Act I: In the Courtyard of Hell

Into the Dark

With sweaty palms and wildly beating heart, I open the cover of Being and Time and enter the shadowy world of Heidegger, repeating my mantra “Synthetic Unity of Apperception Is Your Friend” over and over again, clutching to the last remnants of the world of light I am about to leave behind. As I turn the first page, I plunge deep into the gorge that is Being and Time, through a dimensional portal that takes me within the pages of the book, as if into a parallel universe.

A vast courtyard opens before me. The ground is covered with ash so grey that it is only matched by the gloomy skies above me. A straight, cracked stone road leads to a massive undecorated wall. At the base of the wall there is something that looks like a small wooden door, with something hanging on it that I cannot yet make sense of. As I slowly make my journey towards the looming citadel in the distance, I note that there are torn bodies of logical positivists splattered around the ground, breaking the otherwise monotonous grey view. A crow is picking the eye of one of the poor bastards. All in all, it is starting to look rather cosy. Somewhat encouraged, I pick up the pace.

As I arrive at the door, I find that it is actually much larger than I had previously assumed. The discouraging wall is towering before me, reaching the very skies. I remind myself of the beauty of synthetic a priori judgments and steel myself. On the massive, black wooden door a crucified body hangs limply. Above the crux there is a plate that reads: “Rvdolph Carnap – Rex Positivisterum”. I bow my head before this atrocity. Positivister is of course a masculine noun of second declination, not third, and thus its plural genitive should be positivistrorum. Probably didn't fit the plate, and they thought they would get away with it. I lift my shaking head back up. Above the gruesome sight of massacred Latin, there reads in letters of blood: “Niemand verarscht mit Heidegger”, that is, “Nobody messes with Heidegger”.

Oh, well, too late, buddy.

Luckily, Heidegger is one of those guys whole leave the keys under the welcoming mat (that reads: "Those who will to enter, prepare to throw away all your hope". Aww, such a nice thing to say!).

Reminding myself again of the basic Kantian principles, I put the brass key into the lock, turn it and open the door, stepping into the dark antechamber of Introduction.

Introduction: §§1-2.

§1

The entrance hall of hell is actually rather nice. Apart from the occasional Greek (which is actually quite fun to attempt to decipher) that is not at all translated (except by the helpful translator of my book – in fact, I am attempting to evade the Heideggerian speech by using the Finnish translation. Thus I must always translate the used terms into English, so I do not revert to simply repeating the gibberish I read. I think I am being quite crafty here. Which isn’t actually true, as the real reason behind this is that I haven’t got my hands on the English version…). The first clause sets out to explain why we should reawaken the question about Being.

Heidegger claims that Plato’s and Aristotle’s philosophies have been trivialised regarding Being in three ways, which he then sets out to explain in brief.

(1) Being is the most general concept. After saying this he throws lines after lines of Greek and Latin to my face, as if this is supposed to make it clearer. Nonetheless, after being briefly blinded, the idea becomes clear enough: philosophers have assumed that being is something that is so general, that it need not be defined. He pulls out the corpse of Hegel and speaks through his mouth: “Being is an undefined necessity”. But he says that even if this was so, it only goes on to prove that the concept of being is the vaguest, not the clearest. I nod in careful agreement, expecting some plot behind the seeming simplicity of his ideas. Perhaps I have been spotted and the spell is working through my mind as I type this. Must focus. Yes, the second one:

(2) The concept of “Being” is indefinable. According to Heidegger those that claim this have understood that Being is not something that is. But it doesn’t follow, or so he says, that Being is indefinable, but merely that it cannot be defined in the common way (you know, that “A bookshelf is …” kind of way). Well, I am left wondering how the hell should it be defined then. Heidegger doesn’t, at least not at the moment, offer any options. Just states that this indefinability does not free us from asking for its meaning, but indeed challenges us to do exactly that. Well, as a philosopher with too much time on my hands, I really must concur. I have always found it so that if something is the most basic thing, it is simply compulsive to ask “but, what does it mean?”. Gosh, I am beginning to like this guy already.

(3) “Being” is the most self-evident concept. After all, don’t we all understand what is meant with such statements as “the sky is blue” or “my hair is on fire”? Well, Heidegger says that this sort of understandability only shows our lack of understanding. Okay. He says that we already understand being, but at the same time the meaning of being is “cloaked in ambiguity”. This proves that the question of the meaning of “being” must be reawakened. I guess he is saying that if something is understandable to us, but we don’t really know what it is, it is necessary to find out. I am not sure if I agree (the blood of a pragmatist runs too thick in me), but his next clarification is okay: in the field of basic philosophical concepts it is dubious to claim self-evidentiality, when the object of analysis is the self-evident. Well, yeah, I guess you are right Heidegger.

He then ends this survey by saying that it seems that not only is the answer to the question about Being vague, but the question itself is without direction. Not very optimistic of you, Heidegger.

I am doing fine, I think. Not at all as scary as I had thought. Perhaps it is just a ruse to get me to advance further, or perhaps Heidegger is just a misunderstood, lonely puppy in need of a friend. Perhaps all those mutilated positivists in his courtyard were just for fun. Nothing personal. In any case, I am prepared to enter deeper into his lair. I think I can smell some pies in the oven already.

§2

Oh, well, that didn’t last long. The next clause made my lurking headache start its creeping advance upon my forehead, so I had to take a break and get some painkillers. The smell of pies turned out to be a still smoking corpse of some other hapless adventurer (looked like a humean philosopher to me, so I kicked it while I passed by).

Heidegger wants to explain what asking a question means. This is actually a rather interesting topic for me, because I have pondered these things for quite some time now (it is not enough to ask questions, it seems, but one must also ask what asking a question is about - where does it end!?). Heidegger first states that asking a question always precludes that-which-is-sought with the question, a target if you will. But he also distinguishes between the “object of question” and the, well, “questioned”. Could it be that the object of question is the answer, or that-which-would-become-the-answer? The questioned then would be that which the question is about, I guess. Basically, if I ask “what is the sum of three and five?” here the questioned would be “the sum of three and five” and the object of question would be eight. When I ask a question, I must first formulate the question so that I ask what is being questioned, or asked, and only then can there be hopes of successfully identifying the object of the question. It seems to me here that Heidegger is being very realistic, because he assumes that all questions have answers, and seems to think that the formulation (i. e. what is meant with it) of a question is enough to determine its answer.

Or then I am completely off. Never mind me. One question arises from this, though: what is the question itself, or the act of questioning, if it is not the questioned as expressed here? I think Heidegger is thinking of a sort of simple state of mind. Perhaps the act of questioning itself arises from a mere need, a desire. He doesn’t seem to explicate this, but only says that “questioning is about the one-who-questions relating (being in relation, basically)”, or some such. Ugh, I don’t know.

He speaks of transparency of the question too. A question about Being must be made transparent. I have no idea what he means by this, beyond that he seems to be thinking that being transparent is somehow about being visible, being comprehensible. Being clear. My head is beginning to twist and bend under the pressure.

Well, in any case. He now turns to the question concerning Being. The questioned is Being, in this question. What we must do is to explicate the question itself so that we could make some sense of it. According to Heidegger, that which the question searches is not as much unknown as totally unfixed. That is, we understand what we ask when we ask about Being, but we really don’t know where we should seek the answer: being is everywhere, all around us, in everything we do. Which direction should we head?

What should one make of sentences like this: “The being of being “is” not itself something that is.” Like, d’oh! Let’s see if we can make sense of this. The being of being is probably the “way being is”, so to speak, that is, the meaning of being (am I making any sense? I don’t suppose I am). That meaning of being “is” (well, it really must be “is”, because it can’t be is, as we are trying to say what “is” is – I am starting to feel nauseous) not something that is. Okay, well, let’s try this: the meaning of “being” is not alike to other meanings of things. When “earwax” means something, it then is something. But when “being” means something, it cannot be something. The meaning of being must be something unlike the meaning of other things. I guess Heidegger is simply saying that the idea that “being is something” is the reason why being has been thought to be some sort of primordial, indefinable concept, as it really cannot be anything. That is: we have been looking for the meaning of being from a wholly different place, or from a wholly erroneous angle. And indeed, he says that we must avoid “telling a myth”, by which he means that we shouldn’t reduce being to something other that is – as we do with other things. He says that when we ask about being, we are in a sense “interrogating being about its own being” – and so wholly another approach must be invented for this to make sense.

Oll Klear, but please, mr. Heidegger, do tell us how to proceed! You have made me desperate, and you have made me understand my lack of understanding, but how to rise from this quagmire?

Heidegger says that we must first make sure that we approach Being in a correct way for it to, in a sense, present itself to us truthfully in our interrogation. Okay, admittedly that was pretty Heideggerian. Gah! But I will not give in. The Being is like something, and we are trying to find out what that something is. In order for it to show itself to us as it really is, we must look at it from a correct angle. I guess it could be much like looking at a square: in order for us to really see it as it is, we must look at it straight from the front, otherwise it is distorted (although our brains are rather apt in distorting it back to a square, but anyway - the analogy is meant to carry only as far). But how to make sure the aspect is right? He understands that there are many ways in which we use being, and we must go through them all to somehow get a grip onto what is common to all these beings. Sounds laboursome.

Heidegger then goes on to express his most notorious term: Dasein (literally something like being-here or herebeing). He himself defines it as follows: “This being that we always are and whose possibilities of being include the ability to ask, we name terminologically as Dasein.” What is he trying to say? I actually feel quite content at this point, and dare to say that he means that every conscious being that is able to reflect upon himself (or to reflect at all, but I assume that something that is able to ask, is able to ask about itself too) is Dasein. What is common to all beings that share consciousness, is that things are like something to them. The warmth of the Sun for a rock is not like anything – the rock hasn’t got a perspective on the warmth. It just Is, so to speak. But it is like something to me. But this may not be enough here: I think Heidegger would also include the ability to reflect upon oneself. In this Kant is smiling happily, for it is in accordance with his Principle of Synthetic Unity of Apperception (something that I will not pursue here – this is the domain of Heidegger, and bringing Kant here would perhaps only call wrath down upon me). Is then Dasein simply a name for all those beings that are conscious? That is, a subset of all those things that are, and a subset that is identified by its members’ ability to reflect upon themselves, to ask about their own being – to be self-conscious? At this point it seems plausible, so I wipe the sweat off my forehead and journey on, faithful in that I am on the right path.

Heidegger then says that the analysis of Being must be started from the analysis of Dasein. I guess this is so, because we are conscious beings, and thus we must start the analysis of ourselves by analysing what this consciousness is that determines us. But Heidegger identifies a possible circle here: we seem to try to define Being in its being, and only then ask the question about Being. That is, we as Dasein already are, so if we start from that and ask the question about Being, we seem to already presuppose Being as something. This sounds like something that might be one of the most crushing problems for Heidegger, but he himself is adamant that this is not the case. I am intrigued: how come?

Well, he says, we can determine Being in its being even before we have an explicit concept of the meaning of Being. If this wasn’t true, then we couldn’t have ever formed any kind of ontological knowledge whatsoever! Well, Heidegger, I really must again succumb to your reasoning and find it in the right, insofar as I understand it. Using something is simply not the same as being able to explicitly define that something. This is evident in everywhere I turn: I use the keyboard now, but how to define a keyboard? Even though I might be able to do that after giving it some thought, it simply isn’t necessary for my usage of the keyboard to define the keyboard. So, Heidegger maintains, we can go on using Dasein as the basis of our inquiries, even though it already uses the concept of being, that we are to define. I agree, so let us crawl onwards.

So, Heidegger concludes the clause by saying that there can be no circular reasoning in asking for the meaning of Being, because the meaning is not something that is derived from premises through logic (which would be a necessary condition for something to even be a possibly circular reasoning), but the question purports to simply show the foundation, or unhide it. We must remember that for Heidegger truth is “unhiddenness”. I cannot explicate this further here, but what Heidegger is saying, I believe, is that the meaning of Being cannot be deduced – it can only be shown.

* * * My ponderings are suddenly interrupted by coughing sounds from behind a corner * * *

I startle and hug my Kantian notion of free will harder. Another feeble cough resonates in the hallway, and I recognize that it is no threat. Quietly and carefully I walk around the corner to find a huddled man, shivering on the cold, marble floor, with ragged, torn clothes.

“Sir?” I ask uncertain. The figure coughs again and turns his worn out face towards me. “My God!”, I gasp, “Wittgenstein? Is that really you?” – this place is far more wondrous than I had expected. I never expected to find Wittgenstein, forlorn in this cursed place.

He gives a brief nod and rises to his feet, shaking. “My good man, what is that you are doing here?” I ask in wonder and give my coat to him to warm him up.

“He… he…”, another spasm of cough interrupts him, “stole my ideas!” What an odd thing to say, that Heidegger stole Wittgenstein’s ideas? “I came here to look for them, but I got lost somewhere between Dasein and unhiddenness.”

"Now, who would have thought…", I think, and ask:“What idea did he steal, good man?”

“Many ideas, but in particular the idea that some things can only be shown. Remember that in Tractatus I wrote that the form of picturing can only be shown, not pictured?”

“Yes, I remember that. Language is a picture of reality, and the form of the picture is something that accompanies all pictures, but that itself cannot be pictured, but only shown. That is, basically, that logic cannot be proved or explained, but that it simply is, and shows itself through its usage, I believe.”

“Yes, something like that. And now, here he is, that pesky Heidegger, speaking of Being only showing its truth.”

“I see now. I hadn’t thought of that before. You say he stole other ideas from you?” I wonder what sort of ideas these two so remarkably different philosophers might still share.

“Well, not as much stole as borrowed and forgot to return. But that’s okay, I once borrowed Levinas’s vacuum cleaner and sold it onwards, so I guess I deserve the bad karma. But I would still like to find the ideas again.”

“Well, then, perhaps you would care to join me in my mission to uncover the truths of Being and Time?” I asked hopefully, encouraged by his returning strength, although somewhat surprised that he would do that to Levinas, who, after all, is such a nice guy.

“Certainly. Let us go forth!”, he exclaimed enthusiastically.

And so we did, Wittgenstein and I, hand in hand, to enter ever deeper into the conceptual maze of Being and Time. Exhausted, but hopeful. There is a sense of wisdom in the words of Heidegger, and there is faith in me that I will resolve his puzzles.