Reconsidering the Idea of Heideggerian Being

Article Published in Anekaant: A Journal of Polysemic Thought, Issue No.5 Spring 2017, pp. 77-85. ISSN: 2320-6195) - UDAYPRAKASH SHARMA

Reconsidering the Idea of Heideggerian Being

The main concern of this paper is to explain, argue through and critically assess the idea of Being and Horizon as enunciated by Heidegger. Heidegger in his most popular work Being and Time (Sein und Zeit) expresses his concerns for the understanding of the idea of Being. Heidegger believes that while most would believe that they, when using the expression “Being” are aware of and understand its meaning; their understanding is ridden with confusions and somewhat inadequate. In fact, according to him, the idea of Being has left us puzzled. As Heidegger says, “manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression “Being”. We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed”[i]. It is indeed quite interesting how we use the word assuming that we know its meaning but when it comes to explanation, we fail to work out the meaning of it. Something like this happens while translating a text from one language to another; we find it difficult to find an alternative word for the original one. In the same way Heidegger’s lectures have been translated from German to the nearest substitute available in English vocabulary. Translators of Heidegger’s work titled Being and Time, John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson state, “We have tried in the main to keep our vocabulary under control, providing a German-English glossary for the more important expressions, and rather full analytical index which will also serve as an English-German glossary”[ii]. For example, the word “Horizon” (German: Horizontes) with a connotation somewhat different to what English speaking readers are accustomed to has been used often. I will discuss this later in this paper.

Presenting his review of Heidegger’s work, Costica Bradatan claims that, “Being and Time is an enigmatic book. It was written in a rush; Martin Heidegger had not published much since 1916 and his academic career was somehow stagnating. When it came out, however, the book became an instant classic”[iii]. Regarding the language used by Heidegger, he adds, “Heidegger’s peculiar use of language – not only in Sein und Zeit, but throughout his work – has given him the reputation of being, at once, one of the worst philosophers who had ever put pen to paper (if you listen to his detractors) and one of the greatest masters of German language (if you believe his admirers). His language does not simply happen to be difficult, it is deliberately so”[iv]. He believes that “Heidegger is a violent writer. Not in the sense of using “violent language,” but in the subtler one of doing violence to language, with an intent to “bring some sense” into it. A text written by Heidegger would appear “more like a torture chamber than a piece of writing: you come across words that have been butchered (a beheaded noun here, an eviscerated verb there), and sentences mercilessly tortured to death”.[v] Bradatan is of the above view because, for instance, Heidegger makes the use of the group of words like “readiness-to-hand,” and “presentness-at-hand” which mean or direct us to understand it as a human hand. It also means hand in German language. By this Heidegger means that if you want to make sense of something then you have to have a good “hold” or “grasp” over it. – to have a handle over the concept, therefore, relating it to hand, which is used for holding things or having a grip on things.

I can at once relate to the frustration that one may go through while working on a Heideggerian text. The computer too went through the same; it kept on marking words (as butchered by Heidegger) red. Most of these words in English were assumed to be a spelling or grammatical error by my computer. It didn’t have any built in dictionary reference for the same.

Let me begin my exploration of Heidegger’s argument, although I must admit, it is only an initial and sketchy one. According to Heidegger, we may think of horizon as something that does not extend or is unending. Heidegger thinks of it as something which can neither widen nor go beyond. Put differently, he seems to have a very narrow view of Horizon. This idea was also substantiated by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht,Albert Guerard Professor in Literature, Stanford University, USA, during a Distinguished Lecture organized by the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Vadodara.

Although the lecture was based on Diderot’s Philosophy, I, during a discussion with Prof. Gumbrecht, inquired about the Heideggerian concept of horizon in relation to the context of horizon which Diderot talked about and it is then, that Prof. Gumbrecht recollected an anecdote where he referred to a lecture of Heidegger of the period 1929-30 which was titled “Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics”, where Heidegger talks about the world as a horizon. Till 1950 Heidegger had never travelled in his life. He didn’t have much money to do so as he never became a full-fledged professor and was working as a visiting professor in a university in Germany. On his 70th birthday as well as a gift on Christmas, Heidegger’s wife, Elfride Petri gave him a travel opportunity to Greece. It was a dream for Heidegger to travel to Greece and visit the historical places there, especially Athens. However, Elfride Petri bought him the tour on a ship through a cheapest German travel agency, popular even today and known by the name Neckermann. Heidegger couldn’t accept the fact that he was travelling with the customers of Neckermann who most certainly would have been from the poor strata of the German society. Consequently, he never left the ship and remained on the ship during his entire travel to and fro Greece. Reading through this, Gumbrecht refers to Heidegger’s horizon as being narrow since he couldn’t broaden his horizon and see himself among the customers of Neckermann travelling to Greece. He had a typical bourgeoisie horizon about himself or he held one for that matter. May be this is also a reason that Heidegger assumes the horizons are limited and cannot be broadened[vi].

 According to the translators of the book Being and Time, “We tend to think of a horizon as something which we may widen or extend or go beyond; Heidegger, however seems to think of it rather as something which can neither widen nor go beyond, but which provides the limits for certain intellectual activities performed ‘within it’”[vii]. By “within it” one could consider a space which is provided by a particular horizon. For example, a painting is like a particular horizon; a single horizon – a single space.

In a similar vein, Heidegger prioritizes the question of being in order to be able to give one particular, universal and concrete definition. This way Heidegger’s thought seems to be authoritarian. He does not give us any space to differ from his understanding of the concept of Being. As Tim Mauldin says, “...space and time themselves are elusive entities. The physical world presents itself to us as a collection of things and events in space that coexists or succeeds each other in time. But space and time do not appear to our senses: they have no colour or flavour or sound or smell or tangible shape.”[viii] We are not sure about the space and time and therefore drawing out one singular or universal definition of being would be detrimental for us. Similarly Rovelli explains that “It is possible to imagine a world without colours, without matter, even without space, but it’s difficult to imagine one without time. The German philosopher Martin Heidegger emphasized our ‘dwelling in time’”[ix]. Rovelli further gives an anecdote through a letter written by Einstein to his friend Michele Besso’s sister, when Besso died. In his words: “Einstein wrote a moving letter to Michele’s sister: ‘Michele has left this strange world a little before me. This means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction made between past, present and future is nothing more than a persistent, stubborn illusion”[x]. Nevertheless, Heidegger raises an important question based on the richness of his thought.

So far the question of Being has been engaged with by Plato, Aristotle and Hegel in an attempt to define the term but they have not been able to give us any substantial definition of the term Being and later they were also taken up by other themes of actual investigation, such as with the ideas of truth, beauty, justice, politics and logic, among others. So far such failure at interpreting the word Being has led to the rejection of its relevance. The word has been regarded superfluous. Certain dogma has been created that the word is not useful, and since it is not relevant, attempts to explain the term are resisted. As Bradatan argues, “For Heidegger, Western philosophy has been in a serious crisis for almost as long as it has been in existence - “almost” because there was a time, before Socrates and Plato, when philosophy flourished: the pre-Socratic period. Whereas for most philosophers Western thought begins with Socrates and Plato, for Heidegger it ends there”[xi]. I think that a possible reason behind Heidegger’s frustration with Socrates and Plato’s philosophy is due to their negligence of the question of Being and existence: Perhaps also because without attempting a detailed investigation of these central concepts, they moved ahead to argue and investigate other ideas like truth, beauty and justice.

Today, in modern philosophy, thinkers have come to discuss all the other ideas - for instance, equality, justice, liberalism, communitarianism, multiculturalism and terrorism, to mention a few – ideas which are just suffixes to the idea of being. The very basis of these ideas, namely Being, has been neglected or to put it in other words it has been purposely neglected because of its difficult an dense nature. It has been pushed aside with a label tagging it as ‘not important’. This is highly political. Heidegger argues not only for a relook at the idea of Being but also for a relook at the reason that such an important idea has been sidelined by modern philosophy and is experiencing difficulty in bouncing back into the highest position of relevance in modern philosophy. It would be helpful here to mention that, Being with a capital “B” is the broader concept of the word being, whereas being with a small “b” is implying all individual beings whether they be plant or animal or human beings. This will be discussed ahead in the article.

Heidegger’s intention and aim is to investigate these accounts of presuppositions and prejudices which constantly suggest and believe the idea of Being is unnecessary. He believes that the problem is rooted in ancient ontology per se. This ontology has to be inquired into adequately to clarify the meaning of Being.

We need to relook at the structures of the categories as they have been framed in ontology, (ontology is a study of the nature of being, becoming or existence. It inquires into the questions like what exists? What can be called as being? What can be classified as an object or categorized under the hierarchy of entities?) and ask whether they are complete and appropriate. We need to reinvigorate categories that we have made in language or in physical reality of different kinds of beings, for example, of human beings, animals, plants, planets, poor, rich, normal, abnormal, among others. Heidegger attempts to discuss this only to the level where it becomes clear that it is important and related to the meaning of being.

For this purpose Heidegger gives three propositions:[xii]

1.     Being is the most universal concept. We all imagine a being when we speak of the term being. We already think we know what one is talking about when one uses the term being. According to genus and species the word being doesn’t define the uppermost and the lowermost. It doesn’t define any hierarchy. The universality of the being is transcendental to any universality of genus (biology/class/genre/category). In medieval ontology being is designated as transcendence.

Aristotle questioned this thought by arguing that if being is transcendental then what accounts for the multiplicity of the generic concepts applicable to things, especially when there is a unity of analogy. For instance, the word Dog is a unity of analogy, we know that Dog is an animal. It is unanimous. But the problem comes when we see Chi-hua-hua, Pug, Doberman, Great Dane, Labrador, Rottweiler and the list of dog breeds names goes on. This resembles the multiplicity within a unity of analogy. After all, the breeds of dogs and the idea of dog both resemble Being. We may differentiate between dog and cat but within each category there are many multiplicities whereas the core of each individual animal is Being only. The unity of analogy and the unity of multiplicity are therefore at contrast with each other. Aristotle came out more clearly than Plato, who was heavily caught up with defining the idea of Being. Aristotle calls being as (what was). Even Aristotle couldn’t make sense of these interconnected terms or categories of genus. Hegel went on to define being as an ‘indeterminate immediate’ and later makes this definition basic for all further categorical explanations.

Even if one argues that being is a universal concept, this in no way suggests or infers that it is a clear concept since concrete definition is available for the term. In fact, in spite of three philosophers focusing their attention on the concept, there is no particular definition to hold on to – the idea still remains the darkest of all and therefore it is worthy of further investigation.

2.     It is maintained that the idea of Being is indefinable. Being cannot be associated with being an entity or vice versa. It cannot be termed as an entity. Being cannot be compared with hierarchical terms of the lowest rungs. Ranking is absent in or among Being. For instance, a man can behave like a dog and a dog can resemble having a quality of a human being. Even though, both man and dog are two different beings, they are not permanently fixed in their entities only. Both are flexible and therefore transcendental.

It is possible to thereby conclude that being cannot have a character of an entity. So defining being in a Hegelian way as ‘indeterminate immediate’, which has its base in medieval ontology, would be regarded as incorrect. However, even when it remains indefinable, this does not eliminate or address the question of its meaning. We need to continue to look at it with suspicion.

3.     Being is, of all concepts, self evident. When we recognize or make an assertion whenever one comports (conducts, behave, accord, agree with) oneself towards entities, even towards oneself, some use is made of being and this is considered as intelligible without further questioning or doubt. For example, when one refers to others or herself as entity/ties then it is considered as intelligent and true, without questioning otherwise. Like you are XYZ and I am ABC. We are confident about it. This kind of confidence is considered as average kind of intelligibility by Heidegger. He calls it an a priori enigma. We don’t know whether we are being or non-being or entity or non-entity. It is a given truth or knowledge from which the veil of darkness needs to be raised by questioning the definition of being.

We should do so because of the common reason which makes us believe in the dubious claim. It may be self evident and it would be foolish to invoke self-evidence. For example, I prove something to myself without the Hegelian dialectics. As Rovelli says “...many times we have realized that it is our immediate intuitions that are imprecise: if we had kept to these we would still believe that the Earth is flat and that it is orbited by the Sun. Our intuitions have developed on the basis of our limited experience”[xiii].

But then how does one question Being?[xiv] Heidegger believes that a question needs to be formulated for inquiring into the subject of Being. Any enquiry that is raised is for a peculiar motive. While or perhaps before interrogating, one frames questions about what is to be found out. However, before making an inquiry we also, already have, at first hand, some meaning of the terms available to us; hence the question or further inquiry is needed. But this vague understanding of being is still a fact. To interpret the question we must develop the concept of being (how we understand it) then we may analyze from it what we assume what is real and what is not.

Yet there are possibilities that our definition of being may be highly influenced by traditional theories and opinions about being. In British and American philosophy the word entity/entities are used to remove any confusion and make it simple, no matter what is its ontological status (what is the nature of such a being). Heidegger uses a term Da-sein (‘Da:zain) quite regularly in his work Being and Time which means ‘being there’. It means something that has the existence of God. Being is how we are and to inquire properly in the matter we need to give a proper explanation of that entity with regards to its being.

Heidegger brings us face to face with the confusion that we are caught up in a cycle/circularity. First, we have to define the entity in its being and we have formulated the question of being on the same line. Aren’t we asking or presupposing something that only an answer can bring? Being will be defined as being only. This is not cyclic according to Heidegger as we are not answering first and then making a question. We are trying to investigate here and any cyclic reasoning is always sterile in prescribing concrete ways and hence it doesn’t allow us to penetrate the field of study. (It is like a catch 22 situation – egg and hen story; is it being that is first or the essence of a being).

Therefore there is no circle here and one can determine the nature of entities in their being without having any prior knowledge about the concept of the meaning of being at one’s disposal (like wildlife studies, we may assume what does a wild cat do for satisfying her hunger. Cat is an entity here and its nature is to kill other mammals or animals for its survival. This knowledge about the entity is not a priori to us or need not be a priori to us or if not a priori to us, still it can be gained from determining the nature of this entity, here being, the cat). Otherwise there couldn’t have been ontological knowledge heretofore. (That something is being and then later it stops to be being – cat dies) The presuppositions are for counter checking (like what does cat eat? Is cat a being? How long does the cat live?)

We all operate under the general understanding of the being; which is our essential constitution. Such meaning of being cannot be presupposed or deduced from this understanding of being of ours. Entities somehow are related to the question of being. The beingness has a priority with regards to its being. The entity chosen for interrogation or questioning of being – This is a special one. It is not shown so far about any interrogation occurred with Dasein (existence is not questioned yet, no one represents existence), whereas being (an entity) can be taken up as a primary example that can be interrogated.

The boundaries of being can only be defined after we have delimited its scope, aim and motives, otherwise it would be endless like an uncaptured horizon. Therefore human being is taken here as a delimited scope or captured horizon - the special one.

According to Heidegger the understanding of the being belongs to the ontological structure of Dasein (Being there or existence) and he proposed that there is an understanding state of mind in which Dasein is disclosed to itself (He believes that there is a consciousness or a priori which makes a being realise its existence). E.g. the way we recognize the difference between the dead and living or being and non-being. It is like the Hegelian existence or determinate being or human existence.

No question can be formed correctly so as to ask on the importance of the validity of Being (How do you know whether you are existing or is this just a dream?). Are we asking the question to understand this nature of being? Or are we trying to generalize it for the sake of generality? According to Vattimo, “The history (of Being) within which we find ourselves thrown is the history of nihilism, that is, of metaphysics and its progressive dissolution, eloquently narrated by Nietzsche and taken up again by Heidegger – a history that we cannot think from an external view...”[xv].

Any scientific research in the said matter is rough and naive. It demarcates areas in basic way. That is how it creates the limits of the knowledge. The basic structures are already bordered with the so called pre-scientific ways of experience and interpreting the domain of Being. Therefore, when we experience pain we design a pain theory after it, exclusively, which is limited and structured. For example, when we see snowfall we see how and understand why it is happening, whereas we have failed to define the idea of being in the process. 

The answer lies beyond our capabilities to reason which is often dominated by science or experience which in turn are rather limited. Our thinking is confined or has limitations. In doing so we are just collecting information and manuals but not producing knowledge. Even science has its limitations. In the same way, Heidegger says that the relativity theory of physics tries to study the nature as it is ‘in itself’. Science creates a theory of the conditions under which we have access to nature, it tries to preserve the changelessness of the law, like law of gravity and thus comes up with a limitation of the structure of its own area of the study. For instance, science uses a given set of formulas which are changeless and they have to be applied rigidly to study anything. It is thus that Rovelli says that “some philosophers, the most devoted followers of Heidegger among them, conclude that physics is incapable of describing the most fundamental aspects of reality, and dismiss it as a misleading form of knowledge”[xvi].

Through all such basic concepts we only have the interpretation of things/entities (A person is good or bad, is that animal good or bad?) It is this preliminary research from which the basic concepts are drawn. Interpretation here is nothing more than history (How beings behaved historically, these areas are explored beforehand.) Therefore any ontological research is blind and perverted from its own aim because it has failed to define the meaning of Being and conceives of this clarification as its fundamental task, that is, referring to the history of being and its behaviour and applying it to the present without defining the Being’s original meaning.)

Different sciences are also dominated by Being and it’s/their behaviour i.e. history - Being which this entity, that is, man himself possesses. Dasein has interconnectivity with other things/entities that are there. Dasein itself has a relationship with the idea of being. Being there, is about Dasein, the whole of existence. To define the characteristics of Dasein is nearly impossible as it comports itself somehow through what we call existence. We cannot ask the question “what Dasein?”, because its essence has in each case of being. A designated entity “Dasein” is a term purely based on the expression of its being. It only understands itself in its own existence. Only a particular Dasein decides its existence. Existence is an ontological affair of Dasein. Even to define Dasein we have to depend on the knowledge that we have beforehand and which is confined. For Heidegger then, language is unable to express the meaning of Dasein.

We can only say that different sciences determine the character of Dasein. They try to define Dasein’s ontical constitution. Here ontic may be understood as something which is concrete or specific reality or a physical system, a pre-categorical and pre-objectual connection. Sciences are ways of being in which Dasein comports itself towards entities, which it need not be itself. Science’s nature is authoritarian and hence it tries to universalize knowledge, nature and being. In doing so it tries to capture being in different entities e.g. human nature, the male body and female body. It thereby creates a dichotomy tries to capture the essence of the Dasein, where as this doesn’t mean that the Being in which science captured the essence of the Dasein, it is the same of definite form of Dasein. E.g. Science may categorize body as male and female or eunuch or animal etc. but it can never be sure about which is the Dasein in the reality. A man is not a man and a woman is not a woman. Things are not as they appear.

Our understanding of Dasein is limited to being in the world, which is essential for our understanding. ‘World’ understanding of the being of those entities which become accessible within the world, therefore when we observe something other worldly or not from this world or think beyond our world’s understanding, we give it our own ontological structure which is a pre-ontological (human being itself is the ground upon which all other notions of the world and the existence of things stand.) understanding of Being, it is seen as compromised or to be of a definite characteristic. E.g. Unicorn is an other worldly creature but our understanding of a unicorn can be a pre-ontology coming from that of our understanding of a image of a horse and of a rhinosaurus. 

All other ontologies arise from the fundamental ontology. This fundamental ontology is of importance and a crucial matter of investigation.

Different features of Dasein or Dasein’s priorities:[xvii]

1.     First priority is an ontical one. Dasein is an entity whose being has a determinate character of existence. E.g. One Being, One Dasein, and limited to that being.

2.     Dasein also possesses understanding of existence and it is also conscious about all other being of all entities of a character other than its own. E.g. human beings recognize other beings or living things and other non-living objects.

3.     Third priority as providing the ontico-ontological condition for the possibilities of any ontologies. Thus Dasein is turned out to be more than any other entity, the one which must first be interrogated ontologically.

But the roots of the existential analytics on its part are ultimately existential, that is, ontical. While the term ‘ontisch’ (‘ontical’) and ‘ontologisch’ (‘ontological’) are not explicitly defined, their meanings will emerge rather clearly. Ontological inquiry is concerned primarily with being; whereas ontical inquiry is concerned primarily with entities and the facts about them. So ontological inquiry is about the existence as a whole and ontical inquiry is concerned with different entities like humans, plants, animals, celestial bodies, etc.

The existentialism is defined by the entities, the ultimate existence. E.g. entities’ presence in the world defines existentialism; otherwise it would be the world of the dead or non being/s. Existentialism has been possible because of the existentiality of existence (being of each existing Dasein) So can being be defined if there is no existence?

Aristotle calls “man’s soul is, in a certain way, entities”[xviii]. The ‘soul’ (Seele in German) which makes up the being of man has and among its ways of being, and in these it discovers all entities, both in the fact that they are, and in their being as they are – that is, always in their being.

Thomas Aquinas was engaged in the task of deriving the ‘transcendentia’ – those characters of being which lie beyond every possible way in which an entity may be classified as coming under some generic (kinds of a particular specie) kind of subject matter (animal, plant, human etc.) and which belong necessarily to anything, whatever it may be. According to Aquinas anything that can come together with entities of any sort (whatever Being) this distinctive entity, is the soul (amina).

So far we saw different ways in which different entities function and behave. Dasein becomes the ‘being there’ because it is made up of fundamental ontology (the consciousness and the knowledge which tells us that we are alive/existing). Dasein’s functions as that entity are to be interrogated beforehand as to its being. Therefore Dasein is not the primary entity to be interrogated beforehand as to its being. Therefore we can’t ask ourselves the question of being, then it would just be radicalizing of an essential tendency-of-being which belongs to Dasein itself – the pre-ontological understanding of the being.

The kind of being which belongs to Dasein (Body/ies of Being) as they are conscious of their being and they are also able to comport themselves or itself proximally (situated nearer to the centre of the body or the point of attachment). It has tendency to do so in terms of that entity towards which it comports itself. Meaning: Human beings can empathize with other entities with their world of emotions and love and care.

This way Dasein is prior and ontically ‘closest’ but ontologically farthest from itself but pre-ontologically it is not a stranger. Dasein’s way of behaviour, its capacities, power, possibilities have been studied or is being studied by ethics, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, political science, history, poetry etc. But so far no complete solution or understanding has been given by these areas. Therefore it won’t be incorrect to state that there are multiple Daseins and multiple horizons available.

It is after considering the above mentioned understanding and ideas of Heidegger on Being and Horizon, I have come across a possibility of reconsidering his ideas on Being and Horizon from a different viewpoint. I think that Heidegger’s entire idea of Being and Horizon is too authoritarian. He interprets that death is the end of Dasein and it leads to its not-being. He is of the view that Dasein is essentially finite. On the other hand, regarding Horizon, Heidegger explains that Horizon is not something that is unlimited. Horizon has a limit to it due to time. Since we are temporary beings our existence and consciousness is limited by time. I feel the need to debate over these claims made by Heidegger.

First, it is understood that death brings an end to a Dasein and not an end to the whole of Dasein but to an individual Dasein. For example, when Heidegger died his Dasein and Being ended, metaphorically stating end as an end that we know of (but there is no end to anything). Along Heidegger, went away his relations, his concepts and his understanding about the world. It is lights off for him, let’s assume permanently for now. Still it’s the end of the world for him individually and not for the other Being/s and their Dasein/s who were born during his time, after him and who are there now. Dasein is the higher understanding of life or consciousness or existence and it may belong to an individual or to the whole. When a Dasein dies, we do not know if it ends and it would be too authoritarian to believe and therefore to propagate that Dasein stops to exist in the world upon its death.

This reality is an illusion and no subject has been able to explain anything properly about this reality. I support the claim that we live in a world which is just unreal. It is an illusion. Otherwise how can we justify the experience which we get when living a part of our life in our dreams or a part of some scene that is the part of our visual while dreaming. While dreaming we feel that it is happening for real. While in the initial stage of a dream most tend to go along as if they are living it for real (present-at-hand experience). It completely depends on how strongly or intensely one feels the visual’s energies. For instance, sometimes I cannot even lift a pen in my dreams and at the very next moment in the visual I am able to drive a car. Therefore it would be unnecessary to believe that Dasein becomes a not being. Dasein is a form which is changed by a Being. Therefore Dasein is also infinite and not finite as claimed by Heidegger.

World, I think is dream which has strong or intense energy and it doesn’t let us feel that it is a dream but it presents itself as reality, which doesn’t break in between for many like the dream we experience while sleeping (it probably breaks when we experience what is popularly known as death). Probably this is why we call the world real because we can feel it through our senses. E.g.: ‘In real’ I can make a coffee, pour it in a mug and drink it and also gain pleasure from its flavours, whereas, if I experience the same situation in my dreams, all such effects may not be there to experience. It is in this sense I call our existence like a strong or intense dream which doesn’t feel like a dream at all. It is larger or bigger dream than our usual understanding of dream when we are asleep. All these illusions are visible to us because light falls on them, otherwise we won’t be able to see things as they appear but we will still be able to feel the dimensions of things surrounding us. Therefore I think that the world is an illusion because it is only possible to dwell in it due to our sensory capacities. A person who is born without the capacity to hear, talk and see wouldn’t be able to experiencing the world as most of us do but s/he would be only experiencing the idea of his/her beingness which comes naturally to us. This is a priori.

According to particle theorists as mentioned by Carlo Rovelli, everything is made of particles. Everything that we see which looks real is made up of particles which are glued together to take a form, be it, our body, animals, plants, air, etc. He also states that “There is no such thing as a real void, one that is completely empty”[xix]. Therefore I would like to argue that upon the death of a Dasein, it only changes its form (body) but remains very much here in the universe. There is no nothingness. It is beyond our imagination to think about nothingness. Try thinking of nothing!

Secondly, Heidegger’s view on Horizon is, as rightly estimated by Prof. Gumbrecht, rather narrow. Heidegger being a bourgeois had an elitist mentality. He couldn’t stretch his own horizon as I have mentioned earlier and hence he probably concluded that horizon cannot be expanded. We need to consider a beforehand example: Any painting is like a horizon. Horizon is a point which is considered as a point where sky and earth meet. If A and B observe the same painting together they may have different views or horizons about this painting. But in the case of individual, let’s say B, the same painting would mean something different if s/he re-views it. This means that the same person can have different horizons and each horizon is unlimited. Horizon can be stretched and expanded. According to Heidegger, Horizon is limited by time and Being is temporal (temporary). It would be erroneous to comment on the idea of temporality of the Being as I have raised the argument before that we do not cease to exist. Existence remains but consciousness is something which we are not sure of as they may or may not exist in our newer taken forms since our Dasein was changed after death into different particles. Therefore, it will also not be rational to say that Being is temporary.

Thirdly and importantly I would like to argue that the idea of the Being has been intentionally ignored/skipped by most thinkers as it is almost impossible to arrive at a particular understanding of the word Being. It shares the same fate as gender studies and many other ‘out of its reach’ subjects. When science or any other subject is unable to understand the nature of something, it discards it with the label of “not relevant”. We are today witnessing so many conflicts and problems in our contemporary world like poverty, discrimination, ethnic violence, terrorism, war, etc. I feel that this is due to our negligence towards understanding the philosophy or the idea of Being. We have ignored its true philosophy, left it un-inquired. Therefore without knowing the meaning of Being we have moved ahead to understand the concepts like, justice, equality, politics, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology etc. which are all related to the materialistic reality which is fake or an illusion. This has brought us in midst of a confusion. It is the reason for our frustration. These all concepts are suffix to the idea of Being. I think that if we would have looked at the idea of Being and tried to further inquire into knowing the concept, we would have been far much better than what are we now. To put it in simple words – (We have registered for post doctoral research in English Literature without knowing the basic 26 alphabets in English). We need to reflect on the idea of Being, who we are? to have the basic knowledge beforehand, is required. All these conflicts and problems are due to the fake or materialistic reality which we have created around us. If we were more concerned about who we are and why are we here and what would be the worldly end to this (if at all) we wouldn’t have made ourselves busy in inquiring into things which do not even matter to us. Therefore it is the need of the hour to reconsider and rethink the idea of Being – to explore the purpose/s of this philosophy.

Notes

[i] Martin Heidegger (1962, p. I)

[ii] Ibid., p. 14.

[iii] Costica Bradatan (2015, P. 52)

[iv] Ibid., P.53

[v] Ibid., P.54

[vi] Question asked by me on the concept of horizon as thought by Heidegger at Balvant Parekh Distinguished Lecture 2016, by Prof. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Albert Guerard Professor in Literature, Stanford University, USA, on the topic: “Prose Of The World”: Denis Diderot and A Different Epistemological Configuration Coming From The Eighteenth Century, on 15th June 2016 at the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Vadodara, India. Lecture video Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnjdjaC-gMs

[vii] Martin Heidegger (1962, p. I)

[viii] Tim Mauldin (2012, P. Xii)

[ix] Carlo Rovelli (2014, p.58)

[x] Carlo Rovelli (2014, p.58)

[xi] Costica Bradatan (2015, P. 53)

[xii] See Martin Heidegger (1962, p.22)

[xiii] Carlo Rovelli (2014, p.59)

[xiv] Martin Heidegger talks about the formal structure of the question of Being. He looks forward to frame a question which could aptly allow one to inquire into the question of Being without any doubt about the inadequacy of the framed question. See, Ibid., p. 24.

[xv] Gianni Vattimo (2016, p.7)

[xvi] Carlo Rovelli (2014, p.59)

[xvii] Martin Heidegger talks about the priorities of the question of being. He specifies the importance of the question of Being and gives a reason stating that why is it important to ask this question which other disciplines ignore or find irrelevant. See, Ibid., p. 28.

[xviii] Ibid., p. 34.

[xix] Carlo Rovelli (2014, p.31)

References

Balvant Parekh Distinguished Lecture 2016, by Prof. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Albert Guerard Professor in Literature, Stanford University, USA, on the topic: “Prose Of The World”: Denis Diderot and A Different Epistemological Configuration Coming From The Eighteenth Century, on 15th June 2016 at the Balvant Parekh Centre for General Semantics and Other Human Sciences, Vadodara, India. Lecture video Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnjdjaC-gMs

Bradatan, Costica (2015). Dying for Ideas: The Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers (Bloomsbury, USA).

Heidegger, Martin (1962). Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. 7th ed. (Harper & Row, New York).

Heidegger, Martin (1972). On Time and Being. Trans. Joan Stambaugh. 2002 ed. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London).

Mauldin, Tim (2012). Philosophy of Physics: Space and Time (Princeton University Press, New Jersey). 

Rovelli, Carlo (2014). Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. Trans. Simon Carnell and Erica Segre.(Penguin Books, Great Britain).

Vattimo, Gianni (2016). Of Reality: The Purposes of Philosophy. Trans. Robert T. Valgenti. (Columbia University Press, New York).

Wheeler, Michael. "Martin Heidegger." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford - Centre for the Study of Language and Information, 12 Oct. 2011. Web. Retrieved from the website: <https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/> on 16 May 2016.

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