Dasein and Being
Heidegger and Deleuze were the pre-eminent Western inquirers into Being in modern times. Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) suggested an “overthrow” of metaphysics because he believed that philosophers from Aristotle onwards had forgotten to inquire what Being really meant on its own. He also argued that philosophers were falsely equating the “beingness” of beings with Being when it was only one aspect of Being. Heidegger proposed going back to the way Parmenides had sought to explain Being as the underlying meaning of the word “being” in all beings.
In his magnum opus Being and Time published in 1927, Heidegger developed new ways to understand the meaning of Being (German Sein). He identified human beings as Dasein (German there-Being), a way of life shared by members of a community. Being can be understood through Dasein because Dasein can encounter and reflect on the question of what it means to be. The activity of existing can be thought of as Being-in-the-world, an essential aspect of Dasein. The manner in which Dasein is in the world is called dwelling, which gives Dasein a sense of belonging and familiarity.
But with whom does Dasein interact with in its everyday existence in the world? Heidegger argued that Dasein is typically with Others or “they.” This “they” is Dasein’s culture, an entity that exists in its own right. Being-in-the-world is deeply connected with Being-with-others, and Dasein needs to be open to the Being-in-the-world nature of the Others without losing its authentic self. The authentic self is one where Dasein is leading a life that is owned by it, whereas the inauthentic self is one where Dasein is leading a life that is lost to the “they.”
When Dasein operates from an authentic self in the everyday present, it anticipates its own death. When it runs away from the meaning of its own death, Dasein is operating from a self that is inauthentic. To anticipate death is to own it, while to expect death is to wait for it. Heidegger also argues that the authentic self is open to the pull of conscience and capable of feeling guilty, unlike the inauthentic self. But authentic Dasein also has a sense of freedom. Human beings are free when they recognize their finitude and heritage and lead a way of life that creatively anticipates the future.
Heidegger also had an interesting approach to the relationship between Nature and Dasein. He proposed that while natural entities and other things of Nature can occur without the existence of Dasein, they need Dasein in order to make sense.
Finally, Dasein also has an important relationship with Truth. The scientific understanding of Truth is that of a correspondence between a proposition and its observed occurrence in the world. But this kind of truth assumes there is already a Reality where propositions make sense to Dasein. The notion of original truth is critical of the creation of this Reality. Heidegger argued that Dasein is the source of this intelligibility, and it is to Dasein that entities unconceal themselves and become intelligible. Reality is therefore the sense-making structure created by this original, or revelatory, truth. This is remarkably similar to the notion of truth put forth in the Upanishads as revealing the real nature of an entity.
Despite the wealth of concepts and relationships that Heidegger developed in Being and Time, he did not complete the book and failed to satisfactorily answer his question on the meaning of Being. So he decided to take a new approach.