Perhaps this is one of the first questions that should be asked whilst approaching the thinking-philosophizing of Heidegger: What is “Dasein”? What is that through which any questioning of, and any coming closer to, Being must pass? What is that which brings closer to the question of Being?
In Being and Time, Heidegger avoids using terms such as human being, humanity, consciousness, or subject when he attempts to ask the question of Being. Instead, he uses the term “Da-sein”, which is literally translated as “being-there”. “Da” means “there”, and “Sein” means “being”.
For Heidegger, terms such as consciousness, subject, human being, and the “I” bring with them metaphysical traces and traditional connotations into the text. This bringing gathers unwanted inscriptions and unthought marks into the text, and hence transfers the text into that toward which the text is not heading. This means that employing such terms in Being and Time would make difficult, or perhaps hold back, any questioning of Being.
The term “Dasein” remains a reference indicating what is human and thus separating the human from the non-human, yet it does not bring into the text what usually appears and announces itself when terms such as consciousness, person, spirit, and human are employed.
What is “Dasein”?
Heidegger says that Dasein is an entity, or a being, through which Being could be investigated, questioned, and understood. Understanding Being passes through the investigating of Dasein.
That is, Dasein finds itself in a relation of which Being is also a part. This relation allows Dasein to ask the question of Being; it makes Dasein the only being that can question and think its own being; it makes the being of Dasein problematic for Dasein.
The relation linking together Dasein with Being allows Dasein, according to Heidegger, to have a “pre-ontological” understanding of the meaning of Being, but it is hidden and usually unnoticed. In Being and Time, Heidegger says that this relation renders Dasein a site from out of which any understanding of the meaning of Being must emerge, a site through which any investigating of Being must pass.
This means that there is Being only because there is Dasein and therefore that it is only through Dasein that the things and the world first arise and announce themselves as understandable. It should be mentioned here that Heidegger, in his later work, abandons this thinking of Dasein as the site from out of which any understanding of the meaning of Being must emerge.
In Being and Time, Heidegger calls the mode of Being of Dasein “existence”. “Existence” means that there is no fixed nature or essence lying at the heart of Dasein and hence rendering it unchanging or predetermined: “The essence of Dasein lies in its existence”. This means that there is no fixed essence defining and predetermining Dasein, and that it is out of Dasein’s being-in-the-world that Dasein understands itself or that understanding becomes a possibility for Dasein.
For more articles on Heidegger’s philosophy, visit this webpage.