Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The ontology of existence

Kierkegaard and Heidegger: The Ontology of Existence Book by Michael Wyschogrod; Humanities Press, 1954. 158 pgs.

Table of Contents PREFACE page I. BEING AND SOME PROBLEMS Being and the One Being and Change Essence and Existence Essentialism Conclusion II. KIERKEGAARD AND HUMAN EXISTENCE Human Existence Ontological Innovations Freedom Pure Being and the Temporal III. HEIDEGGER AND THE ANALYSIS OF DASEIN Being and Beings Dasein and Non-Dasein The Extension of Dasein The New Being IV. EXISTENCE AND THE HUMAN SITUATION ( KIERKEGAARD ) Emotion Paradox and Despair Choice Indirect Communication Faith and Melancholy page Eternity and Time V. EXISTENCE AND THE HUMAN SITUATION ( HEIDEGGER ) Ontological Experiences Destiny Art Original Being VI. THE CONTRAST Pure Being Existential Concern Existential Ontology BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

vii 1 3 8 11 15 21 24 25 33 37 42 51 51 54 60 67 78 78 82 86 90 94 98 101 101 109 114 116 122 123 129 136 145

CHAPTER I Being and Some Problems FUNDAMENTALLY new points of view are not encountered very frequently in the history of philosophy. Truly novel thinkers are actually quite rare. But even the small minority of really original minds who do bring fresh insights to bear on the complex of philosophic efforts that constitutes the history of philosophy face a formidable obstacle. This obstacle is the fact that in communicating their formulations they are compelled to address an audience that is rooted in some antecedent philosophic point of view. Its mode of understanding is thus basically affected by this point of view and where the novelty of the philosophic experience is genuine, such a situation can be a real obstacle to the understanding of new philosophic ideas. And to a considerable extent this holds true of the existential currents of our day. The problems as well as the answers posed by the existential thinkers are novel to a considerable degree. It is possible to plunge into this new universe of discourse and into the experiences that lurk behind it without any attempt at transition. Some may survive and learn to swim. But others will not, and for that reason it would seem more desirable to find a bridge somewhere leading from the shore of traditional philosophy to that of existentialism, thereby enabling the reader to make the transition more gradually. Such a bridge is the problem of Being. The aim of this chapter, therefore, is to discuss the ontological concepts in terms of which the writings of -1-

Kierkegaard and Heidegger will be analysed. That an understanding of these writers from the point of view of the problem of Being does not represent an imposition of a problem foreign to them will, it is hoped, appear from the chapters discussing their respective views on the subject. The purpose of this chapter is to discuss some of the problems that cluster around the concept of Being. A full historical treatment of this concept cannot be attempted here due to limitations both of space and knowledge. Using illustrations from various sources, the attempt will be to formulate a concept that can be used in an analysis of Kierkegaard and Heidegger. At the outset a consideration of the concept of Being involves a fundamental problem of precedence. What comes first, the problem of knowledge or the problem of Being? On the one hand, all statements about Being would have to be based on cognitive sources which should be analysed antecedently. On the other hand, all statements of cognition are some form of the positing of Being. 1 As something that is, a statement of cognition is a statement of Being. This extensiveness of the concept of Being is recognized by Aristotle when he writes: Everything that is, then, is said to 'be' in this same way; each thing that is is said to 'be' because it is a modification of being qua being or a permanent or a transient state or a movement of it, or something else of the sort. 2 As a consequence, it would seem that thinking by its very nature presupposes Being and that it is Being, therefore, that must be analysed antecedently. The result of this

dilemma is that there are at least two approaches possible to the basic analysis which is philosophy: that which inquires after the origin and nature of knowledge and that which ____________________ 1 "'. . . Denken ist, seinem ganzen Sinne nach, folglich in jedem Fall, Setzen eines Seins.'"-- Paul Natorp, Uber Platos Ideenlehre, p. 5. 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, K3, 1061a8 -2attempts to analyse the meaning of Being. The former is sometimes taken to be the characteristic of modern philosophy and the latter of ancient philosophy. While this is undoubtedly something of an oversimplification, the fact remains that an epistemological critique can be taken to precede an ontological one. Because, however, the two thinkers with whom this essay is concerned do not place the epistemological problem in the centre of their attention ( Heidegger rejecting it on philosophical grounds), any extended epistemological analysis will be left out of this essay, though its relevance is conceded at the outset. Being and the One In the order of Universality, Being is the highest. While every other determination can be applied to some things and not to others, Being, in one form or another, can be predicated of everything that is. Aristotle realized this in his Metaphysics where, in discussing the problem of substance, he writes: 'If we do not suppose unity and being to be substances, it follows that none of the other universals is a substance; for these are most universal of all. . . .' 1 As such, then, Being would appear to be the highest genus since it contains in itself all others. This, however, cannot be maintained. Again, Aristotle writes: . . . it is not possible that either unity or being should be a single genus of things; for the differentiae of any genus must each of them both have being and be one; but it is not possible for the genus taken apart from its species (any more than for the species of the genus) to be predicated of its proper differentiae; so that if unity or being is a genus, no differentiae will either have being or be one. 2 ____________________ 1 Aristotle,, Metaphysics, B4, 1001a20. 2 Ibid., B3, 998b21. -3The force of this argument is that a genus cannot be predicated of its differentiae because if the differentiae were to have a genus applied to it, then the differentiae would contain the genus and not vice versa, as it should be. Being, however, must be predicable of its differentiae because if the differentiae did not have Being predicated of them they would not be differentiae since they would not be. Since the case therefore is that Being is predicated of its differentiae, it is clear that Being is not a genus since no genus is predicable of its differentiae.

If Being is not the supreme genus, perhaps it can be reached by abstraction. When all the individual characteristics of things are abstracted, those that differentiate one thing from another, then it might be Being that is left as the common characteristic of everything. But even this cannot succeed because by attempting to reach Being by means of total abstraction, that which is left is not Being but Nothing. 1 This is a result of the fact that, as the point of supreme abstraction, Being would have no characteristics, which is what constitutes Nothing. Being, therefore, is found not to be a supreme genus reached by means of abstraction. Instead, it is a transcendental. To quote Heidegger's definition of a transcendental: 'A transcendental is that which has no further genus over it in which it could be contained, ____________________ 1 Cf. Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, p. 37. The affirmation of this idea can be found in such thinkers as Hegel, who writes: 'Being . . . is an absolute absence of attributes, and so is Nought. Hence, the distinction between the two is one of opinion only, it is a quite nominal distinction, which is at the same time no distinction.'-G. W. F. Hegel, Logic, No. 87 add., p. 139. In a somewhat different way Heidegger attributes the same idea to Duns Scotus: 'Das Seinde und das Nichtseiende sind sich wohl entgegengesetzt, aber sie sind nicht verschieden. Verschiedenheit gibt es nur im Bereich des Seienden; denn Verschiedenheit ist nicht bloss Verneinung (Trennung), sondern zugleich Verbindung. Nur dort wo es einen Gesichtspunkt eine höhere Einheit gibt, an der das zu Unterscheidende gemessen werden kann, ist so etwas wie Verschiedenheit möglich.'-- Kategorien, p. 40. -4nothing more can be stated about it.' 1 As a result, Being has become even to some modern thinkers an object of intuition in some sense of that word. This is a consequence of the fact that as a transcendental concept, Being cannot be defined by inclusion within a genus and the specification of differentiae. The mode of thought necessary for dealing with such a transcendental must reflect its nature, and this is achieved only when the thinker is able to 'feel' the unique generality and all-pervasiveness of the concept he is dealing with. Maritain has this in mind when he writes: It is not enough to employ the word being, to say 'Being.' We must have the intuition, the intellectual perception of the inexhaustible and incomprehensible reality thus manifested as the object of this perception. It is this intuition that makes the metaphysician. 2 Being thus emerges as a transcendental. But even as such it must be thought about. And it does not take much thinking about Being to come to the conclusion expressed by N. Hartmann: 'Being and unity point to each other--this is the inner nature of these concepts.' 3 This is a result of the all-pervasive character of Being. Even those determinations that are not all-pervasive contribute in some measure to the unification of reality. The accidental characteristic of being green, for instance, unifies all the things that are green, to the extent that they are green. It does not unify things that are not green and even those that are green to the extent that they are more than green. But the reason that being green is not a completely unifying factor is that it is not all-pervasive: there are things that are not green and even green things are other things too. This is not so in the case of Being. All things that are can be said to be and are consequently a

____________________ 1 Kategorien, p. 26. 2 Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, p. 44. 3 Nicolai Hartmann, Uber das Seinsproblem in der griechischen Philosophie vor Plato, p. 39. -5form of Being. To the extent, therefore, that things are, they are unified by that which is common to all of them, that they are Being. But, it may be argued, only to the extent that things are, are they unified by Being. More can be said about things than that they just are. They are also this or that, have this characteristic or that. But, again, they have these characteristics only to the extent that these are, and therefore Being succeeds in involving itself with them and and performing its unifying labour. What happens, then, is that Being is a factor that cannot be kept out of anything, that it somehow succeeds in introducing itself into areas that seem, at first glance, to be quite far removed from it. And as such, it serves as a unifying aspect of everything. In this sense, Being constitutes the unity of everything that is. Before exploring the implications of the unity that Being succeeds in accomplishing, it might well be wise to pause for a moment and ask a question. It was said that Being succeeds in involving itself in everything that is. But how about those things that are not? Isn't Being excluded from the area of things that are not? Here is a threat to the allpervasiveness of Being, for it an area can be found that is immune from the inroads that Being makes on everything, then the all-pervasiveness of Being has come to an end. The question then is whether that which is not, or Nothing, can deny allpervasiveness to Being. It would seem that this is one of the questions that concerned Parmenides. His conclusion, it would appear, is that to limit Being by Nothing would be to attribute to Nothing an act of denying all-pervasiveness to Being that would mark it, not as Nothing, but as Being. Nothing, without first converting itself into Being, cannot appear on the horizon and have any effect. To quote one of the fragments: . . . the one that It Is, and it is not possible for It Not to Be, is the way of credibility, for it follows Truth; the other, -6that It is Not, and that It is bound Not to Be, this I tell you is a path that cannot be explored; for you could neither recognize that which Is Not, nor express it. 1 By attributing to Nothing the effect of limiting Being in any way, the essential nature of Nothing is overlooked, which consists of not having any characteristics at all. In the 'Sophist' 2 Plato makes this clear when the Stranger asks: 'Do you see, then, that notbeing in itself can neither be spoken, uttered, or thought, but that it is unthinkable, unutterable, unspeakable, indestructible?' As a consequence, Being remains supreme in its all-pervasiveness, not to be threatened even by Nothing. The result of this reasoning is the denial that Nothing is, or, in the words of Parmenides:'. . . it is neither expressible nor thinkable that What-Is-Not Is.' 3 This conclusion is the result not so much of an attempt to save the integrity of Being as of a

careful understanding of the meaning of Nothing. With Nothing thus put out of the way and with Being in a position to occupy the whole field, various peculiar results ensue. For one, change is read out together with Nothing. This is so because change is possible only when not-Being or Nothing is granted some measures of Being. A can become B only because initially A was not yet B and when it becomes B it is no longer A. This involves Nothing because only to the extent that A is taken as not being B can it become B, and A cannot be B only to the extent that there is Nothing. The impossibility of change in a position that denies the Being of Nothing, as is exemplified best in the poem of Parmenides, is thus seen to hinge on another result of the same position: the denial of all diversity. The argument is closely analogous to that of change. A is not ____________________ 1 Fragment 2 in Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers, p. 42. 2 Plato, "'Sophist,'"238. 3 Fragment 7, 8, Kathleen Freeman, op. cit., p. 43. -7B only to the extent that A in some way contains not-being or Nothing. Without that element of Nothing there is literally nothing to keep things apart from one another and so they fuse into one great Being, undifferentiated in any way and consisting of a total unity. This unity forbids change and diversity because these are incompatible with the total unity that Being, developed along these lines, implies. Gilson expresses this by saying that if Being is sameness, things would either not be or not be different. 1 This kind of Being can be termed pure Being, keeping in mind all the implications of such a sort of Being. Being and Change If the commonly experienced phenomena of change and diversity are to be reestablished as real, some new element must be introduced into the analysis of Being. The reason that Being emerges as a concept that, in its pure form, implies a total unity shorn of any element of diversity and change is that Being was understood as the most universally applicable predicate. As such, it constituted an element of sameness and, consequently, the unity of things that are. The underlying assumption seems to have been that Being is applicable to everything in the same sense. Whether it is a tree that is or a relation, to the extent that they are, their Being is the same. But this is not necessarily so. The Being of a tree is a physical one while that of a relation may not be. The Being that adheres to an idea seems to be somewhat different from that which adheres to a concrete object. And yet, though the Being of various kinds of beings is not identical, neither is it completely different, thereby making a homonym of the word Being. Rather, there is a curious relationship between the various senses of the word. To quote Aristotle: ____________________ 1 E. Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, p. 18. -8-

There are many senses in which a thing may be said to 'be,' but they are related to one central point, one definite kind of thing, and have not merely the epithet 'being' in common. Everything which is healthy is related to health, one thing in the sense that it preserves health, another in the sense that it produces it, another in the sense that it is a symptom of health, another because it is capable of it. And that which is medical is relative to the medical art, one thing in the sense that it possesses it, another in the sense that it is naturally adapted to it, another in the sense that it is a function of the medical art. And we shall find other words used similarly to these. So, too, there are many senses in which a thing is said to be, but all refer to one starting point; some things are said to be because they are substances, others because they are affections of substances, others because they are process towards substance, or destructions or privations or qualities of substance or productive or generative of substance, or negations of some of these things or of substance itself. 1 It is clear that while Aristotle roots all expressions of Being in some variation of substance, he nevertheless realizes that the predication of Being is not the same in all cases but differs, depending on its relationship to substance. Nevertheless, these differences are not complete but only partial. This discovery, that the predication of Being in different senses has yet a basic similarity, is expressed by saying that Being is predicated analogically, a term used by St. Thomas. He writes: . . . some things are said of God and creatures analogically, and not in a purely equivocal nor in a purely univocal sense. For we can name God only from creatures. Hence, whatever is said of God and creatures is said according as there is some relation of the creature to God. . . . Now this mode of community is a mean between pure equivocation and simple ____________________ 1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, T2, 1003a32. -9univocation. For in analogies the idea is not, as it is in univocals, one and the same; yet it is not totally diverse as in equivocals; but the name which is thus used in a multiple sense, signifies various proportions to some one thing: e.g., healthy, applied to urine signifies the sign of animal health; but applied to medicine it signifies the cause of the same health. 1 The analogical predication of Being becomes necessary when it is realized that the Being of beings in different categories is different. For Thomas the best example of this is God and his creatures whose Being cannot be univocally the same as that of God. But the same insight applies equally to beings less disproportionate. The realization that Being is not applied univocally but that different kinds of things have Being attributed to them analogically, makes clear that only a consideration of Being that distinguishes between a being and Being and between what a thing is and that it is can hope to deal successfully with the real world as it presents itself. The doctrine of the analogical predication of Being shows that Being is not an undifferentiated something that is the same wherever it is found, but that it differs in the various instances in which it is found. This introduces the distinction between Being

and the beings that have Being attributed to them analogically. And the fact that different kinds of beings have Being attributed to them in different ways shows that there is some intrinsic relationship between the kind of Being a thing has and what it is. This immediately introduces the distinction between the fact that a thing is and what that thing is. ____________________ 1 St. Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings, vol. I, p. 120 ( Summa Theologica, I, 13, answ. 5). In Heidegger's words: 'Die Analogie steht nun gleichsam zwischen Univokation und Äquivokation, sie ist nicht ganz jene und deckt sich auch nicht mit dieser. Es herrscht keine durchgängige Identität, aber auch keine vollständige Verschiedenheit, sondern eine eigentümliche Verflechtung beider: IdentitÄt in der Verschiedenheit und Verschiedenheit in der Identität.'-- Kategorien, pp. 156-7. -10Though it is a discussion of this latter distinction that will be of greatest significance for the purposes of this essay, it should nevertheless be kept in mind that this is possible only because the consideration of Being has shifted from a discussion of Being to a discussion of the Beings of beings. Once this split into individuals as the objects of ontological discussion has been introduced, the problem of the relation between what a thing is and that it is can arise. Without this split into individuals the question of what a thing is cannot arise because Being, as an entity of totally undifferentiated unity, cannot be asked what it is. Only when there is something else which is not what the thing asked about is, can the question of what arise. Since there is nothing with which to contrast Being, it cannot be asked what it is. Essence and Existence When, in considering an individual thing, the question concerns what it is by its nature, it is its essence that is being asked for. In Aristotle's words: 'What, then, you are by your very nature is your essence.' 1 That essences are inextricably bound up with Being is a result of the fact that nothing can be without being something. 2 The only way Being is ever met with, in the form of beings, is by means of specific essences that happen to be. This impresses Aristotle to such an extent that he locates the Being of a thing in its essence by writing: There are several senses in which a thing may be said to 'be,' . . . for in one sense the 'being' meant is what a thing is or the individual thing, and in another sense it means that a thing is of a certain quality or quantity or has some such predicate asserted of it. While 'being' has all these ____________________ 1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z3, 1029b16. 2 Cf. Jacques Maritain, Existence and the Existent, p. 24. -11senses, obviously that which is primarily is the 'what,' which indicates the substance of the thing. 1

It is the fact that Being occurs in the form of essences that makes possible intelligibility. Essences makes possible definitions, as is shown by Aristotle's comment that 'The formula, therefore, in which the term itself is not present but its meaning is expressed, this is the formula of the essence of each things.' 2 The world of reasoning and inference, of connections that are the result of the nature of things, is a result of the fact that it is possible to know what a thing is and what its being that involves. In terms of the distinction between what a thing is and the fact that it is, it appears that the essence of a thing does not make it be factually. If the fact that a thing is is termed its existence, then it is clear that for a thing to be in actuality it must somehow have existence added to its essence. The problem that arises immediately concerns the nature of the existence that is added to an essence to make it be. Because Kant summed up the whole problem so well, the liberty of quoting from him somewhat more extensively will be taken. It should be noted that the term Being as used by him refers to existence. He writes: Being is obviously not a real predicate; that is, it is not a concept of something which could be added to the concept of a thing. It is merely the positing of a thing or of certain determinations, as existing in themselves. ____________________ 1 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z1, 1028a10. Lowith writes: '. . . Aristotle, in spite of his emphasis on Being as Being, is not concerned with the sheer factuality of existence in general or with the contingency of human existence in particular, but with essential existence, because "whatness" and "thatness" are inseparable and neither precedes the other.'-- Karl Lowith, "'Heidegger: Problem and Background of Existentialism,'" in Social Research, vol. 15, p. 359. This puts Aristotle in the 'essentialist' class. Cf. E. Gilon, op. cit., pp. 41-51. 2 Aristotle, Metaphysics, Z3, 1029b19. -12A hundred real thalers do not contain the least coin more than a hundred possible thalers. For as the latter signify the concept, and the former the object and the positing of the object, should the former contain more than the latter, my concept would not, in that case, express the whole object, and would not therefore be an adequate concept of it. My financial position, is, however, affected very differently by a hundred real thalers than it is by the mere concept of them (that is, of their possibility). For the object, as it actually exists, is not analytically contained in my concept, but is added to my concept (which is a determination of my state) synthetically; and yet the conceived hundred thalers are not themselves in the least increased through thus acquiring existence outside my concept. 1 In this passage Kant points out that the addition of existence to an essence (or concept, as he terms it) cannot in any way affect the essence because otherwise it would be a different essence that has come into existence. And yet it is clear that just the essence alone is not sufficient to translate itself into the world of reality. The Being of anything must therefore be a combination of two factors: the essence and the existence.

This had been the position of St. Thomas Aquinas. He made the distinction between essence and existence by writing: . . . Boethius says, in his De hebdomadibus, that in the beings which are beneath God in perfection, the act of existing (esse) and quiddity (quod est) are really distinct; or as some say, that which is (quod est) and that by which it is (quo est) differ from each other. For the act of existing itself of a thing is that by which a thing exists; just as running is that by which someone runs. 2 ____________________ 1 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith, A598-9, B626-7, pp. 504-5. 2 St. Thomas Aquinas, The Soul, tr. John Patrick Rowan, art. 6, answ., p. 74. -13And then he made clear that the Being of anything is a composite of these two elements: Being (ens) is the existing thing (id quod habet esse), including both essence and the act of existing. It is thus complex or composite. Essence is one of its components, and its notion is disengaged only after we know being. 1 And finally, Thomas insists that, at least in the beings below God, essence and existence are separate and can be known separately: Now, every essence or quiddity can be understood without anything being known of its existing. I can know what a man or a phoenix is and still be ignorant whether it exists in reality. From this it is clear that the act of existing is other than essence or quiddity, unless, perhaps, there is a being whose quiddity is its very act of existing. 2 The ontological position that has thus been adopted is one that is based on a sharp distinction between essence and existence. There are essences that do not have any existence added to them. These are imaginary or possible creatures. Since intelligibility is rooted in essence, much can be known about these imaginary creatures without reference to their existence. On the other side stand essences that have existence added to them. The nature of this combination is not very clear in St. Thomas. He maintains that the act of existing is a result of a form 3 since it is clear that nothing can exist as existence but it must be a nature that exists. The ____________________ 1 Arnaud Maurer in St. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, p. 26, n. 1. 2 Ibid., p. 46. Avicenna, as reported by E. Gilson, op. cit., p. 78, goes so far as to maintain that existence is an accidental addition to essence. 3 'The act of existing (esse) is related to a form as something consequent upon the form in virtue of its very nature, and not as an effect to its efficient cause, in the manner in which motion, for example, is related to the power of the thing that produces it.'--St. Thomas Aquinas , The Soul, art. 14, answ. 4, p. 184. -14-

'. . . essence means that through which and in which a being has its act of existing (esse).' 1 Yet the distinction between essence and existence is as sharp as ever because the fact remains that either a thing exists or it does not exist and there is no middle ground. Though Thomas knows that it is not possible to couple essences with existence indiscriminately, he nevertheless insists that the Being that is attributed to anything must be composed of these two separate aspects and that it is only by keeping them separate that an understanding of Being can ensue. Essentialism The ontology of essence/existence is, however, not without its problems. Basically, the difficulty that arises is that the distinction is too sharp. If existence is not essence, then what is it? The impossibility of answering this question is a result of the fact that the term 'what' necessarily refers to the essence of a thing and since existence is precisely that which is not essence, it is impossible to ask for the 'what' of existence. Any answer given would convert existence into an essence and, once that happens, various curious results ensue. For instance, existence, now considered as an essence, will not exist. Referring to this, Maritain writes: Therefore Cajetan can say in a phrase full of meaning for the metaphysician that it is not contradictory to say existentia non existit, existence does not exist. For the term existentia, the concept and the term existence designates existence itself from the standpoint of essence, in as much as it is an intelligible concretion, a focus of intelligible determination, existentia ut significate, as apprehended by a concept. 2 Any attempt to essentialize existence succeeds only in making sure that existence escapes its grasp and that whatever ____________________ 1 St. Thomas Aquinas, On Being and Essence, p. 28. 2 Jacques Maritain, A Preface to Metaphysics, p. 20. -15does result does not express that factuality which is existence. But it is not only pure existence, shorn of any remnant of essence that causes considerable difficulty. The same is true of pure essence. If essence has no element of existence in it, then it is not. And then, when existence is added to it and it is realized, its essence still is not. It would then seem impossible to say that 'this' or 'that' is because in so doing it is asserted that a particular essence is existence and this is manifestly impossible. That which exists, as existence, cannot be anything specific, which is contrary to common experience. The drawing of too sharp a distinction between essence and existence reveals itself as being fraught with perils. In order to maintain the purity of existence, all essence and therefore all intelligibility must be kept away from existence. And, equally, in order to maintain the purity of essence, all existence must be kept away from essence, thereby removing it from the real world. The result of positing a sharp ontological distinction between essence and existence has been to bring out existence as a factor in Being that, because of its antagonism to essence, cannot be absorbed into any intelligible categories. If this is to be avoided, then

the distinction between essence and existence must be drawn less sharply or even denied entirely. Being, then, would not imply an essence to which existence has been added, but a determination of essence. Gilson mentions 1 Duns Scotus to the effect that whenever there is essence there is Being. The realization of an essence consists not of an addition of existence to it which transforms it into something that has Being, but more and more Being accrues to an essence as it perfects itself more and more. 2 Instead of the essence not being affected at all by coming into being, it is only the determination of the ____________________ 1 E. Gilson, op. cit., p. 86. 2 Referring to Suarez, Descartes and Spinoza, Gilson writes: 'To all of them existence is but the complete actuality of essence, and nothing else.'--Op. cit., p. 110. -16essence that gives anything the measure of Being it may have. Where previously there had been a sharp distinction between something existing or not existing, with no possible middle ground between them, there is now an infinite gradation of Being with every possible intermediary level of Being. As Heidegger, in speaking of Duns Scotus, writes: 'Every individual object of natural reality has a certain value, a level of its reality. This increases progressively as the object participates more intensively in absolute reality.' 1 For the school of thought that adheres to the essence/existence distinction a gradation of existence is impossible because everything either exists or does not and there is nothing in between. As Ross, commenting on the controversy between Aristotle and Plato, writes: . . . Aristotle would say, it makes all the difference between his own and the Platonic view that he assigns no separate existence to either the intermediate or the final result of abstraction, while the Platonist assigns it to both. 2 The issue here is whether there can be intermediate levels of existence. For Aristotle this is impossible because otherwise a thing would be and not be all at once and '. . . it is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not to be, as some think Heraclitus says; for what a man says he does not necessarily believe.' 3 For Plato, on the other hand, there is a realm corresponding to opinion in which there is not full Being but a mixture of both Being and nonBeing. In the Timaeus he writes: . . . What is that which always is and his no becoming; and what is that which is always becoming and never is? That which is apprehended by intelligence and reason is always ____________________ 1 Kategorien, pp. 76-7. 2 William David Ross, Aristotle, p. 158-9. 3 Aristotle, Metaphysics, T3, 1005b23. -17in the same state; but that which is conceived by opinion with the help of sensation and without reason, is always in a process of becoming and perishing and never really is. 1

The area that is conceived by opinion corresponds to the area of reality in which essences are not fully determinate and therefore not fully real. Since the purpose of this chapter is not a treatment of the major figures in the history of philosophy from the point of view of their attitude to this problem, a task which has been performed to some extent by Gilson in his Being and Some Philosophers, but to present the problems themselves, it will not be necessary to cite other thinkers on the two sides of the question. It should be pointed out, however, that the 'continuity in Being' school of thought, that which denies the sharp distinction between essence and existence and maintains that Being is not a coupling of essence with existence but a determination of essence itself, can be and usually is accused of not descending to the world of reality. As George G. Leckie writes: Platonism is content to know the order of entia rationis, beings of the conceptual orders, the ratios and sets of ratios, of formal reference in the horizontal plane. How these refer to entia naturae, beings of nature, namely, the individual or terminated substance in nature remains a mystery. 2 By not making the sharp distinction between that which exists and that which does not, the Platonists are moving in a world of intelligible essences without ever coming to ____________________ 1 Plato, "'Timaeus,'"27-8. To adhere to the idea of a being-continuum it is necessary to insist that even in appearance there is a measure of reality, which is exactly what Plato does: 'Instead of juxtaposing being and non-being, that is, reality and appearance, Plato attempted to show that, even in appearance, there was a measure of reality.'-- E. Gilson, op. cit., p. 16. 2 George G. Leckie in Introduction to St. Thomas Aquinas, Concerning Being and Essence, p. xxiii. -18grips with the factuality and perhaps arbitrariness of existence. The Platonic disregard of individuals in favour of universals is a result of the fact that individuals harbour the arbitrariness of existence while universals, as intelligible essences, can be kept clear of it. Such in essentialist position functions very well within its own frame of reference, that of pure Being, but cannot evolve a concept of Being which includes the factuality of given existence. 1 The best illustration of such a position, from the point of view of Kierkegaard, is Hegel. Though Kierkegaard's polemic against Hegel cannot be treated here adequately, as that would involve an essay in its own right, it might be proper to quote one or two paragraphs as illustrations. In trying to contrast essence with Being, which for Hegel is immediate and entirely undifferentiated, Hegel writes: Any mention of the Essence implies that we distinguish it from Being: the latter is immediate and, compared with the Essence, we look upon it as mere seeming and sham. But, this reflected light or seeming is not an utter nonentity and nothing at all, but Being which has been absorbed. The point of view given by the Essence is the same as what is termed reflection. This word 'reflection' is originally applied, when a ray of light in a

straight line impinges upon the surface of a mirror, from which it is thrown back. In this phenomenon we have a double fact: first, in immediate which is, and, secondly, the same thing as derivative or statuted. The same process takes place when we reflect or think upon an object; for here we aim at knowing the object, not in its immediacy, but as derivative or mediated. The problem or aim of philosophy is often represented as the attainment of a knowledge of the essence of things: a phrase which only means that things instead of being left ____________________ 1 It should also be kept in mind that in the realm of pure Being it is exceedingly difficult to resist the tendency for everything to be absorbed into the undifferentiated, unchanging One. -19in their immediacy, must be shown to be mediated by, or based upon, something else. 1 Essence is thus seen to be a reflection of Being into itself which crystallizes it as that which it is. Since, by reflecting into itself, it establishes a relationship with itself, Being, in the form of essence, loses its immediacy. But, since the relationship that it establishes is with itself, it returns to itself, and this return to itself by means of the mediation of essence is existence. To quote once more: As it first comes, the chief feature of the Essence is shown in itself and intermediation in itself. But when it has completed the circle of intermediation (als Totalität der Vermittlung), its unity with itself is explicitly stated as the selfannulling of difference, and therefore of intermediation. Once more then we come back to immediacy or Being; but Being insofar as it is intermediated (vermittelt) by annulling (Aufheben) the intermediation. And that Being is Existence. 2 The Being which contains existence is that which emerges after the mediation that essence has accomplished is reabsorbed into the immediacy of Being. But this new Being cannot ignore the mediation of essence but must contain it. As a result, the Being that contains existence is a Being that succeeds in connecting divergencies into the immediacy of Being: Existence is the immediate unity of reflection-into-itself; and reflection-into-another. It follows from this that existence is the indefinite multitude of existents as reflectedintothemselves, which at the same time equally throw light upon one another,--which, in short, are relative and form a ____________________ 1 G. W. F. Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, tr. William Wallace, No. 112, add., p. 179. 2 Ibid., No. 122, add., p. 197. -20world of reciprocal dependence, and of infinite interconnection between grounds and consequents. 1

The Hegelian evolution of the concept of existence has been quoted at some length in order to show the philosophic position which is the target of the Kierkegaardian criticism. Existence, as it emerges in Hegel, is a step in the evolution of pure Being. As such, it partakes of the conceptuality of pure Being and itself becomes a strain in the totality of it. The splitting up of pure Being, which is the accomplishment of essence, is corrected by existence's tendency to permit the essences' reflection-into-themselves to extend to other things and thereby annul the separation achieved by essence. That such an understanding of existence is not one that sees in it a measure of the factuality that escapes conceptualization is clear. It also remains a mystery how such a completely abstract determination of existence comes to be split up into the many existences that present themselves in the diversity of beings. 2 Instead, there is a conceptual scheme that assigns to existence a task in the qualification of Being from an immediate to a mediate and once again an immediate level, but which, in the process, coverts existence into a kind of essence, but essence nevertheless. Conclusion There now emerge two distinct approaches to the problem of Being which are central for the purposes of this essay. On the one hand stands the distinction between essence and existence. Maintained in all its severity, this distinction tends to make out of existence a fact very difficult to absorb into intelligibility because of its repugnance to essence. ____________________ 1 G. W. F. Hegel, The Logic of Hegel, tr. William Wallace, No. 123, p. 198. 2 This is Kierkegaard's criticism of the passage quoted. See Postscript, p. 267n. -21Existence becomes the ground from which the categories of understanding are generated. In Thomas's words: Since a thing includes both its quiddity and its existence (esse: to be), truth is more grounded on the existence (esse) of the thing than on its quiddity itself. For, indeed, the noun ens (being) is derived from esse (to be) so that the adequation in which truth consists is achieved by a kind of assimilation of the intellect to the existence (esse) of the thing, through the very operation whereby it accepts it such as it is. 1 The operation of thought is not a continuous process leading from the conception to the thing but there is a conception or essence which is applied to an existence. If such an understanding of existence might be termed existentialist, in a pre-Kierkegaardian sense of the term, then Kant is an existentialist when he writes: It is therefore not a perfectly correct expression to say, A sea-unicorn is an existing animal, but conversely, the predicates which I think together with an unicorn are suitable to a certain existing sea-animal. Not, regular hexagons exist in nature, but the predicates which are thought together with a hexagon are suitable to certain things in nature, like the cells in honeycombs, or rock-crystal. 2

From this point of view Being is the rooting of an essence in existence with a sharp discontinuity between an essence that is not so rooted and one that is. And even in the latter there is a discontinuity between its factuality and its nature. The problems of this school of thought concern the need to understand existence without destroying it in the process. That is the only way that its existentialism can remain secure. ____________________ 1 Quoted by Gilson, op. cit., p. 188. 2 Immanuel Kant, "'The Only Possible Argument for the Demonstration of the Existence of God'" in Essays and Treatises, tr.?, Section I, Contemplation the First, I, p. 231. -22On the other side stands the point of view that sees existence as some form of determination of essence. Here there is a being-continuum from that which has full Being to that which does not have it at all. Existence is a characteristic of essence that increases or diminishes in magnitude as the essence undergoes various developments on its way towards realization. This position, by saving intelligibility, tends to lose existence as factuality and converts it into a new sort of essence, in no way dependent upon the arbitrariness of existence. And, in its concept of pure Being, it is caught in that concept's tendency towards undifferentiated unity and is therefore hard-put to explain the diversity, real or otherwise, that presents itself to man. It will appear that the Kierkegaardian critique of the essentialist position is a protest, in terms of the human situation, against the intelligible indifference of that position to the existence of man. As a result, existence emerges as a human category. -23CHAPTER Kierkegaard and Human Existence

II

KIERKEGAARD'S basic philosophical analysis does not proceed from the ontological point of view of some of the thinkers of the preceding chapter. His basic existential interest does not permit him to assume an objective interest in ontological problems. 1 And yet it is possible to discern a very marked ontological basis from which his existential thinking proceeds. This ontological basis is rarely made the chief object of analysis. Kierkegaard's interest is always existentially Christian and everything other than that can have only secondary interest. And yet there is a definite ontological contribution. To discern this contribution it is advisable to view the Kierkegaardian literature as a totality. 2 In spite of the complexity of shifting points of view represented by various periods and various pseudonymous authors, it would be a mistake to overlook the basic ontological position which underlies the development. The development itself takes place on an ethico-religious level, not an ontological one, which latter aspect of Kierkegaard's thought remains constant throughout the literature. Kierkegaard's own emphasis on the basic unity of his work is based primarily on its religious purpose, even in its aesthetic stage. 3 But it may be possible to discern ____________________ 1 Postscript, pp. 18-19.

2

3

For a discussion of the unity of Kierkegaard's work, see Regis Jolivet , Introduction to Kierkegaard, tr. W. H. Barber, pp. 110-13. Point of View, pp. 148-9.

-24an ontological position of which the different stages are existential expressions. Human Existence Kierkegaard undoubtedly is troubled by the problem that appeared in the preceding chapter. He has read in Spinoza that the more perfect a thing is the more it is. Such a position will be recognized without much difficulty as one that adheres to the idea of a being-continuum in which essences are more and more fully realized, thereby achieving more and more existence. As has been previously pointed out, 1 this position is in the Platonic tradition as far as its understanding of Being is concerned. But Kierkegaard does not like that position and therefore claims that what is lacking here is a distinction between factual being and ideal being. The terminology which permits us to speak of more or less of being, and consequently of degrees of reality or being, is in itself lacking in clearness, and becomes still more confusing when the above distinction is neglected; when, in other words, Spinoza does indeed speak profoundly but fails to consider the difficulty. In the case of factual existence it is meaningless to speak of more or less of being. A fly, when it exists, has as much being as God; the stupid remark I here set down has as much factual existence as Spinoza's profundity; for factual existence is subject to the dialectic of Hamlet: to be or not be. Factual existence is wholly indifferent to any and all variations in essence, and everything that exists participates without petty jealousy in being, and participates in the same degree. Ideally, to be sure, the case is quite different. But the moment I speak of being in the ideal sense I no longer speak of being, but of essence. The highest ideality is necessary, and therefore it is. ____________________ 1 Supra, p. 18. -25But this its being is identical with its essence; such being does not involve it dialectically in the determination of factual existence, since it is; nor can it be said to have more or less of being in relation to other things. In the old days this used to be expressed, if somewhat imperfectly, by saying that if God is possible he is eo ipso necessary ( Leibnitz). Spinoza's principle is thus quite correct and his tautology in order; but it is also certain that he altogether evades the difficulty. For the difficulty is to lay hold of God's factual existence, and to introduce God's ideal essence dialectically into the sphere of factual existence. 1 At this point, Kierkegaard has identified himself with the school of thought that sees a sharp distinction between the essence and existence of a thing and has thereby posited the familiar disjunction between the same essence existing or not existing. And Kierkegaard is not reluctant to accept the consequence of this view. He sees that the

element of existence is not subject to demonstration because reasoning always proceeds from existence, not towards it; 2 he sees that existence cannot really be defined because by definition it is turned into an essence rather than in existence, or, in his own words, '. . . the moment I speak of being in the ideal sense, I no longer speak of being, but of essence'; 3 and finally, that his concept of existence precludes the radical unification of thought and being which is the endeavour of the Hegelian concept of being. 4 On this level, Kierkegaard is directly in the tradition of the Thomistic essence-existence distinction. But, of course, there is one additional interpretation that Kierkegaard gives to the word 'existence' which alters fundamentally its meaning and converts it into a characteristically Kierkegaardian concept; and that is the use of existence as the personal existence of the subjective ____________________ 1 Fragments, pp. 32-3n. 2 Ibid., p. 31. 3 Ibid., p. 33n. 4 Postscript, p. 112. -26 thinker. Where previously the essence-existence distinction was applied in a completely objective way to all kinds of beings, among which the thinker himself had no preeminence, the Kierkegaardian existence is that of the subjective thinker whose thinking proceeds from his personal involvement in this thought. 1 Such thought is necessarily different from objective thinking since the former generates pathos while the latter does not. 2 But, nevertheless, the problems that this kind of thought raises are in many ways analogous to the problems of existence in the pre-Kierkegaardian, nonpersonal interpretation of that concept. It must be made clear that such an interpretation of the Kierkegaardian concept of existence does not mean to imply that his existence is a direct continuation of the nonpersonal interpretation of existence. That would be extravagant since it would deprive Kierkegaard of an originality that is clearly his. What is claimed is that given the concept of existence and coupled to it the subjective interest of Kierkegaard, the central problems that arise reflect on a subjective plane the previous problems of existence on the objective level. It might possibly be maintained that the connection is even closer, that the subjective interest that Kierkegaard adds to existence is not an extraneous addition but actually nothing more than taking seriously the concept of existence as applied to the thinker. But this rather extreme position will be discarded for the more conservative one indicated above. Kierkegaard's polemic against the objective thinker is a ____________________ 1 That there is no one place where Kierkegaard defines existence is not surprising, as he indicates that it cannot be defined by its nature since, once defined, it is not existence anymore but becomes essence. In his Introduction to the Postscript, p. xviii, Lowrie suggests the use, in some instances, of the word 'life' to indicate Kierkegaard's meaning of the term. In his biography of Kierkegaard ( Walter Lowrie, Kierkegaard, p. 302.) he suggests as a definition 'the conditions of a truly humane

2

life.' See Postscript, p. 274. Postscript, pp. 347ff.

-27good illustration of the way in which the more familiar issues of the essence-existence philosophers reappears in Kierkegaard. The position that maintains a sharp distinction between an existing and a non-existing essence must generally attribute any value that anything may have to its element of existence, since it is existence that lends reality to any essence. The most perfect essence, without existence, is inferior to a considerably baser essence, if only it has existence. The truth, and therefore value, of anything resides in its being imbedded in existence, realized in factuality. 1 Now, if the existence under consideration is the existence of man, then any value that a man can realize must consist of his embedding it in his personal existence, in Kierkegaardian terminology, 'the transformation of inwardness and its actualization in himself.' 2 This inward appropriation is not merely a more intense way of holding a belief, a belief that has some ontological status even if it has not been fully absorbed into existence. Without such transformation of inwardness the value or truth involved cannot be said to be at all since it corresponds analogically to an essence without existence, which has no reality. Any theory based ____________________ 1 This was realized, at least as far as the truth of anything is concerned, by Aquinas when he wrote: 'Since a thing includes both its quiddity and its existence (esse: to be), truth is more grounded on the existence (esse) of the thing than on its quiddity itself. For, indeed, the noun ens (being) is derived from esse (to be) so that the adequation in which truth consists is achieved by a kind of assimilation of the intellect to the existence (esse) of the thing, through the very operation whereby it accepts it such as it is.'-- Thomas Aquinas, in I Sent., d. 19, q. 5, a. I, Solutio, ed. by P. Mandonnet, vol. 1, p. 486, quoted by Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, p. 188.

2

This may be the place to mention Gilson's criticism of Kierkegaard's use of existence in a subjective sense. He writes: 'For, indeed, to identify subjectivity with existence, as Kierkegaard always did, was but to turn existence into one more essence, namely, that whose very essence it is to preclude objectivity.'--Loc. cit. Why anything turns into an essence once it cannot be considered objectively is not made clear. It would rather seem that objective consideration (definition) makes essences, not the lack of it. Postscript, p. 44n.

-28on a continuous increasing of the motivating power of a belief without the radical transformation of inwardness, would correspond to the familiar being-continuum of Plato and Spinoza which, as was shown, 1 Kierkegaard rejects energetically. The discontinuity between a truth that has been transformed into inwardness and one that has not corresponds to the discontinuity between an essence with existence and one without. On the subjective, Kierkegaardian level, this discontinuity corresponds to the 'leap' of the subjective thinker. Whereas the philosophers of the being-continuum can

talk of quantitative changes permitting an approximating transition, 2 Kierkegaard sees change as a 'continual leap in existence.' 3 As a subjective reflection of the basic structure of being, the leap is a process up to which objective analysis can lead, preparing the way for it, but not grasping it essentially. 4 It is easy to see why Kierkegaard must insist on this, since intelligibility would reduce the leap to a mediation, which is the opposite of the leap. The fact that reflection cannot mediate the leaps of existence is a result of Kierkegaard's identification of existence with subjectivity and not with knowledge. It is subjectivity and its necessary accompaniment, pathos, that reflect in human reality the factual unintelligibility of human existence. Knowledge is always of possibilities, of unrealized modes of existence. By means of emotional involvement the subjective thinker is able to translate into modes of existence the essences that were previously possibilities. Kierkegaard is of the opinion that it is emotion that expresses existence because he feels that by means of emotional involvement the subjective thinker introduces into the situation that aspect of himself which is his reality. This attaches itself, for Kierkegaard, not to reflection, because reflection ____________________ 1 Supra, p. 26. 2 Kierkegaard quotes Jacobi to that effect.--Postscript, p. 94. 3 Fear and Trembling, p. 59n. 4 Postscript, pp. 105-6. -29is intelligibility and mediation, the characteristics of precisely that which is not existence. Emotion or pathos, on the other hand, is generally considered the nonintelligible and that which, because of its qualitative nature, cannot be mediated. These considerations make emotion the almost ideal medium of human existence. The primacy which emotion enjoys in the thinking of Kierkegaard 1 corresponds to the ontological primacy of existence over essence. Just as this latter viewpoint does not dispense with essence but roots it in existence, so the Kierkegaardian viewpoint does not substitute emotion for reflection but insists on a reflection that not only reckons with but is rooted in the existentially emotional situation of the subjective thinker. It has now been shown that Kierkegaard's polemic against the objective thinker who proceeds by means of mediation and his preference for the discontinuous leap of the subjective thinker can be traced to his ontological disjunction between the existing and the non-existing. But the leap is only a more specialized version of the more extensive concept of choice that pervades Kierkegaard. It is not difficult to see that choice would occupy a more central position in the philosophy of the existence disjunction than in that of the being-continuum. In the case of Kierkegaard, because of his coupling of subjective interest with his basic ontological position, it would not be unreasonable to expect a subjective analysis of the phenomenon of human choice. And that is certainly there. 2 But there is much more too. There is an important emphasis on the 'how' rather than the 'what' of the choice. Kierkegaard writes: If you will understand me aright. I should like to say that in making a choice it is not so much a question of choosing

____________________ 1 'There is only one proof of the birth of Christianity and that, quite rightly, is from the emotions, when the dread of sin and a heavy conscience torture a man into crossing the narrow line between despair bordering upon madness--and Christendom.'-Journals, p. 314. 2 Either/Or, vol. 2, pp. 133ff. -30the right as of the energy, the earnestness, the pathos with which one chooses. Thereby the personality announces its inner infinity, and thereby, in turn, the personality is consolidated. Therefore, even if a man were to choose the wrong, he will nevertheless discover, precisely by reason of the energy with which he chose, that he had chosen the wrong. For the choice being made with the whole inwardness of his personality, his nature is purified and he himself brought into immediate relation with the eternal Power whose omnipresence interpenetrates the whole of existence. This transfiguration, this higher consecration, is never attained by that man who chooses merely aesthetically. 1 Furthermore, he maintains that if it were not possible for God-fearing men, under the same circumstances, to choose opposites, then the essential relationship between man and God would not exist. 2 The key to the understanding of Kierkegaardian choice resides apparently not in its content but in the way a content is chosen. By saying only this much, however, it would appear that Kierkegaard is much more modern than he is, that his thought is devoid of any kind of positive direction and restricts itself to the authentication of any kind of life, provided it is lived with sufficient intensity. This is clearly not so. If anything, then Kierkegaard has a too narrowly parochial point of view, especially in regard to religious values. How is it, then, that he can still write what has been quoted above? To understand that it is once again necessary to go back to the basic problems involved in the ontology of essence/ existence. It has already been pointed out that the school of thought that posits a sharp disjunction between an existing and a non-existing essence thereby involves itself in a difficult dialectic. If the disjunction holds, then what gives being or reality (in Kierkegaard's terminology 'factual ____________________ 1 Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 141. 2 Works of Love, p. 186. -31being') to anything is its existence, the fact that it is. But nothing is just an existence-everything that exists is the existence of something. Yet the element that makes a thing be something, its essence, does not exist since it is the element that is the opposite of existence, namely essence. The result of this is that being or reality cannot be attributed to that element of something that makes it be what it is, but only to the fact that it is. And, since intelligibility resides not in the factual existence of anything but in an understanding of what it is, intelligibility is lost together with essences. 1

On its own subjective level, the Kierkegaardian analysis of choice reflects this very same dialectic. If the inward transformation of the subject corresponds to existence, then the nature of that which is inwardly transformed corresponds to essence. Since it is existence that lends being or reality to anything, and since, in choice, it is the 'how' and not the 'what' that corresponds to existence, the 'how' of a choice assumes the importance that the quoted paragraph indicates. Real choice involves 'deepening of the self.' 2 It is an act of realization that corresponds to the achievement of existence on the part of an essence. But here too the familiar dialectic immediately presents itself. If what has been said is so, then the 'what' of a choice has no importance at all since being or reality attaches itself only to the 'how' or existential aspect of the choice. Kierkegaard cannot admit this fully since that would undermine the religious position he has made his own. He therefore claims that even if the choice was wrong, if only it was made with pathos, the chooser 'will . . . discover precisely by reason of the energy with which he chose, that he had chosen the wrong.' 3 That is, the right 'how' leads to the right 'what' in the long run. Actually, that is but the subjective way of saying that exist____________________ 1 This problem, in relation to Averroes and Avicenna, is developed by Gilson, op. cit., pp. 82ff. 2 Works of love, p. 186. 3 Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 141. -32ence precedes essence, that reasoning proceeds from existence and not towards it. On the objective level this position claims that it is this boy who is John, not John who is this boy. Subjectively, it is an existence that is good, not goodness that is an existence. To get at the good, therefore, it is necessary to start from an existence--which in Kierkegaard involves the deepening of the self by means of pathos. 1 Ontological Innovations Such are some of the important similarities that are to be discerned between the problems that have arisen in the pre-Kierkegaardian essence/existence distinction and the Kierkegaardian, subjective interpretation of them. And yet, the addition of Kierkegaard's subjective interest adds completely new dimensions to the problem, dimensions that the non-subjective interpretation of existence did not have at all. The coupling of an essence with existence produces a being in the practical sense of that word. There are just two possibilities under the circumstances: either a particular something (essence) has existence or does not; there are no intermediate possibilities for it is precisely this disjunction that distinguishes this position from the being-continuum point of view. But in the case of human existence this cannot ____________________ 1 The same dialectic that, on the objective level, denies reality to essence, also causes Kierkegaard difficulty in determining the status of that which is chosen. If something assumes existence only by being chosen, then what is it that is being chosen? In his own words: '. . . choice performs at one and the same time the two dialectical movements: that which is chosen does not exist and comes into existence with the choice; that, which is chosen exists, otherwise there would not be a choice.'--

Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 181. The method of subjective reflection of ontological structures extends even to Kierkegaard's analysis of emotion. For example, shame is taken to be the subjective reflection of the fact that 'the immortal spirit is characterized as sex.'-- Concept of Dread, p. 62. This also yields humour. Cf. Chapter IV. -33be said to be so. No man can establish himself existentially to the extent that he is beyond the necessity for constantly renewing his subjectivity, his inward transformation. The human existential position is in a constant state of flux, constantly advancing to or retreating from inwardness, constantly making itself in the process. The achievement of quietude is an almost certain indication that subjectivity has been lost and that the subject, by becoming objective, has lost himself. 1 This is inherent in the position of man for, since he is a composite of the eternal and the temporal, his task is to realize in the temporal the demands of the eternal. Under such circumstances quietude is manifestly impossible for it would mean the assumption, on the part of man, of the point of view of the eternal, something that man neither can nor has a right to do. But if this is so, then man can never exist fully for that would mean that he has become as inward as possible, pure subjectivity, and thereby escaped the necessity of choice. The existence of man emerges now as a completely dynamic process of constant reappropriation of in inwardness that can never be held passively. This being so, the old ontology must undergo some revisions in order to enable it to absorb the existential situation as it now appears. It would seem that the motivating force in the search for a new ontology is the attempt to establish the genuine reality of the changes that man undergoes in passing from one kind of existence to another. Since Kierkegaard sets down as a cardinal principle the necessity for the thinker to be subjectively involved in his thinking, staking his existence on its outcome, it is plain that if it were the case that in reality there is not everything at stake, since ontologically everything that he strives for already pre-exists in him, then the basis of total subjective involvement would be undermined. The doctrine which does precisely this is the Platonic doctrine of recollection. Kierkegaard is aware that this theory is intended to be a ____________________ 1 Cf. Sickness Unto Death, p. 51. -34solution of the dialectic involved in the learning process. 1 Socrates argues that, offhand, learning should be impossible since either the learner does or does not know that which he is to learn. If the learner does already know that which he is going to learn, then he is not learning anything. If, on the other hand, he does not know it, then he can never learn it since he does not know what to learn. To overcome this apparent impossibility, Socrates develops the doctrine of recollection which holds that ontologically the learner has the knowledge he is about to learn already contained in himself except that he has, as it were, forgotten it. Learning thus becomes a noetic process which, however, does not bring about any change in the ontological status of the learner. This is the point at

which Kierkegaard has to differ. And he does so by considering the status of the moment in which the change from ignorance to knowledge takes place. In the Platonic doctrine this moment cannot have any decisive significance for it does not bring about the existence of any truth that had no existence prior to it. The most that it did was to remind the learner of a truth that already was there, except that he had forgotten it. This is by no means a decisive change since it has no ontological effects. For Kierkegaard the change from Error to Truth is like the change from non-being to being. 2 That this must be so follows from the previous discussion of the nature of the inward transformation of truth and its absorption into existence. The moment, therefore, assumes a decisive role for it is the ontological juncture at which knowledge is generated. In contradistinction to the Platonic recollection, Kierkegaard calls this new concept repetition and says of it that . . . repetition is a decisive expression for what 'recollection' was for the Greeks. Just as they taught that all knowledge is ____________________ 1 Fragments, p. 5. 2 Ibid., p. 13. -35a recollection, so will modern philosophy teach that the whole of life is a repetition. The only modern philosopher who had an inkling of this was Leibnitz. Repetition and recollection are the same movement, only in opposite directions; for what is recollected has been, is repeated backwards, whereas repetition properly so called is recollected forwards. 1 The essential factor in this definition, if it can be called that, is its emphasis upon the forward-looking characteristic of repetition. Whereas in recollection there was no real novelty, repetition is oriented towards the future and the truly novel in it. That is not to say that repetition is an expression for complete novelty, with no roots in the past. As if to forewarn such a misunderstanding, Kierkegaard goes on to say that Hope is a new garment, starched and stiff and glittering, yet one has never had it on, and hence one does not know how it will become one and how it fits. Recollection is a discarded garment, which, beautiful as it may be, does not fit, for one has outgrown it. Repetition is an imperishable garment, which fits snugly and comfortably, neither too tight nor too loose. 2 This indicates clearly that, in contradistinction to hope, repetition is not totally novel but that it is rather a combination of the old and the new in a somewhat unspecified way. What is clear, however, is that the combination differs from the Platonic recollection in a very important way. Platonic recollection is not a real combination of the old and the new for it is essentially the old, the pre-existing, obscured momentarily by forgetfulness, but essentially present to the exclusion of real novelty. In repetition there is an element of the pre-existing but there is also an equally present element of the new, the creative, the adventurous.

____________________ 1 Repetition, pp. 3-4. 2 Ibid., p. 4. -36Freedom In granting full ontological status to the achievement of the moment, Kierkegaard places an emphasis upon becoming which is never lost. Becoming, in various senses of the word, becomes the central task of man in his existential situation. 1 And it is by following up the consequences of this position that Kierkegaard arrives at his formulation of freedom. He does this by analysing becoming. Either that which becomes was there previously or it was not. If it was, then nothing has become, for it was there all the time. If it was not there previously, then there is nothing that has become since there must be something that undergoes the process of becoming. The solution to this, says Kierkegaard, 2 is the concept of possibility: which refers to a being that is nevertheless a non-being. Becoming, then, is the transition from possibility to actuality. And in this becoming there resides freedom for that which becomes must be the possible before it becomes the actual and the possible can never be the necessary. The necessary is a determination of essence--that which is necessary is so by its essence. But the difference between the possible and the actual is not one of essence but of being or, in more traditional terms, not a difference of essence but of existence. Necessity is therefore not a synthesis of the possible and the actual but something that is essentially different from both and, since that which becomes changes from the possible to the actual, that which becomes cannot be necessary. What Kierkegaard has done by this argument is to establish freedom at the very core of all that becomes and, since for man everything becomes, at the core of everything. This is carried so far that even the necessity of the past is denied. 3 Since the past, too, has become, it, too, must have ____________________ 1 Postscript, pp. 74ff. 2 Fragments, p. 60. 3 Ibid., p. 63. -37come into being freely and the fact that it is now in the past adds no new necessity to it, at least as far as the 'how' of its happening is concerned. For, argues Kierkegaard, if the past was necessary, then the future is necessary also because there is no way of ascribing freedom to the future without ascribing it to the past. The central position of freedom in Kierkegaard's thought thus becomes apparent. It would not be understanding it, however, if the characteristically existential nature of it were not made clear. For a non-existential understanding freedom is usually a determinant that enters a situation in which the factors are already given--all that remains is the exercise of freedom with regard to them. Ontologically understood, it is not the presence of freedom that gives being to the possibilities in the situation. The

possibilities that can be chosen pre-exist; all freedom does is to choose one or another of them. Not so with Kierkegaard. For him freedom is truly creative for it creates ontologically that which it chooses. Freedom, by means of inward transformation, becomes the truth of that which it appropriates. In Kierkegaard's words: Truth in its very being is not the duplication of being in terms of thought, which yields only the thought of being, merely ensures that the act of thinking shall not be a cobweb of the brain without relation to reality, guaranteeing the validity of thought, that the thing thought actually is, i.e. has validity. No, truth in its very being is the reduplication in me, in thee, in him, so that my, that thy, that his life, approximately, in the striving to attain it, is the very being of truth, is a life, as the truth was in Christ, for He was the truth. 1 As a matter of fact, it would seem that without this reduplication in the subject of the being of the truth involved, the truth is no truth at all. It follows from this that truth is not ____________________ 1 Training in Christianity, p. 201. -38a subjective reflection of in objective certainty, a theory that posits a direct, uninterrupted transfer from objective certainty to subjective belief in truth, but rather a subjective appropriation of an objective uncertainty, which places upon the subject, in his freedom, the power to create truth. As Kierkegaard writes: '. . . An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth attainable for an existing individual.' 1 In the truth so generated there is always an element of the uncertain, of the possibility of error. But it is this uncertainty that is the source of the passion without which no appropiration can take place at all. Involvement implies a stake in the outcome and one can only have a stake in the outcome of something that is undecided, in which there are genuine possibilities. If truth is such an involvement then truth must have this element of uncertainty in it without which it could not be truth. The categories of repetition and freedom have been developed to show the extent of Kierkegaard's departure from the relative stability of the previous essence-existence combination and his introduction into the analysis of human existence the characteristically Kierkegaardian element of subjective striving as a continuous process. When, as has been shown, this situation is given ontological significance, when it is maintained that it is the process of inward transformation that gives being to truth, the fundamental novelty of the theory becomes apparent. At this point, however, it becomes necessary to clear up a potential error. It would seem possible to assert that by means of this theory of constant subjective transformation of truth, Kierkegaard has swung over to the non-existential, being-continuum point of view. Isn't, after all, the process of giving being to truth by means of constant inward transformation a kind of continuum of being where things become more and more inwardly transformed and thereby get more and more ____________________

1

Postscript, p. 182.

-39being? If that is so, then the sharp disjunction between an existing and a non-existing essence is destroyed and what is left is a gradation of being, or in the Kierkegaardian version of it, a gradation of inwardness. But that this is not so is shown by the fact that the Kierkegaardian theory is based upon a series of qualitative leaps which, far from being continuous, are sharply separated. Though at this point it is not necessary to go into detail concerning the three existencespheres of Kierkegaard, the aesthetic, the ethical and the religious, their very presence negates the assumption of any continuum in Kierkegaard and shows the qualitative distinctions that he insists on making. It is true that, unlike the pre-Kierkegaardian essence/existence disjunction, Kierkegaard has more than just two existence possibilities. But this does not imply an adoption of the beingcontinuum point of view but is merely the result of Kierkegaard's joining to the concept of existence that of subjectivity in the human sense, thereby shifting the discussion to a human rather than a general level. On the human level there are three or possibly four kinds of existences (depending on whether or not the distinction between religiousness A and religiousness B is made), 1 but that is still not a continuum. Kierkegaard is able then to maintain his position of truth as its continuous transformation into the being of the subject without forfeiting his existential position. And it is really in the full development of this position that the distinction between existence and pure being is formulated. In the first part of this chapter it was shown how Kierke____________________ 1 There is in Kierkegaard a strain that seems to indicate that basically there are just two choices: 'For although there is only one situation in which either/or has absolute significance, namely, when truth, righteousness and holiness are lined up on one side, and lust and base propensities and obscure passions and perdition on the other; yet, it is always important to choose rightly, even as between things which one may innocently choose. . . .'-- Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 133. This may refer to the choice between the aesthetic on the one hand and the ethico-religious on the other. -40gaard, in his polemic against Spinoza, makes the distinction between factual and ideal being. This distinction corresponds to that between essence and existence of Aquinas. But subsequently it was found that Kierkegaardian existence is considerably different from the usual meaning of the term in that for Kierkegaard existence is human existence. The being with which this is contrasted is the objective being of the objective thinker. To begin with, 'For an objective reflection the truth becomes an object, something objective and thought must be pointed away from the subject. 1 When this is done, then the Hegelian claim of correspondence between thought and being holds. Truth then is a tautology, a system that is generated logically from the very meaning of its terms. The subject and the object then become identical and there is true continuity in the whole of being. But this is pure Being, a kind of Being which is not that of man. Man's situation

as an individual does not permit him to adopt that point of view. Man is a subject and must therefore adopt the subjective point of view. Complete subjectivity is close to madness, with the only difference being that madness is subjective passion for something finite 2 while, for Kierkegaard, full subjectivity is appropriate only towards God. When full subjectivity is reached (which never is), then the object vanishes entirely. This is expressed by saying that 'Only ethical and ethico-religious knowledge has an essential relationship to the existence of the knower.' 3 When full objectivity is reached (which never is), then the subject vanishes, which is expressed by saying that what the subject knows to be true, in a fully objective sense, does not concern him in the least since concern is subjectivity which this subject lacks. Between these two limits swings the position of man, ever absorbing the objective more and more into ____________________ 1 Postscript, p. 171. 2 Ibid., p. 174n. 3 Ibid., p. 177. -41subjectivity, and losing it again to the objective. This is not an unfortunate fall from which man should try to escape as quickly as possible to return to the realm of pure being, but this is the life of man and his task, without which striving he ceases to be human. The distinction between existence and pure being is the distinction between the authentic and the inauthentic, between involvement and aloofness, ultimately between despair and salvation. Pure Being and the Temporal There is no factor as closely related to the existential nature of man's situation as time. Man's existence is in time and because he must operate in and with time he cannot leave existence. Yet time alone does not describe his predicament. It is rather the realization of eternity in time that does. And Kierkegaard's concept of eternity is an instructive one. He writes: . . . time itself in its totality is the instant; eternally understood the temporal is the instant, and the instant eternally understand is only 'once.' In vain would the temporal assume an air of importance, count the instants, and add them all together--if eternity has any say in the matter, the temporal never gets farther than, never comes to more than, the 'once.' For eternity is the opposite; it is not the opposite to a single instant (this is meaningless), it is the opposite to the temporal as a whole, and it opposes itself with the power of eternity against the temporal amounting to more than that. 1 As Lowrie, commenting on this passage, notes, this indicates that Kierkegaard rejects the Hegelian concept of bad eternity as the infinite prolongation of time and declares himself for the concept of eternity as never-changing ____________________ 1 Christian Discourses, pp. 103-4. -42-

presence. 1 But never-changing presence is being in the same sense in which being is opposed to the temporal: What is joy? or what is it to be joyful? It is to be present to oneself; but to be truly present to oneself is this thing of 'today,' that is, this thing of being today, of truly being today. And in the same degree that it is more true that thou art today, in the same degree that thou art quite present to thyself in being today, in that very same degree is the baleful tomorrow non-existent for thee. Joy is the present tense with the whole emphasis upon the present. Therefore it is that God is blessed who eternally says Today. And therefore it is that the lilies and the birds are joy, because with silence and unconditional obedience they are entirely present to themselves in being today. 2 It appears from this that 'the present tense with the whole emphasis upon the present' precludes change, making the 'baleful tomorrow non-existent. But that is eternityeternity is nothing more than the present forever, as it were. And Kierkegaard identifies such a condition with Being. It is not being overly presumptuous to draw from this the inference that pure Being is here identified with eternity, while existence is not temporality without eternity but eternity in time. 3 ____________________ 1 Helene Weiss, "'An Interpretative Note on a Passage in Plotinus'" On Eternity and Time' in Classical Philosophy, vol. 36, no. 3, July, 1941, p. 231, attaches this distinction to sempiternitas and aeternitas. She writes: '. . . sempiternitas, as one of the meanings of "always," implies (a) multitude in the way of succession, and this means a going-on from one stage to the next, and (b) this going-on as one which will never cease, that is, which can never fail to be there.' She continues: 'Unlike sempiternitas, aeternitas knows nothing of parts or of number and quantity and hence of no successive stages. In short, it is entirely free from succession.' Cf. Helene Weiss, "'The Greek Conceptions of Time and Being in the Light of Heidegger's Philosophy'" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 2, no. 2, Dec., 1941, p. 182n. 2 Christian Discourses pp. 349-50. 3 That pure being and eternity are the same Kierkegaard states explicitly: 'In modern philosophy the abstraction culminates in "pure -43To ask at this point what the proofs are that Kierkegaard can muster for the existence of eternity or pure being would be to ask a question that is inadmissible from Kierkegaard's point of view. Proving the existence of anything is something that Kierkegaard frowns on in general because, as a result of his understanding of existence, he maintains that reasoning always proceeds from existence and not towards it. 1 Furthermore, pure being does not exist. If it would exist it would not be pure being. It is therefore not possible to demand even the raw 'pointing to' which substitutes for proof in the case of existence. The question that is legitimate in connection with pure being concerns the relationship of the existing, subjective thinker to it. As such, it ceases to be an objective question and enters the existential dynamic of the subjective thinker. In a broader sense, Kierkegaard's justification for giving a place to pure being in his thinking is to be sought in the light it sheds on the tensions of the subjective thinker. Concepts such as the stages of existence are possible in Kierkegaard in terms of the subjective

thinker's developing relationship to the pure being that partially constitutes his possibilities. All the ensuing dialectic is a result of this relationship, without which the tensions of the subjective thinker would be impossible. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard cannot permit himself to prove the existence of pure being without violating its basic meaning. The point that all this leads to is that eternity or pure being has a place in Kierkegaard's thought. It is not the being of man but it is a part of the being of man, that part of him that is eternal. The realization of man resides in those few moments when he succeeds in capturing the eternal ____________________ being," but pure being is the most abstract expression for eternity. . . .' -- Concept of Dread, p. 75n.

1

As to existence being eternity in time, this is in agreement with Geismar, Soren Kierkegaard, p. 272, who writes: 'Der Existierende ist ein Mensch, der das Ewige in der Zeitlichkeit zu verwirklichen strebt.' Supra, p. 26.

-44into time, into the flux of his existence. As Kierkegaard says of the moment: And now the moment. Such a moment has a peculiar character. It is brief and temporal indeed, like every moment; it is transient as all moments are; it is past, like every moment in the next moment. And yet it is decisive, and filled with the eternal. Such a moment ought to have a distinctive name; let us call it the Fullness of Time. 1 Existence, therefore, is eternity in time and the whole tension and striving of existence comes about because of this dichotomy between eternity and time. There is a point of view which is that of pure being or eternity. For that point of view there is no either/or, no existential choice because, sub specie aeterni, there is no either/or. 2 Indeed, outside of Christianity, which for Kierkegaard is the only truly existential point of view, the only consistent position is that of pantheism which is 'the taking of oneself out of existence by way of recollection into the eternal, whereby all existential decisions become a mere shadow-play beside what is eternally decided from behind.' 3 Such a step is certainly an inauthentic one which will necessarily lead to despair. But it makes sense, because eternity and pure Being make sense. And existence does not make any sense without eternity as the element that gives pathos to existence. It is in Kierkegaard's ambivalent attitude towards mysticism that the place pure Being occupies in his thought is most clearly indicated. That Kierkegaard himself has mystical strains in him is a fact that can hardly be overlooked. Philosophically, he assigns to such experiences a metaphysical status. Indeed, that is one of the main points of his criticism of mysticism. The epithet 'metaphysical' 4 ____________________ 1 Fragments, p. 13. 2 Postscript, p. 270.

3 4

Ibid., p. 203. Either/Or, vol. 2, pp. 208ff.

-45under such circumstances indicates that he is equating the state of mystical experience with that of pure Being. That this is so is shown by the criticism he directs towards the mystical, a criticism that is almost the same as that directed toward pure Being: The fault of the mystic is that by his choice he does not become concrete for himself, nor for God either; he chooses himself abstractly and therefore lacks transparency. For it is a mistake to think that the abstract is the transparent. The abstract is the turbid, the foggy. Therefore, his love for God reaches its highest expression in a feeling, a mood: in the dusk of evening when fogs prevail he melts with vague movements into one with his God. But when one chooses oneself abstractly one does not choose oneself ethically. Only when in his choice a man has assumed himself, is clad in himself, has so totally penetrated himself that every movement is attended by the consciousness of a responsibility for himself, only then has he chosen himself ethically, only then has he repeated himself, only then is he concrete, only then is he in his total isolation in absolute continuity with the reality to which he belongs. 1 Mysticism, then, is the human process the purpose of which is to translate man into a state of being which is beyond the existential. That Kierkegaard rejects this cannot be disputed. But that he is powerfully drawn to it cannot be doubted either. As a matter of fact, Kierkegaard's English biographer writes: 2 'I would say that he [ Kierkegaard] never became a mystic--but that he seemed to be headed in that direction.' And in terms of the previous analysis of the place of pure being in Kierkegaard's thought, this attraction can be easily understood. Since existence derives its tension from the need for the subjective thinker to relate himself to eternity, becoming eternity, which is the aim of the mystic, ____________________ 1 Either/Or vol. 2, pp. 207-8. 2 Lowrie, Kierkegaard, p. 562. -46is the unattainable limit towards which the existential subject strives. The difference between the mystic and Kierkegaard is that the mystic sees in existence an obstacle to complete immersion in eternity, an obstacle which should be overcome as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, does not admit the legitimacy of an escape from the realm in which man finds himself. Man must not escape from existence but take a position in relation to it, or, in his own words, '. . . the mystic teaches that it [existence] is vanity, illusion, sin. But every such judgment is a metaphysical judgment and does not define ethically my relation to existence.' 1 But the nature of the relation towards existence is determined by the presence of the eternal in the subject who establishes that relation. Without that element of the eternal or pure Being, man is just as inauthentic as he is when he tries to disregard the temporal and therefore existential aspect in him. And that is why Kierkegaard is both drawn to and repelled by mysticism. On the one hand, pure mysticism is an escape from existence

into pure Being--the crime of Hegel; on the other hand, it is the element that infuses into temporality that striving tension which is existence. But it is not only in Kierkegaard's analysis of mysticism that the central role eternity plays in his thought appears. It is also apparent in his discussion of choice. The first part of this chapter emphasized Kierkegaard's stress on the 'how' rather than the 'what' of choice. That, however, does not describe the situation fully. Ultimately the 'how' of choice leads to a particular content which is found to be the eternal as a realization of the self: But what is it I choose? Is it this thing or that? No, for I choose absolutely, and the absoluteness of my choice is expressed precisely by the fact that I have not chosen to choose this or that. I choose the absolute. And what is the ____________________ 1 Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 208. -47absolute? It is I myself in my eternal validity. Anything else but myself I never can choose as the absolute, for if I choose something else I choose it as a finite thing and so do not choose it absolutely. 1 Choice, being the faculty of ethical man by means of which he realizes himself, must ultimately attach itself to that in man which it is his task to realize. And that is eternity. Now, of course, this does not mean that once such a choice has been made man has grasped the eternal and possesses it as one possesses an article of clothing once it has been purchased. There is never an instant when the eternal must not be re-chosen, reappropriated. That, indeed, is one of the meanings of repetition. But it is primarily the meaning of existence--eternity in time. For man eternity can have no meaning without being intertwined in the temporal, in the flux of existence. Yet it is the eternal that is chosen and without it the striving of existence is lost. Kierkegaard's dialectical method is another one of the typically Kierkegaardian concepts that can be understood best from the point of view of the juxtaposition of the eternal with the temporal, pure Being and existence. The dialectic is a reflection of man's uneasiness, the fact that he never is in a position where he does not stand at the centre of the tension of these, by now well-known, opposites. Once this basic tension is seen, many other, less directly related little tensions develop, all of which, however, can be traced back to the basic opposition between pure Being and existence. Thus, for instance, the most elementary choice of good over evil is not free from the dialectic. On the one hand, eternity, as it were, shines through a situation and points to the good. If it were only this, then the good would be a matter without risk, a certain, non-dangerous good. But with eternity there strives the temporal and once this is so, man must choose the good, which introduces ____________________ 1 Either/Or, vol. 2, pp 179-80. -48-

immediately an element of risk. This risk is the dialectic, a dialectic that stems not from human ignorance, the elimination of which would reveal automatically the good without the risk of choice, but from the inherent situation of man as an existing individual realizing eternity in time. With the present understanding of the nature of the disjunction Kierkegaard poses between eternity and time or pure Being and existence, it becomes possible to gain a better understanding of the meaning of his concept of subjectivity, a concept that is central to his thought. It might well be proper to indicate first what it is not. Kierkegaard's formulation of the concept of subjectivity is not an epistemological one. As a matter of fact, he does not sympathize with the effort in modern philosophy to inquire after the grounds of certification of knowledge claims. All efforts at general doubt he finds useless, for '. . . to present doubt with reasons with the intent of slaying it is like giving to a hungry monster one wants to be rid of the delicious food it likes best.' 1 This is so because doubt is not a matter of knowledge, the increase of which can serve to terminate doubt, but a matter of the will which can be ended only by an act of will. Kierkegaard insists on this when he refers to the Greek sceptics: The Greek sceptic did not doubt by virtue of his knowledge, but by an act of will (refusal to give assent). From this it follows that doubt can be overcome only by a free act, an act of will, as every Greek sceptic would understand as soon as he had understood himself. 2 This makes amply clear that by subjectivity Kierkegaard cannot mean doubt concerning reality of the outside world and the substitution of the inner, subjective world for it. His opposition extends even to the Hegelian identification ____________________ 1 For Self-Examination, p. 88. 2 Fragments, p. 67. -49of the subject with the object 1 which substitutes Absolute for Subjective Idealism. And this condemnation of doubt and various forms of idealisms 2 comes about by the adoption of a new point of view towards these problems, a point of view that does not inquire for the reasons that can be adduced for and against any doctrine, but rather, what is my relation, as an existing individual human being, to the doctrine? That Kierkegaard can adopt such a point of view is a result of the fact that his basic distinction is not between subject and object, which inevitably raises the epistemological problems that modern philosophy has been permeated with, but between pure Being, which is not man, and existence, which is man. This distinction does not raise epistemological problems but the problem of subjectivity, how existence can relate itself to pure being, as it manifests itself in various forms. The nature of such relations is not essentially noetic but emotional, and that is why the major part of Kierkegaard's effort is directed towards an exploration of the geography of human emotions. The purpose of this chapter has been twofold: First, to show the similarity between some of the issues raised by the traditional essence/existence distinction and the subjective version of these issues in Kierkegaard. And, second, to show that

Kierkegaard's concept of existence has to be understood in contrast with that of pure Being or eternity. It is, however, only by maintaining these latter concepts in their integrity that the tension of Kierkegaardian existence can be understood. Pure Being or eternity is not rejected as ontologically unsound. The only unsound step is for man to forget that he is less than that. 3 ____________________ 1 Postscript, p. 112. 2 Theodor Haecker, Soren Kierkegaard, p. 27, writes: 'With his philosophy of subjectivity he was necessarily a realist and not an idealist. He stands for sound common sense. He could never have fallen so low as to think that the world was only an illusion.' 3 Postscript, p. 271. -50CHAPTER Heidegger and the Analysis of Dasein Being and Beings

III

W HEREAS Kierkegaard's concern with Being, basic as it is, is never made the object of explicit philosophical research, except in relation to more directly existential problems, Heidegger sets the problem of Being in the very centre of his concern. He maintains that Being is a problem that has been forgotten and that only its resurrection can direct philosophy to that area of thought in which it can function most properly. In spite of this he makes clear at the outset of his thinking that if concern with the problem of Being implies, as its aim, a drawing up of a definition of Being, then disappointment is inevitable. The reason for this is that 'Being, for purposes of definition, cannot be deduced from higher concepts and cannot be presented by lower.' 1. That it cannot be deduced from higher concepts is the result of its all-embracing generality. That it cannot be presented by lower is based on the distinction between Being per se and a being. No being, in the sense of a being, can represent Being because it is precisely by virtue of Being that something is a being and not vice versa. This unique position that Being occupies thus prevents the possibility of formulating a definition of it in the sense in which traditional logic speaks of definition. ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 4 -51And yet the problem does not disappear but is only increased because Being's nondefinability does not prevent our asking for it. But already in the way the question is posed there is contained an important distinction, that between Being (Sein) and a being (Seiendes). With this distinction Heidegger associates a terminological one, that between ontological (ontologisch) and ontic (ontisch) questioning. The former is concerned with the problem of Being as such as distinguished from any one being. Ontic, on the other hand, is the mode of questioning of the positive sciences which are concerned with various particular objects of being, no matter how theoretical. 1. Heidegger's problem then is to be an ontological and not an ontic one. But there is more

than that. The asking of questions is the mode of Being of that being which we ourselves are. This kind of being is termed by Heidegger 'Dasein,' literally 'being there.' 2 . The ontic distinction of Dasein is that for it 'in its Being, its own Being is at stake.' 3. This translation of the phrase Heidegger uses may put too much emphasis on the staking-ability of Dasein. But the phrase 'is at stake' is impersonal. It says that once Dasein is interested in understanding Being, this being--interested itself, is a mode of being of Dasein which puts it into the class of ontological matters. It will appear later that in actuality it is the other way around, that only because Dasein is ontological can it even ask for the meaning of Being. But for the time being it is clear, in Heidegger's own words, that 'The ontic ____________________ 1 Heidegger writes: 'Ontologisches Fragen ist zwar gegenüber dem ontischen Fragen der positiven Wissenschaften ursprünglicher.'-SZ, p. 11. He states his belief that the concepts of science are based on an ontology that can and indeed must come before the positive science itself. For a collection of essays on Heidegger's influence on some areas of science and the arts, see Martin Heideggers Einfluss auf die Wissenschaften, ( Bern, 1949) 2 The term 'Dasein' will be used throughout this essay because it is felt that it would be almost impossible to find an English equivalent that would express Heidegger's characteristic use of the term 3 SZ, p. 12 -52distinction of Dasein consists of the fact that it is ontological.' 1. It thus appears already that the mode of being of Dasein is unique. 'The Being itself to which Dasein can relate itself in one way or another and always relates itself in some way, we call existence.' 2. This mode of being is that of man to whom alone the term can be applied because it is only he who can relate himself to himself. The question with which existence concerns itself in its possibility is a mode of its Being and must therefore not only be based on its existence but can only be approached by existing. This constitutes the realm of existential questioning. Existential questioning, however, does not in itself require a knowledge of the ontological structure of existence. An inquiry after the nature of the ontological structure of existence is not existential any more but becomes existentialistic (existenzial), a term which Heidegger uses to characterize his own inquiry. 3. The ontological analysis of Dasein is existentialistic because it searches not for the ontic characteristics of Dasein, which differ in each individual Dasein, but for the basic modes of Being of Dasein. These ontological characteristics of the Being of Dasein are termed existentialities (Existentialien). Existentialities, together with the traditional categories, are the two basic possibilities of beingcharacteristics. 4. Categories are legitimately applicable whenever the question to be answered has a 'what' in it. Existentialities on the other hand, come in when the question concerns a 'who,' Dasein, in short, existence. It is by means of an ontological analysis of Dasein directed towards the explication of the existentialities of Dasein that a 'fundamental ontology' (Fundamentalontologic) can be founded. ____________________ 1 Loc. cit

2 3

4

Loc. cit 'Therefore, fundamental ontology, from which all other kind must derive, must be sought in the existentialistic analysis of Dasein.' -- SZ, p. 13 SZ, p. 45

-53This basic structure of the Heideggerian enterprise has revealed two basic sets of distinctions whose interaction has now to be considered. First, there is the distinction between Being and a being. Heidegger holds it of prime importance not to commit the error of ignoring this distinction by reducing Being to any one being and thereby losing the ontological nature of the inquiry. 1. From this distinction between Being and a being follows that between the ontological and the ontic. And from it also follows the distinction between the existentialistic and existential. But this last distinction already implies a second basic set of distinctions other than that between Being and a being. This is the distinction between Dasein and the non-Dasein. Off-hand, it would seem that even this is based on the first distinction between Being and a being: Dasein, because it can relate itself to itself and therefore ask for the meaning of Being, is ontological while that which is not Dasein is merely ontic and not ontological. But, though this element is clearly present in the distinction between Dasein and the non-Dasein, it is not by itself enough to account for it. This will become clear by citing an instance in which Heidegger tries to show how a concept, when applied to Dasein, becomes an existentiality of it and is therefore to be understood in a completely different sense than otherwise. Dasein and Non-Dasein One of the first problems that Heidegger raises in trying to draw the portrait, in an ontological sense, of Dasein is to discover the field in which Dasein operates. The obvious answer turns to the world as the field of Dasein. Now it might be well to point out, first of all, the sense in which ____________________ 1 'The first philosophical step in the understanding of the problem of Being consists of . . . not defining a being as such by reducing it to another being as its origin, as if Being had the characteristic of a possible being.'-- SZ, p. 6 -54Heidegger does not wish to raise the problem of the relation of Dasein and its world: the epistemological. By declaring his allegiance to the phenomenological method of Husserl, which has as its watchword 'to the things themselves,' he permits himself to discard the problem of how the world can 'come' to man or of how man can 'go out' to the world as being based on a non-phenomenological 'going behind' the describable fact that Dasein does have a world in which it operates. 1. But Heidegger wants to do more than that. He wants to show that it is impossible to consider man as an entity and the world as an entity and then put the two together to get man-in-the-world. His contention is that it is of the nature of Dasein to be in the world in such a way that the world is of its essence. 2. That is to say, Dasein can only be formulated as Being-in-the-world (Inder-Welt-sein).

____________________ 1 Heidegger expresses his dependence on Husserl very clearly in many places in SZ, especially pp. 27 - 39. The work as a whole is dedicated to him. It is therefore clear that the relationship between Heidegger's and Husserl's thought is a very close one. There are, however, two main reasons for not devoting more space to Husserl in this study. First, it seems to the writer that Heidegger's dependence on Husserl is primarily in the field of epistemology, or the rejection of it, and not in Heidegger's existential strain with which this study is primarily concerned. Cf. James Collins, The Existentialists, p. 29. And, secondly, Heidegger's relation to Husserl has been explored rather thoroughly in the available literature. See Helmut Folwart, Kant, Husserl, Heidegger; Julius Kraft, Von Husserl zu Heidegger; Philip Merlan, "'Time Consciousness in Husserl and Heidegger,'" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 8, no. 1, Sept., 1947; Georg Misch, Lebensphilosophie und Phanomenologie; Franz Muth, Edmund Husserl und Martin Heidegger; Emil Spiess, "'Wege der neueren Philosophie zu Martin Heidegger,'" in Jabrbuch der Schweizerischen Philosophischen Gesellschaft, vol. 2, 1942 2 'Being-in-the-world is . . . an a priori, necessary mode of Dasein. . . .'-- SZ, p. 53. Folwart expresses this in epistemological terms when he writes: 'The subject is not separated by a chasm from the object, so that the problem arises as to how, in cognition, it can get out of itself to the objects outside, but rather Dasein is ever 'outside' among the 'encounterable beings' and in this being outside is simultaneously 'inside,' that is, it is itself as Being-in-the-world that which cognizes.'-- H. Folwart, op. cit., p. 112 -55This Being-in-the-world of Dasein is a unitary phenomenon but for purposes of analysis he divides it into three constituent elements: worldliness, that which is in-the-world, and in-being as such. It is the analysis of the last named element, in-being as such, that sheds the most light on the meaning of existentiality and thereby of the basic distinction between Dasein and that which is non-Dasein. In-being usually means a relation of two spatially extended objects in which the one contains the other; the water is in the glass, the suit is in the closet, etc. This relation can be extended to saying that the chair is in the lecture room, the lecture room is in the university, the university in the city, etc., until we say the chair is in the world-space. This kind of 'in' relation concerns objects that are 'present' (Vorhanden). Being present in something else in the sense of a place-relationship is an ontological characteristic that is categorical in nature. The sense in which Dasein is in the world, however, is basically different from the objects that are present in something else. Dasein is in the world in the more original sense of 'in' as living at, keeping oneself at. The 'at' (bei) signifies that Dasein is accustomed to something in the sense of living there. The usual way of looking at it would be to say that such expressions as living at, keeping oneself at, are but human modes of expressing a condition that is, ontologically, spatially extended presence in a place. But Heidegger contends that that is not so, that living somewhere and keeping oneself somewhere are not only ontologically independent existentialities which need not be deduced from categories but, more than that, that the existentialistic way of analysis is more fundamental and prior to the categorical. He maintains that two objects can have a spatial relationship, can be next to each other only because the

fundamental existentiality of in-being reveals the possibility of a world in which being next to each other can reveal itself. 1. This does not deny the spatial location of ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 57 -56the human body in the world. What it does do is to avoid the artificial composition of man as spirit and flesh, the former of which is not spatially located while the latter is, leaving in the dark how these two relate themselves to each other. 1. Heidegger's position is that man's spatial location is made possible by his having the existentiality inbeing 'to begin with' (von Hause aus). The difference between categorical in-being and existentialistic in-being serves to point out the distinction between Dasein and non-Dasein. The non-Dasein consists of two branches: that which is present (Vorhanden) and that which is at hand (Zuhanden). 2. Basic to the mode of being of that which is at hand is the fact of its utensiality. It is always 'for something' (Umwillen). That which is at hand is discovered in the relationship to the world that is use. This relationship does not first see an object as such and then ask its use, but it originally sees that which is at hand from the 'something for' point of view. 3. Here again Heidegger wards off the accusation of reading into things uses that are imparted to them by human disposition by granting ontological status to the usefulness of utensils. Those who maintain that this is a subjective colouring of a world that is indifferent to human presence and to the usefulness or lack of it that such presence imparts to things are seeing the world as present (Vorhanden) but not at hand (Zuhanden). And this is reversing reality, for things show themselves originally as useful or not useful for human purposes and it is only by a subsequent theorization that being present instead of being at hand emerges. 4. The purpose of presenting the very fundamental distinction between existentialistic and categorical in-being ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 56 2 'Die Seinsart von Zeug, in der es sich von ihm selbst her offenbart, nennen wir die Zuhandenheit.'--Ibid., p. 69 3 SZ, p. 71 4 H. Folwart, op. cit., p. 113 -57has been to show that the difference between the Dasein and the non-Dasein mode of being involves a distinction that is quite separate from that between Being and a being. If Heidegger had only made this latter distinction he would have been operating within the framework of the traditional essence/existence distinction which sees in a being the element of existence added to that of essence. And that he is existential in this preKierkegaardian sense of the term is made clear by his subsequent analysis of Plato's doctrine of truth in which he identifies Plato as an essentialist by pointing out that for Plato Being has its essence in whatbeing or essence. 1. That the essence of Being is

essence is the familiar doctrine of all "essentialists." And when he says that the essence of Dasein lies in its existence, 2. he is enunciating, it would seem, the existential protest against essentialism. All this would be so if his basic distinction were that between Being and a being alone and if there were not present the Dasein/non-Dasein distinction. But once this latter element presents itself then the term existence as applied to Dasein assumes a new meaning, different from the sense in which it can be applied to non-Dasein being. In a letter written in 1947 Heidegger gives the impression that this point has been overlooked and he insists explicitly that the term existence as applied to Dasein is not the existence of the metaphysics of essence/existence. 3. Though the sense that he attributes to Dasein's existence in that letter represents a change from his position in Sein and Zeit, as will be shown subsequently, 4. the negative part of his statement, that it is not to be understood in the traditional sense, is already made clear in Sein un Zeit when he writes that ____________________ 1 'Im Was-sein des Seienden west dieses Jeweils an. Anwesung aber ist überhaupt das Wesen des Seins. Deshalb hat für Platon das Sein das eigentliche Wesen im Wassein.'-- Platons, p. 35. Heidegger also makes the essence/existence distinction in traditional terms in KPM, p. 214 2 'Das "Wesen" des Daseins liegt in seiner Existenz.'-- SZ, p. 42 3 Platons, pp. 68-9 4 Cf. post, p. 76 -58traditional concept of existence is a category of that which is present (Vorhanden) and is not to be applied to Dasein. 1. The result of all this is that Heidegger is giving the term existence a human interpretation, strikingly similar to Kierkegaard's. The unique element is that integrated into this aspect of Heidegger's approach is the distinction between Being and a being, with human existence or Dasein as the point of approach from a being into Being by means of the ontological nature of man's existence. 2. It will appear in the last chapter that it is precisely this transformation that is the criterion of Heidegger's success. Before, however, an intelligent appraisal of that can be made, a good deal more has to be known of his existentialistic analysis of Dasein. Heidegger's analysis of Dasein is of an a priori character. 3. This is a result of the fact that it is ontological and not ontic. The search after Being is a reaching back for the possibility of the situation as it reveals itself in the preontological situation. 4. But this asking for possibilities in a categorical sense has itself to be understood existentialistically. As a model category of that which is present (Vorhanden) possibility connotes the not yet real and the not necessary. But as an existentiality, possibility is not a prelude to reality but the very constitution of it. 5. Dasein is its ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 42 2 The importance of this point has generally been realized in the literature about Heidegger. It may be sufficient to quote the following: '. . . von der menschlichen Existenz aus öffnet sich der Zugang zum "sein," weil zu ihr ein 'Seinsverständniss' wesentlich gehört; zugleich aber ist sie selber eine Art des Seins, so das an ihr das,

3

4 5

was zum Sein überhaupt gehort, sich finden und fassbar sein muss.'-- Georg Misch, op. cit., p. 9. Cf. Alois Fischer, Die Existenxphilosophie Martin Heideggers, p. 18; Karl Lowith, "'Heidegger: Problem and Background of Existentialism," in Social Research, vol. 15, p. 352 Heidegger emphasizes the a priori nature of his analysis in many places. Perhaps the clearest expression of this occurs in connection with a discussion of Care. Cf. SZ, p. 199. It is also expressed in epistemological terms by Alois Fischer, op. cit., p. 8 Concerning the charge of circularity, see SZ, pp. 7-8 Ibid., pp. 143-4

-59possibility. And here emerges the theme that is central to Heidegger's orientation. In defining the essence of Dasein Heidegger makes it into a field, rather than a point. 1. The Being of Dasein is Care (Sorge) which is the concern of Dasein with its possibilities. It is of the essential constitution of Dasein that it is ahead of itself (vorweg). This has to be understood ontologically. It is not the case that Dasein is something and then can think ahead or backwards to what it will be or what it was. Such an interpretation would be applicable to something that is present (Vorhanden) and at the same time is endowed with the ability to think. The existentialistic constitution of Dasein means, however, that being ahead of itself is essentially constituent of it. It is its possibility by being ahead of itself in Care. 2. The Extension of Dasein Dasein's Being-in-the-world now reveals itself as rooted in its essence not because Dasein happens to know of a world but because Dasein, since it is essentially ahead of itself, must have a field in which to be ahead of itself. That is why both Being-in-theworld and Care (Sorge) are a priori --because they are involved essentially in the nature of Dasein. The totality of Dasein is now grasped as 'AlreadyBeing-in-the-world, inadvance-of-itself, as the Being-concerned-with-beings-encountered-in-the-world.' 3. All this hyphenation, weird as it seems at first sight, is intended ____________________ 1 This idea is expressed by Maximilian Beck, "'Referat und Kritik von Martin Heidegger"; "Sein und Zeit"' in Philosophische Hefte, Heft 1, Juli 1928, pp. 18-19 2 'It is not that there is first a complete something called Self which afterwards develops or enters into a relation with itself, but rather that the Self comes only into being in a form which allows such relation or duality--i.e. it is self-relation from the beginning.'-- Eric Unger, "'Existentialism I,'" in Nineteenth Century and After, vol. 142, p. 281 3 SZ, p. 192. The translation quoted is in Brock, pp. 64-5 -60to spread out the essence of Dasein into a field that understands Dasein as possibility in an existentialistic sense. This precludes understanding Care as something simple. 1 Heidegger does not mean here by simple (einfach), easy to comprehend, but of the nature of one. By saying that Care cannot be of the nature of one he expresses the

insight that since he has made Dasein to be essentially ahead of itself he cannot have something single since being ahead of itself involves a relationship that is componential. It is perhaps in Heidegger's understanding of the phenomenon of death that this expansion of Dasein into something that essentially involves being ahead of itself is made clearest. The vulgar understanding of death sees it as something that comes at the close of life. Life can essentially be understood well enough without death, which is almost an extraneous interruption of it. According to Heidegger, however, the authentic understanding of death sees it as something that penetrates all of life. 'The ending which is meant by death does not signify a cessation (Zu-Ende-sein) of Dasein but a Being-tothe-End of this being.' 2 This Being-to-the-End implies that in every situation of Dasein there is involved its not being any more. The confrontation of Dasein with the possibility of its own not being introduces a negativity that is of the essence of Dasein. Dasein's negativity is not something outside of itself, a realm which it is not. It is rather of its essence because it is essential for Dasein to be ahead of itself, to be its possibility and being its possibility involves not being something. In Heidegger's work on Kant, where he develops the analysis of Dasein from the point of view of its finitude, the negativity ____________________ 1 'Der Ausdruck "Sorge" meint ein Existenzial-ontologisches Grundphanomen das gleichwohl in seiner Struktur nicht einfach ist.' --SZ, p. 196. 2 "'Das mit dem Tod gemeinte Enden bedeutet kein Zu-Ende-sein des Daseins, sondern ein Sein zum Ende dieses Seienden.'"--SZ, p. 245. -61inherent in Dasein is made the source of the possibility of the three questions that are the basic interest of reason: what can I know? What shall I do? What can I hope? Each of these questions, claims Heidegger, is made possible by the fact that there is something which Dasein is not, which constitutes its finitude. Existentialistically negativity must somehow interpenetrate all of Dasein to make possible its finitude and its being ahead of itself which is, in the form of Care, its Being. 1 It should have become apparent by now that Heidegger dilutes Dasein, which is itself at least as far as it reaches, by infusing into it existentialistic possibility which serves to remove Dasein from itself. This function is fulfilled by Care which, as the Being of Dasein, puts it ahead of itself. 2 But it is also evident that the case cannot rest there. There must be some existentialistic design of Dasein that enables ____________________ 1 An analysis of Heidegger's Kant interpretation lies outside the scope of this essay. The point that is made is that in KPM Heidegger makes Dasein's finitude express its being projected into Nothing and thereby ahead of itself. As far as an evaluation of Heidegger's Kant interpretation is concerned, it is difficult to refrain from referring the reader to Ernst Cassirer, "'Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik,'" in KantStudien, vol. 36, esp. p. 16. Cf. Paul Hofman, "'Metaphysik oder Verstehende SinnWissenschaft?'" in Kant-Studien, vol. 64, P. 50; Julius Kraft , op. cit., p. 93n.; Alois Fischer, op. cit., pp. 72-3. 2 The extent to which Care can be misunderstood is illustrated by a quotation from an

article that distinguishes itself by its unphilosophic lack of temperance. It reads: 'Perhaps the climax of the whole occurs in a central portion of "Sein und Zeit" in the definition of Dasein (personal existence) as Sorge (care). Existence, it turns out, is essentially care; and care is: Das Sich-Vorweg-Schon-Sein-In (der Welt) als Seinbei (innerweltlich-begegnenden Seienden) (p. 192). Paraphrased, this guarded definition states the platitude that human nature participates through anticipation in the future and through memory in the past; and at the same time is bound by indissoluble ties to the insistent cares of the present.'-- Marjorie Glicksman, "'A Note on the Philosophy of Heidegger'" in The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 35, no. 4, Feb. 17, 1938, p. 102. The mistake here is that Heidegger is not saying that there is first a 'human nature' which then 'participates' in the past and the future, but that 'human nature' is in the past and in the future by its essence and no matter how thin it is sliced it already is extended. -62it to place itself in relations towards itself. There is, first of all the possibility that in being ahead of itself it can come to itself by realizing its possibility. This coming to itself Heidegger terms Zu-kunft, 1 which literally translated means 'coming to' but which, without the hyphenation, means future. Furthermore, in realizing its possibility by means of determination (Entschlossenheit), Dasein renders present (gegenwärtigen) the Being which it is. Once again it is but a short step to the familiar concept of the present. And the past is acquired when the future leaves out of itself the present and thus slips into the past. The result of this analysis is that timeliness (Zeitlichkeit) has been found to be the meaning of Care. Care is the characteristic of Dasein that enables it to be ahead of itself and this has been found possible only because at the root of Care lies timeliness which permits Dasein to extend itself in its various directions; in Heidegger's own words: 'Timeliness is the original out-of-itself for itself.' 2 It should be made clear immediately that by this conception of timelessness Heidegger does not mean the usual conception of time. If this were so then Dasein's being ahead of itself would mean that it is something 'not yet--but later.' This would make Care happen 'in' time. In so doing it would relegate Dasein to the status of something present (Vorhanden). The timeliness which is under discussion here is the basic existentiality of Dasein and it is only by means of it that Dasein can develop the conception of time that permits things to happen 'in' time. 3 ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 325. 2 Ibid., p. 329. 3 This is expressed by E. Unger, op. cit., p. 287, who writes: 'The existential past is still present and the existential future is already present. The concepts past, present and future are derived from the ordinary, non-existential meaning of time and they have to be redefined in order to convey what is meant by the time-structure of existence. So existential future does not indicate a "now" which is not yet "real" and will be real some day, but the actual condition of an entity which is so constructed that it is constantly "coming towards itself," i.e. which has a Self that is actually rooted in two time modes at once.' -63-

The vulgar conception of time, in the form of the dating of time (Datierbarkeit), reflects the three-fold nature of timeliness by its basic construction of 'now,' 'later' and 'before.' The conception of time which Heidegger finds to be the one basically opposed to his existentialistic version he calls the 'now' theory of time. 1 This point of view sees time as an unbroken procedure of nows, each of which relieves its predecessor. This view of time is founded in the inauthentic condition of Dasein in which it does not see its basically extended construction in the sense of its being ahead of itself. These atoms of now are entities that are of the nature of the present in a non-enduring way. That is to say, they themselves are not constructed 'ecstatically'-essentially made up of directions. But Heidegger's effort throughout his work is to dissolve any entity into extended componentiality. The purpose of setting Care as the Being of Dasein was to extend Dasein into an entity that is essentially ahead of itself and thereby a field rather than a point. And in his conception of timeliness, which Heidegger sets at the root of Care, his attempt is once again to dissolve timeliness into a structure which is basically ecstatic and therefore extended. This hypothesis is not intended to apply only to Dasein and Care and timeliness but to the very structure of Being itself. This is evidenced by a very revealing footnote 2 in which Heidegger criticizes the traditional concept of eternity as a 'standing now.' According to him, such a conception of eternity is rooted in the vulgar conception of 'now' time. If the eternity of God can be construed in any way, then, says Heidegger, it must be in the form of a more original and unending timeliness. What he has done, therefore, is to interpret eternity not as a narrowing down of Being to a point that does not permit componentiality and thereby precludes and is above time, but ____________________ 1 SZ, pp. 421et sqq. 2 Ibid., p. 427n. -64to extend the field of Being unendingly and thereby make it something that is ahead of itself in an unending way. The result of this is an ontology that removes pure Being from the catalogue of ontological structures. There is no One that is not dissolved at its root into an extended relationship with itself that gives it direction and componentiality. Not only is there not in man or Dasein a measure of pure Being to which, as in Kierkegaard, he must relate himself, but there is no pure Being in any place because timeliness, as the root of Dasein's Care, engulfs everything in its ecstatic structure. Actually, Heidegger had declared war on the traditional concept of pure being very early in his work when he made the distinction between Dasein and that which is present (Vorhanden). He claims, 1 that Parmenides made the immediate realization of something present in its pure presentness (Vorhandenheit) the basis of his consideration of Being. Temporally, continues Heidegger, this has the structure of centring something present (gegenwärtigen) which is understood in the sense of presence. This is clearly the Parmenidian One considered as pure Being in the traditional sense. Heidegger objects to identifying Being with the present because that would undermine his conception of it as basically extended in the ecstatic structure of timeliness. His effort is to dissolve Being in timeliness and not to permit anything to remain that is not contained in a field in which directedness compels the elimination of entities that, as points, are not directed.

The purpose that drives Heidegger to as thoroughgoing a dissolution of Being into a field as is the case in his thinking, will be shown to be related to the basic emotional experiences of Dasein. But there is another consideration that might possibly be relevant. Heidegger uses the metaphor of light in connection with his concept of Being. Thus, he speaks of the 'light of Being' 2 which permits a view of that ____________________ 1 SZ, pp. 25-6. 2 Platons, pp. 76-7. -65which is. It is as if Heidegger were of the opinion that a concept of Being that partakes of the Parmenidian, nonextended kind of pure being would somehow, due to its opaqueness, not permit the illumination which is the nature of knowing. These entities of pure being would, as a result of their ontological indissolubility, keep out the light and block the illuminating revelation that, for instance, is the nature of poetry. Only a concept of Being that is extended and directed can offer the necessary kind of transparency. The field concept of Being thus permits the association of the metaphor of light with the concept of Being and its use as an ontological structure that makes possible the illumination of Dasein. It thus appears at this point that, in contradistinction to Kierkegaard, Heidegger undermines pure Being as an ontological structure. To show that this is a justified conclusion as far as the material contained in the available portion of Sein und Zeit has been the effort of the discussion so far. But, unfortunately, the situation is somewhat more complex than that. First of all, only part of Sein und Zeit is available. Furthermore, even the third section of the first part, which is entitled "'Time and Being,'" and in which presumably, Being would itself become the problem after the preliminary analysis of Dasein had been completed, is not available. This being so, it may be premature to present the available material of Sein und Zeit as an adequate presentation of a final ontological position. But that complete suspension of judgment may not be indicated at this stage is evidenced by two facts. First, the additional portions of Sein und Zeit have not seen print since the original part appeared in 1927. This is too long a period not to suspect that there is something in the problems themselves that have led to an impasse. What these may be will be discussed in the last chapter. And, then, there have appeared a body of writings, beginning with Of the Essence of Truth, which was written in 1930 but published in 1943, that seem -66to indicate an important new departure in Heidegger's thought. In his letter on Humanism, published in 1947, Heidegger admits that his thinking had come to a turningpoint in the third section of the first part of Sein und Zeit. He did not publish it, he writes, because 'thinking failed to express adequately this change and did not come through with the help of the language of metaphysics.' 1 Though he maintains that this turning-point does not represent a change in the point of view of Sein und Zeit, he tells us that Of the Essence of Truth gives a certain insight into this turning. An analysis of the problem involved should reveal the nature of the turning and its relationship to the position of Sein und Zeit.

The New Being As would be expected, Of the Essence of Truth is concerned with the problem of truth. Now the problem of truth had been treated quite extensively in Sein und Zeit and by comparing there two treatments a very illuminating insight can be gained of the nature of the reversal in Of the Essence of Truth. The first thing Heidegger makes clear in Sein und Zeit is that the discussion of truth is not one in the theory of judgment which sees truth in the proposition. 2 This would involve some kind of agreement (Übereinstimmung) between the proposition and that to which the proposition refers. This can be made meaningful only if it is understood that 'The proposition is true means: it discovers that which is in itself.' 3 Truth is thus removed from an agreement between a subject and an object and is made into a characteristic of that which is; its being revealed. But the possibility of anything revealing itself is based on the existentialistic structure of Dasein in so far as it is characterized by Being-in-the-world. That is to say, 'Dasein is "in ____________________ 1 Platons, p. 72. 2 SZ, p. 217. 3 Ibid., p. 218. -67truth."' 1 It is of the essence of Dasein to be open, to be revealed, because only by opening up Dasein to its field can Heidegger accomplish that dissolution of Dasein into possibility which is his purpose. By thus rooting truth in Dasein as an existentialistic mode of its being, Heidegger is compelled to conclude that only in so far and so long as there is Dasein is there truth. 2 Heidegger writes 3 that Newton's laws became true through him. This does not mean that before their being discovered they were false. It means that they were neither true nor false. Does this mean that the being (Seiende) which truth discovers was not previously? No, says Heidegger; discovering truth is a revealing of something as it was before. But, only three pages further, 4 he insists: 'Being--that which is not (nicht Seiendes)-"there is" (gibt es) only in so far as there is truth. And truth is only in so far and so long as there is Dasein.' The fact thus remains that, though truth is discovering something as it was before, truth and Being is possible only in so far as there is Dasein. That this is so is shown conclusively, if indeed what has gone before is not enough, by an outburst of Heidegger's which reads: 'That there are "eternal truths" will be proven sufficiently only when the proof that Dasein was and will be in all eternity has succeeded. As long as this proof is lacking, the sentence remains a fantastic assertion which does not gain correctness by being "believed" implicitly by philosophers.' 5 The intrinsic ontological dependence of Being upon Dasein is thus made clear beyond shadow of doubt. Heidegger, of course, defends himself against charges of a subjectivistic and therefore arbitrary conception of truth by saying that '. . . only because "truth" as discovery is a mode of being of Dasein, can it be removed from its arbitrary will.' 6 But that it is ontologically rooted in Dasein remains. ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 221. 2 Ibid., p. 226. 3 Ibid., p. 227.

4 5 6

Ibid., p. 230. Ibid., p. 227. Loc. cit.

-68Of the Essence of Truth pursues, to begin with, a line similar to that of Sein und Zeit. Here, too, Heidegger first attempts to demolish the theory of truth that finds it in the proposition by means of some kind of agreement between it and the object to which the proposition refers. He shows that what is really involved is a 'standing open' (offenständigkeit) of that which is. 1 The result of such a view is, he claims, that 'the traditional practice of attributing truth exclusively to the statement as its sole and essential place of origin, falls to the ground.' 2 But if truth is located in this overtness of things, then that which makes possible that overtness must be the essence of truth. This is freedom. As Heidegger understands it, freedom is not a determination of human will but 'Freedom reveals itself as the "letting-be" (Seinlassen) of what-is.' 3 To quote Heidegger's own words: Freedom is not what common sense is content to let pass under that name: the random ability to do as we please, to go this way or that in our choice. Freedom is not license in what we do or do not do. Nor, on the other hand, is freedom a mere readiness to do something requisite and necessary (and thus in a sense 'actual' (Seiendes)). Over and above all this ('negative' and 'positive' freedom) freedom is a participation in the revealment of what-is-as-such (das Seiende als ein solches). The revelation of this is itself guaranteed in that ex-sistent participation whereby the overtness of the overt (die Offenheit des offenen), i.e. the 'There' (Da) of it, is what it is. 4 The emphasis of this view of truth is upon Dasein attuning itself to Being and being ready to receive its revelation. The concept of ex-sistence, defined as an 'exposition into the revealed nature of what-is-as-such' represents a shift from the familiar concept of existence in Sein und Zeit to one which ____________________ 1 WW, p. 11, Brock, p. 328. 2 Ibid., p. 12; Brock, p. 329. 3 Ibid., p. 14; Brock, p. 333. 4 Ibid., p. 15; Brock, pp. 334-5. -69sees Being not as an existentialistic determination of Dasein whose ecstatic timeliness is the source of it, but as something almost outside Dasein to which Dasein must orient itself. Heidegger goes so far as to say that 'freedom, or exsistent, revelatory Da-sein possesses [my italics--M. W.] man and moreover in so original a manner that it alone confers upon him that relationship with what-is-in-totality which is the basis and distinctive characteristic of his history.' 1 In their hyphenated form, Da-sein and exsistence represent a departure from the insistence upon ontology as an analysis of the structure of Dasein for an ontology that sees Dasein as the shepherd of a Being which Heidegger did not get at by existentialistic analysis but which he introduces in the essay Of the Essence of Truth in a way that makes it incompatible with the Dasein analysis of

Sein und Zeit. Though he adds, in the last paragraph of the essay, that 'The knowledge arrived at in the lecture comes to flower in the essential experience that only in and from Da-sein, as a thing to which we have entry, can any approximation to the truth of Being evolve for historical man,' 2 the fact remains that by hyphenating the original Dasein of Sein und Zeit he abandons his attempt to root truth 3 and thereby Being in Dasein and, in so doing, goes over into what might be called his second period in which he roots Dasein in truth and Being. The change from a philosophical orientation which proceeds primarily from an internal analysis of the existentialities of Dasein to one which posits Being in an almost nonexistentialistic sense, was forecast in the two essays that Heidegger published in 1929. In an essay entitled Of the Essence of Cause, published that year, he develops the idea ____________________ 1 WW, p. 16; Brock, p. 336. 2 Ibid., p. 27; Brock, p. 351. 3 It would seem that Vietta points to the identification of Dasein with Being without, however, appreciating the shift in the later writings. See Egon Vietta, Die Seinsfrage bei Martin Heidegger, p. 90. -70of transcendence as the area in which causality must be found. He insists that transcendence, is not a factual characteristic of Dasein which is a result of its being found in a world, but that transcendence, identified with Beingin-the-world, is an essential, ontological characteristic of Dasein that makes possible factual being found in the world. Now in itself this is not a departure from the position of Sein un Zeit. There, too, Being-in-the-world had been understood in this sense. But Heidegger's restatement of Being-in-the-world under the name of transcendence assumes importance when the purpose of this emphasis on the essential openness of Dasein is understood. This purpose is to make possible a dealing with Being that is no longer an analysis of the existentialities of Dasein. All this is shown by a very revealing footnote to Of the Essence of the Cause which it is worth while translating almost in whole: Here the following comment may be appropriate: The discussions of 'Sein und Zeit' that have been published until now set themselves no other task but to reveal concretely a sketch of transcendence. . . . This is so in order to make possible the chief intention which indicated clearly in the heading of the whole first part, namely, the winning of the 'transcendental horizon of the question of Being.' All concrete interpretations, above all that of time, are to be evaluated only from the point of view of making possible the question of Being. They have as little to do with modern 'dialectical theology' as with the scholasticism of the Middle Ages. If, thereby, Dasein is interpreted as that being which can pose the problem of Being as belonging to its existence, then this does not mean that this being which, as Dasein, can exist authentically and inauthentically, is the 'authentic' being in general among all other beings, so that these are but a shadow of it (Dasein). Exactly the opposite; in the illumination of transcendence the horizon is won, by means

-71of which the concept of Being--even the much-extolled 'natural one--can be grounded philosophically as a concept. Ontological interpretation of Being in and from the transcendence of Dasein does not mean ontic derivation of the All of beings of a nonDasein character from being qua Dasein. And as concerns the reproach, connected with such a misinterpretation, of an 'anthropocentric standpoint' in 'Sein und Zeit,' this much too eagerly passed on objection remains empty so long as it is omitted, in thinking through the evaluation, to comprehend the whole line and purpose of the problem development in 'Sein und Zeit'; how, just by means of the working out of the transcendence of Dasein, 'man' comes into the 'centre' in such a way that his nullity (Nichtigkeit) in the whole of beings can and must first become a problem. What dangers lurk in an 'anthropocentric standpoint' that puts all exertion exclusively into showing the essence of Dasein, which here stands 'in the centre,' is ecstatic, that is, 'excentric' but that therefore, equally any alleged freedom of view-point remains a delusion as being opposed to all meaning of philosophizing as an essentially finite possibility of existence? 1 Here Heidegger makes quite clear his intention of breaking away from Dasein-analysis which is only a preparation for the real analysis of Being. That he does make this break in the essay Of the Essence of Truth has been shown and what is seen now is the preparation for that break. In Of the Essence of Cause, transcendence, as Being-in-the world, is still an existentiality of Dasein but that existentiality which opens it to Being. Heidegger concludes his essay by saying that man is a being of distance. 2 He has the ability to listen into distance. From this to man as the shepherd of Being is not very far. In the same year that saw the appearance of Of the Essenceof Cause ____________________ 1 WG, pp. 100-1n. 2 Ibid., 110. -72of Cause in a volume dedicated to Husserl, there also appeared a lecture that Heidegger delivered in taking over the position previously occupied by his teacher Husserl. This essay was published under the title What is Metaphysics? and has considerable interest for the purpose of understanding the concept of Being that Heidegger was trying to develop from a point of view other than the 'ontic derivation of the All of beings of a non-Dasein character from the being qua Dasein.' The purpose of the essay is the discussion of the metaphysical concept of Nothing. His first thesis is that negation, which is not only restricted to propositions but includes, as will be shown, dread, can exist only because there is a Nothing, upon which it is dependent. 1 But, argues Heidegger, can Nothing just be a negation of all that is? His answer is that it cannot be, because if it were then Nothing would represent complete lack of differentiation and thereby not permit differentiation between an imaginary and an authentic Nothing. 2 If Nothing, then, is not just negation of all that is, then it must be something that is in what-is. By saying this, Heidegger is rooting Nothing in Being as equal partners. And, most important of all, he says: 'Nothing is that which makes the revelation of what-is as

such possible for human existence.' 3 This shows that the purpose of the whole metaphysical discussion of Nothing has been to create the possibility for a dissolution of Being into a field which permits Dasein to project itself into Nothing by means of transcendence. Whereas, as has been shown, 4 Heidegger in Sein und Zeit used Care and ecstatic timeliness as the elements that dissolved Dasein into a field of possibilities and thereby permit Being-in-the-world as an essential determination of Dasein, in this new approach it is in terms of something outside Dasein that Dasein's openness must be understood; and this role is assigned to Nothing. He goes as far as to say that 'Because our Da-sein ____________________ 1 WM, p. 26; Brock, p. 361. 2 Ibid., p. 27; Brock, p. 363. 3 Ibid., p. 32; Brock, p. 370. 4 Supra, p. 60. -73projects into Nothing on this basis of hidden dread, man becomes the stand-in (Platzhalter) for Nothing.' 1 Nothing, as the Being of what is, thus becomes the ontological basis for Dasein's transcendence. The existentiality of transcendence thus, as it were, reflects the basic, metaphysical structure of Being (Nothing). It is not any more Being that is approached through Dasein but Dasein through Being (Nothing). The extent of the change in viewpoint from that of Sein und Zeit that the essay What is Metaphysics? represents is shown even more clearly by an introduction that Heidegger wrote for the 1949 edition of the essay. In it can be found such a statement: The term 'existence' is used in 'Sein und Zeit' exclusively as a designation of the Being of Man. From a proper understanding of 'existence' it is possible to think the 'essence' of Dasein in whose openness Being itself manifests itself and hides itself, testifies and withdraws, without this truth of Being exhausting itself in Dasein or even permitting itself to be equated with it in the style of the metaphysical propositions: all objectivity is, as such, subjectivity. 2 Not only does Heidegger emphasize the fact that Being is not to be equated with Dasein, but on the following page, in making clear that only man exists, he writes: 'The rock is, but it does not exist. The tree is, but it is does not exist. The horse is, but it does not exist. The angel is, but he does not exist. God is, but he does not exist.' 3 In evaluating the significance of this remark the statement in Sein und Zeit concerning the eternity of God, which has been referred to previously, 4 should be remembered. There Heidegger had said that if the eternity of God can be construed in any way, then it must be in the form of a more original and 'unending' timeliness. Timeliness, however, has been found to be the ____________________ 1 WM, p. 34; Brock, p. 374. 2 WM, p. 14. 3 WM, pp. 14-15. 4 Supra, p. 64.

-74possibility of Care which is the Being of Dasein. If, therefore, God is included in timeliness in a more original way, then he also exists in a more original way and this is the implication of the remark concerning God in Sein und Zeit. Heidegger's subsequent refusal to attribute existence to God in the Introduction to What is Metaphysics? reveals the extent to which the Dasein-mode of analysis has lost its grip on him and his willingness to posit Being not rooted in timeliness. Heidegger's conception of Being of the second period is put to use in many ways. As a method of penetrating into the poetry of Hölderlin it results in essays of literary criticism of high quality. And in his last work, a collection of essays under the collective title of Holzwege, Heidegger uses his conception of Being for the basis of an aesthetic theory applying it to two such artists as Van Gogh and Rilke. But though more will be said of these points in another chapter in which Heidegger's view of the human situation will be discussed as a result or, as the case may be, as a source of his ontology, the essential point to be noted here is that this new conception of Being which becomes so central does not have a complete ontological basis--almost none at all. When, in his letter about humanism which he wrote as an answer to some questions of Jean Beaufret in 1947, Heidegger comes to the point where an analysis of this concept of Being would seem to be called for, he writes the following: 'But Being--what is Being? It is itself. To experience this and to say this, future thought must learn.' 1 Thus, by assigning to future thought this task, Heidegger seems to be indicating his own awareness of the fact that his own effort does not accomplish this task. He does say that Being is illumination (lichtung) 2 and, it will be seen, this becomes central in the aesthetic applications of Being, especially in relation to language. But all does not constitute an adequate ontological basis for these functions of Being. ____________________ 1 Platons, p. 76. 2 Ibid., p. 77. -75The purpose which Heidegger seeks in these latter writings appears perhaps most clearly in a discussion of the distinction that he makes between the traditional term existence and his own ek-sistenz. It will be remembered that even in Sein und Zeit he had already made clear that his use of the term existence as the mode of Being of Dasein is existentialistic and not to be applied to that which is present (Vorhanden), as the traditional existence usually is. 1 But in this latter passage he writes the following: Eksistenz, understood ecstatically, is not congruous either in content or in form, with existentia. The connotation of eksistenz is that of standing open (Hinaus-stehen) to the truth of Being. Existentia (existence), on the other hand, means actualitas, reality in contradistinction to mere possibility in the form of Idea. Eksistenz refers to the definition of what man is in the destiny of Truth. The term existentia remains as referring to the realization of what something is as it appears in its Idea. The sentence 'man ek-sists' does not answer the question whether man really is or is not, but it answers the question concerning the essence of man. 2

Though here, as in Sein und Zeit, the traditional meaning of existence is discarded, what is substituted differs considerably. Here the human receptivity to Being is made the meaning of eksistenz so that it is by ek-sisting essentially that man is thrown open essentially to the illumination of Being. Heidegger seems to be concerned with establishing that man can 'grasp' Being and there is no better way of doing that than by making this ability the essence of man in the form of ek-sistenz. Whereas previously Heidegger had been concerned with rooting non-existentialistic categories in existentialities, the purpose now is to root Dasein in Being and to show how the former is the repository of ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 42. 2 Platons, pp. 70-1. -76the latter. This is the reversal which constitutes the change from Heidegger's first to his second period. The aim of this chapter has been to show Heidegger's ontology as an analysis of existentialities and then, a second period, in which this no longer holds true. In existentialistic analysis Heidegger is concerned with dissolving Dasein into a field by making possibility as Care the Being of Dasein. The result of this is to destroy pure Being, traditionally understood as presence into ecstatic componentiality as timeliness. The second period, in which Being appears in a non-existentialistic sense, accomplishes this same dissolution by making Nothing the ontological equal of Being, thus permitting Dasein to transcend itself. -77CHAPTER Existence and the Human Situation

IV

( Kierkegaard) IN the chapter which treated of Kierkegaard's disjunction between the state of existence and the realm of pure Being, the conclusion was reached that he sees pure Being as an ontologically sound realm in itself, provided only that man realizes that he cannot pretend to live in such a realm. However, the state in which man does live, that of existence, receives its characteristic tension from the fact that he somehow has to relate himself to eternity (which is pure Being), a need which raises many problems. The purpose of this chapter is to show that many of the characteristically Kierkegaardian analyses of emotional complexes are derived from the human necessity to come to terms with pure Being or eternity and that without the positing of such an ontologically traditional framework, no such tensions can arise. Emotion It might be well to begin by an attempt to understand the major emphasis on emotion that is central to Kierkegaard's writing. Traditionally, emotions have been rather suspect

in the halls of academic philosophy, the feeling being that they somehow endanger the rational, objective purpose of philosophic analysis. Thus, for instance, Swenson points out 1 ____________________ 1 David F. Swenson, Something About Kierkegaard, p. 111. -78that when Descartes undertook to doubt everything that is susceptible of being doubted, he was very careful not to apply any doubt at all to the area of 'ethico-religious' belief. Kierkegaard, on the other hand, reverses the distribution and concerns himself, though not primarily by means of doubt, with the ethico-religious, to the exclusion of almost anything else. In addition, this concern with the ethicoreligious, is a passionately emotional one. It is not difficult to see that this is a result of his emphasis upon existence as the human state. It was already pointed out 1 that just as for Aquinas the truth of anything resides in its existence rather than its quiddity (essence), so, in the Kierkegaardian analysis of existence as human existence, the emphasis in the search after ethico-religious truth is in the existential aspect of man. But for the subjective analysis of existence it is the passionate appropriation on the part of man of an ethicoreligious doctrine that corresponds to the aspect of existence of a thing wherein, for Aquinas, its truth resides. It could not be the intellect of man that is his existence because the intellect harbours an innumerable host of unrealized possibilities which correspond to essences without existence. So it is natural that Kierkegaard chooses an aspect of man by means of which he realizes an intellectual possibility--that is, gives it existence. This is his emotion. But, of course, emotion can also be a possibility that is not realized. That is the emotion of the aesthetic personality who experiences events emotionally not because of the intrinsic value of the experience but for the pleasure to be gotten from it. A good example of such a type is the seducer. 2 His involvement is with the emotion of love. But loves achieve reality only by being inbedded in existence; ____________________ 1 Supra, p. 28n. 2 The seducer figures prominently in the first part of Either/Or, especially pp. 70-84 and the "'Diary of the Seducer,'" pp. 249-371. An extended analysis of this phase of Kierkegaard is to be found in Walther Rehm, Kierkegaard und der Verfuhrer. -79in this case being directed toward one individual. But the seducer experiences his love, not to realize it, but to have it dispelled as soon as it is on the verge of being realized. This is expressed by the fact that his love evaporates as soon as it has been consummated and that is why he is constantly on the search for new victims, a search that must go on forever. It is clear, therefore, that by identifying passion with the existential aspect of man, Kierkegaard restricts this identification to the kind of emotion that does actually realize possibilities by coupling them with existence. The central emphasis that is given to emotion, then, is the result of the existential orientation of Kierkegaard. But it would be quite wrong to think that, for Kierkegaard, emotion, or as he calls it, pathos, is a subsequent addition to an ethico-religious doctrine

which pre-exists fully as a possibility to be realized. Such a view would grant to objective understanding of ethico-religious truths a status of eminence that Kierkegaard would never think of doing. The fact of the matter is that the thinker, in looking around for an ethico-religious doctrine to adopt emotionally, is already labouring under the intensest kind of emotion. This is so because he is caught in the uncomfortable position of having to look for something which, by the nature of the thing he is looking for, he has no time to look for. This peculiar thing is his eternal happiness. He has no time to look for the belief that will really give him his eternal happiness because he is wasting every moment that he does not have it. 1 The result of all this is that eternal happiness presupposes itself in the form of infinite passion. And this infinite passion is generated even when the question is ____________________ 1 'The existing individual who chooses the subjective way apprehends instantly the entire dialectical difficulty involved in having to use some time, perhaps a long time, in finding God objectively; and he feels this dialectical difficulty in all its painfulness, because every moment is wasted in which he does not have God. That very instant he has God, not by virtue of any objective deliberation, but by virtue of the infinite passion of inwardness.'-- Postscript, pp. 178-9. -80whether there is an eternal happiness to begin with, since that very question itself involves an infinite stake, the winning or the losing of an eternal happiness. The emotional involvement of the subjective thinker is therefore found to precede the doctrine that he will ultimately adopt; indeed, to determine it, since without such determination there would be no method of determining the doctrine at all. This method of thought which locates the infinite emotional involvement of the thinker at the very inception of his thought, before any doctrine has as yet crystallized, is the subjective thinking of Kierkegaard. Now it is clear that this is more than just the identification of the existence of Thomistic ontology with human emotion and the requirement that just as truth for Aquinas resides in existence so truth for man resides in emotion. What this doctrine does do, in addition to what has just been stated, is to set up an infinite tension at the very source of emotion, a tension that is to shape the whole course that the emotional life of the subjective thinker is to take. And this basic tension could not be there without the basic ontological juxtaposition of man's existence in time with his relation to eternity. This is the point which generates the tension in man that is the source of his dialectic, of the paradox, of his movement and, as will be shown, of many other concepts in Kierkegaard. It is, however, important from the beginning to understand the magnitude of the tension between time and eternity, existence and pure Being. They are irreconcilable. 1 One way to reconcile them would be for Kierkegaard to attempt to undermine the meaningfulness of eternity by dissolving it in time. This was the effort of Heidegger and the next chapter will show the effects such a step has on the delineation of the human existential situation. Another would be to enable man to enter the realm of eternity, thus making ____________________ 1 This is shown by Kierkegaard's assertion that in eternity there is no either/or, in time there is; in eternity there is no becoming, in time there is.-- Postscript, pp. 270-2n.

-81time ontologically illusory. This is the attempt of the mystics. Kierkegaard rejects both of these alternatives, the former implicitly, 1 the latter explicitly. 2 As a result, he is left with a genuinely dynamic situation in which two realms, that of time and that of eternity, interact with each other in spite of their contradictory natures. This is the source of the powerful dynamism of Kierkegaard's description of the human situation, its characteristic nature. Without such a basic ontological dichotomy most of Kierkegaard would be impossible. Paradox and Despair The concept in Kierkegaard which raises the irreconcilable tension under discussion to an ontological level is that of paradox. In theological terms, pure Being or eternity is God. The penetration of God into time is therefore the theological expression for a relation between pure Being and existence which is the source of the tension of human existence. Hirsch, in defining paradox writes: 'In the strict sense, paradox is the break in the existence of the individual before God which precludes any mediation.' 3 This definition makes clear that it is only in the light of God that human existence is paradoxical because it is man's need to relate himself to a realm of Being that is radically different from existence that gives existence the dynamic quality it has. What Hirsch has not made clear, however, and what this essay attempts to do, is that at the bottom of Kierke____________________ 1 It might not even be so implicit in view of the following passage: 'If the wisdom of life should ever alter that which concerns the eternal in man to the point of changing it into something temporal, then this would be folly whether it be spoken by an old man or by a youth.'-Purity of Heart, p. 7. 2 This has already been discussed in connection with Kierkegaard's attitude towards mysticism. See Supra, pp. 45 -7. 3 Emanuel Hirsch, Kierkegaard Studien, vol. 2, p. 643. -82gaard's theological terminology lies an ontology, a distinction between pure Being and existence which is the basic philosophic source of his thought. What is the result of this state of affairs? Or, in other words, how does man react to this situation? First of all, there has to be some motion. The situation of paradox does not permit rest for The human soul is a contradiction between the external and the inward, the temporal and the eternal. It is a selfcontradiction because that which makes it what it is, is the fact that it wishes to express the contradiction in itself. The soul is therefore in contradiction, and is self-contradiction. If it were not in contradiction, if it were lost in the earthly life, if it were not self-contradiction, then movement would be impossible. 1 An analysis of the factors in the situation shows that two kinds of movement are possible: towards the eternal or towards the temporal. Both of these movements are

forms of despair for they are attempted escapes from the real self which is not exclusively one or another of these factors but a combination of both. The first of these movements Kierkegaard calls the movement towards infinitude and, he says, 'The despair of Infinitude is due to the lack of Finitude.' 2 In it, the subject tries to make believe that he can escape the hold that time has on him, that he can live in categories such as 'mankind,' 'the nation,' etc. In this attempt he becomes fantastic and claims not to be able to understand how an individual can exist before God and not go crazy for he does not see how eternity can function in time and therefore in existence. The other movement of despair, that toward the temporal, Kierkegaard calls the despair of finitude and, he says, 'The despair of Finitude is due to the lack of Infinitude.' 3 ____________________ 1 Edifying Discourses, vol. 2, p. 76. 2 Sickness Unto Death, p. 45. 3 Ibid., p. 49. -83The person who chooses this form of despair wants it to appear that man has nothing more to him than the temporal and, as a result, he adopts as narrow and mean outlook, that of the typical philistine. This kind of despair is very rarely noticed for it is disguised by the most level-headed practicality, down-to-earthness and industry. And yet there is present in the consciousness, often very deeply hidden, the terror of escape from the reality of the self into an attempt at losing the self in the world of non-self. It is thus apparent that the two movements described above, both of which are forms of despair, are a result of the ontological structure of man--that he has to establish a relationship with pure Being without being it. Without the eternal in man, says Kierkegaard, 1 he could not despair. This is so because without the eternal there is lacking the basic situation in terms of which despair is possible. Without the eternal man would be pure temporality with nothing to fear from the continuous change of time since there would be nothing in him that protests changeability and wants to maintain its self-identity. This would mean that the human situation is basically non-existential for there would be nothing in it to which the subject could relate himself by means of subjectivity, inward transformation. Inward transformation is possible only in a subject who is in time who endeavours to relate the eternal to his situation in time thus giving the two prerequisite conditions of subjectivity: the subject who appropriates and the eternal truth that is appropriated. But, though despair feels that it is the presence of the eternal in it that is its cause, it cannot turn and destroy it. This is the hardness of the eternal, that it generates a despair which cannot end itself by consuming itself because nothing can destroy the etemal. 2 ____________________ 1 Sickness Unto Death, p. 30. 2 'If one might die of despair as one dies of a sickness, then the eternal in him, the self, must be capable of dying in the same sense that the body dies of a sickness. But this is an impossibility; the dying of The result is that the -84-

subject is left in a state which he cannot escape at either end: neither by escaping the eternal nor by escaping the temporal. The role that the eternal or pure Being plays in despair, however, is one step ahead of the normal way in which the eternal starts its intervention in time. The aesthetic stage for Kierkegaard precedes despair, though it harbours the seeds of despair in it. If there is anything that characterizes the aesthetic stage it is immediacy that runs constantly through Kierkegaard's discussion of it. On one level immediacy implies the relation of the self with the world around it. But that is not the truly Kierkegaardian meaning of immediacy because there is, in Kierkegaard, no picture of the world as a cosmos to which man relates himself. Much rather the immediacy of which he speaks is the immediacy of the self. The aesthetic stage is a stage in the existential development of man at which he does not yet realize the nature of the factors that are his self--the eternal in time. This is immediacy, a self that is uniform with itself. The realization that shatters this immediacy is the realization that the self is not a homogenous entity but a relation. 1 The elements in this relation are the infinite and the finite, the temporal and the eternal, freedom and necessity. But equal in importance with the elements in the relation is the nature of the relation. It is not the usual relation in which the relation is a third factor that in turn, is related to the elements that make it up, but the unique aspect of this relation is that it relates itself to itself, thereby constituting a self. When the subject realizes this, be it as vaguely as possible, then it has been aroused from its immediacy with ____________________ despair transforms itself constantly into a living. The despairing man cannot die; no more than "the dagger can slay thoughts" can despair consume the eternal thing, the self, which is the ground of despair, whose worm dieth not, and whose fire is not quenched.'-- Sickness Unto Death, pp. 25-6. 1 Ibid., pp. 17-18. -85itself and made into a self that is a relation with itself. It may be added that at this point Kierkegaard introduces a remark that, in view of Heidegger's thought, is very interesting. He states that this self, which is a relation that relates itself to itself, can either be taken to have constituted itself or have been constituted by another. Kierkegaard chooses the latter alternative and goes on to say: If the human self had constituted itself, there could be a question only of one form [of despair--M. W.], that of not willing to be one's own self, of willing to get rid of oneself. This formula (i.e. that the self is constituted by another) is the expression for the total dependence of the relation (the self namely), the expression for the fact that the self cannot of itself attain and remain equilibrium and rest by itself, but only by relating itself to the Power which constituted the whole relation. Indeed, so far is it from being true that this second form of despair (despair at not willing to be one's own self) denotes only a particular kind of despair, that on the contrary all despair can in the last analysis be reduced to this. If man in despair is as he thinks conscious of his despair, does not talk about it meaninglessly as of something which befell him . . . and if by himself and by himself only he would abolish the despair, then by all the labour he expends he is only labouring himself deeper into a deeper despair. 1

It is therefore because of man's inability to extricate himself from his despair without positing a factor beyond himself that Kierkegaard does posit such a factor. Choice With the break in immediacy that is brought about by the discovery of the componential nature of the self, man has come to realize the despair that was inherent in the ____________________ 1 Sickness Unto Death, pp. 18-19. -86aesthetic stage all the time. 1 But out of this despair emerges the self that is now more truly a self than previously because, to a certain extent, it now knows itself. The nature of this 'knowledge,' as was just said, is that the self is not homogenous, not immediate, but a relation of primarily two factors: eternity and time. But the realization of the componential nature of the self introduces a new category, that of choice. Previously, in the aesthetic stage, when the self was one entity in which there was no tension of its factors, the category of choice could not be real because there was no self that could reflect alternatives, or rather, in which alternatives could be rooted. A self that is one is what it is, or, even if it becomes, becomes it by necessity. There is no way in which genuine alternatives can be rooted in a self that is itself not composed of non-identical elements. But with the realization of the self for what it is, true possibility of choice is opened and there is set before the subject a wholly new category, that of choice. This is the meaning of Kierkegaard's statement that one chooses the possibility of choice by choosing oneself. The 'oneself' that is chosen is the self as it has been developed above and this gives the possibility of choice because of the intrinsic relationship between the nature of the self as componential and the alternatives of choice. Choice is therefore seen to be rooted not in the 'objective' situation but in the nature of the self that is in the situation. The same step, which to the aesthetic self is necessity, is to this new self free choice because the possibility of free choice has been established in the self. This possibility consists of there being in the self two elements which themselves have to be chosen. Once this has ____________________ 1 For a psychological discussion of despair and the more general phenomenon of anxiety, see Rollo May, The Meaning of Anxiety, esp. pp. 27-45. Also, Arnold Kunzli, Die Angst als Abendlandische Krankheit The psychology of Kierkegaard is also treated to some extent by Elwyn Allen Smith, "'Psychological Aspects of Kierkegaard'" in Character and Personality, An International Psychological Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3, March, 1944. -87been established, choice in an exterior sense becomes a possibility and a new stage in the existential development of man has been reached. 1 With the introduction of the category of choice Kierkegaard is in the ethical stage for it is the reality of choice that makes the ethical stage. 2 It has been shown that it was the

introduction of the eternal into the self that brought about the change from the aesthetic to the ethical. The nature of this introduction was not very specific, however, because for purposes of achieving the transfer from the aesthetic to the ethical, all the eternal had to do was to split the immediate unity of the self and make it aware of its componentiality. This posited the category of choice and therefore the ethical. It will now be shown that it is again by the introduction of the eternal into the ethical that the next existential stage, that of the religious, will be reached. The basic characteristic of the ethical situation is that full justice can never be done to ethical demands. Being universal in nature, ethical rules set up a horizon towards which the ethical personality strives without ever being able to reach it. The expression for this situation is guilt for guilt is an ethical determination, the ethical expression for ethical failure. But guilt is also the extreme point of ethics, the point at which ethics is destroyed. The magnitude of the guilt that is the inevitable result of a strictly ethical point of view is staggering to the subject. He is lost in the sheer impossibility of ethical demands. At this point a new leap takes place. The ethicist places his guilt before God, which is eternity, and the guilt ____________________ 1 Friedrich Carl Fischer, Die Nullpunkt-Existenz dargestellt an der Lebensform Soren Kierkegaards argues that the key to Kierkegaard's personality was his inability to choose between alternatives. As examples he mentions his reluctance to commit himself in marriage, his refusal to enter the clergy and his refusal to commit himself a Christian, maintaining all his life that he does not claim to be one. Interesting as this suggestion is psychologically, it sheds no light on Kierkegaard's philosophic analysis of choice and the conditions for it. 2 Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 141. -88ceases being guilt and becomes sin. 1 With that leap, from guilt to sin, man has left the ethical and is in the religious stage. The new element that has been added to guilt, which without it is still in the ethical sphere, is the eternal. From this new point of view completely new possibilities reveal themselves. First of all, there is the title of the edifying discourse with which Kierkegaard concludes Either/Or: 'The edification implied in the thought that as against God we are always in the wrong.' 2 Placed at the end of the second volume of Either/Or, this discourse is intended to point to the stage that follows that of the ethical with which the second volume of the work is concerned. But besides this consolation that sin has over guilt, there is also the possibility of repentance which is a religious category that is strictly nonsense from a purely ethical point of view. Without going into a more detailed discussion of repentance, since that concept belongs more in the theological than the philosophical part of Kierkegaard's thought, it will suffice to point out that repentance dissolves the finality of guilt in the forgiveness of God, a step that makes sense only from an eternal point of view. 3 But what is more important, it has been shown again that it was the introduction of the concept of the eternal that has brought about the movement from the ethical to the religious, just as it was the introduction of the eternal that brought about the movement from the aesthetic to the ethical. 4 ____________________ 1 'In the fight to realize the task of ethics sin shows itself not as something which only casually belongs to a casual individual, but sin withdraws deeper and deeper as a

2 3

4

deeper and deeper presupposition, as a presupposition which goes well beyond the individual. Now all is lost for ethics, and it has contributed to the loss of all.'-Concept of Dread, p. 17. Either/Or, vol. 2, pp. 283-94. 'He repents himself back into himself, back into the family, back into the race, until he finds himself in God.'--Ibid., pp. 181-2. It may be mentioned that the difference between religiosity A and religiosity B also revolves around the position of eternity. See Postscript, pp. 508ff.

-89Indirect Communication But it not only in the stages of the existential development of man that the combination of eternity in time, of pure Being as the horizon of existence, plays such central role. It also is reflected in the Kierkegaardian methodology: the address to individual and indirect communication. For Kierkegaard the concept of the 'individuel' takes on the status of a category. 1 It is in his method of thought. Everything he writes is written by an individual and to an individual. 2 The most immediate contrast to the individual is the crowd. The individual refuses to merge into the crowd and make its decisions his. He maintains his own self identity and makes his decisions out of himself. His view of the world is truly his because he is not ready to transform his inwardness into objectivity, which to him would mean giving himself up as an individual. And yet it is essential, for a proper understanding of Kierkegaard's category of the individual, to distinguish it from a generally egocentric orientation. Kierkegaard's individual makes no sense if he is conceived of as being alone. The individual who is alone can establish a relation of ownership towards the world. 3 ____________________ 1 Kirerkegaard's understanding of the individual is expounded primarily in the essay "'The Individual'" in The Point of View, pp. 109-40. Ronald Gregor Smith in his notes to Martin Buber, Between Man and man, p. 207, suggests the use of 'the Single One' instead of the individual since, he argues, everyone is an individual, while not everyone is a single One. 2 Thought the aesthetic works, which are pseudonymous, are not written by an 'individual' since the aesthete is not an individual, they are written to individuals in the sense of presenting each of them with an either/or, a choice. For a discussion of the complex problem of the pseudonyms see Friedrich Grossart, "'Grundmotiv und Aufbau der pseudonymen Schriften Kierkegaards,'" in Deutsche Viertejahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 9. Jahrg., 2. Heft, 1941. 3 This point is argued with characteristic lucidity by Martin Buber, "'The Question to the Single One'" in Between Man and Man, pp. 40-82. He contrasts Kierkegaard's Single One (individual) with Max Stirner's 'Unique One' and finds that whereas for the former responsibility and truth result from the concept, for the latter such results would be unobtainable. -90For such an individual there is no real possibility of tension because nothing and nobody can have any claim on him and his world. Only by placing the individual before

God is the typically Kierkegaardian concept of the individual reached. Or to put it more precisely, it is not an individual who first establishes himself as an individual and then enters into a relationship with God, but it is the relationship with God that makes one an individual. One cannot have any relationship with God except to the extent that one is an individual before God. It is the feeling of 'being talked to' by God that lifts man from his life in the crowd and permits him to establish himself as an individual. The proof of the individuality is this private relation which is possible only as an individual. Translated from the subjective, emotional language of religious experience into ontological thought, it is once again apparent that the category of the individual emerges as eternity in the predicament of existence. Kierkegaard proclaims that The individual--with this category the cause of Christianity stands or falls, since worlddevelopment has got so far along in reflection as it has. Without this category pantheism has triumphed absolutely. 1 This means that pure Being, as such is not an individual, almost the very opposite of the individual. But to have a relationship with pure Being (God) from presence in time takes an individual. And having a relationship with the eternal means that the eternal penetrates time, not as it is itself out of time, as pure Being, but in the form that it adopts in time, that of the individual. This does not mean that the individual is nothing less than eternity itself--a temporal edition of eternity. Such a view would obscure the basic distinction between eternity and time, pure Being ____________________ 1 Point of View, p. 136. -91and existence. It does mean that the individual is that unique combination that is neither eternity alone nor temporality alone, but a peculiar combination of the two or, in other words, existence. The threat that hangs over man is that this combination, existence, will be prolonged into eternity. In that case individuality, aloneness, existence, becomes an eternal punishment because in eternity it is not existence that is the proper mode of being. Kierkegaard says: In eternity there are chambers enough so that each may be placed alone in one. For wherever conscience is present, and it is and shall be present in each person, there exists in eternity a lonely prison, or the blessed chamber of salvation. On that account this consciousness of being an individual is the primary consciousness in man, which is his eternal consciousness. 1 This passage shows clearly that Kierkegaard's thought proceeds within a framework of Being that is pure Being. His polemic against it is not intended to deny its meaningfulness from the eternal point of view. As a matter of fact, it seems possible that underneath all the distaste shown towards it, Kierkegaard actually longs for the experience which has previously been identified with the mystical experience. What is denied is that the adoption of an eternal point of view in time is a valid way out. In time, man's eternal consciousness appears as his consciousness of individuality. 2

Indirect communication is the method of communication that develops out of such an understanding of the human situation. Inherent in this understanding was the assumption that though individuality is achieved not by egocentricity ____________________ 1 Purity of Heart, pp. 177-8. 2 That there is no explicit discussion of the realm of eternity other than from the point of view of man's existential relation to it is a result of the belief that such a discussion would be a form of despair for an existing individual. -92but by being 'an individual before God,' it is nevertheless only before God that such a fruitful relationship can be established, not before anyone else. If anything, then anyone besides the eternal is an impediment to the one absolute relationship, that with God. It is therefore necessary for the communicator, in order not to do more harm than good, to withdraw himself from the situation 1 and make sure that the relationship that is established is not between the listener and himself but between the listener and God. This involves a means of communication that is not direct because direct communication establishes an essential relationship with the one who communicates the knowledge. But there is more to indirect communication than just the attempt to hide the communicator. The nature of the communication must be such as to call for some action on the part of the listener. The reason for this is not hard to see. Since it is not the source of the communication that is essential, nor its objective content, but only the way in which the listener relates himself to it, it is essential for the communication to be of such a nature as to make it necessary for the listener to relate himself to it in some way. The best way to accomplish this is to make the communication a 'sign of contradiction' which inevitably arouses such a reaction. Kierkegaard goes on to say: A communication which is the unity of jest and earnest is such a sign of contradiction. It is not by any means a direct communication, it is impossible for him who receives it to tell directly which is which, because the communication does not directly communicate either jest or earnest. The earnestness of such communication lies in another place, or is a second instance, in the intent of making the receiver ____________________ 1 This is brought out most clearly in Works of Love, pp. 223-4. For a pedagogical discussion of indirect communication, see Walter Rest, Indirekte Mitteilung als bildendes Verfahren, dargestellt am Leben und Werk Soren Kierkegaards. -93independently active--which, dialectically understood, is the highest earnestness in the case of communication. 1 It is clear, however, that indirect communication has a role in Kierkegaard's thought only because there is need for the existing individual to relate himself to something that is itself not existential 2 but gives to time the tension that makes it existence. Faith and Melancholy

Indirect communication aims at faith. That is the reason that it has to be indirect, because faith is a subjective matter, not an objective one. But it is essential to realize that Kierkegaard's faith is not a risky poetic venture. Faith is not belief without sufficient evidence, additional quantities of which can convert faith into knowledge. Such an interpretation, according to Kierkegaard, would be a purely objective interpretation. Faith is a relation to something to which one can only be related by means of faith. And this again follows from Kierkegaard's juxtaposition of existence with eternity. Eternity is the one 'object' that existence cannot know because knowledge in this case would convert it into eternity. This is so because from the eternal point of view knowledge and being are one, a Hegelian doctrine that Kierkegaard would not think of doubting. 3 Therefore, eternity is the one thing that cannot be known without being it and since man is not eternity but existence, he does not know eternity. And yet he must have a relation to eternity because, in some way, there is something eternal in him. This relation is faith. Faith, from one point of view, stands for uncertainty and that expresses the fact that the ____________________ 1 Training in Christianity, p. 125. 2 'God does not think, he creates; God does not exist, He is eternal.' -- Postscript, p. 296. 3 See esp. Postscript, pp. 293ff. -94object of faith is not known. Again, faith stands for paradox and that expresses the fact that the way in which the eternal is in man is not understood. And finally, the object of faith is a paradox, not because in itself there is anything paradoxical about it (there would be no way of knowing that and, more important, it could not concern man at all) but because in relation to existence, eternity must be paradoxical. Faith, therefore, almost assumes the status of a new human faculty, one that permits man to attune himself to a reality with which he cannot establish a noetic relationship by the very nature of the 'object' under consideration. And this again is a result of Kierkegaard's understanding of the relation between time and eternity. Faith, then, is the human condition in which the eternal in man is most fully realized. That does not say that the eternal is most fully realized by means of faith. The eternal, from an eternal point of view, does not have to be realized at all because one of its outstanding characteristics is that, in an ideal sense, its meaning is its realization. But faith is the human condition in which the eternal is most fully realized. And that is why faith is such a difficult thing for man to achieve. It requires nothing less than a renunciation of the temporal. At the risk of being repetitious, it should once again be pointed out that this renunciation of the temporal is not that of the mystic. The mystic renounces the temporal by denying it. The subjective thinker performs a 'double reflection': he renounces the temporal by moving back into it. 1 His renunciation achieves the eternal in time, which is existence. The movement that leads to faith is therefore that of 'infinite resignation' of which Kierkegaard writes that The infinite resignation is the last stage prior to faith so that one who has not made this movement has not faith; for only in the infinite resignation do I become clear to myself

____________________ 1 '. . . faith does the opposite: after having made the movement of infinity, it makes those of finiteness.'-- Fear and Trembling, p. 51. -95with respect to my eternal validity, and only then can there be any question of grasping existence by virtue of faith. 1 But lest it be thought that the movement of resignation is simple and not double, Kierkegaard makes sure to add: By faith I make resignation of nothing, on the contrary, by faith I acquire everything, precisely in the sense in which it is said that he who has faith like a grain of mustard can remove mountains. Such is the way in which the eternal is realized existentially in the subject. 2 It is not, however, only in the realm of religious experience that the eternal has such a central role. It extends to almost the whole reign of human emotion. The emotions of melancholy and sexual love illustrate this. That melancholy is one of the most essential of Kierkegaard's traits has generally been recognized. 3 Many of his categories, despair and dread, for instance, can be traced back to it. But when it comes to write a definition of it, he says: What, then, is melancholy? It is hysteria of the spirit. There comes a moment in a man's life when his immediacy is, as it were, ripened and the spirit demands a higher form in which it will apprehend itself as spirit. Man, so long as he is immediate spirit, coheres with the whole earthly life, and now the spirit would collect itself, as it were, out of this dispersion and became in itself transformed, the personality would be conscious of itself in its eternal validity [my italics-M. W.]. If this does not come to pass, if the movement is checked, if it is forced back, melancholy ensues. 4 ____________________ 1 Fear and Trembling, pp. 65-6. Cf. Sickness unto Death, p. 113n. 2 Fear and Trembling, pp. 69-70. 3 For example, see Eduard Geismar, Soren Kierkegaard, pp. 16ff. Also, Point of View, p. 76. 4 Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 159. -96This means that melancholy is the result of inability on the subject's part to grasp the eternal existentially, whether he is conscious of it or not. In one way, melancholy is the result of a lack of the eternal, of a feeling of non-selfrealization. And in another way it points to the presence of the eternal because only from the point of view of the possibility of it can melancholy ensue. How despair, which is melancholy at its most intense, leads to the leap into the ethical has already been discussed. This quotation has shown the central nature of eternity in regard to the experience of melancholy.

A somewhat similar condition is found in Kierkegaard's discussion of sexual love. His interest is to distinguish love from lust and so he says: . . . what distinguishes all love from lust is the fact that it bears an impress of eternity. The lovers are sincerely convinced that their relationship is in itself a complete whole which never can be altered. But since this assurance is founded only upon a natural determinant, the eternal is thus based upon the temporal and thereby conceals itself. 1 The last sentence is very instructive. In love Kierkegaard sees a combination of the eternal with the temporal. This combination, however, is of such a kind that the eternal is based on the temporal. The result of that must be that the eternal ultimately conceals itself because, in spite of the presence of the eternal, it is the temporal, the natural, that is pre-eminent. But in the case of the true combination of the eternal with the temporal, which yields existence, no such pre-eminence exists. There, it is a much more intimate interpenetration of the eternal with the temporal that yields tension rather than the quietude of love. Kierkegaard, in his own life, felt, initially, that he must yield the latter to obtain the former. But, as Buber points out, 2 this is not ____________________ 1 Either/Or, vol. 2, p. 18. 2 Martin Buber, op. cit., p. 52. -97necessarily so at all, a discovery that Kierkegaard himself seems to have made at one point in his life. 1 Nevertheless, the combination of the eternal and the temporal which at this point Kierkegaard seems to have felt to be inauthentic, that of love, serves to point out very convincingly the necessity for understanding the typical emotional tensions in the Kierkegaardian literature as so many variations on the theme of the combination of the eternal with the temporal. Eternity and Time It remains now to try to understand somewhat more closely Kierkegaard's understanding of the phenomena of eternity and time. There is nowhere in Kierkegaard as explicit and sophisticated a discussion of time as there is in Heidegger. Yet he, too, in groping for a definition of the temporal, notices that what is most characteristic about it is that it is composed of three elements: the past, the present, and the future. But, instead of being led by this insight into an attempt at the temporalization of being, he proceeds to argue that it is only in relation to eternity that being can be re-established to its meaning. All this appears within the bounds of a very short argument. He writes: The temporal has three times, and therefore it never really absolutely exists, or absolutely in any one of them. The eternal is. A temporal object can have many different attributes, and in a certain sense can be said to have them all at one time, in so far as it is what it is in these definite attributes. But duplication in itself never has a temporal object; as the temporal disappears in time, so too it exists only in its attributes. On the contrary, when the eternal is present in a man, then this eternal so reduplicates itself in him, that

____________________ 1 'Had I had faith I should have remained with Regine.'-- Journals, No. 444, p. 121. -98every moment it is present in him, it is present in a twofold manner: in an outward direction, and in an inward direction back into itself, but in such a way that this is one and the same thing; for otherwise it is not duplication. The eternal is not merely in its own attributes, but is in itself in its attributes; it not only has attributes, but is in itself when it has attributes. 1 The argument, then, is that being is incompatible with time because attributes, which are the only indication of being in time, ultimately disappear in time. In order to introduce something that is 'duplication,' something that is 'one and the same thing,' something that, in short, can remain what it is in spite of the disappearance of attributes in time, Kierkegaard introduces the eternal. This eternal is its own attribute instead of having attributes which can be destroyed in time. Naturally as has already been pointed out, 2 such an eternity cannot be merely time extended infinitely because such an eternity cannot escape the ravages of temporality-it rather increases them infinitely. The eternity of Kierkegaard resembles the Eleatic one in this respect--it is selfidentity. Eternity is thus seen to intervene in temporality, thereby, making possible being in time. But which one of the three aspects of time, the past, the present and the future, corresponds to the eternal aspect? The answer is--the present, for When by the help of eternity a man lives absorbed in today, he turns his back to the next day. The more he is eternally absorbed in today, the more decisively does he turn his back upon the next day, so that he does not see it at all. 3 ____________________ 1 Works of Love, p. 227. 2 Supra, p. 42. 3 Christian Discourses, p. 76. This is also expressed in Training in Christianity, p. 67, when he writes: '. . . in relation to the absolute there is only one tense: the present. For him who is not contemporary with the absolute--for him it has no existence. And as Christ is the absolute it is easy to see that with respect to Him there is only one situation: that of contemporaneousness.' -99The eternal can therefore conquer the future because it is the foundation of the future, the only extent to which the future can be said to be. 1 The point of penetration of the eternal into time is the present, and that is the reason for the fact that only the present is, that the past has been and is not anymore and the future will be but is not yet. This is so because only eternity has Being and since the present is the temporal container of eternity, only the present has Being. And yet, the Being of eternity in the present is basically different from the Being of eternity in itself because the former is existence while the latter is not. That is the accomplishment of time, that by introducing the distinction between the 'here' and the 'hereafter' it introduces existence. As Kierkegaard writes:

The apprehension of the distinction 'here' and 'hereafter' is at bottom the apprehension of what it is to exist, and the other distinctions converge about this. . . . 2 This, then, is the Kierkegaardian understanding of the nature of eternity and time and their interrelation which produces existence. The purpose of this chapter has been primarily to show how this ontological understanding generates the emotional tensions that pervade Kierkegaard and to emphasize that only within the framework of such a relatively traditional (but, it may be noted, not therefore incorrect) view of the meaning of time and being can these tensions be generated. The next chapter will be devoted to examining the effect that Heidegger's understanding of time and being has on his description of the human emotional situation. ____________________ 1 'Through the eternal can one conquer the future, because the eternal is the foundation of the future; therefore through this one can understand that.'-- Edifying Discourses, vol. 1, p. 21. 2 Postscript, p. 506. -100CHAPTER Existence and the Human Situation

V

( Heidegger) THE philosophy of Heidegger is replete with terms that are specifically human. In the midst of ontological discussions there occur terms like fear, dread, death and care. If Heidegger's philosophic concern were ethical in purpose, even if that ethical concern were directed towards ontological ends, then the prevalence of these specifically human terms would not be surprising. But such is not the case. Heidegger disclaims any ethical interest and time and again he makes clear that his use of such ethical-sounding terms is not to be taken in any but an ontological sense. Under these circumstances it is clear that Heidegger's orientation towards the human situation is closely related to his ontology. The problem concerns the nature of this relationship and the way in which his ontology reflects or determines his view of that situation. Ontological Experiences Heidegger maintains that his use of a term like Care (Sorge) is not experiential. In giving his definition of Care he adds: 'Left out of the meaning is every ontically meant being-tendency such as being worried (Besorgnis) or being carefree.' 1 Care in this sense is ontologically prior to any ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 192. -101ontic manifestation--indeed, it is that which makes it possible for Dasein to be either carefree or not. The expression 'makes it possible' occurs in Sein und Zeit very often 1 in

connection with the making ontological of a term that would otherwise be taken ontically, or in making existentialistic that which would otherwise be taken existentially. Invariably, the function of the ontological is to make possible the ontic. Thus, for instance, in discussing 'inbeing' as an existentiality that is rooted in the basic existentialistic structure of Being-in-the-world, Heidegger makes clear that he is not thereby denying Dasein's being in space in a non-existentialistic, objective sense. But, he adds: ' Dasein itself has its own "being-in-space" which, however, is possible only as a result of Being-in-the-world in general.' 2 The ontological existentiality is thus the ground for the ontic. But the nature of this relationship must be understood. First, there is the question of how the ontological 'makes possible' the ontic. Is it a causal relationship? And then, does not the asking after the possibility of something involve an infinite regress concerning what it is that makes possible that which makes possible, etc.? The problem as it appears now concerns the sense in which the existential-ontic expressions of Heidegger are to be taken. That they are expressions of mood (Stimmung) on the one hand, and ontological on the other, has generally been realized. 3 Heidegger himself stresses their ontological significance and warns against their being taken ontically. But there must be some intrinsic relationship between their ontic sense and their ontological application. Otherwise other terms could be used as well without involving any possible misunderstanding. It would seem that certain ontic states, more than others, reveal the ontological structure of Dasein. Fischer writes: 'To consider moods from an onto____________________ 1 SZ, p. 57. Cf. pp. 111, 121, 125. 2 Ibid., p. 56. 3 See C. A. Hoberg, Das Dasein des Menschen, p. 34. -102logical point of view means to see whether and how they are understanding of Being (seinsverstehend), that is, revealing (erschliessend).' 1 The ontological position of Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, as it has been discussed in Chapter III of this essay, was seen to centre around a dissolution of Being into a field of possibilities. This has been found to be the purpose of rooting in Dasein's essence its being ahead of itself by means of Care, whose root is ecstatic timeliness. The ontological role that ontic moods are made to play is related to this position in two ways. First, those ontic states are generally chosen by Heidegger for the distinction of having ontological significance bestowed upon them that are of a futuristic or 'outside' nature. Secondly, by making the ontological that which makes possible the ontic, Heidegger introduces the dissolving effect of possibility into the ontological structures he is building. To establish the first point it would be well to select some ontic experiences to which Heidegger assigns ontological status and to show how their significance lies in their ability to dissolve the essence of Dasein into possibility. It is perhaps Heidegger's discussion of death which is most useful. In death man sees the possibility of his not being 2 and thereby alone death introduces the element of possibility into Dasein. To this extent even the vulgar conception of death serves Heidegger's purpose. His attempt, however, is to sharpen the possibility producing effect of death on Dasein to such an

extent that it reveals itself as the purest possibility of Dasein, free from any characteristic that is not possibility. His purpose is to be able to say that 'Death, as the end of Dasein, is the innermost (eigenst), absolute (unbezügliche), certain, and as such undetermined, not-to-berepeated possibility of Dasein.' 3 The method by means of which Heidegger attempts to accomplish the setting of ____________________ 1 Alois Fischer, Die Existenz philosophie Martin Heideggers, p. 64. 2 C. A. Hoberg, op. cit., p. 40. 3 SZ, pp. 258-9; Brock, p. 71. -103death into an existentialistically central position is to subtract from it those elements which do not constitute pure possibility for Dasein. To begin with, there is the dying of others which is a phenomenon of death that does not involve the observing Dasein in its own possibility. The dying of others is therefore not the existentiality of death. This is found to be essentially connected with Dasein's own. 1 The area of possibility has thus been made to coincide with that of Dasein. But even so, the interpenetration of Dasein by death has not been established, for death can be understood as an ending of Dasein that comes into function to end Dasein but does not constitute it while it is alive. Heidegger cannot countenance this because then Dasein would not have been fully dissolved into possibility since the segment before death, life, would not have been resolved into the possibility that is death. As a result, Heidegger rejects such a view of death as befitting the ending of something present (Vorhanden) or at hand (Zuhanden), but not Dasein. For Dasein death is not something that ends life but part of life from the very beginning. Vietta 2 quotes a line from T. S. Eliot: 'In my beginning is my end.' Death is therefore a basic existentiality of Dasein because it accomplishes Heidegger's purpose of dissolving Dasein into possibility. That Dasein's attitude towards death can be authentic or inauthentic is a result of the ontological nature of death. Understood as an end that terminates Dasein, the attitude towards death is inauthentic. Ontically, the expression of such an inauthentic attitude is the denial of the reality of death by pushing it off in time or restricting it to others. This inauthentic attitude proclaims that '. . . at the end one also dies once, but for the while being one remains untouched.' 3 It is to be noted that what Heidegger emphasizes ____________________ 1 'To the extent that death has any being, it can only be my death.'-Adolf Sternberger, Der Verstandene Tod, p. 9. Cf. SZ, p. 239. 2 Egon Vietta, Die Seinsfrage bei Martin Heidegger, p. 107. 3 SZ, p. 253. -104in his discussion of the inauthentic attitude towards death is that by it Dasein covers or obscures the element of everpresent possibility. Authentic, on the other hand, is the attitude that reveals death fully in its possibility. Offhand, it might seem that this involves ontically an awaiting of death. But to await death would be to make it a termination that is being awaited. Instead, the proper reaction to a true understanding of

death as possibility in its most genuine form is to 'run ahead in the possibility (Vorlaufen in die Möglichkeit).' 1 Heidegger emphasizes that this does not mean a running ahead to death as a termination of life but a revealing to itself of Dasein in its true possibility. Dasein, in this authentic state, is possibility without limit: 'In running ahead to this possibility it [ Dasein] constantly becomes larger, that is, it reveals itself as something that knows in general no measure, knows no more or less, but signifies the possibility of the measureless impossibility of existence.' 2 Authentic being-to-death is thus found to be an existentiality of Dasein that constitutes its complete dissolution into pure and unending possibility. As an authentic existentiality of Dasein, death reveals itself as the element in the existence of Dasein that permits it to be possibility through and through. But the ontological status that thus accrues to death is itself interpreted as a function of possibility. The ontological clarity which Dasein achieves by understanding its death authentically makes it possible for Dasein to be itself. In the words of A. Vogt: 3 ' Dasein is self in the understanding running ahead into the innermost possibility, the possibility of its own impossibility; that is, in running ahead into the Nothingness of existence.' By facing its own possibility Dasein tears itself away from its mode of being 'one of many (Man)' and ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 262. 2 Loc. cit. 3 Annemarie Vogt, Das Problem des Selbstseins bei Heidegger und Kirkegaard, p. 15. -105becomes individual or single (einzelnes). 1 The result of this is that Heidegger creates the ontological structure of death as existentialistic possibility and then makes that structure itself the possibility for further existentialities--in this case, authenticity and self-being. Heidegger's ontological structures are thus seen to be possibility in a twofold sense. First, the existentiality itself, in this case death, is possibility and, secondly, it is an ontological structure because it makes possible other ontological and ontic possibilities. Heidegger's discussion of dread (Angst) also reveals the way in which ontological structures are constituted by possibility. The first distinction is that between fear (Furcht) and dread. 2 That which is feared is always something in the world, be it of a Dasein or non-Dasein character. But Dasein can also attempt to flee from its own possibility of authenticity. In so doing, it flees from its own Being-in-theworld and this is what constitutes dread. Dread is therefore not of anything specific--just of Nothing. 3 This Nothing, as something into which Dasein is projected, is the Beingin-the-world which Dasein dreads. But, goes on Heidegger, though ontically, in fear, Dasein is escaping from itself, ontologically this situation must be understood in terms of dread of Being-in-the-world. Only because there is ontological dread in Dasein can there be fear. 'Fear,' he writes, 4 'is dread lost in the "world," inauthentic and hidden to itself as such.' By thus characterizing fear as a sort of inauthentic dread, Heidegger shows that the relationship between the existentiality dread and the ontic condition of fear is that the former makes possible the latter. The role of dread, therefore, is to reveal Dasein in its possibility; then to make possible the existential condition of fear. At

____________________ 1 'Der Tod "gehört" nicht indifferent nur dem eigenen Dasein zu, sondern es beansprucht dieses als einzelnes.'--SZ, p. 263. 2 Ibid., pp. 185-91. 3 Alois Fischer, op. cit., p. 6. 4 SZ, p. 189. -106the same time, dread can also lead to Dasein's being free to choose itself as possibility. 1 In either direction, however, dread is the revelation of possibility in which Dasein has to locate itself. It is, however, in the discussion of guilt and conscience that Heidegger applies the technique of the ontologization of emotional experience in its most radical form. From the methodological point of view the justification for attempting an ontological examination of such an experience as guilt lies in the fact that 'guilty' presents itself as a predicate of 'I am.' 2 There must be something in the Being of Dasein that makes it guilty as such. Guilt, understood formally and in the usual ethical sense, refers to a state in which something that could and should be is lacking. Lack, as not being present, is a determination of something of the sort that is present (Vorhanden) and not of Dasein. If Dasein is guilty, therefore, it cannot be guilty by not measuring up to some norms, of whatever content. And yet there is an element of the 'not' in being guilty. Dasein, as possibility, is possible only because, as Care, it is constituted through and through by nullity (Nichtigkeit). In Heidegger's words it is the 'nullifying being-the-cause of a nullity (Das nichtige Grundsein einer Nichtigkeit).' 3 And this is why Dasein is guilty as such. The fact that it is of the essence of Dasein that it is ahead of itself, that it is a project and a possibility, involves that it has a power of nullity which, in turn, roots beingguilty in its essence. This being-guilty is not the result of Dasein's having made itself guilty by any breach but, on the contrary, 'this becomes possible only "by reason of" an original being-guilty.' 4 To define being-guilty from the point of view of good and bad is to overlook that morality presupposes the existentialistic possibility of beingguilty as an essential constituent of Dasein. When conscience, by means of silence, calls Dasein to itself, it calls it to an ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 188. 2 Ibid., p. 281. 3 Ibid., p. 285. 4 Ibid., p. 284. -107authentic relation to its own possibility, which is authenticity as such for Dasein. 1 This analysis of the phenomenon of guilt contains in model form the whole technique of ontological analysis of emotional experiences. It shows how the ontological version of the experience under discussion 'makes possible' the vulgar version of it; how the ontological version itself ultimately is shown to be some form of possibility and how the justification for the procedure lies in the experience being a predicate of Dasein's 'I

am.' Though it is true that Heidegger attributes to understanding, as well, an existentialistic role in Dasein's being a project (Entwurf), 2 the fact nevertheless remains that the key roles in his ontological structures are occupied by constructs that are, at least on the ontic level, of an emotionally experiential nature. It may be noted here that these experiences are almost invariably in an unhappy key. Perhaps the only exception to this is a remark in What is Metaphysics? 3 in which Heidegger indicates that not only boredom but joy at the presence of one beloved as well, can reveal 'being-in-totality.' The reason for this emphasis on unhappy experiences, at first glance, lies in the insight that it is they who somehow reflect the reality of Nothing more than any other and since it is Heidegger's attempt to root Nothing in the essence of Dasein and thereby extend it into possibility, the emphasis under discussion can be understood. The question that presents itself at this point, however, is whether the emphasis on the emotions of negativity are a result of an ontology that roots Being in Nothing or whether the ontology does ____________________ 1 C. A. Hoberg, op. cit., p. 45. 2 The intimate connection between the human noetic function and the emotional background from which it arises is indicated by passages such as the following: 'Befindlichkeit und Verstehen charakterisieren als Existenzialien die ursprüngliche Erschlossenheit des In-der-Weltseins. In der Weise der Gestimmtheit "sieht" das Dasein Möglichkeiten, aus denen her es ist.'-- SZ, p. 148. 3 WM, p. 28; Brock, p. 364. -108this because the vision of the human situation that underlies it is of a despairing and terror-stricken kind. Such in evaluation seems to be essential even for an understanding of Heidegger's ontology and will be attempted in the last chapter of this essay. At this point it will suffice to note this condition and to indicate that it is central for the first period of Heidegger writing, that of Sein und Zeit. Destiny The ontological analysis of the structure of Dasein is applied by Heidegger not only as a methodological approach to the phenomena of the emotional situation of man, but also as a theory of man's historicity. In being projected towards its death authentically, Dasein reveals only one of the 'ends' which, by circumscribing, constitute it. 1 The other end is birth. Dasein is thus that which is between birth and death. But this mode of being between birth and death must be understood properly. The common view is that Dasein is real in its 'now' and that its past and its future are, respectively, already not real and not yet real. It is not difficult to see that such a view does not understand Care as the Being of Dasein. The traditional view sees a constant passing by of nows which constitute history by their passing by but which, by themselves as nows, are not historical. Heidegger's view is that Dasein does not travel the road of life by filling it out with innumerable momentary realities but it extends itself in such a way that its Being is constituted originally by extension. It is clear that such an analysis of the nature of Dasein's historicity is founded upon Heidegger's previous rooting of Dasein's Care in timeliness. Dasein's being rooted in timeliness permits it to be historical, or, in

Heidegger's own words: 'The analysis of the historicity of Dasein attempts to show that this ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 373. -109"being" is not "timely" because "it stands in history," but, on the contrary, that it does and can exist historically only because it is, in the ground of its Being, timely.' 1 Again, it need hardly be pointed out how the attempt is to extend Dasein into a field, in this case of historicity, and not to permit it to retain any element of non-extension. In this case such an element of non-extension would be the 'now' which passes by but which itself is not of a durational character. To that extent Heidegger's analysis of historicity is but another application of the general ontological dissolution of Dasein into a field of possibilities or happenings. But it is in his analysis of Dasein's attitude towards its own historicity that the implications for the human situation are developed. Dasein's determination, which is its authenticity, is its projecting itself into its own being guilty. 2 It has already been pointed out 3 that Dasein's guilt is not the result of not living up to some norms of behaviour, but to the constitution of Dasein's essence which roots its not-being in itself. Determination, under these circumstances, is a special mode of Dasein's revelation; in this case, its revelation to itself of its own position. What Dasein determines cannot be prescribed by an ontological analysis but it is certain that it consists of a taking over of the heritage into which it finds itself thrown. 4 This determined acceptance of the situation into which Dasein is thrown involves a delivering itself over to possibilities that have been overcome. Thus, the determination to death eliminates all accidental and temporary possibilities and reveals Dasein's destiny which is the possibility of Dasein's determining itself as possibility. The point at which destiny reveals itself, the point at which Dasein takes over its being thrown into its situation, is the moment. The moment reveals Dasein's authentic possibility in its determination for the future. But ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 376. 2 Ibid., pp. 296-7. 3 Cf. supra, p. 107. 4 C. A. Hoberg, op. cit., p. 50. -110the possibilities that are Dasein are always an authentic acceptance of previous possibilities as the situation into which Dasein is thrown. This makes Dasein's determination a repetition, of which Heidegger writes: 'Repetition is the explicit delivery, that is, the return to possibilities of the Dasein that have been there (dagewesen).' 1 And, since repetition is a revelation of Dasein in the moment, it is Dasein's orientation towards its finitude and therefore its death, that makes historicity possible. The hidden ground of D asein's historicity is therefore, according to Heidegger, its authentic Being-to-death 2 which gives it its destiny by means of repetition in the moment.

The complex of terms and concepts that is expressed by historicity, destiny, moment and determination must be understood from the point of view of Heidegger's ontological analysis of Dasein. Having interpreted Dasein on the basis of ecstatic temporality, Heidegger must account for the fact that Dasein, in existing, has a destiny. Destiny is a dimension of the human situation which seems to involve aspects other than those of which Heidegger has constructed Dasein. Destiny is a happening of Dasein that lends an intrinsic meaningfulness to it, even if that meaningfulness is of the most indirect sort. The fact that Dasein is extended by means of timeliness gives it a horizontal dimension that cannot possibly lend it the depth that is involved in situations of a historical character. The possibility of achieving a history depends upon the possibility of a moment in which Dasein not only happens but in which its choice makes that which happens be its destiny. 3 Heidegger, in order to give to Dasein this dimension without basically altering its ontological status of Care and timeliness, attributes to these horizontal dimensions the possibility of achieving a measure of depth by means of the intensification of the horizontal extension. Dasein's moment, therefore, is not a point at which something enters ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 385. 2 Ibid., p. 386. 3 Ibid., p. 384. -111its situation that is essentially other, as is eternity in the case of Kierkegaard, but a point at which Dasein succeeds in dissolving into its own running ahead of itself that element that is given to it, its inherited possibilities. The significant point is that by thus absorbing into its own extension the possibilities that it inherits, Dasein receives a historical dimension that seems to be on a level other than Dasein's ecstatic timeliness. It is revealing that in discussing repetition as a possibility of Dasein, Heidegger writes: 'The authentic repetition of an existence possibility that has been --that Dasein chooses for itself its hero--is grounded existentialistically in the determination that runs ahead (vorlaufende Entschlossenheit); because in it the choice is first made that makes free for the struggling emulation and the devotion to that which can be repeated.' 1 The mention of the heroic indicates that the dimension which the moment imparts to Dasein is something like the heroic, even if it consists only of choosing a hero. This is also the reason for Heidegger's assertion that it is Dasein that is primarily historical and that the non-Dasein is only secondarily historical. The dimension which Heidegger is compelled to add to Dasein because of its historical character cannot be found in non-Dasein except in a secondary sense. Whether the attempt to achieve this dimension by the Heideggerian method of the intensification of the extension of Dasein's timeliness is successful remains to be seen. That Heidegger does have a view of the human situation in Sein und Zeit, however, is clear. The emphasis of the discussion so far has been on showing that Heidegger's choice of experiences for the purpose of bestowing on them ontological status is based upon the attempt to interpret Dasein essentially as possibility. Emotions like dread, therefore, serve a useful ontological purpose because they reflect or constitute Dasein's absorption of Nothing, which makes it possibility. The experience of historical magnitudes, as well,

____________________ 1 SZ., p. 385. -112reveals Dasein's essential extension in timeliness. It is true that Heidegger does have a place for experiences that constitute a gathering itself in of Dasein: e.g. its choosing itself. But Dasein's choosing itself does not consist of a turning against its being extended and an attempt to realize something in itself that concentrates it into a point, but rather an acceptance of its extension. As Vogt 1 expresses it: 'To-want-to-be-oneself means: to bear dread, to persevere in dread and not to flee it.' It would almost be correct to say that this is the paradox of Heidegger, though he does not use the term. The self, by dissolving itself into its dread, wins itself. The same tendency has revealed itself in Heidegger's understanding of the moment, which does not bring eternity into time, as in Kierkegaard, but extends into the future that which Dasein inherits in its situation. The result of the position described is to view man as a being essentially constituted by his being ahead of himself in Care and finding his salvation in the revealing to himself of this situation. 2 The experiences that achieve this are those which are of such a nature as to permit their being interpreted as dissolving Dasein into its possibilities. With the lessening of the emphasis upon the existentialistic analysis of Dasein as the key to the problem of Being and the attempt to evolve a concept of Being which the structure of Dasein can reflect rather than generate, a new atmosphere concerning the human situation emerges. In the centre of Heidegger's writing there now move problems of a literary-critical nature, especially as exemplified in the poetry of Hölderlin. Though Heidegger's essays on the poetry of Hölderlin are basically an exposition and analysis of the poet's meanings, Heidegger's own orientation towards the phenomenon of art and the ontological problems involved emerges clearly enough to permit a discussion of them. ____________________ 1 A. Vogt, op. cit., p. 22. 2 See C. A. Hoberg, op. cit., p. 52. -113Art Basic to Heidegger's understanding of the poetic enterprise is a theory of language which assigns to it ontological significance. In discussing a saying of Hölderlin that language is the most dangerous of goods given to man, Heidegger maintains 1 that it is only by means of language that man is subject to a 'revelation' which, in the form of a being, threatens man. Language is that mode of the Being of man which permits him to be open to the beings that relate themselves to him. 'Language,' writes Heidegger, 2 'is not only a tool which man possesses among many others, but language first grants the possibility, in general, to stand in the midst of the openness (Offenheit) of beings.' It is by means of the possession of language that man is not closed off from that which reveals itself but can come under its influence and illumination. The fact that verbal constructions are in a position to communicate states of being is not an indication that communication is the basic function of language. The communicative function of

language is a result of the fact that Being reveals itself in language. Language is therefore the ground in which the Being of man is founded. Heidegger quotes 3 Hölderlin to the effect that man is a conversation. From this point of view, the composition of poetry is not a verbal expression of something that is ontologically present before the coming into being of the poetry that communicates it, but it is the poetry that brings into being that which it names. In Heidegger's words: 'The poet names the gods and names all things what they are.' ____________________ 1 Hölderlin, p. 34; Brock, p. 298. A similar idea is expressed in Platon, p. 79, where Heidegger writes: 'Der Mensch aber ist nicht nur ein Lebewesen das neben anderen Fähigkeiten auch die Sprache besitzt. Vielmehr ist die Sprache das Haus des Seins, darin wohnend der Mensch ek-sistiert, indem er der Wahrheit des Seins, sie hütend, gehört.' 2 Hölderlin, p. 35; Brock, p. 299. 3 Ibid., p. 36; Brock, p. 300. -114This naming does not consist of supplying something that is already known with a name, but, by the poet speaking the essential word, the being, by means of this naming, is first designated to be that which it is.' 1 The poet creates (stiften) by means of the word and in the word. That which creates itself in him is Being because 'Being must be opened in order for that which is (Seiende) to appear.' 2 As the faculty of man that permits Being to create itself in him, poetry is that which makes dawn a new time and brings to a close the old one. By means of the creative revelation that is original language or poetry, man places himself in the openness of Being. Thus, though Heidegger grants to the poetic process an ontologically creative role, he insists that the poet is that realm of Being in which truth happens. The poet does not generate a being out of his own existentiality, but it is he who sets into a work of art the truth of something that is. Heidegger writes: 'Thus, the essence of art would be this: the setting-itself-into-a-work (Sich-ins Werk-setzen) of the truth of that which is.' 3 As an example, he refers to Van Gogh's painting of a pair of peasant's shoes. ' Van Gogh's painting is the opening up of what the utensil, the pair of peasant's shoes, is in truth. This being steps forth in the unhiddenness (Unverborgenheit) of its Being.' What the artist does is to reveal that which he paints as that which it is; not in the sense of reflecting a revelation which he only reports, but in the sense of constituting the revelation. Heidegger uses the metaphor of 'shining' 4 to describe the way in which the hidden is opened up in a work of art and made to reveal itself in truth. And beauty is one of the ways in which the truth shines forth in a work of art. Beauty is therefore not something that is present besides the revelation of the truth of Being, but is the very process of the ____________________ 1 Hölderlin, p. 38; Brock, p. 304. 2 Loc. cit. 3 Holzwege, p. 25. 4 'Das ins Werk gefügte Scheinen ist das Schöne.'--Holzwege, p. 44.

-115appearance (erscheinen) of that which is. 1 The result of this is that the artist must attune himself to that which wants to reveal itself and permit the process to happen through him. He, in his work of art, then becomes the realm in which the truth involved happens and, from this point of view, the artist does not reflect truths but makes them happen. But the fact nevertheless remains that only by attuning himself to the truths that want to happen and thereby create a particular time can the artist become the realm in which these truths do happen. 2 Heidegger's orientation is in the direction of the artist's living in the presence of realities which, though they happen through him, he must abide by if he is to be an artist. Original Being The concept of Being that makes possible such a position is that of Heidegger's second period. Without repeating the discussion of Chapter III concerning the shift in emphasis from the existentialistic analysis of Dasein in Sein und Zeit to the less Dasein-oriented thought of the subsequent writings, it might be pointed out here that the theory of poetic creation just discussed is based on an understanding of Being which is basically nonexistentialistic. As that which reveals itself in the illumination (lichtung) of truth, Being is the ontological principle which permits Dasein to be its shepherd, but which must first address Dasein before Dasein can make itself its shepherd. 3 And this orientation of receptivity towards the happenings of Being is reflected by many of the positions adopted by Heidegger. It is encountered, perhaps most clearly, in his discussion of values. ____________________ 1 'Die Schönheit ist die Anwesenheit des Seyns. Das Seyn ist das Wahre des Seienden.'- Hölderlin, p. 127. Cf. Holzwege, p. 67. 2 This is also shown by Heidegger's characterization of the present as a time when the gods are absent. 3 'Der Mensch muss, bevor er spricht, erst vom Sein sich wieder ansprechen lassen. . . .' Platon, p. 60. -116His polemic is directed against the view that places reality on one level and then proceeds, by means of experience, to add value to reality. 1 In one of his essays about Hölderlin there is what amounts to an outburst against this view. He writes: 'How long are we going to imagine that there was first of all a part of nature existing for itself and a landscape existing for itself, and that then, with the help of "poetic experiences" this landscape became coloured with myth? How long are we going to prevent ourselves from experiencing the actual as actual?' 2 Heidegger's own position makes out of values, which are erroneously thought to be addenda of reality, modes of the revelation of Being and thereby ontologically as basic as anything else. By locating those elements of reality that are experiential and valuational in the modes of revelation of Being, Heidegger denies the structure of Dasein that ontologically creative role that a location of value in judgment grants it. Instead, the human experiencing of values is made, at least ontologically, a derivative of certain modes of behaviour of Being which are

reflected or even happen in Dasein but which are nevertheless the happenings of Being and not the experiencing of Dasein. The distinction between the rooting of judgments and values in the modes of Being and, on the other hand, of locating them in an activity or attitude of Dasein, also recurs in Heidegger's essays about various figures in the history of philosophy. Without attempting to evaluate the acceptability of his interpretations from the point of view of textual fidelity, it is nevertheless interesting to note these interpretations as revelatory of Heidegger's own position. Thus, for instance, in his essay on the Cave passage in Plato's Republic, Heidegger maintains that what is involved there is a shift of the place of truth. 'As un-hiddenness (Unverborgenheit) it [truth] is still a distinguishing mark ____________________ 1 Platon, pp. 99-100. 2 Hölderlin, p. 21; Brock, p. 275. -117of that which is itself. As correctness of "viewing ( Blicken)," however, it becomes the outstanding characteristic of the human attitude towards that which is.' 1 In this shift Heidegger locates the beginning of humanism, which he defines as the view '. . . that man, according to various points of view, every time, however, by knowing, moves into a middle of that which is, without therefore being already the highest of that which is.' 2 By thus making truth into a value rather than a mode of Being, Western metaphysics has made its beginning. This development is to culminate in the thought of Nietsche whose revaluation of all values is the total conversion into value of all Being. 3 As such, Nietzsche's proclamation of the death of God represents his understanding that in the form of value the divine has been killed because only as a mode of Being can the divine be taken seriously. And as nihilism in general, Nietzsche's thought expresses itself as the negation of all Being by its conversion into value. The will to power is Nietzsche's supreme value which has the power of bringing all Being under its wing and thereby destroying it. In terms of the ontology of independent Being with which Heidegger operates in his latter essays, he develops an analysis of the contemporary situation. There are two areas in which this analysis is applied: the arts and the sciences. The art of our time is marked by the absence of the gods. The poet of our time is prevented from making the opening itself up of Being happen because the gods have disappeared from the world; even their traces have disappeared. 4 All he can do is to attempt to capture some of the remote traces of the Divine. But not only the gods have disappeared from the world. Even the revelation of things as they are has been hidden by the mass-techniques of our time. Heidegger ____________________ 1 Platon, p. 42. 2 Ibid., p. 49. 3 Holzwege, pp. 242-7. 4 'Nicht nur die Götter und der Gott sind entflohen, sondern der Glanz der Gottheit ist in der Weltgeschichte erloschen.'--Ibid., p. 248.

-118quotes 1 from a letter by R. M. Rilke in which he compares the attitude of our grandparents towards a 'house' or a 'well' with our attitude towards the objects of our life. To them a house or a well was a familiar utensil which was hospitable and expressive of the human. The 'American' objects of our day have nothing in common with their predecessors. Expressions of an impersonal technology, they are not a revelation of the human but an imposition on the world of an attitude of utility. Heidegger sees the source of this attitude in the conversion by Nietzsche of Being into the will to power and thereby into an attitude of man towards reality. In contrast, he points to the attempts on the part of Rilke to encounter Being as a whole. The Being that Rilke faces is the well-rounded sphere of Parmenides. 2 Though there is no extended discussion in this essay of the ontological implications of the Parmenidian view of Being and though it is not possible to identify Heidegger's view with that of Rilke without qualification, it nevertheless is revealing that Heidegger feels it necessary to refer to Parmenides and his view of Being in the elucidation of the work of a poet with whom he is undoubtedly in sympathy. In the field of modern science, as well, Heidegger sees a turning away from Receptivity towards Being as it presents itself and the placing in its place of a human attitude. 'The Being of that which is, is sought and found in the beingrepresented of that which is.' 3 This is the meaning of the modern search for a 'picture' of the world. 4 Because modern metaphysics locates in a human attitude the Being of that which it examines, it must have a picture of the world as the representation which it seeks. Only by means of such an approach is modern experimental science possible because experimentation consists of having a picture or theory which is then, successfully or unsuccessfully, read into the ____________________ 1 Holzwege, p. 268. 2 Ibid., pp. 277-8. 3 Ibid., p. 83. 4 Ibid., p. 85. -119data at hand. 1 The experiment is led and directed by the theory and in that sense is subordinate to it. Such a technique was impossible for the Greeks who saw man as 'being viewed (angeschaut)' by Being and thereby standing in its openness. The manipulative control of reality which is modern experimental science is possible only for a metaphysics that locates in human representation the Being of that which is and thereby makes possible the use of theory as a directing and guiding principle in the confrontation of Being. The aim of this chapter has been to show how Heidegger's concepts of Being are related to the applications he makes of them in the various areas of human endeavour. Because, as has been shown in Chapter III, there is a basic dichotomy in the ontology of Heidegger's early and late period, the formulations of the human situation as discussed in this chapter fall into two, rather sharply distinguishable areas. First is the period of Sein und Zeit in which the emphasis is on the ontological interpretation of emotional experiences as a means of extending Dasein into possibility. Since, at this period,

Heidegger is working with a concept of Being that is itself pure possibility in the existentialistic sense, he chooses those aspects of experience that reveal Dasein from the point of view of its extension, of its being ahead of itself. In the second period of Heidegger, in which he operates with a non-existentialistic, independent concept of Being, his aim is to present man as the shepherd of Being or the realm in which that Being happens. His theory of the nature of language and poetry, as expressed in his writings about Hölderlin, are directed towards that end. His polemic against the turning of Being into value, as well, has as its purpose the maintenance of the concept of Being in its ____________________ 1 'Ein Experiment ansetzen heisst, eine Bedingung vorstellen, dergemäss ein bestimmter Bewegungszusammenhang in der Notwendigkeit seines Ablaufs verfolgbar und d.h. für die Berechnung im voraus beherrschbar gemacht werden kann.'-- Holzwege, p. 74. -120independence and the understanding of the human situation in the light of man as the medium of the revelation of Being. And, finally, his analysis of the modern situation in the arts and the sciences also proceeds from the point of view of a non-existentialistic understanding of Being. All this is possible, however, only by an understanding of the human situation in terms of a concept of Being and not by an understanding of the concept of Being in terms of the human situation. Heidegger's first period attempts the latter, while his second period attempts the former. -121CHAPTER The Contrast

VI

THE lines of Kierkegaard and Heidegger which have until now been pursued separately, though side by side, are to meet now. Were this essay a study of influences, it would be proper at this point to present in more or less schematic form the concepts in Heidegger, ontological in this case, which could be thought of as having been derived from Kierkegaard. Since, however, the effort here is not to trace historical influence but a contrast and evaluation of the ontological enterprise of each of these thinkers and the extent to which their respective attitudes towards existence, as the point of departure of their thinking, can be harmonized with the ontological categories brought into play, the problem of procedure arises. It would not be sufficient to draw up a table of terms operative in Heidegger's writings which are derived from Kierkegaard. To see that these are considerable in number it is necessary only to think of terms like the 'moment,' 'fear' and 'existence.' Such a listing, however, would not be adequate because it would obscure the basic differences that divide the use of these terms in the writings of Kierkegaard from those in Heidegger. The way in which these differences can be made to appear is by contrasting the basic ontological positions of the two thinkers under consideration. Instead of many small differences in the use of these terms, it will then appear that these are but the result of a basic ontological difference which permeates their writing

-122and which leads to the many derivative differences in the understanding of the terms they have in common. The fact, however, that so many of the terms in their respective thinking are held in common indicates that there is a similar philosophic experience at their root which is absorbed in different philosophic categories in the two cases. The attempt will be to understand which of the two enterprises more adequately translates into philosophic terms the basically existentialist experience that underlies both. Pure Being The philosophical construct of existence as it emerges in Kierkegaard is based on an ontology of pure Being. Existence is very much less and very much more than pure Being. It is less than pure Being because existence implies a situation in which there is a factor operating that is the opposite of pure Being: the temporal. Existence is also more than pure Being because the unique mixture of pure Being and the temporal produces human categories that are foreign to pure Being as such. These existential categories can be understood in their tension only on the basis of being the meeting points of two ontologically separate constructs: pure Being and temporality. Without granting that the moment is a paradox because it realizes the eternal in the temporal, it would be no paradox at all because there is nothing paradoxical in the moment, as a point in time, accomplishing something that is basically temporal. But if the moment succeeds in some way in capturing the eternal, 1 then the impossibility of such a success becomes apparent. If temporality is a process, a continuum, and pure Being is a point whose unity transcends componentiality, then how can the point that is pure Being enter temporality without ____________________ 1 Cf. Fritz Sieber, Der Bergriff der Mitteilung bei Soren Kierkegaard, p. 23. -123being dissolved in its opposite and thereby losing its essential, unified indissolubility? And yet, neither can it be said that this does not happen because man's encounter with the divine is in some sense a matter of encountering the eternal in time. 1 And the fact that this does happen, that man cannot escape himself by either capturing his pure Being entirely and escaping into the unity that it is, or by entirely losing himself in his temporality and pretending that the eternal does not constitute him essentially as well, is the nature of human existence. Heidegger's understanding of the ontological basis of the situation is different. His is a rejection of pure Being as a concept. 2 This rejection is based on the conviction that no such concept can be generated from a philosophical analysis that proceeds from the point of view of the human thinker (the existentialistic thinking of Dasein). 3 With the rejection of Being as the non-componential unity of pure Being, the concept of Being that is substituted is necessarily one that is essentially extended. It could almost be said that Heidegger's point is that no matter how thin Being is sliced, it will always yield a field rather than a point. The conversion of Being into a field characterized by extension is accomplished by Heidegger in various different ways, depending on the point of view of the discussion at the moment. For Dasein it is Care that affects its extension by putting it ahead of itself in its project. Later, when the

discussion is centred less on Dasein, it is by the rooting of Being in Nothing and Nothing in Being ____________________ 1 'The Moment makes its appearance when an eternal resolve comes into relation with an incommensurable occasion.'-- Fragments, p. 18. 2 A. Vogt, Das Problem des Selbstseins bei Heidegger und Kierkegaard, pp. 17-18, expresses this by saying that where for Heidegger there is Nothing, for Kierkegaard there is Being or eternity. This is but another way of saying that Heidegger roots Being in Nothing, thereby making a field of possibilities of Being, while Kierkegaard maintains Being in its purity. Cf. C. A. Hoberg, Das Dasein des Menschen, 128-32. 3 This seems to be the reason for Heidegger's rejection of Greek ontology. It is accused of trying to understand Being 'out of the world' ( SZ, p. 12), e.g. non-existentially. -124that the same effect is sought for. The effect of Nothing is to dissolve Being's solidity and not to leave any area that, by being free from projection into Nothing, is noncomponential and therefore not extended. In whichever way this effect is brought about, the result is the same. Being is no longer a presence but a happening and a happening not of presences but of entities that are themselves happenings. 1 It would not be too much to expect that this basic ontological difference between Kierkegaard and Heidegger would appear in the latter's comments about the former and this is indeed the case. In discussing the moment, Heidegger writes: S. Kierkegaard has seen the existential (existenzielle) phenomenon of the moment most penetratingly, which does not, however, mean that he has succeeded equally in the existentialistic (existenziale) interpretation. He adheres to the vulgar time-concept and defines the moment with the help of now and eternity. When Kierkegaard speaks of 'temporality' he means the 'Being-in-time (In-der-Zeit-sein)' of man. Time as the condition of being in time (Innerzeitigkeit) knows only the now but never the moment. When this is experienced existentially, however, a more original, though existentialistically inexpressible, temporality is presupposed. 2 In this note Heidegger makes very clear that Kierkegaard's understanding of the moment is in terms of 'now.' This is but another way of saying that the moment is the introduction of pure Being or eternity into time because, as has already been pointed out, Kierkegaard's understanding of ____________________ 1 'Wir haben also bei Heidegger phänomenales Sein als Sein der Zeitlichkeit. Dasein und Zeitlichkeit sind, und zwar derart, dass des Daseins Wesen Zeitlichkeit "ist."'-H. E. Muller, Der Zeitbegriff Deutingers und Heideggers, p. 36. Cf. M. Beck, 'Referat und Kritik von Martin Heidegger: 'Sein und Zeit' in Philosophische Hefte, Heft 1, Juli, 1928, pp. 7-8. 2 SZ, p. 338n. -125-

eternity is that of never-changing presence which is the meaning of 'now.' The 'now' is that non-componential entity which reflects in the medium of time the absolute noncomponentiality of pure Being. But, it is only Kierkegaard who can give such an interpretation of the moment because for him pure Being and its reflection in time, the 'now,' have ontological significance. As a consequence, the moment of Kierkegaard is directed towards the present. 1 For Heidegger this would be impossible. His accusation that Kierkegaard adheres to the 'vulgar time-concept' means that this concept of time is based on a succession of 'nows' which, by passing, constitute time but as such reflect the presence of pure Being. Since Heidegger's understanding of time cannot contain any such non-componential entities, his view of the moment cannot be oriented towards the 'now' but to the moment as disclosing not presence but extension. The more original temporality of which he speaks sees the moment as something that reveals Dasein in its possibilities. To quote Heidegger: 'To the runningahead of determination there belongs a presence according to which a decision reveals the situation.' 2 The moment is thus a point of revelation of Dasein's being ahead of itself and to that extent is not only itself extended but permits Dasein's authentic extension which is determination. The concept of the moment has thus been reinterpreted by Heidegger according to the dictates of his own ontology which does not permit him to grant to pure Being and its ____________________ 1 It is very illuminating that while for Kierkegaard the moment is of the present, for Heidegger it is of the future. Kierkegaard writes: '. . . in relation to the absolute there is only one tense: the present. For him who is not contemporary with the absolute-for him it has no existence.'-- Training, p. 67. For Heidegger, however, it is the future that is primary. As Muller, op. cit., p. 7, writes: 'Wie schon erwähnt, ist für Heidegger die Zukunft in der Primären Stellung. Sie ist in ihrer Eigenart fundamental ontologisch derart begründet.' Since Heidegger's moment is a revelation of extension, it is the future that is primary because the future is the ecstasy that extends Dasein. 2 SZ, p. 338. -126temporal representative, the 'now' or presence, any ontological status. It is not, however, only in connection with the moment that Heidegger's realization of the basic ontological difference between Kierkegaard and himself appears. In another note in Sein und Zeit he writes: In the 19th century S. Kierkegaard explicitly grasped the problem of existence as an existential one and thought it through penetratingly. The existentialistic problem is so foreign to him, however, that in the ontological respect he is completely under the sway of Hegel and the philosophy of antiquity as seen through him. Therefore more is to be learned philosophically from his edifying writings than from the theoretical--with the exception of the treatise concerning the concept of dread. 1 Though Heidegger does not specify here in what way Kierkegaard is under the sway of Hegel's ontology, being no doubt fully aware that, if anything, it is antagonism that characterizes Kierkegaard's relationship to the philosophy of pure Being of Hegel, the meaning of his remark is not too difficult to decipher. Kierkegaard's polemic against

Hegel's pure Being restricts itself to an attack on the identification of the thinker's point of view with that of pure Being. The undesirable result of this, according to Kierkegaard, is that though the system which the thinker constructs is perfectly valid for an abstract, non-existing being, it has no relationship to the situation in which the human thinker finds himself. Thus, Kierkegaard's attack is directed at the identification of pure Being with the situation of the thinker and not at pure Being itself. On the contrary, it is the thinker's relationship to it, as the point at which pure Being meets the temporal, that constitutes the nature of his existence. Kierkegaard's effort is therefore not a basic destruction of the ontological categories of Hegel, ____________________ 1 SZ, p. 235n. -127but a new juxtaposition of them, having as its purpose the yielding of the tensions of existence. For Heidegger the acceptance of the ontological validity of pure Being represents an acceptance of the ontology of Hegel and the philosophy of antiquity. His accusation against Kierkegaard in the note quoted is a realization that his own attempt to dissolve Being is not sympathized with by Kierkegaard but that his ( Kierkegaard's) thinking is an acceptance of the traditional ontological categories with the novelty of the existential innovation being rooted not in a basically new ontology but in a new juxtaposition of the old ingredients. In the note quoted above there emerges another strain that is active in the attitude of Heidegger towards Kierkegaard and which goes rather deeply into the basic nature of the relationship. This strain is found in Heidegger's distinction between the ontic and the ontological, the existential and the existentialistic. The meaning of these distinctions has already been discussed. It will be sufficient to repeat here that the second of these terms is taken by Heidegger as incorporating the point of view that is concerned with the problem of Being while the first refers to the area of beings. Heidegger's point is that Kierkegaard's thinking remains on the ontic and existential level and never rises to the ontological and existentialistic one. That Kierkegaard does not address himself to the problem of Being as such is quite true. But the fact that Kierkegaard does not do so is not the result of an accidental interest in theological matters to the detriment of philosophical ones. Were this the case, then Heidegger's criticism of Kierkegaard's lack of originality would be unanswerable. The reason that Kierkegaard does not concern himself directly with the problem of Being is that to do so would be to engage in thinking that is not subjectively existential. The existential thinking of Kierkegaard requires the adoption of a point of view that is an infinite involvement of the subjective thinker in a problem on which he stakes nothing less than -128himself. Only to the extent that the thinker is ready to involve that which is most precious to him, himself, without any limitation or reservation, is there a possibility of absorbing into his existence and thereby converting into truth the solutions evolved. An interest in the problem of Being, in the mode in which Heidegger proposes it, represents an objective interest that is basically opposed to subjective thinking. Kierkegaard's

refusal to pose the problem of Being as such is thus the result of his existential orientation and is inherent in the position he adopts. Existential Concern The difference that emerges at this point between Kierkegaard and Heidegger would seem not to be directly ontological but one that concerns the nature of their existentialist approaches. Kierkegaard's thinking is personal, involved and replete with pathos, while that of Heidegger is detached, objective, impersonal. 1 The fact that none of Heidegger's writing is directly autobiographical is itself enough to show that Kierkegaard's understanding of existential thinking does not apply to him. If this is so, however, the question arises as to what extent, if any, can Heidegger be thought of as incorporating the existential concern of Kierkegaard in his own thinking. The concern with the problem of Being, as the alleged central motif in the philosophy of Heidegger, is itself not existential. And K.H.---K ____________________ 1 Adolf Sternberger, "'Der Verstandene Tod'" in Studein und Bibliographein zur Gegenwartsphilosophie, no. 6, p. 70n, expresses this as follows: '. . . Heideggers Unternehmen ist es gerade uber den Status der "Vorschule" und des "unendlichen Interressiertseins am Existieren" hinauszukommen, und das Fazit aus den Kierkegaardschen Mitteilungen zu ziehen, das Existieren selbst als Seinsbestimmung mit hereinzubekommen und das Hinzielen zurückzubiegen, so dass nichts mehr und schon gar nicht das eigentliche Ziel draussen bleibt.' Cf. also Alois Fischer , Die Existenzphilosophie Martin Heideggers, pp. xi-xii. -129yet many of the key concepts on the road towards the formulation of the concept of Being are more than reminiscent of Kierkegaard's pathetic thinking. How does this come about? In answering this question it might be well to start by pointing out a very fundamental problem in the philosophy of Kierkegaard. It has been made clear that the existential thinking of Kierkegaard is based, even if only implicitly, on an ontology that juxtaposes pure Being with the temporal and sees the tensions of existence as being generated by this juxtaposition. The question is: how is this ontological picture arrived at? It might be that its basis is an ontological argument. As such, it would be an objective analysis that would yield Kierkegaard's ontology and once this basic framework had been achieved, the purely existential categories follow as a result of the ontology. It is not difficult to see that this could not be a truly existential point of view and that, as a matter of fact, it is not the thinking of Kierkegaard. Instead, there is first an existential involvement, such as the necessity for winning 'my' eternal happiness of the Postscript. 1 Since, however, it is not possible to formulate an existential situation, such as the moment, without an ontological structure at its basis, the ontology is generated from the pathetic thinking of the subjective thinker. And it would seem that this is precisely the attempt of Kierkegaard. But there are very serious difficulties connected with such an attempt. Are the ontological categories evolved really existential in nature? Pure Being, it has been

found, is one of the basic ontological ingredients that go into making up Kierkegaard's ontological picture. But certainly pure Being is not an existential category. It is the mode of being that is almost the opposite of existence. As a consequence, pure Being, as such, cannot be an existentially achieved category. And it is true that pure Being never ____________________ 1 'Higher than this speculative happiness, therefore, is the infinite passionate interest in a personal eternal happiness.'-- Postscript, p. 54. -130appears in Kierkegaard as such but only in terms of the subject's relationship to it, which is a constant becoming and never a being it. 1 Even with this qualification, however, the fact remains that pure Being or eternity, a non-existential category, is an operative feature in the ontology of Kierkegaard, 2 a feature which cannot be arrived at by means of existential thinking. It would seem that Heidegger accepts the philosophic desirability of basing all ontological research on the situation in which the existing thinker or Dasein finds itself. His distinction between existentialities and categories is aimed at the preservation of the Dasein-orientation of his analysis. The condemnation of the ontology of antiquity is grounded on the belief that its central concepts are an attempt to understand Being from out of the 'world,' 3 that which is non-Dasein, rather than from the point of view of the existence of Dasein. The rejection of the ontology of presence or, as has been shown, of pure Being is based on the consideration that makes Kierkegaard's acceptance of it problematic from the purely existential point of view. 4 It is thus apparent, surprising as it may seem, that Heidegger is, in this sense, more existential than Kierkegaard as he refuses to incorporate into his ontology non-existentialistic elements. And yet the fact remains that, on the one hand, his thinking is not that of subjective involvement and, on the other hand, his addressing himself to the problem of Being as such is itself a basically non-existential undertaking. The result seems to be that by adopting a more purely existential position than even Kierkegaard, Heidegger is somehow forced into an interest in Being which, in his ____________________ 1 Kierkegaard insists that his problem is becoming a Christian and not being one. Cf. Postscript, p. 110. 2 It is important to note again that Kierkegaard can make a statement like '. . . God does not exist, He is eternal,' while Heidegger claims that if God is eternal, it is in the sense of more original timeliness. Cf. SZ, p. 427n. 3 SZ, pp. 21-2. 4 Ibid., p. 26. -131terms, converts his analysis from an existential into an existentialistic one and also succeeds in sapping from it the pathetic involvement that is characteristic of Kierkegaard. The interconnection of these two results and their common ground in the experience of existence remain to be analysed.

Putting aside momentarily the question concerning the non-existential nature of the interest in the problem of Being, once such an interest does arise it is not difficult to see why it should lead to the Heideggerian concept of Being. Pure Being must be rejected as non-existential and with it a temporality that is based on the progression of minute reflections of that pure Being. In its place there moves almost naturally a concept of Being that, by rooting extension in its essence, converts it into the field or continuum which is the Being of Heidegger Sein und Zeit. Such a concept of Being is existential because it reflects and therefore can account for the nature of existence which is always ahead of itself, which never is but always becomes and which can consequently never achieve the quietude and choicelessness of pure Being. This conception of Being does not basically contradict such experiences as dread, Care and despair which reveal man as the opposite of the non-componentiality of pure Being and involve him in his existential extensions or, in Heidegger's term, 'transcendence.' 1 But, though this very concept of Being solves all those difficulties and removes from the ontological structure a basically non-existential determinant, it also succeeds in removing the tensions which are generated by the collision of pure Being with a temporally determined existence. The pathos that was generated in the thinking of Kierkegaard was possible only because of the basic incommensurability of his ontological ingredients. 2 With the subjective thinker as ____________________ 1 WG, p. 81. 2 This incommensurability is best expressed in Kierkegaard's theological terms by the apostle. He writes: 'Between God and man, then, there is and remains an eternal, essential, qualitative difference. The paradox-religious relationship (which, quite rightly, cannot be thought, but only believed) appears when God appoints a particular man to divine authority, in relation, be it carefully noted, to that which God has entrusted to him.'-- Present Age, p. 151. And, furthermore, '. . . the paradox is the source of the thinker's passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a lover without feeling: a paltry mediocrity.'-- Fragments, p. 29. -132the point at which this incommensurability happens, the human situation that ensues is one that is permeated by the most violent kind of pathos. Where this is not the case, where the ontological contradictions that are involved in the juxtaposition of pure Being with the temporal are removed by a concept of Being that is not the opposite and antagonist of time but its source of generation, then there are no conflicts that can generate the involvement that is the prerequisite for the pathos of subjective thinking. Heidegger's concept of Being is thus seen as preventing the kind of existential thinking that is found in Kierkegaard. And yet the nature of Heidegger's concept of Being was found to be a result of his refusal to incorporate into his ontology any non-existential element, such as pure Being. The conclusion to be drawn from this is that existential thinking, in its purity, undermines itself. By refusing to introduce into its ontology a concept of Being that is itself non-existential and to which the existing thinker must relate himself paradoxically, and by extending the projectedness of Dasein into the very nature of Being itself, Heidegger's ontology fails to construct those concepts which provide the dimension in terms of which the happening of existence can assume interest in any distinctively human sense. The subjective thinking of Heidegger cannot generate

pathos because that which is involved in thinking is not ill at ease in existence since there is nothing in it that contradicts its being extended and its being unable to gather itself in into a point which, to some extent, would realize its nonextended and noncomponential aspect. Instead, it is an -133ever more thoroughgoing extension of itself that constitutes its realization. It has been pointed out how some of the key concepts in Heidegger's use of emotional experiences serve as a revelation to Dasein of its being constituted essentially by a being ahead of itself, by its ecstatic construction, in short, its extension. But these emotional experiences lose the sharpness which they possess for Kierkegaard when it is realized that they are not an attempt on the part of temporality to dissolve the eternal in man, which is one of the possible attempts on the part of the aesthetic thinker to escape himself, but that they are the functionings of the nature of man which realizes itself only by thus functioning. The experience of despair is as significant for Kierkegaard as it is because that for which it despairs is the individual before God, which, once achieved, is not despair any more. But Heidegger's dread is a dread on behalf of a Self that is not something other than dread but dread itself. Dread on behalf of something that itself is dread would seem to be somewhat self-defeating because that which is at stake in dread can be provided only by something other than the dread itself. If Heidegger's concept of Being is now taken as the source of his non-existential--in the pathetic sense-approach to his enterprise, the question as to why it is the problem of Being that occupies his central interest is still not answered. Especially does this question become acute when it is remembered that the kind of Being that emerges from this interest is what it is mainly because Heidegger refuses to permit any non-existential elements in his thinking. If his approach to Being is rooted in the purest kind of existential concern, then why direct that pure existential concern to a relatively objective problem such as ontology instead of a subjective problem, such as the thinker's own eternal happiness? In short, why think existentialistically instead of existentially? The answer might be that Heidegger realizes that an adequate ontology is necessary for a satis-134factory exploration of the issues that confront Dasein in its existence. As such, his ontological analysis would be a means for a basically existential purpose and he would be doing explicitly what Kierkegaard had been doing implicitly: giving an ontological picture of man's existential situation. But that this is not so becomes clear on various grounds. Above all, Heidegger himself says so. 1 He makes it clear that his analysis is basically an ontological one and only to the extent that they have ontological significance are existential categories introduced. His constant exhortation to the reader not to interpret experiences like dread in an existential but in an existentialistic sense points up the supremacy of the ontological over the existential interest. This being so, it is clear that Heidegger's ontological interest is not rooted in an existential one but that the opposite is the case. It is true that Heidegger claims that the posing of the problem of Being is itself a being-possibility of Dasein. 2 But the purpose of this is only to make possible the admission of existential categories in his ontological analysis and not to subordinate the latter to the former.

The conclusion that is to be drawn from these considerations is that Heidegger's addressing himself to the problem of Being as his central interest removes him from the class of existential thinkers, a conclusion with which he himself agrees. 3 His concern is not the subjective thinking-through of the situation in which he finds himself, which is true existential thinking, but an objective analysis of the problem of Being. And yet he attempts to incorporate into such ____________________ 1 SZ, pp. 7-8. 2 Ibid, p. 13. 3 Heidegger's assertion that he is not an exponent of existentialism is based on his belief that to be an existentialist one must maintain that existence precedes essence. Since such a statement operates with standard metaphysical categories and not existentialities, he cannot subscribe to it and is therefore not an existentialist. Cf. Platons, p. 73. The point made here, however, is that he is not an existentialist because his thought is not that of subjective appropriation. -135an analysis the challenge of existence that had been raised by Kierkegaard. This challenge had made it clear that conceptual thinking that does not relate itself to the lifeencounters of the thinker does not ultimately deal with the reality that is characterized by the disjunctions of existence and which is the ultimate judge of any system of philosophic thinking. The area assigned to conceptual analysis is seen by Kierkegaard to be bounded on all sides by situations which philosophy in general and ontology in particular cannot encompass but which necessarily escapes the schematization of philosophy. These situations are the grounds of the reality that generates, on another plane, philosophy and to which the philosophy thus generated must be referred back if it is not to become comical as, for instance, the system of Hegel. In this sense the ontology of Kierkegaard is a translation into conceptual terms of the existential predicament of the thinker. Pure Being can find a place in such an ontology in spite of the fact that it is non-existential because it expresses the paradox of existence--that there is something in the situation of the existing thinker that acts as a disconcerting ingredient by being a point that can never be reached fully and never be lost fully. 1 The shifting of ground which is the nature of the Kierkegaardian challenge is a revolt not against the concepts of traditional ontology which, as has been shown, Kierkegaard generally accepts, but against the sovereignty of that ontology and against its status as the final arbiter of the human issues involved. Existential Ontology Heidegger's attempt is to evolve an ontology that would, as it were, contain the existential challenge of Kierkegaard ____________________ 1 Eternity causes despair and at the same time does not permit it to triumph completely: 'If there were nothing eternal in man, he could not despair; but if despair could consume his self, there would still be no despair.'-- Sickness, p. 30. -136-

and yet permit ontology to remain supreme. In that sense he is more directly in the tradition of Western philosophy than Kierkegaard and perhaps constitutes one of its major contemporary representatives. But the challenge that he attempts to absorb, that of Kierkegaardian existence, is so difficult to digest ontologically that the ontology that is to result from the attempt is not realized. The initial ontological impact is to dissolve Being into the field that is Dasein. Even if such a reformulation of the concept is taken to be adequate for the ontological analysis of Dasein, which itself is doubtful, it cannot be adequate for an ontology which, though taking Dasein for its point of departure, is intended to serve as an analysis of Being that is all-inclusive. 1 The fact that the third section of the First Part of Sein und Zeit which is directed to the examination of 'Time and Being,' 2 in contradistinction to the available two parts that are directed to the analysis of Dasein, has not been published after many years because Heidegger still feels the inadequacy of its thought, 3 points to the intrinsic difficulty of applying an analysis of Being that is rooted in Dasein-analysis to the problem of Being as such. When, in his later period, Heidegger addresses himself to the Being that appears in art, especially the poetry of Hölderlin, he is compelled to operate with a concept of Being that is discontinuous with that of Sein und Zeit. The Being of the first period roots itself in Dasein and the existentialities that Dasein is. As such, it reflects the extension in ecstatic timeliness of Dasein itself. The entities that Heidegger finds to be moving through the poetry of Hölderlin, however, cannot be included in such a Dasein-centred understanding of Being because they demand an orientation on the part of the poet to an attuning himself to the revelation of Being which takes place in the poet but which nevertheless is not a ____________________ 1 Cf. title of Chapter II of the Introduction to SZ, p. 15. 2 The chapter headings of the whole work are given in SZ, pp. 39-40. 3 Platons, p. 72. -137generation on his part but a reception. The ontology of Sein und Zeit is not in a position to posit a situation in which the existentialistic reception of a revelation is just that-a reception and not the production of that received. Though Heidegger's second period represents an ontological shift from the position of the first period, it is not possible to take this latter formulation as an ontology that succeeds in some new way in incorporating Kierkegaardian existence into Being because this latter understanding of the concept of Being is implicit only. It is not a philosophically reasoned argument of the concept but merely an application of it to some aesthetic problems from which it must be drawn by inference. If, therefore, the problem of the absorbtion of existence into ontology is to be analysed, it must be in terms of the thought of Sein und Zeit and the earlier essays that the task must be attempted. And it is perhaps Paul Tillich who sums up the case for such an existential ontology when he writes: If the philosophy of personal existence is right in maintaining that immediate experience is the door to the creative 'Source' of Being, it is necessary for the concepts describing immediate experience to be at the same time descriptive of the structure of Being itself. The so-called 'affects' are then not mere subjective emotions with no

ontological significance; they are half-symbolic, half-realistic indications of the structure of Reality itself. It is in this way that Heidegger and many other philosophers of personal existence are to be understood. 1 Leaving aside the nature of the 'half-symbolic, half-realistic' relationship that the subjective emotions have to their ontological function, it is clear that an existential ontology must be predicated on a set of experiences that are taken to be ontologically significant. It is equally clear that a ____________________ 1 Paul Tillich, "'Existential Philosophy'" in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 5, pp. 57-8. -138selection is required. Not all experiences receive consideration in the ontology of Heidegger. The method by means of which ontologically significant experiences are to be separated from those not equally significant can be rational if there is an antecedent ontology which serves as a criterion. But that would clearly destroy the truly existential character of the investigation. Without such a criterion, however, there seems to be no way of selection. It is true, of course, that Heidegger does select his experiences very carefully, 1 but the purpose of that is to support an antecedent ontology of the dissolution of Being into a field of possibilities and the experiences that are selected as relevant are interpreted as showing up this view of Being. The problem of selecting ontologically relevant experiences brings up another problem closely related to it. Even if it were possible to make a selection on some basis, the experiences thus chosen would have to be exemplary in some way since otherwise ontology would become a purely personal matter. Throughout Heidegger's discussions it is understood that when, for instance, it is said that Care is the Being of Dasein, this particular insight is valid for all men. The only way such a conclusion can be reached is by taking a particular case of experience and declaring it to be ontologically exemplary. As M. Beck 2 has pointed out, the analysis of Dasein cannot be exemplary because such a procedure is possible only when the essence of a thing is other than its existence. In such cases an essence can be exemplary because its reappearance in many existences is merely a duplication. But Dasein's essence is its existence and there cannot therefore be any one Dasein that is in any way exemplary for any other Dasein. The difficulty of absorbing ____________________ 1 For a short discussion of the nature of this selection, see Franz Muth , Edmund Husserl und Martin Heideggers, pp. 19-20. An analysis of the social roots of Heidegger is to be found in Georg Lukács, Existentialismus oder Marxismus, esp. pp. 161-83. 2 Maximilian Beck, op. cit., pp. 38-9. -139pure existence into intelligibility thus presents itself anew and threatens to convert the whole effort of an existential ontology into a basic impossibility. Or equally bad, it

threatens to convert Heidegger's analysis into one of pure essences thereby losing that upon which the whole structure is allegedly based. The difficulties which are thus seen to lie in the way of an existential ontology are formidable and to say that Heidegger has overcome them would be to exaggerate his accomplishment. The basic problem in every existential position, whether Kierkegaardian or pre-Kierkegaardian, is that if the distinction between essence and existence is taken at all seriously, then it becomes exceedingly difficult to absorb pure existence into intelligible categories. The Kierkegaardian interpretation of existence reflects the same difficulty on its own level. It does not seem possible for Heidegger to take the experiences that lie at the basis of human existence and to view them from a point of view other than involvement in the experiences themselves. To do so would be analogous to converting existence into essence, thereby making possible an intelligible discussion of the subject, but at the same time losing that element which makes existence, personal or otherwise, not essence. The destruction of the factuality of existence which results from such a procedure is analogous to the detached objectivity of Heidegger's ontology which, on the human level, destroys the existential element of involvement and subjective appropriation, the characteristics of existence. To the extent that Kierkegaard is 'not a thinker but a religious author' 1 and does not attempt to evolve an ontology, to that extent he is safe from the difficulties that beset Heidegger's attempt. And yet it is not difficult to see that in his case, too, there are pressing problems. It has already appeared that, as a matter of fact, he does have an ontology in terms of which he views the existential predicament of ____________________ 1 Holzwege, p. 230. -140man and that in this ontology there is at least one element, pure Being, which cannot itself be the direct result of existential thinking. And if ontology is taken as the supreme synthesis of all the modes of Being presented in reality, then it would seem that the Kierkegaardian existential attitude is not adequate to cope with the totality of Being. If this is so, then there must be areas of human experience in which the categories of existence are not applicable and in which other modes of thought are valid. This is admitted by Kierkegaard and he makes clear that, in its proper sphere, the scientific mode of reasoning is entirely acceptable. He writes: . . . scientific method becomes especially dangerous and pernicious when it would encroach also upon the sphere of spirit. Let it deal with plants and animals and stars in that way; but to deal with the human spirit in that way is blasphemy, which only weakens ethical and religious passion. 1 In the condemnation of this statement there lies a basic approval. The condemnation is of a science that insists on encroaching upon the areas where existence must reign supreme. But it is also clearly indicated that in the realm of the natural sciences nonexistential thinking is proper. Kierkegaard's contention, however, is that man's primary concern should be with those areas of experience in which the existential mode of reasoning is applicable exclusively. He writes:

The main objection, the whole objection to natural science may simply and formally be expressed thus, absolutely: it is incredible that a man who has thought infinitely about himself as spirit could think of choosing natural science (with empirical material) as his life's work and aim. 2 The reason that Kierkegaard gives for this judgment is that the scientific enterprise can lead to an understanding of the ____________________ 1 Journals, No. 617, p. 182. 2 Ibid. No. 619, p. 185. -141world but not to an understanding of man himself and this constitutes scepticism for it is an understanding of everything in terms of an 'X' (the one who does the understanding), which itself, however, is not understood. Nevertheless, this judgment of the scientific enterprise does not constitute an encroaching of existential categories on the subjectmatter and the methodology of the natural sciences because the issue under discussion, whether the natural sciences are or should be the primary realm of human concern, is not itself part of any scientific discipline. While Heidegger's ontological enterprise is explicitly directed towards a re-evaluation of the scientific as well as the humanistic areas of thought, 1 Kierkegaard's position is seen to grant a measure of autonomy to the natural sciences. In ontological terms this would be expressed by saying that there might perhaps be areas of Being 2 in which the absence of the contradiction between the eternal and the temporal results in the absence of the tensions which are the categories of existence. Such a position seems to involve Kierkegaard in serious ontological problems because it raises the question of the relationship of the existential to the non-existential realms of Being and this would involve a sort of meta-ontology whose categories, though themselves non-existential, would have to include those of existence and Kierkegaard would thus be embarking on the road of Heidegger, a step which he clearly does not take. It is possible for him to refuse to take this step because from the point of view of existential reasoning such an enterprise would be objective and therefore inauthentic. If man could relate himself to the sciences in terms of the categories of the sciences and then relate himself to himself in existential ____________________ 1 Sein und Zeit is explicitly intended as a contribution to the revision of the ontological basis of the sciences. See SZ, pp. 9-10. A volume such as Martin Heideggers Einfluss auf die Wissenschaften could not have a Kierkegaardian counterpart. 2 One such is eternity or God for whom, e.g., there is no choice. -142categories, then the problem of relating the two to each other would clearly arise. But man can relate himself to the sciences only as man and as such the existential categories that are involved in his being an existing man direct his relationship to the sciences. This does not dissolve scientific into existential categories, as in the case of Heidegger,

but restricts man to an existential attitude to the sciences and prevents him from adopting an ontological point of view that could be valid only for a non-subjective, noninvolved observer. For Kierkegaard, such a limitation is not arbitrary and perhaps not even a limitation but an affirmation of the nature of man and the attitude towards his situation. This result can be expressed as well by saying that for Kierkegaard the ethico-religious is primary and is above the ontological. From the ontological point of view such a position begs the ontological question as to how Being can have such a structure that it is, at least for man, a derivative of the ethico-religious. And by asking this question, ontology has once more re-established itself as the master of the situation. Whether such a manœuvre is possible would seem to depend ultimately on whether conceptual thinking, of which ontology is the acutest form, is taken as the supreme arbiter of reality. If this is not granted then the result is the position of Kierkegaard who sees at the root of human reality, which is necessarily the only kind that can concern the human thinker, a number of what might be termed 'situations.' These situations can be symbolized conceptually for various purposes, but reality attaches itself primarily to them and to attempt to draw their reality from the conceptual superstructures to which they have given rise is to misunderstand basically the reality of the situations. The insistence upon an ontology that, by evolving a concept of Being that will do justice both to the human existential situation and to the entities to which man relates himself, will accomplish a conceptual synthesis of -143reality, is such a basic misunderstanding. If, on the other hand, conceptual thinking and ontology are taken as capable of embracing reality, then there results the position of Heidegger which is basically an attempt at such a construction. The unique aspect of this attempt is that it is directed towards absorbing into itself the categories of Kierkegaardian existence without losing conceptual and ontological supremacy. The difficulty inherent in this attempt is underlined by the damage that it does to the concept of Being, dissolving it into a continuum of possibilities, and the abandonment of this concept of Being in the face of the basic experiences of Hölderlin's poetry. And, finally, Heidegger's position is very close to losing the authenticity of the existential categories the inclusion of which into ontology was the purpose of the attempt. -144Selected Bibliography Note.--A partial bibliography of works connected with Heidegger is available in Adolf Sternberger, Der Verstandene Tod. The same is true for Kierkegaard in A Kierkegaard Anthology, ed. Robert Bretall. The works listed here are only those actually consulted in the preparation of this essay. For the primary works a shortened title is given at the end of some listings to indicate the form in which they are cited in the footnotes. PRIMARY WORKS Heidegger Martin. Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung. ( Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1951.) Hölderlin. Existence and Being, Introduction by Werner Brock. ( London: Vision Press Ltd., 1949.) Brock. Holzwege. ( Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1950.)

Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik. ( Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1929.) KPM. Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus. ( Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1916.) Kategorien. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheiti; mit einen Brief uber den 'Humanismus.' ( Bern: A. Francke AG., 1947.) Platons. "'Sein und Zeit'" in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung, vol. 8, 1927, pp. 1-438. SZ. Die Selbstbehauptung der Deutschen Universität. ( Breslau: Wilh. Gottl. Korn, 1933.) "'Vom Wesen des Grundes'" in Jahrbuch für Philosophie und Phänomenologische Forschung, Erganzungsband, 1929. W.G. -145Vom Wesen der Wahrheit. ( Frankfurt am Main: V. Klostermann, 1949.) WW. Was ist Metaphysik? ( Bonn: Friedrich Cohen, 1930.) WM. Kierkegaard, Soren Aabye. Attack Upon 'Christendom', tr. Walter Lowrie. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.) Christian Discourses, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( London: Oxford University Press, 1939.) The Concept of Dread, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.) Concluding Unscientific Postscript, tr. David F. Swenson. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.) Postscript. Edifying Discourses, tr. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson . ( Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1943-6.) 4 vols. Either/Or--A Fragment of Life, tr. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949.) 2 vols. Either/Or. Fear and Trembling--A Dialectical Lyric, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.) The Gospel of Suffering and the Lilies of the Field, tr. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson. ( Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1948.) The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard, tr. Alexander Dru. ( London: Oxford University Press, 1938.) Journals. Philosophical Fragments, tr. David F. Swenson. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936.) Fragments. The Point of View, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( London: Oxford University Press, 1939.) The Present Age, tr. Alexander Dru and Walter Lowrie. ( London: Oxford University Press, 1940.) Purity of Heart, tr. Douglas V. Steere. ( New York: Harper & Bros, Publishers, 1938.) Repetition--An Essay in Experimental Psychology, tr. Walter Lowrie . ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1941.) Repetition. -146For Self-Examination and Judge for Yourselves!, tr. Walter Lowrie . ( London: Oxford University Press, 1941.) For SelfExamination. The Sickness Unto Death, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1941.) Stages on Life's Way, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1940.) Thoughts on Crucial Situations in Human Life, tr. David F. Swenson . ( Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1941.) Training in Christianity, tr. Walter Lowrie. ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944.) Works of Love, tr. David F. Swenson and Lillian Marvin Swenson . ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1946.) OTHER WORKS CITED Aristotle. The Works of Aristotle, tr. J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross. ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1908.) 11 vols. Beck Maximilian. 'Referat und Kritik von Martin Heidegger: "Sein und Zeit"' in Philosophische Hefte, Heft 1, Juli, 1928. Buber Martin. Between Man and Man, tr. Ronald Gregor Smith. ( London: Kegan Paul, 1947.) Cassirer Ernst. "'Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik'" in KantStudien. ( Berlin: Pan-Verlagsgesellschaft M.B.H., 1931.) 36. Band, pp. 1-26. Collins James. The Existentialists. ( Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952.) Fischer Alois. Die Existenxphilosophie Martin Heideggers. ( Leipzig: Felix Meiner, 1935.) Fischer Friedrich Carl Fischer. Die Nullpunkt-Existenz, Dargestelt an der Lebensform Soren Kierkegaards. ( München: Beck, 1933.) Folwart Helmut. Kant, Husserl, Heidegger. ( Breslau: Hermann Eschenhagen, 1936.) Freeman Kathleen. Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers--A complete translation of the Fragments in Diels, Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. ( Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 1948.) -147Geismar Eduard. Soren Kierkegaard, Seine Lebensentwicklung und Seine Wirksamkeit als Schriftsteller. ( Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1929.) Gilson Etienne. Being and Some Philosophers. ( Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949.) Glicksman Marjorie. "'A Note on the Philosophy of Heidegger'" in The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 35, no. 4, Feb. 17, 1938. Grossart Friedrich. "'Grundmotiv und Aufbau der Pseudonymen Schriften Kierkegaards'" in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwinssenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 9. Jahrg., 2. Heft, 1941. Haecker Theodor. Soren Kierkegaard, tr. Alexander Dru. ( London: Oxford University Press, 1937.) Hartmann Nicolai. Über das Seinsproblem in der Griechischen Philosophie vor Plato. ( Marburg: Thesis, 1908.) Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. The Logic of Hegel, tr. William Wallace. ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892.) Hirsch Emanuel. Kierkegaard Studien. ( Gutersloh: Bertelsmann, 1933.) 2 vols. Hobert Clemens August. Das Dasein des Menschen--Die Grundfrage der Heideggerschen Philosophie. ( Zeulenroda: Thesis, 1937.)

Hofman Paul. "'Metaphysik oder Verstehende Sinn-Wissenschaft?'" in KantStudien. ( Berlin: Pan-Verlag Kurt Metzner G.M.B.H. 1929.) vol. 64. Joliuet Regis. Introduction to Kierkegaard, tr. W. H. Barber. ( New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.) Kant Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith. ( London: Macmillan and Co., Limited, 1929.) Essays and Treatises, tr. A. F. M. Willich. ( London, 1799.) 2 vols. Kraft Julius. Von Husserl zu Heidegger--Kritik der phänomenologischen Philosophie. ( Leipzig: Hans Buske, 1932.) Kunzli Arnold. Die Angst als Abendlandische Krankheit. ( Zurich: Rascher Verlag, 1948.) Lowith Karl. "'Heidegger: Problem and Background of Existentialism'" in Social Research, vol. 15, pp. 345-69. -148Lowrie Walter. Kierkegaard. ( London: Oxford University Press, 1938.) Lukács Georg. Existentialismus oder Marximus. ( Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 1951.) Maritain Jacques. Existence and the Existent, tr. Lewis Galantiere and Gerald B. Phelan. ( New York: Pantheon, 1948.) A Preface to Metaphysics--Seven Lectures on Being. ( New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939.) Martin Heideggers Einfluss auf die Wissenschaften. ( Bern: A. Francke AG. Verlag, 1949.) May Rollo. The Meaning of Anxiety. ( New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1950.) Merlan Philip. "'Time Consciousness in Husserl and Heidegger'" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 8, no. 1, Sept., 1947. Misch Georg. Lebensphilosophie und Phänomenologie--Eine Auseinandersetzung der Dilthey'schen Richtung mit Heidegger und Husserl. ( Leipzig und Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1931.) Muller Helmut Ernst. Der Zeitbegriff Deutingers und Heideggers. ( Wurzburg: Thesis, 1934.) Muth Franz. Edmund Husserl und Martin Heidegger--Ihre Phänomenologie und Weltanschauung. ( München: Thesis 1931.) Natorp Paul. Über Platos Ideenlehre. ( Berlin: Reuther & Reichard, 1914.) Plato. The Dialogues of Plato, tr. B. Jowett. ( New York: Random House, 1937.) 2 vols. Rehm Walther. Kierkegaard und der Verführer. ( München: Hermann Rinn, 1949.) Rest Walter. Indirekte Mitteilung als Bildendes Verfahren Dargestellt am Leben und Werk Soren Kierkegaards. ( Emsdetten i. Westf.: Thesis, 1937.) Ross William David. Aristotle. ( London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1923.) Sieber Fritz. Der Begriff der Mitteilung bei Soren Kierkegaard. ( Wurzberg: Thesis, 1938.) -149Smith Elwyn Allen. "'Psychological Aspects of Kierkegaard'" in Character and Personality, An International Quarterly, vol. 12, no. 3, March, 1944.

Spiess Emil. "'Wege der neueren Philosophie zu Martin Heidegger'" in Jahrbuch der Schweizerischen Philosophischen Gessellschaft, vol. 2, 1942. Sternberger Adolf. "'Der Verstandene Tod--Eine Untersuchung zu Martin Heideggers Existenzialontologie'" in Studien und Bibliographien zur Gegenwartsphilosophie, no. 6. ( Leipzig: S. Hirzel, 1934.) Swenson David F. Something About Kierkegaard. ( Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1945.) Thomas Aquinas, St. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas. ( New York: Random House, 1945.) 2 vols. On Being and Essence, tr. Armaud Maurer. ( Toronto: The Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1949.) Concerning Being and Essence, tr. George G. Leckie. ( New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1937.) The Soul, tr. John Patrick Rowan. ( St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1949.) Tillich Paul, "'Existential Philosophy'" in Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 5, Jan., 1944, pp. 44-70. Unger Eric. "'Existentialism I and II'" in Nineteenth Century and After, vols. 142 and 143, pp. 278-88 and 28-37 resp. Vietta Egon. Die Seinsfrage bei Martin Heidegger. ( Stuttgart: Curt E. Schwab, 1950.) Vogt Annermarie. Das Problem des Selbstseins bei Heidegger und Kierkegaard. (Giessen: Thesis, 1936.) Weiss Helene. "'The Greek Conceptions of Time and Being in the Light of Heidegger's Philosophy'" in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 2, no. 2, Dec., 1941, pp. 173-87. 'An Interpretative Note on a Passage in Plotinus' "On Eternity and Time"' in Classical Philosophy, vol. 36, no. 3, July, 1941. -150RELATED WORKS Alker Ernst. "'Zur Biographie Soren Kierkegaards'" in Hochland, 34. Jahrg., 9. Heft, 1936-37. Allen E. L. Kierkegaard: His Life and Thought. ( London: Stanley Nott, Ltd., 1935.) Baeumler Alfred. "'Gedanken über Kierkegaard'" in Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, Heft 47, 5. Jahrg., Feb., 1934. "'Hegel und Kierkegaard'" in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistegeschichte, 2. Jahrg., 2. Band, 1924. Barthold A. S. Kierkegaards Persönlichkeit. (Gutersloh: E. Bertelsmann, 1886.) Bauer Wilhelm. Die Ethik Soren Kierkegaards ( Jena: Thesis, 1912.) Bixler Julius Seelye. "'The Contribution of Existenz-Philosophie'" in Harvard Theological Review, vol. 33, no. 1, Jan., 1940. Bollnow Otto Friedrich. Existenzphilosophie. (?). Brandes Georg. Kierkegaard und andere skandinavische Persönlichkeiten. ( Dresden: Carl Reissner, 1924.) Soren Kierkegaard, Ein literarisches Charakterbild. ( Leipzig: J. A. Barth, 1879.) Bretall R. W. "'Soren Kicrkegaard: A Critical Survey'" in The Examiner, vol. 2, no. 4, Autumn, 1939.

Croxall T. H. Kierkegaard Studies. ( London: Lutterworth Press, 1948.) Dempf Alois. Kierkegaards Folgen. ( Leipzig: Jakob Hegner, 1935.) "'Deux Documents Sur Heidegger'" in Les Temps Modernes, Ire annee, no. 4, ler Janvier, 1946, pp. 713-24. Dultz Wilhelm. Eine Untersuchung über die Philosophie Martin Heideggers. ( Heidelberg: Brausdruck, G.m.b.H., 1940.) Geismar Eduard. Lectures on the Religious Thought of Soren Kierkegaard. ( Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1937.) Giess Ludwig. Liebe als Freiheit. (Terneschburg: H. Anwender & Sohn, 1939.) Gilg Arnold. Soren Kierkegaard. ( München: Kaiser Verlag, 1926.) -151Haecker Theodor. Kierkegaard the Cripple, tr. C. Van O. Bruyn. ( New York: Philosophical Library, 1950.) Soren Kierkegaard und die Philosophie der Innerlichkeit. ( Müchen: J. F. Schreiber, 1913.) Hoffding Harold. Soren Kierkegaard als Philosoph. ( Stuttgart: Fr. Frommanns Verlag, 1896.) Hofmann Paul. Review of SZ in Deutsche Literaturzeitung. ( Berlin: de Gruyter, 1929), Heft 4, pp. 155-72. Jancke Rudolf. "'Rilke-Kierkegaard'" in Dichtung und Volkstum, 39. Band, 3. Heft, 1938. Kaufmann F. W. "'The Value of Heidegger's Analysis of Existence for Literary Criticism'" in Modern Language Notes, vol. 48, no. 8, Dec., 1933, pp. 487-91. Kirbach Ernst Hellmuth. Die Ethischen Grudansichten Soren Kierkegaards. (Giessen: Thesis, 1927.) Kuhn Helmuth. Encounter with Nothingness--An Essay on Existentialism. ( Hinsdale, Ill.: Henry Regnery Co., 1949.) Kunneth Walter. Die Lehre von der Sünde. (Gutersloh: E. Bertelsmann.) Lehmann Gerhard. Die Ontologie der Gegenwart in Ihren Grundgestalten. ( Halle: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1933.) Logstrop K. E. Kierkegaards und Heideggers Existenzanalyse und ihr Verhältnis zur Verkündigung. ( Berlin: Erich Blaschker Verlag, 1950.) Lowith Karl. "'Grundzuge der Entwickelung der Phänomenologie zur Philosophie und ihr Verhältnis zur protestantischen Theologie'" in Theologische Rundschau ( Tubingen, 1930), pp. 26-64. "'Les Implications Politiques de la Philosophie de L'existence chez Heidegger'" in Les Temps Modernes, 2e annee, no. 14, Nov., 1946, pp. 343-60. "'Kierkegaard und Nietzsche'" in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geitesgeschichte, 2. Jahrg., 11. Band, 1933. McTaggart John McTaggart Ellis. The Nature of Existence. ( Cambridge, 1921.) -152Merlan Philip. "'Toward the Understanding of Kierkegaard'" in The Journal of Religion, vol. 23, no. 2, April, 1943. Mohring Werner. Ibsen und Kierkegaard. ( Leipzig: Mayer & Muller, 1928.) Mounier Emmanuel. Existentialist Philosophies--An Introduction, tr. Eric Blow. ( London: Rockliff, 1948.) Niedermeyer Gerhard. Soren Kierkegaard Philosophischer Werdegang. ( Leipzig:

Quelle & Meyer, 1909.) Nielsen Christian. Der Standpunkt Kierkegaards innerhalb der Religionspsychologie. ( Erlangen: Thesis, 1911.) Nigg Walter. Soren Kierkagaard. ( Leipzig: Paul Haupt Bern, 1942.) Oppel Horst. "'Kierkegaard und die existentielle Literaturwissenschaft'" in Dichtung und Volkstum, 38. Band, 1. Heft, 1937. "'Kierkegaard und Goethe'" in Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, 16. Jahrg., Heft 1, 1938. Patrick Denzil G. M. Pascal and Kierkegaard. ( London: Lutterworth Press, 1947.) 2 vols. Preiswerk Andreas. Das Einzelne bei Platon und Aristoteles. ( Leipzig: Dieterisch'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1939.) Riviere William T. A Pastor Looks at Kierkegaard. ( Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Publishing House, 1941.) Scheu M. Marina. The Categories of Being in Aristotle and St. Thomas. ( Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America, 1944.) Schilder Klaas. Zur Begriffsgeschichte des 'Paradoxon.' (Kampen: J. H. Kok A.G., 1933.) Schimanski Stefan. "'On Meeting a Philosopher'" in Partisan Review, vol. 15, no. 4, April, 1948, pp. 506-11. Schrempf Christoph. Soren Kierkegaard, Eine Biographie. ( Jena: Eugen Diederichs Verlag, 1927.) Seifert Hans. Die Konkretion des Daseins bei Soren Kierkegaard. ( Erlangen: Gutenberg Druckerei, 1929.) Slotty Martin. Die Erkenntnislehre S.A. Kierkegaads. ( Cassel: Pillardy & Augustin, 1915.) -153Soper David Wesley. "'Kierkegaard--The Danish Jeremiah'" in Religion in Life: A Christian Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4, Autumn Number, 1944. Sternberg Kurt. "'Die Geburt des Etwas aus dem Nichts'" in Pan-Bucherei, Gruppe: Philosophie, Nummer 14. Tumarkin Anna. "'Heideggers Existenzialphilosophie'" in Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Psychologie und ihre Anwendung, Bd. 2, no. 3, 1943. Vietta Egon. "'Martin Heidegger und die Situation der Jugend'" in Neue Rundschau, vol. 42, pt. 2, Oct., 1931, pp. 501-11. Voigt Friedrich Adolf. Soren Kierkegaard im Kampfe mit der Romantik, der Theologie und der Kirche. ( Berlin: Furche Verlag, 1928.) Wahl Jean. Études Kierkegaardiennes. ( Paris: Fernand Aubier, 1938.) A Short History of Existentialism, tr. Forrest Williams and Stanley Maron. ( New York: Philosophical Library, 1949.) Werkmeister W. H. 'An Introduction to Heidegger's "Existential Philosophy"' in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 2, no. 1, Sept., 1941. Wust Peter. Der Mensch und die Philosophie. ( Regensburg-Munster, 1947.) -154Index A priori, 60

Aesthetic, 79, 85, 87, 90 n. Aquinas, 9, 13 - 14, 22, 28 n., 79, 81 Aristotle, 2, 3, 8 - 9, 11, 17 Authentic, 104 -5, 144 Averroes, 32 n. Avicenna, 14 n., 32 n. Beck, M., 125 n., 139 Becoming, 37 Being-in-the-world, 55 -6, 60, 67, 71, 102, 106 Buber, M., 90 n. Cajetan, 15 Care, 60 -5, 77, 101, 109, 124, 139 Cassirer, E., 62 n. Change, 7, 29, 34 Choice, 30 -2, 46 -8, 86 ff., 113 Collins, J., 55 n. Dasein, 32 ff., 102 ff., 116, 131, 135 Death, 61, 103 ff. Descartes, R., 16 n. Despair, 45, 83 -6, 134 Destiny, 111 Dialectic, 48 Double reflection, 95 Dread, 106 -7 Duns Scotus, 4 n., 16 Eliot, T. S., 104 Emotion, 29 - 30, 78 ff., 108 Essence, 12 ff. Eternal happiness, 80 Eternity, 42 ff., 64, 74, 81 -5, 92, 94 -6, 98 ff., 124 126 Ethical, 88 Ethico-religious, 79 - 80 Existence, 11 ff., 25 ff., 53, 74, 76, 123 ff., 140 Existentialities, 53, 57, 63, 102 Faith, 94 -6 Fear, 106 Fischer, A., 59 n., 62 n, 102, 106 n., 129 n. Fischer, F. C., 88 n. Folwart, H., 55 n., 57 n. Freedom, 37 -9, 69 Geismar, E., 44 n., 96 n. Gilson, E., 8 n., 16, 18, 22 n., 28 n. Glicksman, M., 62 n. God, 26, 41, 43, 46, 64, 74 -5, 82 -3, 91 ff., 118, 134 Grossart, F., 90 n. Guilt, 88 -9, 107 ff. Haecker, 6., 50 n. Hartmann N., 5 Hegel, G. W. F., 4 n., 19 - 21, 26, 41, 42, 49, 94, 127 -8, 136 Heraclitus, 17

Hirsch, E., 82 Historicity, 109 -11 Hoberg, C. A., 102 n., 103 n., 108 n., 110 n., 113 n., 124 n. Hofman, P., 62 n. Holderlin, 75, 114 ff., 120, 137 Humanism, 67 Husserl, E., 55, 73 Indirect communication, 90 ff. -155Intuition, 5 Inwardness, 28, 39 Jolivet R., 24 n. Kant, I., 12 - 13, 22, 61, 62 n. Knowledge, 2 - 3 Kraft, J., 55 n., 62 n. Kunzli, A., 87 n. Language, 114 Leap, 29 - 30, 40 Leckie, G. G., 18 Leibnitz, G. W., 26, 36 Light, 65 -6, 75 Love, 97 Lowith, K., 12 n., 59 n. Lowrie, W., 42, 46 n. Lukacs, G., 139 n. Maritain, J., 5, 15 Maurer, A., 14 n. May, R., 87n. Melancholy, 96 -7 Merlan, P., 55 n. Misch, G., 55 n., 59 n. Moment, 35, 37, 111, 123 ff. Muller, H. E., 125 n., 126 n. Muth, F., 55 n., 139 n. Mysticism, 45 -7, 82, 92, 95 Natorp, P., 2 n. Necessity, 37 Newton, I., 68 Nietzsche, F., 118 Nothing, 6 - 8, 73 -4, 106, 108, 112, 124 -5 Objectivity, 27, 34, 41 Paradox, 82 ff., 95, 113, 123 Parmenides, 6 - 7, 65, 119 Pathos, 27, 33, 80, 133 Plato, 7, 17, 29, 36, 58, 117 Platonism, 17 - 18, 25 Possibility, 103 ff. Recollection, 34 -6

Rehm, W., 79 n. Repentance, 89 Repetition, 35 -6, 111 Rest, W., 93 n. Rilke, R. M., 75, 119 Risk, 48 -9 Ross, W. D., 17 Science, 119, 142 -3 Seducer, 79 - 80 Self, 86 Sieber, F., 123 n. Sin, 89 Smith, E. A., 87 n. Smith, R. G., 90 n. Socrates, 35 Spiess, E., 55 n. Spinoza, B., 16 n., 25, 29 Sternberger, A., 104 n., 129 n. Stirner, M., 90 n. Suarez, 16 n. Subjectivity, 27, 34, 41, 49 - 50 Swenson, D. F., 78 Tillich, P., 138 Time, 42 ff., 49, 63 -4, 74, 82, 98 ff., 109 -10, 123 ff. Transcendence, 71, 132 Truth, 29, 35, 38, 40, 67 ff. Unger, E., 60 n., 63 n. Van Gogh, 75, 115 Vietta, E., 70 n., 104 Vogt, A., 105, 113 n., 124 n. Weiss, H., 43 n. World, 54 - 86 -156-