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The Early Heidegger's Philosophy ofLife: Facticity, Being and Language offers an
interpretat©؛n ٠٢ Heidegger’s c©ncept ٠٢ facticity· as it is articulated in
c©nnecti©n with the ideas ٠٢ life and language in the lecture c©urses ٢٢٠٢٨
1919—25. The b©©k argues that ؛acticity is both the s©urce ٠٢ vitality ٢٠٢
theory and a source ٠٢ decept©؛n and falsehood and therefore cann©t be
viewed in either p©s؛t؛ve ٠٢ negative terms exclusively, but must instead be
viewed as amb؛gu©us. This essay argues that this basic thesis is c©rrect and
is supp©rted by drawing a d؛st؛nct©؛n between everydayness and inauthen-
ticity. It is als© argued that the analysis of language the b©©k ©ffers can be
usefal in clearing up misunderstandings ٠٢Heidegger’s c©ncept ofdiscourse
in Being and Time.
Scott M. Campbell, The Early Heidegger’s Philosophy o fL ife : Facticity, Being, and
Language وFordham University Press, 2012, 2 4 وpp, $28 (pbk), ISBN-13: 978-0־
8232-4220-7.
The volumes of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe dedicated to the lecture courses that
he delivered in the years prior to the publication of the 1927 w ork Being and Time
have received a great deal of attention in the last couple of decades and with good
reason, for they shed an enormous am ount of light on the development of
Heidegger’s ^ ilo so p h ic al thinking. Scholars examine these volumes for a variety
of reasons/ Some are interested in the clues they provide regarding the
development of the position articulated in Being and Time. Others study these
texts to unravel the influence of im portant figures from the history of philosophy
1 آلwould be impossible to eite all ﺀهtbe literatee that foeuses ou Heidegger’s early lecture courses. Some notable
book leugth studies include Bowler 2008; Crowe ﻫﻬﺖ6 ﻫﻬﺖ ث8 تKisiel ل993 أShirley ت01 أهvan Buren 1 4 وو. A
particularly good anthology is Kisiel and van Buren 1994.
life, and he argues for it throughout the book. The basie thesis is that facticity
contains within it the dual possibility of uncovering, disclosing, or revealing on the
one hand, and covering over on the other. Campbell begins the argument for this
point in his treatm ent of factical living, as just discussed, and then extends it
through his analysis of Heidegger’s discussion of language and speaking. This
analysis aims to show that speech can be used both to disclose things as w hat they
are, or as w hat they are not. In this way factical speech illustrates the interplay
between disclosing and covering over that also typifies factical living, and
therefore, Campbell argues, the facticity of living and speaking function both to
uncover and cover over Being. On the basis ©fthis argument Campbell disputes the
claim that Heidegger is not concerned with the question of Being in his early work
(xii). Against this, he argues that Heidegger focuses on facticity in this period
precisely because factical life generates an openness to Being and thus is the site
from which any questioning about Being or understanding of Being is possible.
Campbell maintains, then, that the analysis of Dasein with which readers of Being
and Time are familiar evolves out of the analysis of factical life that Heidegger
undertakes in the early work.
The Early Heidegger's Philosophy o f Life consists of nine chapters divided into
four parts: I. Philosophical Vitality (1 و1 و- ;) ﻣﻖII. Factical Life (1921-22) ؛III. The
Hermeneutics of Facticity (1 و222-ث( وIV. The Language of Life (1923-25). Part I
focuses on Heidegger’s analysis of science and religion in the lecture courses from
1919-21: Toward the Definition o f Philosophy (GA 56/57) ؛Basic Problems o f
Phenomenology (GA 58); Phenomenology o f Intuition and Expression: Theory o f
Philosophical Concept Formation (GA 59) ؛and The Phenomenology o f Religious
Life (GA 6 م(هThe aim of this section is to highlight the position that facticity is the
existential or living source for theories, regardless of whether these theories are
scientific or religious. As such, facticity is the source of any sort of foilosophical
vitality, which is subsequently lost when these expressions of life are ‘objectified’ in
theory. Part II looks more broadly at the concept of life itself and how questioning
emerges from out of factical life. It also argues for the ambiguity of focticity based
on Heidegger’s claims that facticity is a source of ‘ruinance.’ The source material
for the analysis in the two chapters of this section is “Phenomenological
Interpretations of Aristotle: An Initiation into Phenomenological Research” (GA
61). Part 111 focuses on the text “Phenomenological Interpretations with Respect to
Aristotle: Indication of the Hermeneutical Situation,” the so-called “lost manu-
script” from 1922, and O ntology: The Hermeneutics o f Facticity (GA 6 م(وThis
section is organized around the claim that Heidegger intends to reinterpret
philosophical and theological concepts in terms of the facticity of life by retrieving
the factical meanings from which they developed and which have subsequently
been covered over. Thus, it focuses on illustrating how Heidegger begins to analyze
facticity or existence with an eye tow ard linking it to ontology. Part IV shifts to a
consideration of the topic of language and focuses on Introduction to
Phenomenological Research (GA 17), Basic Concepts o f Aristotelian Philosophy
(GA 18), and Plato's Sophist (GA 19). The goals here are to show that language
involves both a revealing and a concealing, and that language can serve as foe
ص LESLIE MACAVOY
2^See especially Dreyfus 1991, 7— ﻟﻖ5 ﻟﺖand Haugeland 1 و9 ت.
3For a discussion of this debate between a so-called “pragmatic” model of discourse and a “linguistic” model of
discourse, see Carman2ت״0 0 و, ﻗﺖ0 —وت
AMBIGUITY OF FACTICITY IN HEIDEGGER'S EARLY ^ORK ]وه
*Crowe 2.006 and ¿008 and van Buren 1992 and 1994 are the particular targets £٠٢ this critique.
AMBIGUITY OF FACTICITY INHEIDEGGER'S EAREY WDRK 105
detachment from the ‘they’ but rather a modification of one’s involvement with it.6
It furtherm ore implies that everyday Being-in-the-world is neutral with respect to
authenticity and inauthenticity and is the ground from which each of these
possibilities develops/
In this way, one can argue for a distinction between everydayness and
inauthenticity, and it seems that such a distinction would be useful to
Campbell’s argument. The ambiguity that Campbell seeks to highlight in factical
life is the ambiguity that belongs to everydayness, and it appears as though
Campbell wants to retrieve a positive meaning for in u th en tic ity mainly because
he wants to point to the multi-valence of everydayness. For this reason, it may be
more effective to distinguish everydayness and inauthenticity, rather than to argue
against a dichotomy between authenticity and inauthenticity.
These points of disagreement are, however, fairly minor in that they concern the
argument as it is framed in the introductory and concluding sections of the book.
The chapters in between are full of careful textual analysis and interpretation that
will be of considerable interest to serious readers of Heidegger across a broad
spectrum. Campbell’s exegetical approach to these lectures shows a path of
thinking that Heidegger sustains over the six-year period investigated and beyond,
and in this regard, it makes a valuable contribution to the body of scholarship on
H eidegger’s early philosophy.
References
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6 “Authentic Being-one’s-Self does not rest upon ٠. . a condition that has been detached from the ‘they’; it is rather an
existentiell modification o f the They'— o f the ‘they' as an essential existentiale" (SZ 130/BT 168).
^See SZ 43/BT 69, where Heidegger ־؛efers to average everydayness as “undifferentiated.”
ص ا£$اا £ MACAVOY
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Notes on contributor
Correspondence to: Leslie MacAvoy, macavoyl@etsu.edu.
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