Nate Zuckerman

Being and Time argues that we, as Dasein, are defined not by what we are, but by our way of existing, our “existentiell possibilities.” I diagnose and respond to an interpretive dilemma that arises from Heidegger's ambiguous use of this latter term. Most readings stress its specific sense, holding that Dasein has no general essence and is instead determined by some historically contingent way of understanding itself and the meaning of being at large. But this fails to explain the sense in which Being and Time is a work of fundamental ontology, concluding in Heidegger's claim to have found the meaning of Dasein's being in the concept of originary temporality. On the other hand, readings that stress the general sense of “existentiell possibilities” find Heidegger on a fruitless quest for the transcendental conditions necessary for Dasein's existence, which seems to founder on the claims that Dasein is constitutively thrown, factical, and “in-each-case-mine” [jemeinig]. Both readings are problematic and, I contend, result from a failure to disambiguate and explain the ontologically unique relationship between the specific and general aspects of Dasein's essence. I argue that we can better explain this relationship, Heidegger's method for investigating it, and the sense in which Dasein has an essence that is open to philosophical investigation, if we read Being and Time's ontology of Dasein in terms of what Anton Ford calls “categorial” genus-species relationships

Being and Time's fundamental ontoogy and existentialism both rest on the A Potiori Claim, which states that originary temporality is, although non-sequential, a genuine and basic concept of time from which we derive our more ordinary, sequential concept of time. In this paper, I develop a new reading and defense of this claim against the readings of William Blattner, which ties originary temporality too tightly to the particular roles and identities we live out and must therefore find Heidegger's project a failure, and Tony Fisher, who implies that our various roles and identities hang together in time in a merely accidental and non-rational way. On my reading, originary temporality is the structure of Dasein's characteristic activity of existential commitment. Through this activity, we each work out, in our own case, what it takes to embody the capacity for sense-making, at all. Here, the non-sequentiality of originary temporality reflects the way in which commitments are revised and sustained through time, while the sequence of nows derives from our need to embody our commitment in a single life that negotiates among the practical demands that our various identities make of us.

If we interpret ‘death’ in Heidegger not, like most readers, as the end of a particular person’s life or culture’s way of life, but more broadly as the absolute end of any capacity for sense-making whatsoever, I argue, we can best account for its role in Being and Time’s ontology of Dasein; find a systematic place for the various, more ‘local’ forms of breakdown that get called ‘death’ on the most prominent readings of the text; and highlight the continuity between Heidegger’s early concerns about death and his later worries about nihilism and the technological worldview he calls ‘enframing’ (Gestell).