Notes on Heidegger's Being and Time - 1.III: The worldhood of the world (pp. 91-148, §§ 14-24) - Wednesday, 28 October 2015

1.III: The worldhood of the world (pp. 91-148, §§ 14-24)

Wednesday, 28 October 2015 (Notes by Marton Ribary)

Zeug

In our everyday dealings (Umgang), things do not primordially present themselves as objects of formalised and abstract perception (Vorhandenheit/presence-at-hand). Rather, we encounter things as we go about our life and carry out the minutest projects (this is Merleau-Ponty’s term used in his Phenomenology of Perception) like opening a door by using the doorknob. In order to delineate things encountered in this way from things as object of formalised and abstract perception, Heidegger introduces the concept of Zeug (“equipment”/”useful thing”/”utensil” according to different English translations). Zeug is essentially “etwas um zu”, a thing with which we carry out a project (e.g. an instrument), or a thing which refers to something else (e.g. a sign). Zeug is encountered in the context of references. It opens up a network of interrelated entities which eventually constitute a totality, i.e. the “worldhood”, which is a key characteristic of Dasein’ existence.

Disengagement and the critique of modernity

Leif Jerram pointed out that Heidegger’s description of Zeug can be read in the context of the 19-20^th century critique of modernity. The industrial revolution and the standardised machine production of everyday goods resulted in a disengagement from the object we encounter in our daily life. We do not know anymore where, how and by whom the clothes we wear, the food we eat, the pencil we write with were created. Objects have lost their reference to the human side of production. The frozen pizza just shows up in our basket, the waste just disappears into the bins. We do not know anymore where they come from and where they go. Heidegger’s account of Zeug can be understood as an attempt to reconstruct the context of references which modernity pushed into oblivion, but still operates under our everyday dealings.

From Zeug to the mere Thing

The type of existence Zeug uncovers during our everyday dealings is what Heidegger calls readiness-to-hand (Zuhandenheit). This is the primary mode of existence of the entities, and it is only by privative modes that the presence-at-hand (Vorhandenheit) can be discovered. The avenue from readiness-to-hand of the Zeug to the presence-at-hand of a mere Things is marked by conspicuousness. When the Zeug is unusable (the doorknob does not open the door), missing (the doorknob is not on the door), standing in the way (the doorknob blocks the way to reach the keyhole) or used as a sign (the doorknob left on the kitchen table referring to the necessity of having it fixed), that is, when the Zeug fails a primary intention of a project, this is the moment when Zeug presents itself as an entity which has another type of existence, which points beyond the intended project. The Zeug has suddenly become a piece of useless metal and revealed an existence without the context of references. The Zeug has become a mere Thing, the conspicuousness has discovered its existence as presence-at-hand.

The critique of Descartes’ ontology

Heidegger’s criticism of Descartes is directed against his Thing-ontology which fails to acknowledge that the primary mode of encounter with entities is not the formalised and abstract perception of mere Things. Descartes’ description is correct, but only inasmuch as it is emphasised that it is not the primordial one – and that is where Descartes is wrong as he claims that the existence of mere Things is the primary mode of existence, and “values”, “intentions” etc. are attached to the entities only afterwards. According to Descartes, perception reveals the entities in their arithmetic purity, and the untrained human mind simply struggles to achieve perfect perception and muddies it with his/her own interests. According to Heidegger, it is the other way round. Entities are encountered within the involved dealings of Dasein. The complexity is the primary form of their existence, and there is a long way before we can extract the formalised and abstract perception from our primordial experience.

Ent-fernung/Ausrichtung

Towards the end of the section about the “worldhood of the world”, Heidegger discusses the mode by which the spatiality of Dasein can be grasped. After he has rejected Descartes’ division of entities into three groups, that is, mere things with only material substance (res extensa), God with only intellectual substance (res cogitnas), and the human being which is a combination of both, Heidegger needs to reinterpret Dasein’s spatiality which parts with Descartes’ idea of extensio. The concepts of Ent-fernung (de-severance/de-distancing) and Ausrichtung (directionality) try to capture the “active and transitive” (105) nature of perception which goes against the passive description of perception in Descartes. The encounter with entities is a perceptive-emotional-cognitive-etc. complex, these elements cannot be clearly delineated from each other in the first step. The complex everyday experience opens up a totality referring to the world shared by Dasein and the entities encountered during her/his dealings. This complex network of Dasein, entities and the world uncovers Dasein’s true spatiality. ”Both directionality and de-severance, as modes of Being-in-the-world, are guided beforehand by the circumspection of concern.” (108) “…that circumspective Being-in-the-world is spatial. … Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space.” (110-111).

Page numbers in these notes refer to those on the margin of Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1962) and its reprints. These page numbers on the margin correspond to the German original published by Max Niemeyer Verlag (Tübingen) and Band 2 of the Heidegger Gesamtausgabe published by Vittorio Klostermann Verlag (Frankfurt). Being and Time is abbreviated as SZ in these notes.