Getting in Touch with Being (Being and Time §1)

The Double-Forgetting of Being

Last time, we saw that ontology, the study of being, is rooted in a deep-seated concern that human beings have for being, especially our own being. Being gets to us. Being weirds us out.

Even so, most of the time, we don’t pay attention to this. We focus on our to-do lists. We have goals and problems to solve. We have shows to binge. We let ourselves forget the weirdness of being, then we forget that we forgot it. 

Even among philosophers and scientists, this double-forgetting reigns. Fundamental questions about being are assumed to be obsolete, superfluous, or just to belong to their own specialized, irrelevant niche. 

The philosophical study of being has been reduced to a handful of taken-for-granted ontological clichés: “being” is an empty and universal concept; it is indefinable; its meaning is self-evident. 

These ontological clichés thwart our questioning. They are encrusted leftovers from ancient and medieval inquiries. They do not answer the question of being. They point to it, only to cover it up. 

Hence the name Heidegger gives to the first section of Being and Time: “The Necessity for Explicitly Restating the Question of Being,” and its first sentence: “This question has today been forgotten.”

Our Everyday Sense of Being

But how do we even begin to ask about being? Here’s something to notice: even to ask the question of being, to see being as something question-worthy, we must already have some sense of being.  

Every day I encounter and deal with different kinds of entities: myself, other people, furniture, cats, trees, and cars. I easily understand how the concept of being functions in statements like “I am  here,” “The sky is blue,” “The cat is on the mat,” and “2+5 is 7." 

In everyday life, we are guided by an underlying sense of the different ways of being and the various kinds of beings, even if we can’t spell this out in explicit definitions and explanations.

Similarly, we have a sense of familiarity in our hometown, even if we can’t draw a good map or provide precise directions for getting around.  

Our relationship to being (and to the world, and to ourselves) is deeper and earlier than our ideas, beliefs, and theories. 

Heidegger proposes that we call this underlying, guiding sense of being our “understanding of being.” Pursuing the question of being requires delicately digging into this understanding of being that we already have.  

An Understanding Deeper Than Knowledge

To access this underlying understanding of being, we need to look deeper and closer than what we already know and believe.

What we already know about the world is infiltrated with all kinds of theories and presumptions inherited from our culture. Such presumptions neutralize ontological perplexity and facilitate our forgetfulness of the question of being:

• Only material stuff really exists, the kind of stuff studied by physics
• The mind is some kind of inner “hallucination,” “simulation,” or “representation” of the external world
• The mind is in the brain
• The mind is separate from the body
• Reason is separate from emotion 
• Language is a stream of information
• Intelligence is an algorithm 
• Society is a collection of individuals gathered for mutual benefit

To approach ontology—the question of being—in a radical, fresh way, we must learn to notice, unpack, and articulate our underlying, everyday sense of being, rather than starting from our theories and knowledge. This process requires a special observational method that Heidegger, following his teacher Husserl, calls phenomenology. But that’s a story for another time.

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