Being And Time

It is difficult to read the second chapter of Division 2 without being struck by its religious overtones. Not only does Heidegger foreground two characteristically Christian pre-occupations, conscience and guilt, but Heidegger he seems to be reformulating an idea of original sin. As he says, entities like Dasein “are guilty in the very basis of their Being” (332). We are guilty prior to having specifically done anything. Further, such guilt is “the existential condition for the possibility of the ‘morally’ good and for that of the ‘morally’ evil” (332). There are two similarities with the Christian fall here. First, we are “fallen,” in the sense of just finding ourselves already inauthentic before any choice on our part, but second, this fallenness and guilt ground and hence are unaffected by any subsequent moral activity. In short, it is not just that our sin is original, given by and with our nature. It is also that we are ostensibly deprived of any normal means by which to begin atoning for it. (For the original reading of Heidegger in this way, see Stephen Mulhall’s 2005 book Philosophical Myths of the Fall).

At this point, Heidegger departs from the Christian narrative. While the theist appeals to faith in God as the means to redemption, Heidegger uses the call of our own conscience. In this sense, any problems lurking around such comparisons seem allayed. If the voice of conscience is indeed a non-supernatural phenomenon, experienceable by any Dasein, divine intervention is not required. Put another way, we might be fallen, but we can get up by ourselves. Nevertheless, doubts linger. Particularly, we may ask whether Heidegger’s ultimate solution to the problem of inauthenticity, despite secular content, ends up using problematic theological ways of thinking, and if so, whether he is in danger of re-enforcing the dominance of the they he claims to oppose.

To address such concerns, it is necessary to examine these features of Heideggerian guilt that maintain a redemptory, or religious, logic. To start, the conception of the escape from the they seems, like Christian redemption, to be all or nothing. We are either saved by the call of conscience, or we are irrevocably, absolutely, damned as inauthentic. There is little space in between. This does not seem to tarry with our experience, however. For example, there are people in the public world of philosophy who are utterly, uncritically absorbed in its structures and how “one” should act. On the other hand, there are individuals who, while not necessarily authentic, exist in a more critical, troubled relationship to the public world of philosophy. Are we really to say they are all equally bad?

This idea does not coincide with some of Heidegger’s own remarks on the subject. For example, he says, in discussing idle talk, “The tempting tranquilization aggravates the falling” (222). If Dasein is capable of falling rather than just having fallen, and this is being aggravated, or getting worse, this implies at the very least degrees of inauthenticity. If true, this would also imply something about the means to achieve it. Namely, it would suggest that we each possess more localized ways to either encourage or fend off absorption in the they. It would suggest that this process does not have to involve some absolute awareness of guilt before the self.

Furthermore, this could still be consistent with Heidegger’s rejection of reflective ethical behavior for this role. For instance, as discussed in Division 1, Chapter 4, more limited experiences of the breakdown of the world could serve this function. What Freud had called the uncanniness of the everyday, odd moments of incongruity or dissonance, could be part of a smaller-scale struggle against the they. Likewise, certain boundary or exceptional experiences might offer this on a grander scale. These are the kinds of things Nietzsche alludes to when he says that authenticity can be achieved “only through the widest—perhaps most disturbing and shattering—experiences” (Nietzsche, Friedrich. Beyond Good and Evil, trans. by R.J. Hollingdale. London: Penguin. 1990). Existentialist philosophers have furnished several examples. Deep solitude, suffering, love, loss, and creation could all play a part in resisting the leveling tendencies of the they.

So, too, in its own way, could a proper response to guilt and conscience, especially if we view conscience as an instigating force complementing a wider set of processes promoting authenticity, rather than as the only or final means for achieving this goal. It is unclear that, alone, it is capable of effectively doing this. This is perhaps why Heidegger in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1930), a few years after Being and Time, shifts his attention to the experience of profound boredom. This would represent just such an additional, and alternative, way one can think about encouraging authenticity.