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Annotations

oneself is a matter of ontologically always “returning to” oneself in the sense of staying with oneself.181

Hence, ex-sistence is ability that is aware of itself as both the ability and the necessity to be always becoming itself. (Cf. “Zu-sein” in the first annotation to ¶2 below.)


2. EX-SISTENTIAL ABILITY

2.1 Möglichkeit

Heidegger employs the noun “Möglichkeit” in two senses that are importantly distinct.

  1. In the plural (Möglichkeiten), the term refers to specific possibilities that we can personally chose (or not) to actualize.
  2. In the singular (Möglichkeit; sometimes Möglichsein), it refers to the very nature of ex-sistence as ontological ability.182

Ex-sistential ability is not the modal category of possibility, set over against actuality and necessity, something that pertains to things rather than to ex-sistence.183 It is not a “possession” I have that I can sometimes put into action. Rather, it names my very essence, what I am and cannot not be. Ex-sistence is most fundamentally the self-enacting ability to ex-sist, to keep on keeping on, an ability that has to be always enacting itself if I am to ex-sist at all.184

Consider, by way of analogy, two kinds of ability. (1) I am able to visit Patagonia; however I do not have to, and I could live my whole life without ever going there. (2) I am able to breathe, but I have to be always breathing or I stop living. Ex-sistential ability is analogous to no. 2. It is a unique ability to ex-sist that must be always enacting itself as the ability to ex-sist—otherwise I stop ex-sisting.185

This is what is it means to say that I am, of necessity, always becoming my exsistence. Ex-sistence as ability is my ergon, my essential function, and if it is not functioning by enacting itself, I do not ex-sist at all. And yet, it is not I personally who put that function to work. Rather, the self-enacting ability to keep on ex-sisting is intrinsic to my nature. It is an a priori fact that is “done unto me” (factum)—what Heidegger calls “facticity” (cf. SZ §12, 10).

Heidegger retrieved the notion of ex-sistential ability from Aristotle’s dunamis while radically reversing Aristotle by declaring that dunamis/ability is higher than energeia/actuality.186 Möglichkeit is the dunamis-dimension of ex-sistence, the a priori


181. The tradition goes back at least to Proclus’ doctrine of epistrophē, self-awareness as a “return to oneself.” See Heidegger’s second gloss to ¶1 (3) in this section.

182. Re Möglichsein: SZ 143–45 passim=183–86 passim and elsewhere.

183. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B 106.

184. GA 80, 1: 274.28: “das es [= Dasein] aus der Ermöglichung seiner selbst existiert.”

185. Even if (ho mē genoito) I were to choose to end my life, I would have to keep on enacting my ability to ex-sist right up to the end, even as I go about preparing the means for ending that ability. Cf. GA 27: 325.23–25=226.25–26.

186. The retrieval: GA 9: 283.22–287.12=216.20–219.19. The reversal: SZ 88.30–31=63.2 vs. Metaphysics IX 8, 1049b5. There are two states of dunamis:

  1. 1. dunamis while stored up and at rest: ability that has achieved a certain stage of actuality and is able to go on to achieve another actuality but is not actively functioning that way (Metaphysics X 8, 1050a16: energeiai . . . en tōi eidei; cf. GA 9: 283.22–284.33=216.24–217.25). (Cf. Andrea del Verrocchio’s bust of Lorenzo de’ Medici National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Kress Collection 1943.4.93.)
  2. 2. dunamis functioning as moving: ability that is functioning by actually enacting itself as ability (ibid., 1050a15: dunamei . . . hoti elthoi eis to eidos and 1050a17: hōn kinēsis to telos).


Thomas Sheehan - Heidegger's Being and Time