The Manifold Varieties of Mattering: Heidegger on Dasein

Today brings a new installment in our series on Heidegger’s Being and Time. We are focused here on Section 4, “The Ontical Priority of the Question of Being.” 

First, I am happy to announce that I'll be teaching the course on Heidegger's Being and Time at UC Berkeley this summer. The course meets on Berkeley campus from 1pm to 3:30pm on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from July 8 to August 14. Let me know if you'd like to drop by sometime.

Review

Remember, Heidegger’s ambition in Being and Time is to rejuvenate the discipline of ontology. Ontologists ask about the meaning of being. They are interested in the different kinds of things that exist; they chart distinctions between different modes of being (traditionally, e.g., natural beings vs man made beings, changing beings vs unchanging beings, material beings vs immaterial beings, mortal beings vs immortal beings.)

But first of all notice how strange all of this is. What kind of entity are we such that we get preoccupied with asking the question of being? That is Heidegger's question in section 4 of Being and Time.

Heidegger argues that to reanimate the field of ontology, we need to first clarify the mode of being of that peculiar entity (us) who does all of this worrying and inquiring into the various ways of being.

Recall that Heidegger proposes a novel ontological label to refer to us: Dasein, a German term that etymologically evokes “being-there.” 

Dasein is the entity that has “ontical priority” in Heidegger's ontological investigation. It is the most important entity to investigate, given its preoccupation with being. Remember, “ontical” is a technical term Heidegger uses to refer to particular entities, while “ontological” refers to the mode of being of those entities.

Section 4 of Being and Time introduces several key features of Dasein’s mode of being.

Dasein: The Relational Entity 

Heidegger chooses “Dasein” as his label for us because he thinks traditional terms like “man” or  “humanity” or “the subject” or “subjectivity” are bogged down with bad ontological baggage.

For example, especially since Descartes, “subjectivity” or “the mind” is defined in terms of consciousness and is distinguished from the “objectivity” of the mind-independent world. Descartes defined his way of being as a “thinking substance.” His consciousness of his own thinking, separate from the world around him, was all that he could be really in touch with. Hence his famous one-liner, “I think, therefore I am.” 

But notice that by taking for granted the self-evidence of conscious experience, Descartes has already built in a fundamental separation between whatever we are and whatever the world is. Such notions of consciousness, self-awareness, and subjectivity have had an ironclad grip on philosophers’ imagination for several hundred years. 

What if assuming and starting from this separation between consciousness and the world actually blinds us from what we really are? Heidegger thinks that by starting with this separation between mind world, we are acting like disoriented philosophers in an unfamiliar kitchen, overlooking that primordial familiarity we normally have with our everyday circumstances.

Instead of being a self-enclosed, separate sphere of self-awareness (consciousness or subjectivity), Heidegger claims that Dasein is a fundamentally relational entity. Dasein is what it is only in being-there, that is, in its being-in-the-world. 

Again, here it helps to think of that lack of separation we experience when we are in the flow of familiarity in our everyday circumstances, like when we can make our breakfast, ride our bike, or play our musical instrument without having to stop and think about it.

When I am in the flow of smoothly playing a blast beat on my drums, the sticks and the drums themselves are not experienced as separate from my body or my self-awareness. I am drumming-in-the-world. Focusing on reflective consciousness overlooks these experiences of involved flow, where the separation between self-and-world has not set in.

What else does Heidegger say about Dasein here in section 4? Well, Dasein’s relation to the world is also a relation to itself. But what kind of relation? Is this a meta-cognitive relation, like being aware that we are aware? No. That would be to drag our characterization of Dasein back into the traditional pit of subjectivity.

Dasein: What's the Matter?

We relate to our lives, and our existence, first and foremost through the fact that our existence matters to us. Existing gets to us. Our lives are at stake for us. Or, as Heidegger also puts it: Dasein is distinguished by “the fact that in its very being, that being is an issue for it.”

Dasein is the entity whose own existence matters to it. This is saying more than “staying alive” matters to us. That is the wrong register in which to hear this claim. This is not a claim about a biological drive for self-preservation. It is about our inescapable orientation to the question of what is worthy of our care.

For an entity like Dasein, the most severe disorientation is to be a condition in which nothing matters. As we will see, this is what Heidegger understands as the mood of anxiety. It is a total breakdown of the world and the self.

We are not simply beings that happen to exist, we are beings to whom existence happens. Our existence arrives as a weird provocation, a burden and a call. Being hits us with a question that we have to answer by living our life: Who am I?

But, we are also built in such a way that we can ignore the questionableness of our existence, burying it under the urgency of our everyday routines, identifying with the pre-given meanings that our culture, family, therapists, priests, and social media influencers suggest to us.

Our own existence matters to us, but not necessarily in the self-centered way this formulation can evoke. Here, saying that our existence matters to us is saying that things, other people, events, traditions, and the world itself matters to us.

Mattering imbues our way of being, but it is not something we actively do. We are receivers of mattering. Things matter to or for us. We cannot willfully or rationally invent or declare what matters to us. Nor is there any guarantee that we will find ourselves living a life in contact with what really matters to us.

Thus, "Dasein's own being is an issue for it" means: To be Dasein is to be intrinsically susceptible to outstanding questions of worth, care, and mattering.

Dasein: The Site of Multiple Meanings

The histories of philosophy and theology are filled with attempts to define the specific nature of what matters about us, the essence of what we are human beings: we are the rational animals; we are beloved creatures of God; we are calculating, self-interested egoists; we are subjects of “inner life” needing to express itself; we are biochemical machines; we are stepping-stones to superintelligent AI.

With his notion of Dasein, Heidegger cuts through all of this. Dasein is the site, the clearing, where being shows up to itself as mattering and meaningful.  

Rather having a fixed nature or essence, Dasein is the entity which interprets itself as having various fixed natures or essences.

We are the self-interpreting entity. Our essence lies not in a fixed property or essence, but in the receptive activity of defining what we are. We are what we care about, we are what matters to us.

As Heidegger puts it: “It is peculiar to [Dasein] that with and through its being, this being is disclosed to it. Understanding of being is itself a definite characteristic of Dasein’s being. Dasein is ontically distinguished in that it is ontological.”

When Heidegger says that Dasein is ontological, he doesn’t mean that we necessarily engage in systematic ontology. He just means that we exist as essentially exposed to the question of the meaning of being. It is this exposure that ultimately motivates the systemic questioning of philosophical ontology, as well as our own attempts to define ourselves in a specific individual identity.

We usually don’t directly experience this exposure to the question of being; but it can break in upon us in those experiences, like anxiety, when our existence and the world itself suddenly strike us as meaningless.

Being and Time seeks to articulate the background architecture of our existence, the hidden scaffolding that allows us to interpret being (and ourselves) in a marvelous plurality of ways.

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