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Heidegger and Authenticity American Style

by

Scott Jensen

Prepared for Kent State Philosophy Graduate School Conference

April 17, 1996

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Works Cited

TP = Birmingham, Peg. The Time of the Political. Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal. (Vol.

14, No. 2 -- Vol. 15, No. 1. pp. 25-45: 1991.

BIW = Dreyfus, Hubert L. Being-in-the-World. ( MIT Press; Cambridge, MA: 1991)

QUF = Fritsche, Johannes. Historicality--Quasi una fantasia on Heideggers Being and Time,

paragraph 74 (I) (upcoming in the Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal)

HC = Guignon, Charles. History and Commitment in the Early Heidegger. Heidegger: a

Critical Reader eds. H.L. Dreyfus and H. Hall. pp. 130-142 (Blackwell; Cambridge, MA:

1992)

BT = Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson.

(HarperSanFrancisco: 1962)

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There is a common belief that the authentic Dasein of Martin Heideggers Being and Time

is an example of the sort of creative, independent soul we Americans have long hoped was the

essence of our national character. In this paper I will show that this belief is false. I will argue

that the Heideggerian conception of authenticity is rather an actively receptive stance, one wholly

divorced from the sort of Authenticity American Style, which so many believe has manifested

itself in our societys mythic heroes--from Thoreau to Whitman to Woody Guthrie.

I will proceed by rehearsing the process through which Dasein becomes authentic in Being

and Time, clarifying key Heideggerian concepts like the call, the reciprocative rejoinder, and

Daseins choice of a hero. Such a clarification will bring to the fore the role played by the

factic situation in this process, and highlight the passive nature of authenticity. In the course of

this rehearsal I will buttress my reading with Johannes Fritsches philological interpretation of

Being and Times controversial paragraph 74, in which Heidegger works out the implications of

Daseins authentic historicity.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with Heidegger knows two things about his work.

First, that he is preoccupied with The question of Being and second that he uses the term

Dasein to refer to what is essential in human being. A solid understanding of the nature of

authenticity can be gained by examining the relation between the question of Being and the

conception of human being as Dasein. While an exhaustive examination of this relationship

certainly involves arduous conceptual labor, for the purpose of this paper we can gain sufficient

access by means of a metaphor employed widely by Heidegger---namely that Dasein is the

lighted space or clearing in which Being shows itself.

The notion behind the Heideggerian conception of human being as Dasein is very simple.

Each person is thrown into existence. One is born into a particular factic situation---into a

particular world of projects, into a particular community of people, at a particular point in

history---and is not consulted at all in this matter. In other words, I find myself thrown there,

into a factic situation---I am a Da (there) sein (to be).

In the context of the particular situation into which Dasein is thrown, Dasein already finds

itself thrown into various projects with which it is concerned. Since the example Heideggers

likes to use in Being and Time is a craftsman, we will follow his lead. Say Dasein finds itself a

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carpenter and its project is building a house. For this project, Dasein needs various gear, which

constitute a work-world for Dasein---wood-for-building, nails-for-fastening, a hammer-for-

pounding-nails and so on. Taken in the context of this project its gear has a for-structure---

wood-for-building, nails-for-fastening, etc. However, right away, one other for-structure

becomes apparent. All this gear has been gathered around the project of building a house for

an other. So in addition to the work-world there exists a public world of being-with-others.

During the course of this project, say Dasein has a mishap: One of its nails-for-fastening is bent

by the misplaced blow of the hammer. Because the nail can no longer fill its function within the

project, it falls out of being-for-the-sake-of the project and becomes a thing in its own right, a

nail, a being.

Now that Daseins world-yielding project has produced a being (the nail), we see the

necessary conditions of Heideggers interest in Being. Once a being is present, it is possible to

ask the simple question, What is it about a being that makes it a being? Whatever the answer to

this question is, will turn out to be the nature of the Being of this being.

By seeing that it is the project of a Dasein that forms the necessary condition for inquiry

into Being, we can clarify Daseins role as lighted space for Being. As we have seen, the nails

presence as a being was possible only on the basis of Daseins project, which in turn was possible

only on the basis of the factic situation of its world into which it was thrown such that it embarked

on its project in the first place. Therefore, the ground of beings is the throw of Daseins

there. Furthermore, because the question of the Being of those beings is only possible on the

basis Daseins project, grounded in its factic situation in the world, we can say that Dasein is--as

pro-jector-- the open or lighted space in which Being makes itself manifest. Now we see

that because Dasein is this lighted space, what it wants if it asks What is Being? is really the it

gives (es gibt), or the nature of the throw of its factic situation.

It is unreasonable to believe that something like the bending of a nail would send anyone

into a contemplation of Being. Heidegger agrees and goes further. For him Dasein is, at first,

necessarily unconcerned with the question of Being. Dasein is always found in its natural habitat,

so to speak; i.e. concerned with the beings ready-to-hand and present-at-hand in the world,

rather than the nature of its factic situation and projects out of which these beings arose. Dasein is

always forgetting about Being. Dasein matter of factly deals with the beings present, forgetting

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not only Being, but even its own projects. Such forgetfulness forms the essence of what

Heidegger calls the They-self, which has fallen away from itself as an authentic potentiality for

Being its Self, and has fallen into the world. (BT 220) In order to remember Being, Dasein

must shake this They-self that it necessarily is most of the time and become authentic. As

Heidegger puts it: Authentic Being-ones-Self. . is. . .an existentiall modification of the they.

(BT 168)

As we have seen, the beings of the They appear only on the basis of the possibilities, given

Daseins factic throw. However, in this facticity there is one possibility that stands apart from any

other: Death is that possibility which is ones ownmost, which is non-relational and which is not

to be outstripped. (BT 294) It is the anxiety, which arises in the face of Death, that will wrench

Dasein out of its They-self.

Again, the idea here is not too terribly complicated. Dasein is lost in its They-self,

concerned only with the beings present in the world. However, because this They-world relies on

a facticity that has as its ownmost possibility death, the nullity of this possibility creates anxiety

capable of reaching this They-self. This anxiety is brought to Dasein by the call of conscience.

This call comes from Dasein itself, which, in its throwness (in its Being-already-in), is anxious

about its potentiality-for-Being. (BT 322) As Dasein comes to terms with this potentiality, and

begins to anticipate (forerun, vorlaufen) it, a new project becomes possible, one which authentic

Dasein will resolutely accept. This project is called being-toward-death, and through it one is

liberated from ones lostness in those possibilities which have been thrust upon one, and one is

liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among

the factical possibilities lying ahead of that possibility which is not to be outstripped. (BT 308)

Once Dasein has anticipated death it separates the wheat from the chaff. The unfounded,

floating possibilities based in the They-world are discarded, and ones authentic possibilities are

taken hold of with the vigor of one who could die at any moment. In other words, Dasein

becomes interested in its factic throw---in its es gibt or its Being. From this point on, the

authentic Dasein resolutely struggles to allow only those projects finding a firm rootedness in

Being (its factic ground) to form its existence.

From this gloss of the road that Dasein travels to authenticity, one might conclude that

Heideggers notion of authenticity is precisely the Authenticity American Style I claimed it was

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not. We have seen only that Dasein, in the sights of death, shakes off possibilities for projects that

have been merely imposed on it, and resolutely takes on projects that are its own. Under this

conception, Heideggerian authenticity could easily be seen in an American sense, such that it

would attack the limits imposed on it like tradition, ethnic origin, sex and family. By moving

against such limits, Dasein would stake its claim in a new world where all limits are challenged, if

not completely overcome. One might conclude that Daseins gaze into the eyes of death has

turned it into, if you will, a rugged individualist who marches only to the beat of its own drum.

While such an interpretation is plausible given the overview as presented so far, it becomes

untenable when we look at the elaboration of Daseins factic situation in paragraph 74 of Being

and Time.

As we have seen, Dasein is thrown into a particular factic existence not of its own

choosing. Paragraph 74 is about one of that situations essential moments---historicity.

Paragraph 74 will show us what it means for Daseins authentic existence to take up the

possibilities generated from a factic situation that is through and through historical. This refined

look at Daseins factic situation we will bring more of the Heideggerian picture of authenticity

into focus.

As Heidegger told us authenticity is always a movement against of the They, and the

account in paragraph 74 remains true to form. He claims that the Dasein lost in the They

interprets itself from the historical possibilities circulating around the They-Self. He goes on to

say that it is in terms of this interpretation, against it, and yet again for it, that any possibility one

has chosen is seized upon in ones resolution. (BT 435) Here we see that, necessarily, the

reaction of an authentic Dasein will be to its existence in the They, which floats around peddling

ungrounded historical possibilities that cannot stand the light generated by a run forward into

death.

Disavowing its They-self, Dasein discovers the true historical possibilities that are

possible given its factic situation. Dasein discloses these historical possibilities in terms of the

heritage (aus dem Erbe) which that resoluteness, as thrown, takes over.(BT 435). Heidegger

characterizes this heritage as good, meaning that the possibilities of heritage are what remain

after the anticipation of death (Vorlaufen in den Tod) has driven out all accidental and

provisional possibility (BT 435). According to Heidegger, Dasein, by disavowing the They, is

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brought back to the simplicity of itsfate. (BT 435) Such a movement from interpreting itself in

terms of the historical possibilities of its They-Self, to interpreting itself in terms of its fate, is

called Daseins primordial historizing. In other words, rather than merely floating along,

resolutely authentic Dasein now actively receives its possibilities from its heritage. This heritage

is, so to speak, the shape of Daseins factic throw, and this shape is the lay of the ground upon

which all future authentic projects will be built.

By looking more closely at the factic situation we see that unlike its American counterpart

Heideggerian Dasein does not possess an unqualified sense of freedom or individuality. A

rugged, authentic American is not supposed to be beholden to any sort of heritage The authentic

American is seen as a free, autonomous individual with the capacity to judge which possibilities

given by history he or she will accept if any at all are accepted. Heidegger, on the other hand,

finds such a project unrealistic. For him, Daseins possibilities are determined by the nature of its

throw or by heritage. Therefore, Dasein has only what Heidegger calls a finite freedom. (BT

436) While the authentic rugged American individual has the opportunity to distance itself from

its past and actively choose either to accept. reject, or creatively modify the possibilities offered to

it by that past, no such distance exists for Heideggerian Dasein. For Heidegger, authenticity

necessarily contains a passive moment. To become authentic, Dasein must both passively accept

the fate of its thrown heritage, and actively choose this fated heritage. Because Dasein is its factic

throw in the sense that this throw determines its possibilities, it simply is not truly free to distance

itself from those possibilities. Daseins freedom lies only in its ability to acquiesce or not to

acquiesce to it facticity. A choice against its facticity is a free fall into the abyss of the false

possibilities of the They. Further, because the factic situation is always a being-in-the-world with

others, Daseins ownmost existence, its ownmost fate, is wrapped up with the historizing of the

community, of a people. (BT 436) Heideggerian Dasein, by the criteria of Authenticity

American style, proves itself to be both unfree and a denial of individual autonomy.

Many commentators (like Charles Guignon, Hubert Dreyfus and Peg Birmingham) have

lost sight of the passive aspect of authentic Dasein in describing the way in which authentic

Dasein relates to its past. In different ways each of these interpreters appeals to the futural

character of Dasein laid out in the last few pages of paragraph 74 in order to justify their take of

Dasein as active in its response to the historicity of its factic situation. In these pages Dasein, in a

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moment of vision (BT 437), catapults itself into the future by choosing a hero or a

possibility of existence that has been, (BT 437) whose possibilities it repeats in future projects.

The claim of these commentators becomes plausible when Heidegger explains that Daseins

repetition of its Heros example is not an attempt to live the heros past life verbatim. Rather,

authentic Dasein makes a double response to the past. First it makes an erwidert (a

reciprocative rejoinder) (BT 438) to its hero, which is at the same time a Widerruf (disavowal)

of that which is the today, is working itself out as the past (BT 438). It is between this

erwidert and Widerruf that each of these commentators loses sight of the passive aspect of

Heideggerian authenticity.

As I have said, each of these commentators has Dasein actively engaging the past through

its choice of a hero. For Guignon (HC 136-138) and Dreyfus (BIW 330-331) this engagement

comes in the form of a conversation with the past [Note: this reading is also suggested in the translators

note 1, p. 438 of Being and Time.] to decide which of the many available possibilities that have been

Dasein wants as its hero. In her article The Time of the Political, Peg Birmingham goes further,

suggesting that Dasein launches a counter attack against the past (TP 31). As we shall see neither

of these reading of the relation of Dasein to it past is defensible.

In his soon to be published article Historicity---Quasi una fantasia on Heideggers Being

and Time, paragraph 74, Johannes Fritsche offers grammatical/philological reasons for the

impossibility of the Guignon/Dreyfus conversation of Dasein with its past. As we have seen the

key sentence for this question is the erwidert sentence, which in German reads: Die

Wiederholung erwidertvielmehr die Moglichkeit der dagewesenen Existenz. (Rather, the

repetition makes a repicrocative rejoinderto the possibility of that existence which has been

there.) (BT 438) How one takes erwidert in this sentence is how one will conceive Daseins

relation to the past.

The verb erwidern generally means response but, as in English, the exact sense of

response is ambiguous. Certainly in can mean, as Guignon and Dreyfus would have it, to respond

in the sense of a conversation. To express this sense in German, erwidert needs a dative object, to

stress the distance necessary for a conversation to take place. You say we should take a left. I

respond to you, we should take a right, and we proceed in open conversation until we come to

some kind of a consensus. In this example we see that the content of my response, we should go

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right, is the direct object of the verb, while you, the one to whom the response is directed, are

the indirect object. In German the direct object takes the accusative case and the indirect object

the dative. However, the to whom the erwidert is made in the erwidert sentence (die

Moglichkeit) is in the accusative. Because erwidert takes an accusative object, according to

Fritsche, a reading of the response in the sense of a conversation is ruled out, making Guignon

and Dreyfus reading impossible.

After grammatically ruling out erwidern in the sense of a conversation, Fritsche leaves us

with two other possibilities for the sense of this response Dasein makes to the past. Both

possibilities play on the sense of responding in kind, both take the accusative, but each carries an

opposite sense of distance between the one who responds and the one to whom the response is

made. In the first sense erwidert is Birminghams counterattack. A boxer would erwidert

another boxers punch with a counter-punch. In this example the distance between the boxers is

too close, and each seeks to increase this distance by knocking-out the other. The second sense of

erwidert, the one adopted by Fritsche, is that of acquiescence to an obligation, request or demand.

A lifeguard erwidert a drowning persons cries for help by doing what is necessary to save that

person. Here, given the dire situation, the distance between the life guard and the drowning

person is too great and the goal is to close it. Because both senses of erwidern take the accusative,

in order to see what sense is meant by Heidegger one must appeal to textual context, where we not

only must account for Daseins erwidert but its Widerruf (disavowal) as well.

If erwidern was meant by Heidegger in Birminghams sense of a distancing counter attack,

one would expect erwidert and Widerruf to have the same object. Authentic Dasein would

launch this counter attack against its thrown heritage, and, at the same time, disavow that heritage.

However, the object of erwidert---the possibility of that existence which has-been-there (BT

438)---and the object of the Widerruf---that which in the today, is working itself out as the

past (BT 438)---are different. The disavowal made in the moment of vision is indeed of a past

but not of the authentic past as heritage. Rather, authentic Dasein disavows that which today is

working itself inauthenticaly as heritage; i.e. the inauthentic historicity. However, perhaps

Daseins double negation is aimed both at the heritage of its factic situation and heritage as it is

interpreted by the They. Such a reading insists that authentic Daseins goal is to distance itself

from the claim of any heritage whatsoever. However, as we have seen, Dasein in its throwness is

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its factic situation and heritage. As we have seen above, to distance itself from that heritage runs

counter to the very movement of authenticity, where Dasein tries to close the distance its They-

Self has placed between it and its authentic facticity.

We are left with having to read erwidert in what Fritsche calls the sense of the Greek

[charity] (QUF 20), where one erwidert by acquiescing to an obligation and closing distance.

With this sense of erwidert, Daseins repetition of the possibilities of its heros is similar to a

response to a call for help. The authentic possibilities of its factic historicity are calling Dasein,

but have for the most part been ignored by the They-Self such that they are in danger of being

completely lost. However, authentic Dasein now hears this call, and, because it has resolutely

vowed only to be open to the real possibilities given to it in its factic throw, it disavows the

possibilities it had previously projected upon in the They. Dasein is now ready for its future

project designed to close the gap between it and its ownmost historicity; a struggle against that

which in the today, is working itself out as the past. (BT 438)

As I mentioned, this paper has merely the negative goal of showing that Heideggers

notion of authenticity is not the same as Authenticity American Style. We have seen that if we

take Authenticity American Style to be an active disavowal of any authority except of ones

own, it is not the same as Heideggers notion of actively choosing to passively receive the

possibilities inherent in the authority of the fate of ones factic situation, and then disavowing

the inauthentic interpretations of that situation. As American heroes I chose persons (Thoreau,

Whitman and Woody Guthrie) who seemed to represent the sort of souls who either refused

heritage, or, if they accepted it, did so only on their own terms by putting their individual stamp

upon heritage. For Heidegger, Dasein is powerless to alter its authentic heritage and can affect

only the Theys false interpretation of that heritage. To heighten this contrast we conclude with

Professor Fritsches speculation on who Heidegger might have had in mind as heroes when he

wrote Being and Time.

Recall that authentic Dasein must anticipate death (in German, vorlaufen in den Tod,

literally to run forward into death). According to Fritsche (QUF 9-10), in World War I the

Heroes of Langemarck did just that. Following the call of the Fatherland, these young

volunteers ran out of their trenches into the certain death of allied machine-gun fire. These

heroes, according to a myth of the German right between the Wars, were willing to die for the life

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only their fatherland could perpetuate. While it is just such action that for many optimized the

stupidity of World War I, one can read in every book on World War I written by a non-liberal, or

non-leftist author, each German soldier had to be capable of doing the same, and had to follow, to

imitate, or to repeat, the moves of these Helden von Langemarck in order to become himself a

Held. (QUF 9) If Fritsche is right that the German readers who ran into Heideggers phase

[Vorlaufen in den Tod] in the years between World War I and World War II(QUF 9) could

hardly have avoided the association between vorlaufen and the Held, then not only is one justified

in adopting these Helden von Langemarck as paradigmatic examples of Heideggerian Heroes,

but also, if we equate the They with those who according to the Dolchstosslegende (myth of the

back) (QUF 9) betrayed these heroes, one can also see the course authentic Daseins future

project is supposed to take.

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