the true sense since the time of Ancient Greece. This has become possible only in our “last” time, when being itself is “called into question” and requires justification.<\/span><\/p>\n

The question of being can only be addressed to being. In German, the words \u201cbeing\u201d (Sein) and \u201cbeing\u201d (Seiende, \u201cbeing\u201d) have the same root. Heidegger uses this circumstance to establish a justifying relationship between being and being. True, being itself is justified in being\u2014the justification moves in a circle here, but for Heidegger this is quite natural, since \u201cThe phenomenology of presence [Dasein] is hermeneutics in the original meaning of the word, which means the occupation of interpretation\u201d (3: 37), and the hermeneutic circle is one of the main methods of hermeneutics.<\/span><\/p>\n

The question of being, furthermore, is addressed not to any being, but to one whose very essence lies in its relation to being\u2014Dasein, the existing man, is precisely such a being. The meaning of being must be discovered through the \u201canalytics of Dasein,\u201d since Dasein is the source of all possible meanings, including the meaning of \u201cbeing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

What \u201cbeing\u201d of Dasein is primary and original? According to Heidegger, not some \u201cabsolute being\u201d, primary as a \u201clogical condition of thinkability\u201d of all that exists, but being as \u201ceveryday being\u201d: it is primary, since any analysis grows out of this being, draws from it both meanings and means for their expression. Therefore, \u201cfundamental ontology\u201d begins with the analysis of \u201ceveryday\u201d Dasein: in accordance with the principle of presuppositionlessness, Heidegger does not introduce any axioms or hypotheses and begins with what is given before any scientific and philosophical analysis \u2013 with everyday life.<\/span><\/p>\n

The \u201cjustification of being\u201d in the analytics of Dasein is carried out by revealing the \u201cmodes of being\u201d of Dasein, or \u201cways of Dasein\u2019s entry into the world\u201d \u2013 existentials. Heidegger defines the \u201cexistential structure\u201d of Dasein \u2013 that is, the general character of existence and, accordingly, the structure of all existentials \u2013 as a \u201cDrawing\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In Heidegger, the outline corresponds to Husserl’s intentionality as the fundamental orientation of consciousness toward an object: “The outline” is the “existential structure” of Dasein, that is, the structure of Dasein’s entry into the world in which it initially already resides (being-in-the-world). In Being and Time, as a result of Dasein “throwing” itself out onto the world in the act of understanding, “possibilities” are constituted. Just as meaning is not something abstract, but meaning for consciousness, so possibility is not a modality in general, but the possibility for Dasein to be something or to do something: “Dasein is in such a way that it originally understood – skillfully – could or did not understand – skillfully – could not be such or such” (4: 4-5). What Dasein is not “in possibility” is “existentially”. That is, everything that Dasein understands, \u201cgoing out of itself\u201d to meet the world, turns out to belong to Dasein itself, and it never manages to escape from itself, just as a deeply unhappy person carrying pain in his heart cannot escape from himself.<\/span><\/p>\n

Proper and improper existence.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Since Dasein has its own possibilities, it can exhaustively realize these possibilities by \u201cchoosing itself\u201d or, on the contrary, \u201close itself.\u201d Hence the two modes of existence of Dasein: \u201cproper\u201d and \u201cimproper\u201d existence (authentic and inauthentic). The relationship between the proper and improper modes of existence of Dasein is the fundamental problem of phenomenological analytics. Heidegger seeks a \u201cproper\u201d mode for each of the different modes of being of Dasein:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Being in the world, \u201cabandonment\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Being with other people, co-being.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Being \u201cwith oneself\u201d is being towards death.<\/span><\/p>\n

The original experience of Dasein is precisely an improper, lost, \u201cfalling\u201d existence, and therefore, according to Heidegger, it is from this that the analytics of Dasein should begin.<\/span><\/p>\n

Forgetting oneself and \u201cfalling\u201d are inherent in Dasein, since the being of Dasein is the most repulsive thing for our gaze, what we would like to know last of all and from which we constantly shield ourselves with the existing being. But the goal of hermeneutics is to make Dasein accessible to itself, therefore hermeneutics in Heidegger is always in a certain sense \u201cviolent\u201d and must resist the desire of Dasein to dissolve in the existing, in oblivion, in the crowd.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being in the world.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Dasein is initially characterized by a fundamental constitution of \u201cbeing-in\u201d, which is fundamentally different from the \u201cbeing-in\u201d of other types of being. Heidegger contrasts Dasein as existence with \u201cpresent being\u201d and \u201cwhat is at hand\u201d, which are completely and entirely exhausted by their reality and therefore can be recorded as a \u201cfact\u201d. Present things can be in something only spatially, while Dasein can be in something by virtue of the fact that by its nature it \u201cprotrudes\u201d from itself and \u201csteps into\u201d the surrounding world. Dasein constitutes a certain semantic space around itself, in which what is more significant is larger and closer, and what is unimportant is smaller and further away. According to Heidegger, it is the semantic space that is primary, and the space of mathematics and physics is an artificial idealization derived from it.<\/span><\/p>\n

The semantic space is constructed by Dasein in the course of everyday activity as a universal \u201cinterconnection of references\u201d (Verweisungszusammenhang) \u2013 a network of practical semantic connections of the \u201chammer \u2013 anvil \u2013 forge\u201d type. This interconnection is primary in relation to an individual thing: a thing \u201ccatches the eye\u201d, stands out from an indefinite horizon only when it falls out of context, \u201cbreaks\u201d, rebels against the whole.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since the analytics of Dasein is, according to Heidegger’s definition, a hermeneutics whose subject is the very reality of the world of everyday life of Dasein, one can say that the subject of analytics is the semantic connections in the world as a self-developing text, where the author of this text, Dasein, is himself included in it as one of the signs, of course, of a special kind. The true task of hermeneutics – to interpret the world as a text – unfolds according to the scheme of the hermeneutic circle: the whole can be understood only on the basis of an understanding of the parts, including an understanding of oneself as a part of the world, and vice versa, a part – only from the whole. But before we know anything about the parts, we always have a pre-understanding of the whole, the vagueness of which must be clarified. Since we ourselves are included in this dimly felt whole, the pre-understanding of the world subject to interpretation can be compared with the sensation of the “world” as peace, as a harmonious, measured stream that carries us, not requiring our conscious participation, but leaving the possibility for it. Hermeneutics \u2013 as the mutual interpretation of the world through itself and itself through the world \u2013 must make Dasein a conscious participant in the project \u201cworld\u201d of which it is the author. The true goal of hermeneutics is to bring Dasein into a state of wakefulness (Wachsein) in relation to itself in its \u201cis\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heidegger defines one\u2019s own way of being in the world as Care. Care is \u201cthe fundamental phenomenon of Dasein\u201d (14: 103), central among all existentials. Like Dasein itself, the category \u201ccare\u201d has a dual meaning: in relation to Dasein as life, care signifies a psychological state of seriousness and awareness of responsibility. But if \u201ccare\u201d had only this meaning, one could put \u201clove\u201d in its place, for example, which is more attractive to many in both the psychological and ethical sense. But not in the ontological sense, at least for Heidegger. Care is, above all, an existential characteristic of Dasein; it is precisely in the state of care that Dasein is most fully included in the world; love can lead beyond the world<\/span>
\n[53]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0, but care always presupposes a real object. In care, Dasein becomes capable of forgetting itself and going beyond the boundaries of its own self \u2013 to the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the task of hermeneutics is apparently to bring Dasein to its \u201cproper\u201d mode of being in relation to the world, to people, and to itself, the \u201cimproper\u201d mode is not destroyed by this, nor is it even \u201csublated\u201d in the dialectical sense: Dasein always remains in the space between the \u201cproper\u201d and the \u201cimproper,\u201d between wakefulness and everyday life; moreover, this duality, this possibility of choice, is Dasein\u2019s mode of existence. Dasein can never cease to be an entity, and one that always faces the choice of one or another of itself, and all that hermeneutics can do is to give a clear awareness of this choice itself, because we usually choose an improper mode of being, simply without assuming that something else is possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Being-with (Mitsein) and Being-with-others (Miteinandersein).<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0When Heidegger considers the being of Dasein with other people, it turns out that any intersubjectivity, any co-being and being-with-others is Man, an averaged, alienated being.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDasein revolves around a certain way of speaking about itself \u2013 rumor, gossip, rumour. This speaking \u201cabout\u201d itself is the openly averaged way in which Dasein receives and affirms itself. This rumor is the way [das Wie] in which Dasein receives its own interpretation at its disposal. This interpretation is not something brought into Dasein, imposed on it from outside, but something that has happened to Dasein by virtue of the fact that it is, where it lives (as its being)\u201d (14: 31).<\/span><\/p>\n

The interpretation of Dasein through rumor and hearsay is, of course, an improper mode of its being. But, just as in being-in-the-world, the improper mode turns out to be an inescapable necessity here: the inclusion of Dasein as a \u201csign\u201d in the context of other signs is its inalienable characteristic. Man cannot give birth to himself, raise himself, and live alone. Dasein is a being among other beings, and therefore a sign among other signs, a word in the Book of Life. The entire Book is a coherent narrative, and the word (Dasein) cannot be torn out of the sentence without losing its meaning. Even if it is the best word in the Book, the entire Book makes it so. But Dasein is not only a \u201cbeing\u201d (sign), but also being (meaning), and it relates to the entire life of beings as meaning relates to the sign. True, rumors and gossip are the most external, crude and therefore difficult to interpret stage of the language of life, but this is the first and necessary stage: a person must act in society, and therefore must be discussed and “explained”. Another thing is that one cannot stop at this stage, and must move on to more refined forms of life meaning.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being-with-others is a mode of being of Dasein, for which Heidegger does not find a corresponding mode of being of his own. Thus, the problem of intersubjectivity takes on a new form here: man has an original experience of the other, the existence of another \u201cI\u201d no longer constitutes a problem, but the problem is now constituted by \u201cI myself\u201d. The real question of human existence, according to Heidegger, is precisely the opposite of the \u201cproblem of intersubjectivity\u201d of European rationalism from Descartes to Husserl: an ordinary person never encounters the problem of the reliability of the existence of other \u201cIs\u201d, on the contrary, the urgent task is to distinguish oneself from others, to \u201cfind oneself\u201d, lost in other people\u2019s opinions, imposed behavior patterns, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, a sign always stands in a context, it must be universally significant, as is Dasein as being. But the meaning is always individual. The same is true of Dasein as being. Heidegger discovers the being of Dasein and the path to its own mode of being in temporality and being-towards-death.<\/span><\/p>\n

Death. Through the analysis of death, Heidegger introduces the problem of the temporality of Dasein in Being and Time. The \u201cphenomenological insight\u201d of death seems impossible, since one\u2019s own death cannot be an object of experience, while someone else\u2019s death can, but not in the proper sense: death is always mine, and no one else\u2019s. At the moment of death, as at the moment of birth, man is absolutely alone. But the \u201chermeneutics of death\u201d is possible and necessary: \u200b\u200b\u201cThe ending implied by death does not mean the completion of presence [Dasein], but being toward the end of this being. Death is a way of being that Dasein takes upon itself insofar as it is\u201d (3: 245). Dasein \u2013 life \u2013 does not acquire integrity at the moment of death, but has this integrity thanks to the presence of death always and at every moment of life.<\/span><\/p>\n

In contrast to Descartes’ formula “I am a thinking thing,” Heidegger puts forward another: “I am the dying one”; “I myself am this constant, ultimate possibility of myself, namely, the possibility of no longer being.” Like any possibility of Dasein, this possibility belongs to its essence. “Therefore, Dasein is essentially its own death” (1: 330). But Dasein can be death, or, more precisely, be toward death, either in its own way or in an impersonal way. The impersonal attitude toward death is expressed in the current truism “everyone is mortal.” This approach exploits the uncertainty of the moment of death and the certainty regarding the fact itself. It implies: “yes, everything is mortal, but not I, at least not now.” Behind this lies the most panicky flight from death, or from what is mortal in us, to what is considered immortal, or simply to oblivion. But, as in other forms of \u201cfall,\u201d Dasein here loses itself, and loses itself most reliably, for the fear of death is the most effective.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proper approach to death is diametrically opposed: here death is no longer an event that ends the history of man as a living being, but \u201cthe other side of life\u201d. Remembering death \u2014 memento mori \u2014 is the surest way to pass from the oblivion of the average Man to wakefulness. Death is the possibility of direct nothingness (the possibility for Dasein to become \u201cnothing\u201d), from which Dasein must reconquer itself every time. \u201cDasein dies in fact the entire time it exists, but usually and more often in the mode of the fall\u201d (3: 251-252). According to Goethe, \u201cOnly he is worthy of life and freedom who goes into battle for them every day\u201d \u2014 according to Heidegger, moreover, life itself is what is reconquered from death, and even the process of \u201creconquering\u201d itself. In the mode of the fall, Dasein flees from death into the oblivion of Man, and therefore can reconquer very little from it. Only in the mode of wakefulness does Dasein rush directly towards death as \u201cits most proper capacity to be.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Time (\u201ctemporality\u201d) is one of the existentials of Dasein and also has proper and improper modes. Unlike many other philosophers, Heidegger defines the present, \u201chere and now,\u201d as improper, since it flees from the future (ultimately, from death) and from the past (from existential guilt). Like Augustine, Heidegger says that the future already exists for Dasein, is already present in its \u201csphere of possibilities,\u201d and calls \u201cbeing-toward-the-future\u201d determination, and \u201cbeing-toward-the-past\u201d guilt. \u201cHe who acts is always shameless.\u201d This is due to the fact that Dasein, realizing itself as a choice from the circle of \u201cthrown-on\u201d possibilities, always inevitably destroys many possibilities incompatible with the one chosen for realization. This destruction is absolute and irrevocable, and it is precisely this that is the basis of existential \u201cbeing-guilty,\u201d and the latter makes any actual guilt possible<\/span>
\n[54]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0.<\/span><\/p>\n

The meaning of Being and Time.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0The phenomenal popularity of Being and Time and its influence, which has not diminished but even grown over the years, is a fact that still awaits scientific explanation. The \u201cattitude\u201d (Stimmung) of \u201cthe determination to be awake in care\u201d turned out to be very consonant with the needs of a modern European. In this care, man received a new source of meaning. Or rather, simple, village people always found themselves in care, so they had no problems with the meaning of life. Heidegger tried to translate this healthy worldview into the language of philosophy: it is not the attitude to the timeless world of pure spirit or reason that fills life with meaning – in what is most temporary for a mortal lies the source of meaning. But it is not in a comfortable, peaceful arrangement in the material world. In the thick of things and everyday affairs, through awakening to constant wakefulness, human life acquires an inexhaustible source of meaning. The world is entrusted to man. Caring for the world and man in it is the meaning of the existence of Dasein, offered to man by Heidegger.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Turn\u201d<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0is how the years 1934\u20131936 are usually called in Heidegger\u2019s creative biography, when a fundamental transformation of Heidegger\u2019s philosophizing took place, the questions and tasks of his philosophy changed, and, most importantly, the very language of his works.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1933, after realizing the impracticability of his planned university reform and resigning from his post as rector, Heidegger retired to a small house in the Alps, leaving it only briefly to give lectures, reports, and negotiations with publishers. According to Heidegger himself, life in nature, among the majestic mountain landscape and simple village people, had a powerful effect on his philosophizing. Heidegger was imbued with the solidity and measuredness of working village life, and his philosophizing was transformed into something similar to this peasant labor, a kind of \u201ccultivation of the field of thought.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Heidegger’s “peasant philosophizing”<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0after the Turn is a calm affirmation indifferent to criticism. Peasant labor is a calm affirmation, since it is accompanied by the consciousness of invested effort and a sense of responsibility: if I do not do this, then no one will do it. Here the right of the creator and discoverer is in effect. But for many admirers and connoisseurs of Heidegger’s work who remained in the cities, for whom Being and Time had become a revelation in its time, the Turn of the 1930s remained incomprehensible. Many were expecting the announced continuation of Being and Time, but Heidegger did not satisfy these expectations. Moreover, his philosophizing became completely different. It seemed to many that Heidegger “froze in a pose of superiority over any argumentation,” “descended to ritually staged thought-poetry” (11:81).<\/span><\/p>\n

Overcoming metaphysics is a new task that Heidegger sets himself after the Turn. Having recognized in the face of Nazism a manifestation of \u201cmetaphysics\u201d in the worst sense, Heidegger began to treat the use of terms of traditional metaphysics in his own philosophizing and metaphysics itself differently. If earlier he spoke about its \u201cfoundation\u201d, then in 1936 Heidegger began to collect notes, which were later published (1954) under the title \u201cOvercoming Metaphysics\u201d. \u201cMetaphysics\u201d after the Turn is defined by Heidegger as the fatal for the entire Western European civilization \u201cforgetting being\u201d for the sake of the existing: \u201cMetaphysics is the oblivion of being and thus the history of the concealment and departure of that which gives being\u201d (6: 184). Rethinking \u201cBeing\u201d. Before the Turn, man’s attitude to being was characterized by Heidegger as “ex-istence”, “out-standing”, “protruding” from oneself. That is, being, in line with all traditional metaphysics, was interpreted by him as transcendent to being. After the Turn, the situation changes: although in order to experience being, one must still go a long way of understanding, being itself is always here, the path to it is the path to where we “always exist anyway”. In other words, now in being its immanence to being is emphasized.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Hermeneutics of Language”.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Working with language was an organic part of Heidegger’s hermeneutic method from the very beginning. Already in “Being and Time” Heidegger posed the problem of the relationship between language and being. This relationship could also be “proper” and “improper”: “Interpretation can draw conceptuality from the being itself, or it can force the being into such concepts that the being resists according to its mode of being” (4: 12). After the Turn, Heidegger sets the task of developing a language open to the “truth of being”, which should be characterized by “rigor of comprehension, thoroughness of speech, parsimony of the word” (5: 220). To this end, Heidegger develops a unique hermeneutics of language.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hermeneutics, as a rule, deals with speech, written or spoken, or with other signs. Heidegger, from the very beginning of the development of his hermeneutics, greatly expanded its subject: at first he spoke of the \u201cinterpretation of reality\u201d, then the subject of hermeneutic questioning became \u201cNothing\u201d. After the \u201cTurn\u201d, language itself becomes the subject of interpretation. For traditional hermeneutics, this is absurd: meaning can only be put into a text by an author, and if the author does not do this, the text will be meaningless. Language has no \u201cauthor\u201d, therefore it cannot have meaning. For Heidegger, on the contrary, meaning that has an author will always be superficial and inessential, his task is to \u201clet language speak\u201d. \u201cLet us leave speaking to language. We can neither assert something about language on the basis of something other than what it is, nor interpret something else by means of language\u201d (15: 12-13).<\/span><\/p>\n

This interpretation of language unfolds in Heidegger in two directions. The first of them is \u201clistening\u201d to the sound of the roots of words. Meaningful speaking must \u201cbe guided by the hidden riches that language holds in reserve for us, so that these riches have the right to demand from us the utterance of language\u201d (15: 91). By \u201chidden riches\u201d Heidegger understands here something similar to the \u201cinner form\u201d of a word according to the theory of A. Potebnya: a sound or a combination of two or three sounds that carry a certain original \u201catom of meaning\u201d<\/span>
\n[55]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0. A number of ancient thinkers, and at the beginning of the 20th century, symbolist poets, believed that each sound separately carries a certain meaning. Various combinations of sounds also mean a combination of the meanings embedded in them. Heidegger does not go as far as analyzing the meaning of individual sounds, but considers some of the original sound forms of the German language as meaningful, even using the data of comparative linguistics (his own example: German giessen, Guss, “to pour”, corresponds in Indo-Germanic ghu, which means “to sacrifice”). In this aspect, Heidegger considers language as the result of centuries of thought. Each word, during the time it was “honored” to be the “immediate reality of thought”, underwent a significant evolution and became a living memory of all its stages. However, Heidegger valued not this entire evolution, the last phase of which took place under the sign of metaphysics, but the most original layers of meaning, which can only be “heard” with difficulty in the roots of modern words. On these “original meanings” Heidegger tries to build the terminology of his hermeneutics, and they also determine the specificity that distinguishes this terminology from the concepts of traditional metaphysics.<\/span><\/p>\n

The “concepts” of metaphysics are words that have not been thought through to depth, so they only convey a superficial meaning. A serious thinker, according to Heidegger, must rethink the entire terminology. Like a farmer adjusting a plow for arable land or making tools, Heidegger processes the meaning of words in interpretation: slowly, thoughtfully, and tirelessly.<\/span><\/p>\n

The nature of language: speaking and telling.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0According to Heidegger’s famous statement, “language is the house of being.” The fact is that one of the definitions of Dasein given in Being and Time is “understanding,” and the sphere of understanding is established by language or is itself language. Accordingly, language can be understood as a certain sphere in which the existence of Dasein unfolds, figuratively – as “the house of its being.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Just as in other respects, in relation to language, the existence of Dasein can be \u201cproper\u201d and \u201cimproper\u201d. For the usual external (\u201cimproper\u201d) understanding, language is speaking. As \u201cspeaking\u201d, language revolves in the sphere of \u201cpresent\u201d being. This understanding of language proceeds from the assumption that \u201cwithin\u201d man there are certain meanings that he \u201cexpresses\u201d externally through words. Language is understood here, accordingly, as a purely auxiliary means of expressing thought. This is precisely how language is understood in metaphysics.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Heidegger, language in its proper sense is something much more. The philosopher defines language in this sense as a Tale. Language does not “speak”, it “tells”.<\/span><\/p>\n

The initial pre-understanding of the world as a harmony that carries man is now compared to a certain \u201cprimal sound,\u201d a \u201cmood of being,\u201d which one must be able to hear behind the entire polyphony of the present being. This is accessible only to poets and philosophers. By listening to this \u201cmood of being,\u201d man can \u201cgive it a word.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

If the fundamental vibration, the tone of being is the ground (Grund), that is, the earth, the soil, then the word, according to the figurative comparison of H\u00f6lderlin, Heidegger’s favorite poet, is a flower bud growing from the earth. Heidegger greatly emphasizes this “earthly” character of the being of the tale: “Germanic dialects are called Mundarten, [literally] “types of mouth,” but this “mouth” is not a part of the body as an organism. Both the body and the mouth are part of the earthly flow and growth in which we, mortals, blossom, and from which we receive the sonority of the roots. Losing the earth, we lose the roots. H\u00f6lderlin compares the word to a flower, to a flower bud, and we hear how the sound rises from the earth, from the tale in which it happened that the world appeared” (15: 101). Everything that is rooted in the earth grows in narration, narration is the force of growth and the growth itself of all growth, and what grows on the soil of being is the world. Language as narration is most fully developed in thinking and poetry. \u201cThe earthly sound of narration again points out to us the proximity of different modes of narration \u2013 thinking and poetry\u201d (15: 101). Heidegger calls poetry and thinking \u201cdwellers on distant peaks\u201d: just as two peaks rising above an endless plain will be close to each other, even if the distance between them is great, so poetry and thinking are close to each other, elevated in their relationship to being above the sea of \u200b\u200bmeaningless speech.<\/span><\/p>\n

The interpretation of poetic works is another direction in Heidegger\u2019s \u201cinterpretation of language.\u201d Heidegger endows the poetic Tale with a certain existential meaning, akin to the biblical \u201clet there be.\u201d This Tale provides the \u201cessential word,\u201d in which the \u201cmood of being\u201d sounds\u2014without this word, no being would be possible. Heidegger finds confirmation of this in Stefan George\u2019s poem \u201cThe Word\u201d: \u201cThere cannot be any thing where the word is lacking\u201d (5: 302\u2013312). Heidegger also finds the development of this same thought in H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s verse:<\/span><\/p>\n

But it behooves us, O poets,<\/span><\/p>\n

To stand with one’s head uncovered under God’s storm.<\/span><\/p>\n

And the father’s ray, his light<\/span><\/p>\n

Catch and hidden in song<\/span><\/p>\n

To bring a heavenly gift to the people.<\/span><\/p>\n

The essence of poetry is the establishment of being in the Tale \u2013 this is how Heidegger interprets the \u201coffering of the heavenly gift.\u201d But this gift is \u201chidden\u201d in the song. In order to reveal it, the interpretive work of thinking is required. In this work, the \u201cproper\u201d essence of thinking \u2013 \u201cattention\u201d (Vernehmen) \u2013 manifests itself. \u201cAttention\u201d is a category paired with the \u201cTale\u201d; it must heed its gift, accept it in such a way that this gift is revealed in understanding. \u201cThinking is attention. Attention in the sense of appropriating the gift [of that being that is established in poetry] and in the sense of concentrating on listening to what expresses itself to us\u201d (15:75\u201376).<\/span><\/p>\n

Now the specificity of man as a \u201cbeing of a special kind\u201d acquires a new meaning. Not \u201cgoing beyond the limits of being as a whole\u201d in \u201cek-stasis\u201d, in experiencing the primordial horror of \u201cbeing pushed forward into Nothingness\u201d, but calm, serious and responsible attention. \u201cMan is an attentive being\u201d. It is precisely with his attention that man illuminates the circle of things in his life world. In attention, things become \u201cpresent\u201d to man. Each thing can be likened to a flower growing from the fertile soil of the \u201cprimordial sound\u201d of being. But a flower, like a word, is not self-sufficient. A flower opens up to the sun. A word also remains only a possibility, even embodied in sound, until it has been heeded, that is, admitted to the heart, to the source of attention in a human being.<\/span><\/p>\n

The poet is like God: in the creation of his world he is completely free, but he also bears the full responsibility. In an era when man himself becomes a “poet” (Greek: “creator”) of reality, creating his own, artificial world in place of the old one, Heidegger reminds man of the “poetic responsibility of the creator”. The “fundamental disposition” of care, analyzed in “Being and Time”, now receives a new expression: “Man is the shepherd of being”.<\/span><\/p>\n

“Existential history”.<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0In the crisis of the 1930s, when the need to find the meaning of history became acute, Heidegger began to reflect on the so-called “existential history”. This was a unique philosophy of history, examining the plan of “existential events”, the unfolding of which were epochs and turning points in the course of history.<\/span><\/p>\n

The main event of the \u201cexistential history\u201d of Europe, which determined its entire fate, is the \u201coblivion of being\u201d. From metaphysics as the \u201coblivion of being\u201d grew the new European science and technology with their \u201csketch\u201d, which in no way resonated with the \u201cbasic tone\u201d of being. The desire for technical dominance over nature led to the world around us being increasingly filled with empty, untrue things<\/span>
\n[56]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0. \u201cThings\u2026 increasingly transfer their existence to the unstable trembling of money\u201d. There is a \u201cemptying of being\u201d, which in our days reaches its extreme limit. \u201cEmptying\u201d does not simply mean \u201cdestruction\u201d, but the deprivation of meaning, depth, and essence.<\/span><\/p>\n

More particular \u201cevents\u201d in which the aforementioned oblivion of being unfolded were 1) the rethinking of the essence of truth in Plato\u2019s image of the cave, which marked the beginning of metaphysics (5: 345\u2013361), 2) the victory of method, which took place in the philosophy of the New Age (5: 131\u2013134), 3) the \u201cdeath of God\u201d, which \u201ccame true\u201d in the philosophizing of Nietzsche (4: 168\u2013217), and 4) the \u201cunbridling\u201d of metaphysics in the dominance of modern European technology (5: 177\u2013192). According to Heidegger, the present time is experiencing the event of the \u201cend of metaphysics\u201d. The era of the dominance of metaphysics is ending. This will inevitably be reflected in all aspects of the life of European humanity. Since Western European history began with the beginning of metaphysics, it is now ending, passing into world history. Philosophy in the traditional sense is coming to an end \u2013 thought liberated from it must take on new forms \u2013 Heidegger tried to find them, but did not claim that he succeeded. Technology and science must take on new, humane forms of existence. Like the late Husserl, Heidegger calls for the creation of a new science that would be \u201cDasein-commensurate\u201d, i.e., would not proceed from an abstract subject, but from a person living in the world, and would serve the fullness of life (existence). \u201cFor the first time, the world civilization that is beginning now will overcome the technical-scientific-industrial seal that once arose as the only standard of being in the world\u201d (8: 263).<\/span><\/p>\n

Heidegger’s influence on subsequent philosophy is broad and multifaceted. In the USA, Japan and other countries, many researchers of Heidegger’s philosophy appeared, but still, it gave the greatest impetus to European thought. Its most significant influence was felt by 1) existentialism; 2) philosophical hermeneutics and 3) philosophical anthropology.<\/span><\/p>\n

The most essential thing in Heidegger’s philosophizing is the method and style of philosophizing itself; it has had and continues to have the greatest influence on thought, calling for “rigor of comprehension, thoroughness of speech, parsimony of words.” Only in rare cases is Heidegger’s influence expressed in the borrowing of problems, as in Sartre’s work “Being and Nothingness,” or method, as in the “philosophical hermeneutics” of Hans-Georg Gadamer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Philosophical Hermeneutics. Hans-Georg Gadamer<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0(1900-2002). \u201cPhilosophical hermeneutics\u201d is a philosophical concept that reveals \u201cthe fundamental linguisticity (correlation with language) in any understanding [and] the moment of understanding in any knowledge of the world\u201d (13: 13) and, thus, claims the role of a universal philosophical discipline.<\/span><\/p>\n

Heidegger’s philosophizing was, in essence, a universal philosophical hermeneutics, but Heidegger consciously did not set himself the task of developing a hermeneutic method as such. Just as the separation of the subject of action from the action, so the separation of the rule of action from the action, according to Heidegger, are traces of a metaphysical conceptual mode of presentation. He almost never considers the hermeneutic method separately from one or another interpretation.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gadamer, unlike Heidegger, makes significant efforts in his main work, Truth and Method (1960), to clarify the conceptual foundations of the hermeneutic method\u2014first of all, the nature of understanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Gadamer, truth is not only a property of statements about reality that are scientifically verified; truth is also comprehended in non-scientific experience. Thus, truth \u201cshows itself\u201d in works of art, history, and human communication. The self-discovery of truth is understanding as a historical process, an accomplishment in which the one who understands is always already included in advance.<\/span><\/p>\n

Gadamer creatively develops Heidegger\u2019s doctrine of the presupposition of all understanding. For him, Heidegger\u2019s thesis \u201cunderstanding in its being is always historical\u201d means that \u201cour consciousness is effectively historical (wirkungsgeschichtlich)<\/span>
\n[57]<\/span><\/sup><\/a>\u00a0, i.e., constituted thanks to effective history, which does not leave our consciousness free in its relation to the past.\u201d \u201cEffective history\u201d is history that has not completely gone into the past, but continues to influence the present and determine it. \u201cHermeneutic consciousness must be effectively historical\u201d means that any understanding must be accompanied by an awareness of its determinacy by tradition, its \u201cembeddedness\u201d in it. \u201cIn reality, it is not history that belongs to us, but we belong to history\u2026 The self-consciousness of the individual is only a flash in the closed chain of historical life.\u201d Again paraphrasing Heidegger, Gadamer calls for \u201cthe wakefulness of effectively historical consciousness.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Literature<\/span><\/strong><\/h5>\n

1. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Prolegomena to the History of the Concept of Time. Tomsk, 1998.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Kassel lectures. Moscow, 1995.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Being and Time \/ Translated by V. V. Bibikhin. Moscow, 1997.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Works and reflections of different years. Moscow, 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Time and Being. Moscow, 1993.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Conversation on a Country Road. Moscow, 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Explanations of H\u00f6lderlin\u2019s poetry. St. Petersburg, 2003.<\/span><\/p>\n

8. Biemel V.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Martin Heidegger about himself. Chelyabinsk., 1998.<\/span><\/p>\n

9. Mikhailov I. A.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Early Heidegger. M., 1999.<\/span>
\nMikhailov I. A.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

10.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Was Heidegger a phenomenologist? \/\/ Logos. Moscow, 1994. No. 6.<\/span><\/p>\n

11.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger and Modernity. M., 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n

12. Gadamer G.-G.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Truth and Method: Foundations of Philosophical Hermeneutics. Moscow, 1988.<\/span><\/p>\n

13. Gadamer G.-G.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0The Relevance of the Beautiful. Moscow, 1991.<\/span><\/p>\n

14. Heidegger M. Gesamtausgabe<\/span><\/em>\u00a0. Abt. 2: History, 1923\u20131944. Bd. 63. Ontology (Hermeneutik der Faktizit\u00e4t). Fr. aM, cop. 1988.<\/span><\/p>\n

15. Heidegger M.<\/span><\/em>\u00a0Understand the language. Pf\u00fcllingen, 1960.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Martin Heidegger was born in 1889 in the town of Messkirch in southern Germany, and studied at the Jesuit college in Constance and at the gymnasium in Freiburg im Breisgau, from which he graduated in 1909. There he entered the university, where he studied theology for the first two years, then philosophy, the humanities and the natural sciences. After completing his course in 1913, he defended his dissertation on the topic of “The Doctrine of Judgment in…<\/p>\n

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