What is being?
Why does Heidegger in “Being and Time” think self-sufficient substances are an inadequate description of being? (A summary of a summary of a summary of Heidegger’s “Being and Time”)
Underlying Heidegger’s Being and Time is the notion that the language used to describe some phenomena is either adequate or inadequate to capture (ie. describe in a compelling way) that phenomena as it presents itself to us.
So the point is less that we should be convinced by argument as such, and more that we should consider our experience, and see whether the descriptions of the structures that Heidegger educes are consistent with and revealing in respect of everything that is important about the world as we experience it.
Know-how vs. know-that
Lets start by distinguishing two kinds of knowing: know-how and know-that.
Know-how — eg. knowing how to use a telescope.
Know-that — eg. knowing that the earth goes round the sun.
Heidegger asserts in Being and Time that we live primarily in a world composed of a wholistic equipmental totality with which we are transparently coping. The more competent we are in respect of any particular activity, that is to say the more competent we are in knowing how to perform an activity, the less we pay attention to it or need to pay attention to it.
Any given component of the equipment takes for granted the whole network of equipment of which it is a part. My computer keyboard is part of an equpimental whole that takes for granted computer screens, the internet, global data centres, printers, flash drives, and smart phones. To understand my computer keyboard, to make sense of it, assumes the background of this equipmental whole.
The nature of equipment is to withdraw into the accomplishment of the task. The clutch pedal in a manual geared car barely registers in our experience at all, but anyone who has ever learnt to drive one knows they use the clutch pedal 50 times just driving to the shops and back.
Where should we start from in trying to understand the world /our world? — Experience !
Heidegger thinks we should start from our experience. If we want to educe an understanding of the world which is consistent with our experience of the world, what other choice is there? What else is there to choose from?
Well, perhaps we should start from a “scientific” “objective” “view from nowhere”? While Heidegger loves science, and the scientific viewpoint, he thinks that in making sense of our world we cannot assert the primacy of science and must instead assert the primacy of experience (ie. “the phenomena”). Possibly this is for two reasons:
(1) It is only as a consequence of our practical engagement in the world that we are able to do science in the first place. Science is a set of practices which are designed to reveal a world that exists independently of any human practices. We can’t then after the fact construct out of the world that gets revealed by science an understanding of practical engagement. The role of practical engagement is just what has, after all, been deliberately left out of the scientific viewpoint we have been developing by this process.
(2) Whilst it is possible to pick out self-sufficient substances from the background of the wholistic world which we experience (ie. traverse from the whole to the parts), it is not possible (or at least it appears to be beyond human capacity) to put together the meaningful world that we find ourselves always already being in, by assembling it from pieces (ie. traverse from the parts to the whole).
Experience is wholistic
This is how we experience the world: We are always already in a whole situation which we can then, if we wish, analyse into components. But we always experience the whole first and the whole understanding (understanding in the sense of know-how).
Experience is always already in-the-world
Normal healthy humans do not in fact have any such experience that corresponds to being “in here” and the “external world” being “out there” — except maybe when we are asleep, or perhaps in some mediative state.
We are so used to philosophers talking this way that we can barely even manage to notice that this description of our experience is not even slightly like how we actually experience the world as we go about our normal everyday lives.
Two more kinds of being
Heidegger sees our western philosophical tradition as having essentially lost sight of something that right in front of us — that self-sufficient substances (which Heidegger calls “present-at-hand” — vorhanden) are not the only or even the primary way in which we make sense of the world.
Heidegger uses the world “being” to describe ways in which humans make sense of the world — “being is that on the basis of which beings are already understood”.
So the question is: what is is?
What do we mean when we say that something is? … such as: “This is a tea-cup. This is a galaxy. This is who I am.”
Heidegger’s basic offering is this:
(1) We have a taken-for-granted way of conceptualising the world
which assumes that there is only one kind of being (“is”): substances-and-only-substances — or worse that being is subjects and objects; “subjects and objects” sounds like two types of being, but both subjects and objects are conceived of as self-sufficient substances.(2) We have a taken-for-granted way of behaving in and experiencing the world — although Heidegger probably wouldn’t want to use those words because “behaving” and “experiencing” already assume to much of the conceptualisation referred to in 1 —
and this taken-for-granted way of behaving in and experiencing assumes that there are at least 3 kinds of being (“is”).
(Later Heidegger thinks there may be several more — perhaps 7 types of being — and that these modes of being vary across epocs.)1 is not consistent with 2 (and hence we need to re-awaken the question of being)
If we want to conceptualise the world in a way that is consistent with our experience of being-in-the-world, we need to work out 1 (how we should conceptualise our world) by examining 2 (the phenomena as we experience them). Heidegger calls this process “hermeneutic phenomenology” — which is to say: interpreting the phenomena.
In 1, “taken-for-granted” points at that we so take it for granted that being is essentially self-sufficient substances which have properties and persist independently of all other substances, that we don’t ever need to think this. Rather the point is that most of our thinking assumes it to be true that being is substances-and-only-substances (or worse — with Descartes — that being is objects and subjects which are both kinds of self-sufficient substances).
In 2, “taken-for-granted” points at that all our experience and behaviour ie. “the phenomena” (the sum total of which Heidegger calls Dasein, and in fact Heidegger doesn’t necessarily want to separate experience from behaviour because this implies inner and outer which is part of the problem which is exposed in 1) is consistent with there currently being at least three types of being — and self-sufficient substances being only one of these three.
For example, roughly speaking, humans behave as though tea-cups are, and in particular we behave as though tea-cups are tea-cups. Heidegger thinks we can read off from our behaviour/experience (ie. from our dasein) what the broad categories of being are — using humans as a kind of measuring device, to measure what types of being there are.
Three types of being
“being is that on the basis of which beings are understood.” I.e. Being is intelligibility. By “understood” (and intelligibility) here, Heidegger (and I) is/are indicating “understood” in the sense of know-how, not know-that.
By using this methodology (hermeneutic phenomenology) Heidegger describes three types of being that at the time of writing B&T he mostly thinks are the modes of being:
Equipment — “ready-to-hand” —zuhanden
This is a tea cup. This is a pencil. This is a hammer.
A wholistic referential equipmental totality.
The more expert you are in respect of any particular skillful activity, the more transparent is the equipmental totality that you use when practicing that skill.
Know-how vs. know-that. Know-how (being able to do something — like ride a bicycle, or operate an electon microscope) can be turned into know-that by doing science experiments, which in turn can be used to inform the development of further know-how.
Self-sufficient substances — “present-at-hand” —vorhanden
This is a galaxy. This is some gold.
These can be gotten at or arrived at by “de-worlding” parts of the equipmental totality — which is to say by doing science experiments or engineering procedures. Science experiments and engineering procedures isolate self-sufficient substances and the self-sufficient properties of self-sufficient substances, thereby creating an atomistic “view-from-nowhere”.
Ourselves—“being the there” — dasein
This is my life. This is who I am. This is who you are. This is who they are.
“Dasein is its world existingly.”
We are at home in the world — most of our time we spend engaged in transparent absorbed coping.
Aside: What is in the phenomena that makes us have patience with the notion that we are “in here” and the “external world” is “out there” ? Why do we tolerate talk about an “external world”? There’s a little voice in our heads. Our eyes are located in front of our brains… it’s an easy miss-step to make that “I” am “in my brain”, but no such conclusion is actually required by the phenonema.
In division 2, Heidegger goes on to say that all these three types of being have something in common — which is that they are structured by temporality (hence the title Being and Time) — but that part of the analysis is not needed in order to see how Heidegger’s understanding of being can save us from 2400 years of “philosophical problems”.
What type of being is more fundamental?
The present-at-hand is causally more fundamental than the ready-to-hand. You can’t make a hammer out of jelly and icecream.
However in respect of inteligibility (making sense of the world) the ready-to-hand is more fundamental. In respect of making sense of the world, you can’t understand what a hammer is merely from the causal properties of component substances. (Intelligibility here needs to be understood as wholistic and pre-cognitive / pre-ontological.)
Division 1 — Dasein — Familiarity
Most of Division 1 (one of the two divisions of Being and Time that were actually written) is an analysis of what Heidegger calls “Dasein” — which is to say us.
A fundamental characteristic of Dasein is Familiarity. That is to say that humans live in a world with which we are fundamentally and significantly always-already familiar.
Riding a bicycle, driving a car, going into a room, opening a door, sitting down at a desk, sitting in front of computer typing and clicking with a mouse, sitting listening to talk about philosophy. These are all things that we know how to do without having to think about them.
Dasein finds itself always-already absorbed in coping with an equipmental totality, most of which coping occurs transparently.
This insight allows us to see that the connection between humans and the world is not primarily mediated by either perception or cognition, but rather it is primarily mediated by skillful activity — that is to say our knowledge of the world is constructed on the back of “know-how”!
Implications for the philosophical tradition
Out of these three kinds of being, the one which most of have least of in our day-to-day experience is actually the one that Philosophers and our common-sense everyday conceptualisation typically assumes is paradigmatic … self-sufficient substances. Self-sufficient substances typically pay a smaller part in most of our lives than either equipment or each other. Mostly self-sufficent substances are only the concern of scientists and artists (and maybe philosophers).
The insights of science do of course pay a huge part in our lives when they are used to furnish us with new additions to the equipmental whole.
Philosophers espousing traditional metaphysical ideas (and our common-sense conceptualisation) have therefore typically gotten the world backwards:
The place we start from is a world made up of a totality of interconnecting equipment (with which we are transparently coping) along with ourselves and each other. This is the world we find ourselves already in when we first find ourselves at all. We don’t, for example, need to escape from our heads in a desperate attempt to clamber into this world. We are always-already-in-the-world — the world is the place where we first enter into being at all.
If we want to be scientists, it is possible to break this wholistic equipmental totality down and strip it back to its bare substances. We can do this by clearing away and/or disregarding large parts of what we take for granted — our transparent familiarity with the world which is ourselves. Or perhaps we just want to see at and look at the beauty of a tree or a forest and admire it and wonder about it.
We should have no expectation however, of being able to traverse this journey the other way. You can’t start from a landscape composed of self-sufficient substances, and expect to be able to construct the world we live in — which is what philosophers have essentially been trying to do since Plato. Once this is understood it should be clear why the attempt is not merely impossible, but also absurd and counterproductive.
If knowing is a function of neither perception nor ideas produced by our minds (/reason/cognition), but rather knowing is a function of skillful activity, and skillful activity is largely based on transparent familiarity, we should have no expectation of being able to articulate the a story of how deworlded objective facts can be fitted together in a way that can make up the world we live in.
