FOR THE COURSE ‘CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY’ TAUGHT BY ALEXANDER

GONGOV AT SOFIA UNIVERSITY

How to Read Heidegger

by Mark Wrathall
A Summary

Daniel Tarpy
15 September 2020

Mark Wrathall summarizes much of Heidegger’s thought – in the way of defining the central
terms he coined or repurposed-- in his book “How to Read Heidegger”. This work is a
summary of that summary. All quotations cited herein are taken from “How to Read
Heidegger” unless specified as originating from Heidegger’s “Being and Time”.
Dasein and Being-in-the-World

Heidegger’s phenomenological approach sets aside the fundamentals of

existence, or the ‘causes’ of existence (for instance, whether reality is underpinned

ontologically by material particles or conceptual forms), in favor of investigating the

world as it is experienced. This is the heart of the matter, for the problem of what is

falls away in the face of direct experience. But who is it that is having this experience?

Translated literally as ‘being-there’, or colloquially as ‘existence’, Dasein is that entity

that ‘comports itself understandingly’ towards itself, and it does so because it is able

to behave towards itself in a self-reflective manner. Dasein is therefore “the kind of

entity” (Being and Time). that a human being is. We are not only beings, but beings

that are ‘in’ a world. We do not exist independently from the world or from other

beings. Dasein as ‘being-in-the-world’ exists as both itself and its interrelations

(between the world, things, and other beings) and this constitutes a whole.
The World

Dasein acts ‘towards’ the world, but what of this world? We have ignored our

natural way of being in the world, in favor of a methodical, scientific understanding

that strips the world of meaning, rendering it “nothing but a collection of physical

objects”. But here, we are said to be confusing the “universe with the world”. The

world to Heidegger is a phenomenological experiencing – a relational and meaningful

reality, irreducible to physical matter – rather than a ‘physical entity’. The world

refers to a conceptual universe, a “domain of possibilities” (Being and Time);

inaccessible to the physical sciences, it is something “that has to be understood to be

seen”, and within which our understanding takes place. The world gives “structure to

the objects that appear in the world”. It tells us what things can be done and the

‘appropriate’ way of doing things, and in this way imposes “an order and a meaning

on activities”. To be in the world is not only to see “what to do with things” but also

“that these are the right things to do”.

The Structure of Being-in-the-World

Moods and Disposedness. There is a general structure to our

being-in-the-world that evokes certain ‘states-of-mind’ which then determines how

we ‘comport’ ourselves to the world. The world evokes certain ‘moods’. Moods are a

response to the world and a way of acting towards the world. Moods both “assail us”

(Being and Time), and yet also, they “are not more fully objective than they are

merely subjective”. We are always affected and being affected by the world, and we

always find “ourselves in the world in a particular way”. “The way things matter to

us … is imposed on us by the way the world is arranged.” These states-of-mind, or

our ‘disposedness’ to the world, singles out from the myriad of things in the world

some thing of importance to us so that we may orient ourselves towards it.

Disposedness “makes things matter to us” by both allowing us to have the freedom

to pursue what is meaningful to us, and yet also limiting us in what we might pursue.

Understanding and Interpretation. To ‘understand’ something is to “grasp the

possible ways that it can be used, or the possible things that can happen to it”. It is to

grasp as well our relation to it and to its uses and its relations to other things and

other beings in the world. ‘Interpretation’ is the “working-out of possibilities

projected in understanding” (Being and Time); it is to make use of understanding by

refining and personalizing it. Understanding and interpretation to Heidegger are not

simply acts of cognition or mental states, but something relational and actionable in

that they are ‘something we do’ rather than something we think. We do not first

encounter the world as an unbroken stream of physical information, and then

proceed to “impose a subjective meaning” onto it. Rather, the world we encounter –
our experience of the world – is one overlaid by and filtered through our

understanding and interpretation. All experiencing involves “an understanding and a

kind of interpretation”. Here again we find a temperedness, for our understanding

and interpretation of experience liberates us from being bedazzled continuously by

the meaningless and unfamiliar, and yet it also confines and misleads us.
Everydayness and the ‘One’

What we know of the world is mediated to us by others. We enter a world that

is already disposed to others. Dasein is that which has its mode of being as

‘being-with-one-another’. By the ‘one’ Heidegger doesn’t mean a particular person,

for “no one in particular ever really decides how things should be done”, but an

aggregate “which is nothing definite, and which all are, though not as the sum”. This

is the mode of everydayness – for our lives are structured by the “dictatorship of the

‘one’” (Being and Time). The real question philosophy then is not “are there others?”

(for in experiencing the world authentically, a world that is already made-for others,

the problem of solipsism falls away), but rather “can I be myself?”. What is needed is

a balance between conformity and freedom. I could not become myself fully if I were

to be burdened by every decision and choice – and in this sense conformity serves its

purpose. But I must take care to not “so thoroughly disburden myself that I am, in

the end, not myself at all, I am the ‘one’”.

Death and Authenticity

We have the desire to ‘flee’ In the face of existence, in the face of our real

situation in the world. There is no ‘right’ or ‘true’ way to live, and though we

embrace society with its prescriptions for life, we do not do so wholeheartedly for we

know that our way of structuring the world is “ultimately not grounded in anything

timeless and essential”. We are then free to choose our own path, and this fills us

with anxiety. Society avoids confronting the idea of death, which nonetheless is

always looming over us. Death modulates our disposedness, in that knowledge of

death allows us to become aware of those things which count for something. Anxiety

is the correct way to respond to death, and yet out of anxiety comes the possibility

for authenticity. For in facing death, we become clear as to what things matter to us

and what our path should be. In this way, death ‘individualizes’.

The ‘inauthentic’ Dasein is that which has not yet come into itself, has not taken

the responsibility for deciding “who and how one should be” (Being and Time).

‘Authenticity’, on the other hand, is a coming into oneself, becoming a ‘real’

individual – one that owns up to its true nature as being that can “decide for itself on

its own being” (Being and Time). What is needed is “a running ahead towards death”,

away from the one to a realization that “shared conventions or norms will ultimately

fail us” and “what others say I should do or think I should do is, in the face of death,

revealed as irrelevant”. In facing death we learn to live authentically.

Truth and Art

In his later works, Heidegger changes his focus from universals to the current

‘historical moment’ and particularly how such a world comes into being or ‘comes to

pass’. We live in a world that is continuously morphing and being created. The world

that ‘comes to pass’ now with presidents and prime ministers is different than the

world of kings and emperors that preceded it. In our modern time, art (as well as

philosophy) plays a central role in helping to usher in such a new world. A new world

comes into being when the desire for the new overcomes the complacency with the

old (even if that desire is forced upon the populace). Great art makes “a world

possible by letting a certain style for organizing things shine and attune us to them”.

When these relations appear to us as beautiful, we are drawn towards it, and

towards conjuring up this new world.

Art lets “truth be seen”. Truth here is not referring to ultimate truth (or an

actual representation of an objective reality), but to the truth about the world that

has come into being – the particular mood or state-of-mind of the world. We do not

understand art through a rational process, or through an analysis of our assertions

and interpretations of it, but it is experienced pre-rationally, and through this, it

enables us to “grasp the character of a world”.

Language and Technology

Language. Languages play a role in “establishing different styles of being in the

world”. Even before learning how to speak, or before one chooses to speak, the

‘ordinary language’ with its pervading and structuring effects, determines by

“drafting or sketching out in advance what can be experienced, perceived, or thought

of things”. The world we encounter is one that is already ‘speakable’ in that it

‘essences’ or calls forth what is central and what is trivial. Language – the system and

structure of language – ‘moves us’ and speaks to us. It does this by “getting us to feel

the world in a particular kind of way”.

Technology. Technology poses both a threat and a promise for our world. It is

undeniable that technology has benefited life tremendously, but Heidegger takes

particular issue with the potential threat posed by technology in its ability to do away

with what fundamentally makes us human. This new state-of-mind, this

technological world that has come to pass before us, with its overriding narrative of

efficiency and productivity, divorces objects and people from their natural roots,

from their ‘inherent properties’. In a world of resources and commodification,

material things and entities lose their significance. Objects become reduced to

superficial products, and human beings become reduced to human resources. Our

current “taste for efficiency and flexibility” is putting at risk “our ability to lead

worthwhile lives”, and we are in danger as well of becoming locked into the totalizing

effect of technology. If this technological age is to go on unimpeded in its blind

striving for efficiency and commodification, man is in danger of being engineered out

of being himself.
Our Mortal Dwelling with Things

Faced with this technological world, we are ‘homesick’. We have achieved the

freedom to do anything, but have lost the reason to do anything at all. We are in

danger of being “made into a controlled machine”, of being made into ‘mere

resources’, of becoming locked into a technological tyranny – unable to change our

course and cut off from our true essence as being which can create new modes of

being. To address this, Heidegger proposes ‘dwelling’. Dwelling “establishes a space”

in which we can “reclaim [our] essence”. Within this enclave – free from the

totalizing nature of technology – we can preserve our true essence, and make room

for “building and nurturing things peculiarly suited” to this space. Dwelling is not a

return to nature, to a pre-technological world, but making a space within modernity

wherein man is free to continue his essential ‘experiment’ with new modes of being.
Main Work Cited
Wrathall, Mark. How to Read Heidegger. 2005

Other Work Cited

Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. 1962.