Thomas Sheehan
1. INTELLIGIBILITY, MEANING, AND MOVEMENT
1.1 Intelligibility and Meaning (Sinn and Bedeutung)
1.2 Movement and Meaning (Bewegung und Bedeutung)
2. THE STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONS OF REDE
2.1 Rede is a bivalent unity
2.2 Bodily minding
2.3 Making sense of something
2.4 The hermeneutical situation
3. SORGE
Chapter 5 of Sein und Zeit, Division I (SZ I, 5) lays out Heidegger’s doctrine of intelligibility and meaning, his highly nuanced ex-sistential Bedeutungslehre.1 Chapter 5 has many moving parts—Befindlichkeit, Verstehen, Auslegung, Aussage, Rede—which can obscure the simplicity of what Heidegger is getting at, namely that ex-sistence is logos in the most fundamental sense of the term. Heidegger calls that “Rede,” which I translate as logos-prime, i.e., logos-1.
Heidegger discusses Rede in SZ §34, which bears the possibly confusing title “Da-sein und Rede. Die Sprache.” Everything hinges on what Heidegger means by “Rede.”2 It does not mean “discourse” in the sense of speaking words and sentences, as the two English translations would have it. That is at best a tertiary meaning of logos. Nor is Rede even the ability to speak words and sentences (Redekönnen); while closer to the mark, that is not yet the primary meaning of Rede.
For Heidegger, the primary meaning of Rede/logos-1 is human ex-sistence as able to make sense of whatever it encounters. That a priori ability is, in turn, the source of our ability to speak as well as of the actual speech we utter.3
Aristotle held that we are the living entities who possess logos. Heidegger, however, reverses Aristotle by declaring that we do not possess logos so much as logos possesses us.4 That means we are not only able to make sense of things but also cannot not be always making sense of things. Logos-1 is an a priori structure of ex-sistence. Take it away and we are no longer human.
The central focus of all Heidegger’s work is ex-sistence as logos-1, which goes by various names throughout his career.5 In the titles of §§29, 31, and 34, Heidegger hyphenates his key term “Dasein” as “Da-sein” to emphasize that ex-sistence is the “Da,” the primary field of intelligibility. Ex-sistence is the “Da,” the field of intelligibility.6 (“Da” should never be interpreted as “here” or “there,” nor “Dasein” as “being-there” or “being-here,” translations that Heidegger emphatically rejected.)7
SZ is built around the issues of meaning and movement, Bedeutung and Bewegung, treated respectively in SZ I.1 and I.2. The goal of the book was to show that ex-sistential movement determines all forms of meaning, both the meaning of things (der Sinn von Seienden) and the meaning of being (der Sinn von Sein); however, SZ got only as far as analyzing ex-sistence’s involvement in meaning and its fundamental structure as movement. The following text deals only with exsistence’s involvement in meaning.
Chapter 5 of SZ I reaches its climax in §34, where Heidegger lays out what he means by Rede. But the complexity of the chapter, along with its often-misunderstood terminology, warrants an extensive set of prenotes regarding
1. intelligibility, meaning, and movement
2. the structure and functions of Rede as logos-prime
3. Sorge: ex-sistence as a priori engaged in making sense of things
Primary and secondary intelligibility. Intelligibility (Sinn) usually refers to the understandability of things, the fact that they are able to be understood. But the intelligibility of things is only the secondary sense of the term (Sinn-2), whereas the primary sense is ex-sistence itself as logos-1 (= (Sinn-1).8 Our ex-sistence as primary intelligibility confers secondary intelligibility/understandability on whatever we encounter.9 For Heidegger, we are thrown open (erschlossen: dis-closed) as primary intelligibility, which then lets us make sense of (entdecken: un-cover) something we encounter so that it has a specific meaning (Bedeutung).
Mind as minding. Aristotle’s term for the human ability to make sense of things is νοῦς (mind). Ex-sistence as primary intelligibility is what Heidegger means by “mind” (cf. Gemut, SZ 25.3=46.30), not as a psychological faculty but instead as the a priori structure baked into human being. We should read “mind” as “minding” so as to emphasize that it is a process rather than a thing or a substance (and least of all one’s brain). Minding connotes attending to what I encounter, having it present to mind-qua-minding. But it does not mean having “an idea in my head.” As minding, I am always “outside,” mentally present to whatever I am theoretically or practically minding.10
Involved with the intelligibility of things. Heidegger’s key term “In-der-Welt-sein” means not only living in the physical universe but also and above all living in—being a priori involved with—the intelligibility of what we encounter. To stress the inevitability of that, Heidegger will say we are “thrown” into intelligibility, which is another way of saying that we are possessed by logos.
Intelligibility and meaning distinguished. Aristotle describes the mind as the τόπος ειδών (De anima, III 4, 429a27-28), the “place” of the forms (meanings) of things. In that vein, Heidegger called his own work a topology, an analysis of ex-sistence as the “place” where everything we encounter is understandable (sinnhaft) and can become actually understood (bedeutend). Insofar as a thing has secondary intelligibility and is able to be understood, we can assign it a particular meaning, a Bedeutung, whereby it becomes actually understood.
As an example of the difference between intelligibility and meaning: In July of 2022 when the James Webb Space Telescope first noticed a blurry bit of light in the dark sky, that tiny smudge was intelligible, i.e., able to be understood. But it took a month of analysis before astronomers decided on how to actually understand what it is. Using the Lyman technique, they figured out that the redshift of that smudge of light is about 12.115, making it one of the earliest galaxies ever formed, dating to ca. 300 million years after the Big Bang, and they catalogued it as JADES-GSz14-0.
Correct and incorrect understanding. Just as there is a difference between the intelligibility of something and its actual meaning, so too there is a difference between understanding something and understanding it correctly. For example, if I’m trying to figure out where Socrates was born, I might come up with the answer “Thebes” and assign that as the meaning of “Socrates’ birthplace.” In so doing, I would be understanding (i.e., having meaningfully present to mind) where Socrates was born—even though that understanding is wrong. (He was born just outside the walls of Athens.) To understand something is simply to assign it a meaning and have it meaningfully present-to-mind. Understanding something correctly, on the other hand, is an endless and asymptotic process of assigning better and clearer meanings to a thing while controlling for their accuracy.11
Clearing the way for intelligibility. One of Heidegger’s metaphors for ex-sistence as primary intelligibility is “die Lichtung,” the cleared space within which things achieve clarity, i.e., attain both secondary intelligibility and their possible meanings.12 “Lichtung” is usually translated as “the clearing” on the model of a treeless opening in the forest. But such a static image is inadequate to Heidegger’s understanding of Lichtung as a movement that opens up a dynamic area by moving ahead, “clearing the way” for intelligibility.13 Heidegger has a kinetic theory of ex-sistence: the Lichtung as ex-sistence is ever unfolding and changing, always “underway” (unterwegs).14
Intelligibility as dis-cursive. Husserl in Logical Investigations VI/6 argued that together with a sensuous intuition (a direct intuition of sense data), we also have a “categorial intuition.” This is not an unmediated intuition of what something means; rather, it is a direct intuition of the intelligibility of things, what traditional metaphysics would call the being/Sein of things.15 Logos-1 as categorial intuition makes us immediately mindful that the sense data we perceive are understandable when synthesized with a possible meaning. The only intelligibility to which we have immediate access is mediated/synthetic intelligibility. We can understand something only via the synthesizing mediation of a relational “as,” i.e., by taking the thing as this or that (e.g., this tool as usable for that task; this subject as having that predicate).
Mediated intelligibility is dis-cursive intelligibility. I hyphenate “dis-cursive” to stress its etymology (Latin: “dis-”: apart, asunder; and “currere”: to run.)16 Here “discurrere” means to “run back and forth” between a thing and the meanings that we have provisionally projected and now synthesize with it as we try to figure out which meaning fits best. Heidegger holds to the medieval axiom operari sequitur esse: what things do follows from what they are.17 As a priori kinetic, we are a dis-tentio, thrown ahead as always becoming ourselves; and because we are dis-tended, the sense we make of things is dis-cursive.18
Being as significance. Phenomenology for Heidegger is the study of the dynamic correlation between the act of experiencing and whatever gets experienced.
Within that correlation, the so-called “being” (Sein) of the things is how they are currently significant to me in my first-person experience of them, i.e., how they currently matter to me. What metaphysics calls “being” is what phenomenology reads as such current mattering.
The field of becoming. Within the phenomenological correlation, Heidegger has a “field theory” of ex-sistence.19 As Lichtung, clearing the way for intelligibility, ex-sistence is a Kraftfeld, a field of force, analogous to the field generated by a magnet. We are a kinetic field of intelligibility, and whatever falls within that dynamic field has its “direction” (its significance) determined by the movement of ex-sistence itself. Sein und Zeit, Heidegger said, means “Sein aus Zeit.”20 We are thrown open as a field of becoming, and the significance of whatever shows up in that field is understood in terms of our becoming.
As the field of intelligibility, I am the movement of asymptotically becoming myself (Zeitlichkeit, “temporality”) that unfolds as the kinetic field of Zeit, “time”; and whatever shows up in that field is understood in terms of such becoming. Significance is ever in flux, correlative to the flux of exsistence as nunc fluens. For Heidegger as for Heraclitus, πάντα ῥεῖ, Alles ist Weg. We and the significance of everything we experience is in open-ended becoming.
Zeitigung as “unfolding.” As Figure 6 illustrates, ex-sistence is both Zeitlichkeit and Zeit. The first term pertains to ex-sistence in and of itself, whereas the second pertains to ex-sistence as the field within which things become intelligible. The relation between ex-sistence-as-Zeitlichkeit and ex-sistence-as-Zeit is what Heidegger calls “Zeitigung” (verb: sich zeitigen), terms that are usually mistranslated as “temporalization” and “to temporalize itself,” neologisms that say nothing and obscure everything. Heidegger understands “Zeitigung” and “sich zeitigen” in terms of φύειν (cf. φύσις), i.e., “to unfold into and as. . . .”21 Our ex-sistential becoming unfolds into and as a field of becoming.
In Anglophone scholarship, Heidegger’s key terms in SZ I, chapter 5, are among the least understood and the worst translated. The interpretations I advance in what follows differ significantly from the usual readings of Heidegger in English but are faithful to what Heidegger presents in this key chapter.
Correcting an error. The structure of Rede is spelled out in SZ §§28-34, which has long bedeviled Heidegger scholarship and generated major misunderstandings. A common and devastating mistake has been to claim that ex-sistence as the field of intelligibility is composed of three coequal elements:
1. Befindlichkeit
2. Verstehen
3. Rede
translated respectively as “state of mind,” “understanding,” and “discourse.” Not only are these translations wrong, but they fundamentally mistake the structure of logos-1.22 Ex-sistence as the field of primary intelligibility is an undivided unity, but a unity that is bivalent in structure.
The first moment of the bivalence is the inseparable unity of Befindlichkeit-Verstehen24 as over against the disastrous mind-body split that has plagued Western philosophy since at least Plato. Befindlichkeit is the “bodiliness” of ex-sistence25 and is indivisible from Verstehen as “aheadness.”
Heidegger reads this unity as either “befindliches Verstehen” or “verstehende Befindlichkeit,”26 the a priori affective aheadness or bodily minding whereby we are bound up with and involved in the intelligibility of things, what he will later call “transcendence.” A key text declares that fundamental unity of affective aheadness is the field of intelligibility, that is, Befindlichkeit-Verstehen is not just determined by Rede but is Rede.
Die beiden gleichursprünglichen konstitutiven Weisen, das Da zu sein, sehen wir in der Befindlichkeit und im Verstehen; ... Befindlichkeit und Verstehen sind gleichursprünglich bestimmt durch die Rede.27
This two-as-one unity constitutes logos-1 and can be provisionally mapped onto the equally inseparable unity of body and mind in Aristotle and Aquinas.28
The second moment of the bivalence. Affective aheadness/bodily minding as primary intelligibility makes possible the other moment of Rede and with it the secondary intelligibility of things. Heidegger calls that second moment “Sein bei,” our meaningful presence to (= our making sense of) things by assigning them meanings, regardless of whether those meanings are correct or not. Later in §65 he will call this “Gegenwärtigung,” rendering things a priori present-to-mind.
The question of translation. Bringing Befindlichkeit-Verstehen into English has long bedeviled the scholarship, in large measure because their relation to Aristotelian terminology has been overlooked. Heidegger retrieved those terms from Book III of the De anima, specifically,
Ex-sistence as thrown ahead projects possible meanings for what it receives through the senses.
Befindlichkeit. Heidegger’s “Befindlichkeit” is related to the Greek πάθος.30 Heidegger interprets the “affect” that something produces in us (= the πάθημα, plural πάθηματα) not as an “internal” impression or representation made by something “outside.” Instead, he reads πάθηματα in terms of intentionality: they are what we undergo in our bodily minding of things. Those πάθηματα are just as much “outside” as ex‐sistence is.
Macquarrie-Robinson (M-R) translates “Befindlichkeit” imperfectly as “state-of-mind” (occasionally as “mood”) and sometimes incorrectly as “states of mind” (plural) in the sense of ex-sistentiel-personal moods or emotions. Stambaugh-Schmidt (S-S) translates “Befindlichkeit” as “attunement” (130.6) without clearly specifying what Befindlichkeit is attuned to. William J. Richardson translates the term as “disposition,” the state of being structurally dis-posed-to-be-affected by things in their significance. Here the “dis-” bespeaks the sundering of any supposed interior self-coincidence, with the result that one is thrown (-posed) “outside” as affectable.31
I translate Befindlichkeit as “affectivity,” shortened to “affect” (adjective: affective), referring to our a priori ability to be affected by how people and things matter to us. Affect is not an ex-sistentiel-personal mood or feeling or “state-of-mind.” It is the a priori ex-sistential structure whereby we are able to have such moods, feelings, and states of mind.32
Verstehen. M-R (171.38) and S-S (130.6) mistakenly interpret “Verstehen” in SZ §31 as “understanding,” as do virtually all translations in other languages.33 That translation would be correct if Heidegger were employing Verstehen in its usual German sense, which, apart from some specific exceptions, is not the case in SZ. In §31 Verstehen does not mean “understanding” as a personal act of making sense of something, much less making correct sense. Instead, Verstehen is what makes us able to make sense of things, viz., being a priori dis-closively ahead in the intelligibility of things.34
Entwurf, entworfen. Ex-sistence is ontologically in movement, thrown open and ahead, clearing the way for things to be intelligible. Heidegger reads that aheadness in terms of “Entwurf,” projection, with the complementary meanings of ex-sistentially projected and ex-sistentielly projective, that is:
The German for “projecting X in terms of Y” is entwerfen X auf Y, which M-R and S-S mistranslate as “projecting X upon Y,” as if one were throwing a book on a table. On the contrary, the “auf” here means “in terms of” or “with regard to,” not “upon.” Heidegger’s “entwerfen auf” means
Four stages in making sense. Chapter 5 delineates four stages in making sense of something. (See Figure 8.)
The terminology Heidegger uses could mask the simplicity of what he is describing: the ordinary an act of making sense might evolve.
1. Verstehen: Making sense is founded on the nature of ex-sistence as affective aheadness (bodily minding) as holding open the field of intelligibility.
2. Entwerfen: As I try to figure out what something is, I might take a stab at what the thing is by projecting a provisional, pre-propositional meaning for it, i.e., making an educated guess. To adapt one of Heidegger’s own examples:36 Say I’m walking through a forest at twilight and in the gathering darkness notice something up ahead. I make an educated guess (= I provisionally project a possible meaning) and say to myself: “It seems there’s a deer up there.”
3. Auslegung: As I get closer, the deer does not move, and I realize that, no, it’s not a deer at all but only a bush that looked like a deer. Here too I am making pre-propositional sense of what I saw, and again I could be right or wrong. Heidegger describes this as explicitly appropriating the meaning that I have provisionally projected.37 (This is also the case when I work out the meaning of an implement by trying it out it in practical activity).
4. Ausssage: The next day, I tell my friend about the experience: “I was walking through the forest early yesterday evening and....” Here I move from pre-propositional to propositional sense-making by uttering a declarative sentence.
Various forms of “as.” Each of these four stages is a matter of dis-cursive intelligibility, which means that each stage is an instance of synthesis built around an implied or expressed “as” that represents the dis-cursive connection between a thing and its possible meaning.
1. The discursive “as” of aheadness.
As intrinsically discursive, the primary intelligibility of aheadness has the implicit
structure of X → as → Y.
2. The projective “as” of a provisional projection of meaning. This “as” is implicitly operative when I provisionally project X → as possibly useful for or as meaning → Y.
3. The hermeneutical “as” of unfolding/working out the initially projected meaning. This “as” is implicitly operative as I work out the provisionally projected meaning, which I might do, for example, by using X → for the purpose of → Y.
4. The apophantic “as” of declarative sentences. This “as” is explicitly operative in an ἀπόφανσις, a declarative sentence, in which I declare that “X → is → Y.”
Auslegung: Working out the projected meaning. Auslegung as the third stage of making sense of something poses a problem for translation. M-R and S-S translate it misleadingly as “interpretation,” a term that usually refers to a thematic explication (e.g., of a text or an artwork) that is expressed in propositional statements. In SZ, however, Auslegung refers to something short of making declarative statements, namely the employment of the hermeneutical “as” rather than the apophantic “as” of propositions. Auslegung (cf. aus + legen: to lay out, spell out) means working out more explicitly a lived meaning that has been provisionally projected, but without making atheoretical statement about it. In practical activity I often do that by just using the thing to do something.
SZ §32 uses various verbs for this pre-propositional unfolding and appropriating of a projected meaning. Besides “auslegen,” Heidegger uses “artikulieren” and “gliedern” (both meaning: to articulate) as functional equivalents. Here, “articulating” does not mean expressing ideas clearly or pronouncing words precisely. The word comes from the Latin “articulatio,” a jointed structure in which two or more things are fitted together.38 Intelligibility, as dis-cursive, has such an articulated and syn-thetic structure. Understanding something is a “jointed” or “articulated” whole composed of distinguishable parts: (1) the thing, (2) its possible meaning, and (3) the relation between those two. The whole is articulated in the form of “X → as or as-for → Y” and is expressed by way of either the hermeneutical “as for” of praxis or the apophantic “as” of declarative assertions.
Entwerfen and Auslegung. In an act of Entwerfen as the second stage understanding, I personally enact that articulated dis-cursivity by projecting a provisional meaning (e.g., that stone → just might work as → an ersatz mallet). Then in an act of Auslegung I work out, either in action or in non-propositional speech, that provisionally projected meaning. Non-propositional speech could be “Hand me that lighter hammer, would you?” when I discover that the first hammer is too heavy. Equally I might silently work out the articulated moments of the provisionally projected meaning by simply putting down a heavy hammer and reaching for a lighter one to drive in those tacks.
Heidegger’s theory of meaning is ultimately based on human being as the asymptotic movement of ever becoming oneself, which SZ calls “temporality” (Zeitlichkeit). In §31 Heidegger reads such becoming in terms of our aheadness, which he will later call our “futurity” (Zukünftigkeit). This aheadness structures what Heidegger calls the “hermeneutical situation,” the a priori structure that I bring to everything I encounter.39 That ex-sistential situation entails that I a priori
Taken together, those three elements of ex-sistence comprise my Vor-struktur, my a priori “aheadness structure,” as the framework that I bring to every encounter with things.40 That framework is dynamic. I live ahead in purposes, and in each specific situation the purpose defines the meaning-giving context in terms of which I understand the significance of something.
Translating “Sorge.” Heidegger pulls together the various elements of ex-sistence as Rede/logos-1 in chapter 6, §41, under the title of “Sorge.” He frequently complained that this term had been misunderstood, but his choice of that word may bear some responsibility.41 He knew what he meant by Sorge, but he did not always make that clear to the rest of us, as is evidenced by the scholarship’s universal mistranslation of Sorge in terms of psychological “care.”42
Sorge is another of SZ’s technical terms that does not have its usual German meaning. Heidegger insisted (but to no effect) that Sorge does not refer to care, concern, or other ex-sistentiel-psychological feelings, attitudes, or acts, not anything in the spectrum running from solicitude to anxiety.43 On the contrary, in SZ “Sorge” names an ex-sistential condition, our bivalent structure of being (1) a priori thrown open and ahead as the world of meaning and thereby (2) making sense of whatever we encounter. This bivalent structure makes us, in Heidegger’s later limning of Sorge, the “guardians” of the field of intelligibility.44
In an important footnote 3 to §42, Heidegger refers to Konrad Burdach’s distinction between two meanings of the Latin cura (German: Sorge). Heidegger excludes the first of the two senses, namely “care” or other psychological synonyms, and opts for the second sense, “Hingabe”: “being given over to” in the sense of being a priori engaged in something.45 Sorge is our a priori condition of always being engaged in making sense of whatever we meet. It lies at the core of SZ, where Bewegung accounts for Bedeutung. Sorge is the meaning-making function that is made possible by ex-sistential movement (“temporality”). As such, it is the structure underlying intentionality and making it possible.46
Sorge as bivalent. Like all ex-sistentials, Sorge has both a formal and a content-related sense.
As §65 will show, this bivalent unity maps on to and is made possible by the bivalent unity of exsistential movement/becoming aka “temporality.”
Sorge as kinetic. The bivalence of ex-sistence is kinetic, a matter of Bewegtheit.49 As thrown ahead, ex-sistence as Sorge is a dynamic tending-towards that foreshadows Zeitlichkeit as ex-sistential becoming.50 Heidegger alludes to this in §41, when (without explicitly naming it) he points to ex-sistential movement as the more original phenomenon that sustains the structure of Sorge.51 Thus §41 is a major step toward the goals of demonstrating that sense-making is grounded in exsistential becoming (= SZ I.2) and that ex-sistential becoming accounts for what “being” means (= SZ I.3).
2 In SZ “Sprache” refers to spoken or written language, whereas in his later work (e.g., GA 12: 227-57=111-36, passim) Heidegger often uses “Sprache” (or “Sage” or “Sprachwesen,” all three ex aequo) to refer to logos-1 as what ultimately makes possible spoken or written language.
3 Both M-R and S-S mistranslate Rede as “discourse” (M-R 203.30 even as “discourse or talk”) as if it referred to verbalized speech rather than to the ex-sistential structure that ultimately makes such speech possible. I follow Richardson (66.20-21) in rendering Rede as logos in the etymological sense of “binding together” and, in this case, binding into a meaningful whole. Note that “für die Rede…die stimmliche Verlautbarung nicht wesentlich ist”: SZ 271.20- 22=316.19.
4 Aristotle: ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, De anima III 9, 432a31 and elsewhere. Heidegger: λόγος τὸν ἄνθρωπον ἔχων, GA 40: 184.11=187.6-7. {beyng.com: Introduction to Metaphysics (2nd edition, 2014) 195}
5 Among those titles are: Dasein, Existenz, das Da, der Entwurfbereich, das Freie, die Gegend, die Gegnet, das Inzwischen, der letzte Gott (see GA 65: 35.1–2=29.33–35 and 308.24–26=244.23–25), die Lichtung, die Mitte, das Offene, der Ort, and (depending on how he uses the following terms) das Sein, das Sein selbst, das Seyn, das Wesen des Seins, das Sein der Wahrheit, die Wahrheit des Seins, das Wesen der Wahrheit, die Wahrheit des Wesens, die Welt, der Wesensort, der Zeit-Raum, and Ἀλήθεια, Logos, Φύσις, usw.
6 Lichtung-sein: GA 15: 380.11–12=69.4–5 and GA 69: 101.12–13.
7 GA 15: 204.7=126.16; GA 71: 211.2-5=180.20.
8 Primary intelligibility: SZ 151.36=193.14: “Sinn ‘hat’ nur das Dasein.” Secondary intelligibility: SZ 151.24=192.32 and 324.35-37=371.35-36.
9 “Sinngebung…, das heißt als Beilegen einer Bedeutung”: GA 15: 345.26-27=47.32-33; cf. also SZ 151.34-38=193.11-15.
10 (1) Re Draußensein: Cf. SZ §13, passim; §28, ¶9; §34, ¶7; etc.; Ausgesetztheit at GA 38: 162.12-13, 17-19=134.10-11, 15-16 and 164.21-23=136.4-6. (2) Re minding: This refers to both the ex-sistential ability to bring something present to mind and the ex-sistentiel act of doing so. I use ex-sistential-personal minding in the sense of, e.g., caring about something ( “Do you mind if I smoke?”) or caring for a person or thing (“Mind your little brother while I’m out”) or being attentive to a situation (“Mind the gap” in the London Tube), and the like. On one’s whole self as mind, see Augustine, “ego animus”: Confessions X, 16 (25).
11 To understand something is to believe we know what and how it is. To understand something correctly is to know what and how it is according to the best evidence and within the best explanatory paradigm currently available—both of which (evidence and paradigm) could themselves change in the future. Someday, using more advanced spectrometry we might come to understand the age of JADES-GS-z14-0 differently than we do now. (JADES abbreviates James Webb Space Telescope Deep Extragalactic Survey.)
12 On ex-sistence as die Lichtung, see SZ 64.22-24=92.334-36; 133.5=171.22; 164.34-35=416.8; 380.28-30=432.17-18; GA 3: 229.10-11=160.32f; GA 6:2: 323.14-15=218.4-5; GA 9: 325.20-21=248.11-12; GA 14: 35.23-24=27.31-33; GA 15: 380.11-12=69.4–54; ibid., 415.10–13=88.18–21; GA 45: 213.1–4=180.6-9; GA 66: 129.5=109.7-8; ibid., 321.12=285.28; GA 66: 328.1-2=291.13-14; GA 69: 101.12-13; GA 70: 125.12; GA 73,1: 450.13; ibid., 642.27-28; etc.
13 (1) Opens up an area: Cf. GA 9: 291.19-20=222.32: “führt durch einen Bereich, öffnet sich selbst und eröffnet diesen.” (2) Clearing the way for intelligibility: Heidegger used such terms as wëgen, Be-wëgung, Be-wegen, and Wëg (GA 12: 249-50=129 and GA 74: 46.6).
14 In a highly contentious passages of De anima III Aristotle held that the human intellect (nous, specifically νοῦς ποιητικός) has a direct insight into (= intellectual intuition of) the meanings of things, which it then “impresses” on the νοῦς παθητικός so that the thing can be actually understood by διάνοια.
15 Cf. GA 4: 61.21=83.27-28.: “Das Offene selbst ist das Unmittelbare,” the field of intelligibility is itself dis-cursive.
16 Cf. Aquinas, S.T. I, 14, 14, resp.: [intellectus noster] de uno in aliud discurrit; I, 79, 8; I, 59, 1, ad 1: ratio vero discurrendo de uno in aliud (vs. intellectus cognoscit simplici intuitu); I, 58, 3, resp.: per quendam motum et discursum intellectualis operationis; II-II, 180, 3, resp: quodam processu. I Sent. d. 3, q. 4, a. 1, ad 4: sub continuo tempore.
17 GA 4: 65.26–28 = 87.27–29 “Jegliches ... je nur das leistet, was es ist.”
18 See Augustine’s “distentio animi,” Confessiones XI 26, 33, Patrologia Latina, 32, 822.47–49, which he borrowed from Enneads III 7: 11.42, διάστασις ζωῆς.
19 This field is what Heidegger calls the “horizon” (Horizont) of intelligibility.
20 GA 97: 68.16.
21 Zollikoner Seminare 203.7-8=158.10-11: “Zeitigung als Sichzeitigen ist Sich-entfalten, aufgehen und so erscheinen,” that is: “Sich zeitigen” = “to unfold of itself, to emerge and show-up-as....”
22 The error also leads to misunderstanding Zeitlichkeit as structured by three moments (past—present—future) rather than as the bivalence that it actually is. Some even argue that logos-1 is composed of four moments by adding Verfallen to the supposed three, on the basis of the badly written sentences at SZ 269.26-28=314.10-12 and SZ 270.14–18=315.10–13. See Making Sense of Heidegger, 148-53 and 297-99. “Verfallen” (M-R: “fallenness”; S-S: “falling prey”) is a positive element of ex-sistence, namely phenomenological intentionality in its everyday mode. Heidegger frequently uses “Aufgehen” (absorption) as a synonym for “Verfallen” (e.g., SZ 54.34, 113.38, 175.31, etc.=80.15, 149.13, 220.3, etc.). To stress the positive sense of “Verfallen” and to avoid any sense of a lapsus from a higher state of ex-sistence, I render the German as “absorption” in the sense of “falling in with” people and things (cf. Greek περιπίπτω) instead of living authentically as ex-sistential ability.
23 See “[die] Zeitlichkeit der Rede, daß heißt des Daseins überhaupt,” SZ 349.32=401.2-3; also SZ 25.26=47.16-17.
24 GA 82: 80.6-7: “Stimmung (besser Gestimmtheit) und Entwerfung machen die Inständigkeit aus” (all in italics).
25 GA 70: 131.12=107.15: “Die Befindlichkeit (Leiblichkeit).”
26 Respectively SZ 260.32=304.36-37 and 182.9=226.1-32
27 SZ 133.22-27=171.38-172.5; cf. ibid., 165.12-13=208.29-20: “Weil für das Da, das heißt Befindlichkeit und Verstehen die Rede konstitutiv ist....”
28 Respectively De anima II 1, 412b6: ἓν ἡ ψυχή καὶ τὸ σῶμα, and In De anima, II, lectio 1, ad fin: “corpus…unitur animae immediate.”
29 Νοῦς παθητικός: cf. De anima III 4, 429a15-16 and 429b24-25; 5, 430a14-15. Νοῦς ποιητικός: De anima III5, 430a15.
30 The ontic-ex-sistentiel affect/feeling produced in us is a pathēma, something undergone, from paskhein, to receive or “suffer” (transitive). Heidegger reads pathos as an ex-sistential that lets us have such pathēmata. In 1924 Heidegger used “Befindlichkeit” to translate Aristotle’s pathos as well as Augustine’s “affectio” in Confessions XI, 27 (36), whereas in 1922 he had it translate Aristotle’s ἕξις: see respectively: GA 18: 192.5-6=129.22-23 and GA 64: 111.25-26=6E.4 and .15 (trans. McNeill) with GA 62: 163.23 and .25. Cf. Sheehan, “Sense and Meaning: From Aristotle to Heidegger,” 274, and “Heidegger: πάθος as the Thing Itself” in Hadjioannou, ed., Heidegger on Affect, 29-46.
31 Another term for Befindlichkeit in SZ is Stimmung. The two are “gleichgesetzt” (GA 70: 131.12=107.15-17).
32 In §29 and elsewhere in SZ, Heidegger uses the term “Befindlichkeit” ambiguously for two different things, one exsistential/ structural and the other ex-sistentiel/personal. (1) He mostly (and properly) employs it to name the a priori ex-sistential structure of affectability/affect. (2) But occasionally he uses it to refer to the ex-sistentiel moods emotions, and feelings that are made possible by Befindlichkeit as an ex-sistential structure. Synonyms for Befindlichkeit in this ex-sistentiel sense include (all in the plural) Stimmungen, Gefühle, Emotionen, Affekte, etc.
33 Chinese, 领会 (lǐng huì); French: Martineau: comprendre; Vesin, entendre; Greek: κατανόηση; Italian: comprensione; Portuguese: compreender; Spanish: comprender; Romanian: înţelegere; etc. At 118.25 and 120.6 M-R goes further and mistranslates it as the act of understanding. See on the contrary GA 20: 286.10-11=209.22-24: “Verstehen bedeutet primär gar keine Weise des Erkennens und Wissens”; ibid., 415.30-32=299.4-6. Also GA 3: 233.1-3=163.20-23; GA 24: 390.31-32=276.3-4: nicht primär ein Erkennen; and SZ 143.1-7=182.17-23: Derivat.
34 Heidegger’s use of Verstehen has overtones of “being made to stand ahead” as in the Greek prosetethēn, from prostithēmi (cf. vorstanden: projected), in the same way that Ex-sistenz maps on to ex-histēmi (Figure A-2.3). Hence Ver-stehen: pro[s]stateia, the fact of standing out in front of. — Etymologically, the “under-” in the English “understand” does not mean “beneath” but may have the Old English sense of “between” or “among” (from the Proto Indo-European “onter”; see Latin, “inter”). Hence, in its ordinary (not ex-sistential) sense of an act of understanding, Verstehen could have undertones of “inter-est,” being among things by being interested in and involved with them. In the 1930s Heidegger suggested giving up the term “Verstehen” in favor of something like “[ex-sistence as] abandoned to or thrown into the field of intelligibility so that it ‘takes its stand’ in pro-jecting” (“Sich-los-geworfen-haben in das Da und ‘stehen’ im Ent-wurf,” GA 82: 79.19-20).
35 Aristotle expresses the synthesizing of a subject matter with a meaning as τὶ κατὰ τινὸς (De interpretatione 17a21 and 19b5) and τὶ κατὰ τινὸς σημαίνει (Metaphysics, VIII 3, 1043b30-31): saying/indicating something (the predicate) about something (the subject matter).
36 GA 21: 187.15-23 = 158.13-20.
37 Auslegung in SZ is the act of rendering explicit the lived meaning that is implicit in an experience before making any theoretical statement about it. (See SZ 148.22-23=188.32 and von Herrmann III, 65.13-15.) That is the fundamental, pre-theoretical hermēneuein that underlies Heidegger’s phenomenology as hermeneutical.
38 Cf. “artus,” a joint, and Plato’s διατέμνειν κατ᾽ ἄρθρα: cutting through something at the joints: Phaedrus 265e1. Re syn-thetic: Greek sun-tithēnai, to place together.
39 Re hermeneutical situation: see §32 SZ 150.18-36, §45, SZ 231.35-232.13=275.3-19, and GA 17: 110-12=80-83.
40 Framework: cf. Gerüst, SZ 151.28 and .33=193.4 and .10.
41 In 1941, Heidegger said in frustration that the word “Sorge” is so freighted with meanings drawn from everyday speech that any other meaning—including Heidegger’s own—is subject to misunderstanding: GA 49: 54.32-55.2=43.3-5. See also GA 3: 236.16-25=165.38-166.2; GA 38: 165.20-34=134.17-29; GA 82: 100-01.
42 The psychological sense is used in virtually all translations of SZ, e.g., Chinese, 操心 / cāo xīn: to worry, be concerned about; French: souci; Greek: μέριμνα (the ancient Greek word for care, concern, solicitude, anxiety); Italian: cura; Portuguese: cura; Romanian: grijă: worries, cares; Spanish: cuidado; and so on.
43 See SZ 192.39-40=237.14-16. Least of all, he says, does it refer to “wearing a funereal expression” (Leichenbittermiene, GA 61: 90.5=68.5).
44 GA 65: 297.9-10=234.32-33: “daß [der Mensch] sich als Wächter der Wahrheit des Seyns begreift, welche Wächterschaft angezeigt ist als die ‘Sorge’.”
45 See GA 20: 420.2-4=303.19: “cura...im Sinne der Hingabe”; GA 60: 204.17=151.5: amandi in Confessions X 27 (38) as liebende Hingabe. To emphasize that Sorge is structural-ex-sistential and not psychological-ex-sistentiel, the later Heidegger speaks of this a priori condition as “thrown unto us”: Zuwurf, GA 66: 224.13=198.21; 97: 117.2, etc.
46 GA 20: 420.14-30=303.33-304.3.
47 “Worauf und warum das Sorgen ist, woran es sich hält, ist zu bestimmen als Bedeutsamkeit” (GA 61: 90.9=68.8).
48 “Ex-sistentiality” has two senses in SZ: (1) a broad sense, where it refers to the whole of ex-sistence with all its exsistential characteristics, and (2) a narrow sense, where it refers only to our thrown-aheadness. Here, it has that narrow sense.
49 SZ 179.2-3=223.22-23: “[der] Wurf- und Bewegtheitscharakter der Geworfenheit.”
50 Cf. Aristotle, pasa kinēsis... eis ti: Physics V 1, 224b1-2; and eis [ti] badizein: ibid., VIII 5, 257b7-8; and Aquinas: motus...in quiddam: In octo libros Physicorum: liber 5, lectio 1, ¶4 (no. 641); and tendere in... : ibid., liber 8, lectio 10, ¶4 (no. 1053).
51 SZ 196.24-25=241.9-11: “Herausstellung eines noch ursprünglicheren Phänomens, das die Einheit und Ganzheit der Strukturmannigfaltigkeit der Sorge ontologisch trägt.”
Thomas Sheehan - Heidegger's doctrine of meaning: his Bedeutungslehre
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