The German word that Heidegger uses is Befindlichkeit, which does not mean ‘mood’, but rather ‘how one finds oneself’, ‘the way in which one is found by oneself in a specific situation at a certain moment’. The usual German word for ‘mood’ is Stimmung.
Apart from the inaccurate translation, the word ‘mood’ is also problematic because it holds within itself traces of subjective mental states. Yet what Heidegger means is something other. There are other translations of Befindlichkeit as ‘attunement’. In this short article, Befindlichkeit is translated as ‘how one finds oneself’, ‘the way in which one finds oneself’.
‘The way in which one finds oneself’ at any given moment affects and determines one’s turning and leaning toward life and thereby one’s understanding of the world at this specific moment. That is, understanding, for Heidegger, could be made clearer or made obscurer by ‘the way in which one finds oneself’.
This also means that ‘how one finds oneself’ could conceal or disclose the environment surrounding oneself. Heidegger says that in most cases ‘the way in which finds oneself’ conceals the environment more than it makes it clearer, more than it brings one closer to it.
‘How one finds oneself’ could also, according to Heidegger, deliver one into an elsewhere away from and far from the situation in which one is now placed. That is, there exist moments in which one becomes completely immersed and hence misses that which surrounds oneself in this situation.
This means that there are moments in which one’s awareness of one’s possibilities in a specific situation are obscured because ‘the way in which one has found oneself’ has transferred oneself into an elsewhere away from the current situation and its own available possibilities.
Heidegger on philosophy’s ignoring of ‘how one finds oneself’
According to Heidegger, philosophy ignores ‘how one finds oneself’, yet ‘how one finds oneself’ discloses the world and makes known one’s place in the world. This means that ‘how one finds oneself’ governs and controls how one communicates with, and responds to, other beings in the world.
Philosophy ignores ‘how one finds oneself’, although ‘the way in which one finds oneself’ constantly changes and affects oneself and one’s leaning toward the world. That is, philosophy ignores ‘how one finds oneself’ although one is always found by oneself leaning toward oneself, other beings, and the world in a certain way where this finding is itself the source of this specific leaning.
According to Heidegger, there exist no moments in which one cannot find oneself leaning toward the world in a certain way. Even if one finds oneself detached from the world, this detachment is itself a specific leaning toward the world, a leaning in which the world is left behind, or a leaning where a distance between oneself and the world is inserted so that it could link together one and the world by separating them, for separation links together by keeping apart.
Thus, ‘how one finds oneself’ constitutes one’s “being-in-the-world as a whole”, that is, ‘how one finds oneself’ “has always already disclosed being-in-the-world as a whole, making it first possible to direct oneself towards something in particular”.
Being, ‘how one finds oneself’, and the limits of rationality
There is something in ‘the way in which one finds oneself’ that exceeds and surpasses reason and rationality. Reason, for Heidegger, cannot reach and disclose the space that is opened up and revealed by the ‘the way in which one finds oneself’. That is, one’s leaning toward the world in a specific situation cannot be totally glimpsed through reason alone.
Hence, ‘how one finds oneself’ reveals the world in a way in which that reason and rationality themselves cannot. This means that any disclosing of Being must pass through not only reason and rationality, but also the ‘the way in which one finds oneself’.
For more articles on Heidegger’s philosophy, visit this webpage, which contains other articles explaining and introducing Heidegger’s thought.