Stephen Scheidell

Heidegger | Being and Time

"To the things themselves!" (58) sounds Heidegger's maxim for ontological, or more specifically
phenomenological, research. He presents a methodology to understand the world from an angle not wholly dependent on
the transcendental ego, breaking from the German Idealism of prior generations. "Only as phenomenology is ontology
possible" (60). Now what makes this claim so significant? Keep in mind last week's reading in Fichte. For Fichte, our
understanding of the world "came to us" as entirely our construction to fit our needs. Heidegger rejoins with his definition
of phenomenon the focus of his analysis: "that which shows itself " (51). The significance here lies in that phenomena
first appear in themselves, apart from any formal conceptions brought upon them by the perceiver. In other words,
Heidegger asserts an external world detached from the transcendental ego. This maneuver allows him to examine the
"Being of entities" as something other than mere constructions of the perceiving mind. As we shall see later, however, this
hardly means that phenomena appear ready to be understood in their entirety; simple perception hardly constitutes
understanding. "When we merely stare at something, our just-having-it-before-us lies before us as a failure to understand
it any more" (190). Therefore, understanding lies at that tension between perceiving phenomena as themselves in
themselves and our interpretation through logos of these phenomena. To better clarify Heidegger's position, we must
clarify what he says on phenomena, logos, and interpretation.
"'Phenomenon' signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest. Now an entity can show itself f r o m itself
in many ways" (51). Entities can seem (as something else), appear ("announcing" something else) or simply show itself. In
this second manner of "appearance" is a pivotal consideration on phenomena: "What thus shows itself is at the same
time an 'appearance' as an emanation of something which hides itself" (54). For example, when a disease "shows itself" in
symptoms, we do not see the disease as such, but we see the symptoms. It thus shows itself by symptoms, but it at the
same time hides "underneath" the symptoms. This reveals for us an even further implication: a "reference-relationship"
(54) between the disease and the symptoms that make the disease manifest. Heidegger asserts this reference-relationship
in any entity that shows itself in itself as such an "appearance." While phenomena show themselves, logos lets them be
perceived.
For Heidegger, logos best translates as "discourse": 'to make manifest what one is talking about' or 'to let
something be seen in the structure of synthesis' (55). This synthesis harks back to something else (57) and refers
specifically to the referential nature of logos. As a phenomenon can have a reference-relationship to something, logos
always refers to something else. Logos, then, both reveals and conceals by only revealing explicitly what refers to
something else. Therefore, it fulfills its function of letting something be seen (58). In the synthesis structure of logos and
the reference-relationship of phenomena, we find one of the pivotal intersections between Heidegger's phenomenon and
logos.
Since phenomena show themselves in themselves, and the function of logos is to let something be seen,
"phenomenology" for Heidegger refers to the methodology of inquiry. The next step in understanding comes as explication
of the phenomena in the hermeneutic, which can refer to: the general business of interpreting, working out the conditions
of ontology, or an analytic of the existentiality of existence, i.e. the working out of ontology, which is philosophically
primary (60).
In 32 Understanding and Interpretation, interpretation fleshes out the relationship between phenomena and
logos. For Heidegger, interpretation is the working out of possibilities, of both the phenomena and Dasein itself, projected
in the understanding" (189). When we interpret, we "take apart" what is explicitly understood to concern ourselves with
the assignment-relations of the phenomena and in what way these contribute to the possibilities of Dasein, which then get
Articulated. This means that upon perception of, for example, a pen we interpret its assignment-relations (what possible
"assignments" the pen might be used for) to decide that the pen possibly serves as a tool for writing or possibly as a tool
for murder. Now, being presented two possibilities for the understanding of the pen, Dasein, now, projects its Being upon
possibilities (188). For Dasein to project its Being is for Dasein to perceive the pen as a murder tool or a writing tool, and
to "project" that by using this tool, it can become a murderer or a poet. Dasein, hopefully, decides to be a poet rather than
murderer and accordingly interprets the pen as a tool for the sake of to become a poet. Heidegger replaces arbitrary
construction with improvisation. Here, we finally come to the full circle interpretation of phenomena. One might
summarize the start-to-finish process in the following way. 1) The phenomena show itself in itself. 2) We neither perceive
the Thing-in-itself nor preconceived formal constructs but the phenomena as phenomena. 3) This perception results in a
preliminary understanding of phenomena. 4) We interpret the phenomena after working out its possible assignmentrelations. 6) Dasein sees its own possibilities limited to, but also made possible by, these assignment-relations. 7) Dasein
chooses from its possibilities and interprets phenomena accordingly 8) This interpretation results in a modified and
refined understanding, 9) which, in turn, gets Articulated through the vehicle of logos as "discourse". Once the
assignment-relation gets articulated via discourse, the authentic Being of a given phenomena becomes unhidden.
By thus steering between one extreme of bald claims of unmediated knowledge and the other extreme of total
subjective construction, Heidegger presents more of an observation. His account does not propose a "better" way of
thinking about the world, but a practical this-is-how-we-relate to the world. An over-conservative Christian might object
to the (apparent) contingency of interpretation based of the choosing of Dasein's possibilities, but in doing so would miss
Heidegger's argument. For Heidegger, attempts at more "objective" understanding of things resulted in reductionistic
statements of material composition and mechanism. He objected to this in saying that this account proves lacking. In our
understanding of things, there lies a relatedness to the phenomena, which we supply. Since we naturally relate to
phenomena around us, how the self does so can only be supplied by the self.