Outline of Analysis of Dasein 2 страница

_x- -«Јh out of its direct applications as shown in these reports.

"Science" and Analysis of Dasein

Many contemporary psychoanalysts, both physicians and psychol­ogists, regard it as an imposition if it is suggested that they concern themselves with "philosophy." Their training has taught them to emphasize action; they see no point in wasting time on idle chal­lenges such as being asked to consider the origin and goal of their endeavor. They point to the miracles of modern medicine, to the considerable results of various psychotherapeutic methods. They declare they have no need for philosophizing. Philosophy would merely introduce confusion into successful therapeutic procedures based on exact, empirical "facts."

In all truth, the attempt to re-examine symptoms of illness and methods of treatment in the light of a new understanding of man does not contain an ounce more philosophy than the customary procedure of approaching them from the point of view of natural science. We are so accustomed to the latter approach that we forget that natural science—and every other empirical approach—is based on certain presuppositions. For example, the "pure facts" of natural science are by no means pure facts, in the sense that something is this or that as and in itself, independent of a primary, encompassing idea about the nature of all things in the world as a whole. Each "pure fact" of any science at any given age is determined in advance by the prescientific notions of that particular age concerning the fundamental character of the world in general. For instance, the ancient Greeks thought of all that is as "phenomena." The very word "phenomena," however, is derived from phainesthai, i.e., to shine forth, to appear, unveil itself, come out of concealment or darkness. During the Middle Ages everything was conceived of as being fundamentally a creation caused and produced by God out of noth­ing. Today's science rests on an equally prescientific presupposition,

28

iftar of Analysis of Dasein 29

'■elief that all things are of the nature of calculable objects. If ence—including the science of healing with all its ramifications

— ■ -i on philosophical presuppositions, it follows that it is possible,

-_nciple, to acquire a new and better understanding of man on _ isis of new and more adequate suppositions.

ere are good reasons to suppose that Martin Heidegger's

--.■sis of Dasein" is more appropriate to an understanding of

m the concepts which natural science has introduced into

;ше and psychotherapy. If this could actually be demonstrated

— we hope to be able to do—analysis of Dasein may well deserve
г called more "objective" as well as more "scientific" than the

■■—^.ioral sciences, which use the methods of natural science. We

пил understand this word in its original and genuine sense.

-trfic" means simply to "bring about knowledge" (scire, to

new; facere, to make). If "scientific" is used in this unprejudiced

-er. the claim that the methods of natural science alone can

=jc precise information becomes unwarranted. We assume, then,

-л* it will be worth a psychoanalyst's while to investigate Daseins-

__.tic thinking even though he may not be accustomed to such

If Daseinsanalytic thinking actually does come closer to

jjl reality than the thinking of natural science, it will be able to

something we have hitherto not been able to find in psycho-

; theory: an understanding of what we are really doing (and

we are doing it just this way) when we treat a patient

__*inalvticalry, such understanding to be based on insights into

essence of human being. A deeper understanding of our practices

£ not but have a beneficial effect on them. In the chapters which

■s- the present one, we shall attempt to-demonstrate in detail

.- conception of man inherent in analysis of Dasein does

fulfill these expectations.

The Opposed Working Principles of Natural Science and of Daseinsanalytic Phenomenology

^r fortunate that Daseinsanalytic thinking does not require us _-cept a ready-made conceptual framework and to learn it bv n On the contrary, analysis of Dasein urges all those who deal V -i human beings to start seeing and thinking from the beginning, I ■ '.at they can remain with what they immediately perceive and

30 The Daseinsanalytic View of Ma

fdo not get lost in "scientific" abstractions, derivations, explanations and calculations estranged from the immediate reality of the givei phenomena. It is of paramount importance to realize from the star that the fundamental difference which separates the natural science, from the Daseinsanalytic or existential science of man is to be fount

I right here.

Nobody, perhaps, has yet been able to formulate the basic work­ing principle appertaining to all natural sciences more poignantly than did Sigmund Freud when he characterized the approach of his psychology as follows:

Our purpose is not merely to describe and classify phenomena, but to conceive them as brought about by the play of forces in the mind, as expressions of tendencies striving towards a goal, which work together or against one another. In this conception, the trends we merely infer are more prominent than the phe­nomena we perceive.¹

In sharp contradistinction to this natural-scientific approach to man's nature, the Daseinsanalytic science of man and his world asks us for once just to look at the phenomena of our world themselves, as they confront us, and to linger with them sufficiently long to become fully aware of what they tell us directly about their meaning and essence. In other words, Daseinsanalytic statements never want to be anything more than "mere," if extremely strict, careful, and subtle, descriptions and expositions of the essential aspects and features of the inanimate things, the plants, the animals, human beings, Godhead, of everything earthly and heavenly, just as they disclose themselves immediately in the light of the Daseinsanalyst's awareness. Consequently it would be inappropriate, in principle, to regard Daseinsanalytic statements as "derived" from factors assumed to he behind that which is described, or to expect that such state­ments can be "proved" by reduction to imagined presuppositions.

¹ S. Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Garden City, N.Y., 1943, p. 60. Trans, by Joan Riviere. Italics added. Translator's note: Freud's works will be quoted according to the London Standard Edition (SE) whenever possible. The New York (1959) edition of the Collected Papers (CP) will also be used exten­sively. Separate editions of works by Freud (such as the one mentioned above) will be indicated as such when used. All translations in the Standard Edition are by the editors James Strachey and Anna Freud and the assistant editors Alix Strachey and Alan Tyson. These translations are often based on earlier translations, e.g., those by Joan Riviere. The majority of the translations in the Collected Papers are by Joan Riviere, the rest by James and Alix Strachey. Translators of works appearing in separate editions will be mentioned in the footnotes referring to these works.

Additions by the translator to quoted excerpts from works by Freud will appear in brackets.

ЭшЬпе of Analysis of Dasein 31

~*-iis would amount to a disastrous confusion of Daseinsanalytic

::omenology with the natural-scientific working principle.

insanalytic statements differ fundamentally from natural-

-.ciitific deductions and explanations. They are at all times "noth-

" г but" references to phenomena which can be immediately per-

ed, Taut which, as such, can neither be derived from something

nor "proved" in some way.,One cannot "explain," "derive," or

. e"" \vhy man has two arms or why h air grows on his headTHe

: i^usT^s^well have four or six arms, or wings, and he could have

:.ers instead of hair. One either sees these features of human

:ence or one does not (if one's "eyesight" is not keen enough for

,_ perception). Just as no one would dismiss the description of

raa's having two arms as merely a dogmatic assertion without any

Tirxrf. simply because this fact can only be seen and can neither be

ed" by, nor derived from, assumed presuppositions, it is as

r justified to call Heidegger's insights into the fundamental

i^zjie of man's existence dogmatic, unverified assumptions.

Equallv unjustifiable are the charges that the Daseinsanalytic

roach is "unscientific" or "mystical" just because it is so different

r. the naturalistic way of thinking of the so-called exact sciences.

irt from the usual usurpation of the term "scientific" by the

rsl sciences (see p. 29), the Daseinsanalytic approach is faith-

: 3 the given phenomena in its own way and has a fundamental

oiess in its descriptions and its exposition of their immediately

•rived meanings at least equal to the so-called exactness of the

_ral sciences. If today the label "Daseinsanalysis" or "Existen-

=0)" is also claimed by so many rather obscure, confused, and

ng psychologies, analysis of Daseiru itself should not be

1 ^ieinsanalysis starts with the observation of facts so simple that

contemporary philosophers and psychologists, accustomed to

:-ated speculations, have a hard time grasping them. Analysis,

- :in categorically refrains (and all those who try to enter into

way of thinking also have to refrain) from imposing some;

.ту idea of being and reality—however customary or "self- \

z~ —on the "particular being"* we call "man." We must be

.Zator's note: Following a suggestion by Professor William Bossart of the

■ту of California, I translate Seiendes as "particular being(s)." Mannheim

'=ттл "essent," which he coined (see M. Heidegger, An Introduction to

■;.. New Haven, 1959, pp. viii ff.). More literal translations of Seiendes

"aac winch is," "actuality," and "entity." For a discussion of "particular being"

iita» W. Barrett, Irrational Man, Garden City, N.Y., 1958, p. 189, fn. 86.

32 The Daseinsanalytic View of Man

able to abstain from forcing man into any preconceived and prejudicial categories beforehand, such as "soul," "psyche," "person," or "consciousness." We must choose a manner of approach which enables us to remain as open as possible and to listen and see how man appears in his full immediacy.²

When we teach students of analysis of Dasein we best begin by asking them what actually takes place if, for instance, they look out of the window of the classroom and watch the yellow house across the street. Chances are that we will get answers like the following: "First of all, I am here—as a subject—and the house is over there— as an object." Supposedly we do not know what the house is to begin with. It starts out as some indefinite existent. This indefinite something sends out certain light rays which can produce corre­sponding nerve excitations in the retina of the human observer. From the retina these excitations are conducted to the upper regions of the brain, where they are registered as sensory perceptions. After that they reach the cortex, where they are correctly put together on the basis of memory traces caused by earlier, similar sensory stimuli which in some way exist in the organic "substrate" of the brain cells. This final assembly in the cortex makes it possible to recognize the perceived thing as "house."

We reply to such answers in exactly the same way as our "insane" patient (see pp. 9ff). Under no circumstances, we insist, could such an answer be squared with the immediately given facts, if only because the process by which nervous excitation is changed into the perception of meaningful connections is beyond compre­hension. No matter how far research into retinal and brain processes is pushed ahead, no matter how much more we understand about the physiological functions involved, the magic by which such trans­formation is accomplished remains dark. Nor can analysis of Dasein accept another common answer, the one which maintains that there is a consciousness in the human subject which is capable of climbing out of its subject and over to the object. We would have to reply to this by asking how a subject would have to be constituted in order to possess a consciousness capable of climbing over and out

² M. Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, Halle, 1927, p. 16. Sein und Zeit will subsequently be referred to as SuZ. The English translation of Sein und Zeit (Being and Time, New York, 1962) appeared while the present book was in press. All of our page references are to the German edition, but note that these page numbers are carried in the margin of the American edition.

Outline of Analysis of Dasein 33

of itself, and how a consciousness would have to be constituted in order to be capable of such "transcending."

After rejecting such unsatisfactory answers, we may urge our students again just to let us know what they concretely experienced just then when they encountered the yellow house, to tell us how this occurrence actually began. Then at last the students begin to:-. lize that they first saw the yellow house immediately as this •ctlow house. From the beginning, they saw (and understood) that there was a yellow house over there.

The next question we ask is where the students themselves were while they were seeing the yellow house—right here, in the lecture room, perhaps, or within their consciousnesses? We do not rest il we have demonstrated to them that they were deceiving usemselves as long as they talked about themselves as subjects at a specific location in space. An unprejudiced observation of our­selves and our world will always show that we are never, to begin with, at some location within a world-container whichJsJndepend-: 6Tus, or within a biological organism that is contained in a body-^.celmd limited by an epidermis. Such observation also shows that r do not reach out to an external world with some sort of psychic: -lers, or pseudo-pods, and thereby take possession of it, "cathect" zp- or comprehend it. It is inconceivable how blind particles and ^^anta of energy of a body could suddenly see and perceive things as the things they are with all their meaningful connotations. Any -jerience shows us what the students learn by this questioning: it they did not experience themselves as some kind of subject: they discovered the yellow house; on the contrary, they were uned immediately in perception of the house with their whole ce, totally congregated in and directed toward what they per-. ed. As human beings, our primary dwelling is "outside" in the ~i.ee of action constituted by relations to things, plants, animals, 'Ъет human beings, ourselves, to heaven or earth in their totality, illv man is not merely involved in his relationships toward a;ular being of his world, he does not merely have such a re-- ship among his other properties or abilities. He is at any given vent nothing but in and as this or that perceiving, instinctual, --._. _lsive, emotional, imaginative, dreaming, thinking, acting, will-щг, от wishing relationship toward the things which he encounters. jl other words, man always and from the beginning fulfills his race in and as one or the other mode of behavior in regard to

34 The Daseinsanalytic View of Man

something or somebody. Tn this sense, man is funda ment ally "out in the jKorld" and with theJJainesJas, encounters. His existence is

originallyftft ^fbem^ mythe-world, in which this "in" is^ not to be understood in the Isense of "within" a case of empty space but always in its original meaning of being "witK) a thing. Man no t merely experiences something of this kind subjectively. He 4s jthere (witJBjthe particular being he encounters, even if he perceives it as being very remote from him. For only.on the.basis of an actual being w ith something can man "experience" closeness as well a s remoteness.

Only when we start to reflect—and if, in this process, we interpret our own being in the same way as we usually understand the being of the objects around us—can we conclude that man is similar to these objects, a thing like an "ego," a "psyche," or even a "psychic apparatus." In doing so, we are creating an artificial riddle which will continue to remain insoluble. For nobody will ever be able to understand how an apparatus can possibly relate itself in a meaning-disclosing way to an independent external world. At best, we can hide this pseudo-problem by postulating the existence of abstract connecting forces.

The Basic Nature of Man's Being-in-the-Wobld

Man's primordial being-in-the-world is not an abstraction but always a concrete occurrence. His being-in-the-world occurs and fulfills itself only in and as the manifold particular modes of human behavior and of man's different ways of relating toward things and fellow beings. This kind of befng presupposes a unique openness of man's existence. It has to be an openness into which the particular beings which man encounters can disclose themselves as the beings they are, with all the context of their meaningful references. How else could man relate to things in the sensible and efficient way he actually is capable of if his relationships toward them were not primarily of the nature of illuminating, of disclosing and under­standing the meaning of what he encounters, whether this dis­closure of the things of his world occurs as seeing or hearing them, smelling or tasting them, feeling them, thinking or dreaming of them, or as handling them unreflectingly?

Contemporary child psychology has shown how crucially im­portant the emotional attitude of the mother is for the newborn

Outline of Analysis of Dasein 35

child, more so even than the quantity and quality of the milk it receives from her. If understanding of what is encountered were not of the essence of human nature, this importance would be hard to explain. The mother can be importantly "meaningful" to the infant in this interpersonal sense only if his initial relationship to her is one of opening up and discovering meaning—in this case the meaning of being sheltered or loved by her. Of course the child cannot, as yet, articulate his understanding in thoughts and abstract notions. His meaning-disclosing encounters remain, for a long period of time, of a nature which psychology and biology up to now have tended to describe with such incomprehensible and distorting terms as "empathic," "instinctual," and "reflexive." Nevertheless, they too are fundamentally an understanding and disclosing of the meaning and references of encountered particular beings.

Man's primary and immediate understanding of things as what they are naturally includes the possibility of also misunderstanding them—taking a rope for a snake at first sight, for instance. A possible misunderstanding of something is no argument against, but rather one for, the designation of man's being-in-the-world as primary and fundamental understanding and elucidating. Even in such a mis­taken perception, there still is understanding of something as some­thing, though an erroneous one.

On the other hand, it is equally true that man's capacity for such a primary and immediate understanding of a single concrete par­ticular being (e.g., of the yellow house opposite the classroom of the students of analysis of Dasein) is based on two essential pre­requisites. First, none of the students would ever have been able to perceive that particular yellow house over there as that house if -_hev, as human beings, had not moved already in an understanding of the special essence, of the way of being, or of the particular kind -£ "being-ness" (cf. fn. 4, p. 36) which is common to all possible booses in the world. Were it not so, they would not have been able •yy distinguish it from a tree or a human being, both belonging to

ferent categories of particular beings, each category representing 1 particular quality of "being-ness." Secondly, the fact that man e- -ts (to phrase it differently) as the possibility of an immediate: closing and understanding of a certain particular being as this '- Tig presupposes the still more fundamental understanding that -_.fre is something at all, against the possibility that there might be irthing at all. In other words, the very essence of man's existence в an immediate and primary awareness of "Being-ness as such"

36 The Daseinsanalytic View of Man

[primer es Seinsverstandnis]. For it is self-evident that without an awareness of "Being-ness as such,"—i.e., of the fact that there is something at all—neither an understanding of the special kind of being (the special "being-ness") of a certain category of things nor an understanding of a concrete, particular being belonging to one or the other of these categories would be possible.

This "Being-ness as such," the awareness of which is said to be the most fundamental feature of man's existence, refers to each "is" which we say so easily when stating that this or that thing is. This "is-ness" or "Being-ness as such," however, cannot, again, be a particular being. Not even the most refined chemical or physical analysis of a thing will ever find its "is-ness" or this "Being-ness as such." If Being-ness were but another thing, it could in turn be derived from something else, and derivations and regressions would continue ad infinitum. If we say, "A thing is," this "is" can never be found as a property among other properties of the thing which we have just observed to be. This "is" is not put on this thing as another thing, like a cap on a doll, for instance.³ "Being-ness as such" is, on the contrary, that which is totally different from all particular beings. Only because "Being-ness as such" is so funda­mentally different from all particular beings does Heidegger oc­casionally call "Being-ness as such" "Nothingness." But this "Noth­ingness" is the complete opposite of nihilistic emptiness, and Heidegger himself is anything but a nihilist. On the contrary, the "Nothingness" or "Being-ness" to which he refers is of such im­measurable abundance that it alone is capable of releasing into its being all that is going to be.⁴

³M. Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache, Pfullingen, 1959, p. 193.

* The author has had a great many discussions and has exchanged many letters with Heidegger concerning possible English translations for the three terms which are fundamental to Daseinsanalytic thinking: Seiendes, Seiendheit, and Seyn (the latter spelling sometimes chosen by Heidegger to stress the fact that he is not referring to an object-category, as Sein is often thought to refer to). We reproduce a passage from one of Heidegger's letters verbatim in order to show that the unusual term "Being-ness" was not chosen arbitrarily:

"The suggestion to translate (a) das Seiende or Seiendes as "being' or 'particular being,' (b) Seiendheit, in the sense of the mode of being of a specific species of things or living beings, as 'being-ness' (lower case), and (c) Seyn, as such, as 'Being-ness' (capitalized) seems best. To be sure, in the sufficient distinction be­tween (b) and (c) the whole road of my thinking is concealed, insofar as one follows its progression through the essence of metaphysics. It is probably not ac­cidental that the 'ontological difference' [i.e., the distinction between (b) and (c) — Translator] cannot be adequately stated in either English or French."

Outline of Analysis of Dasein 37

To state that human being-in-the-world is essentially, funda­mentally, nothing else but an original awareness or understanding of this "Being-ness as such" is no mere philosophical postulate. On the contrary, it is a truth easily demonstrated. Before we know what Being-ness signifies, we move in a basic comprehension of "is," even as we ask, What is being? This does not mean that we are capable at the time of expressing the meaning of "is" in a concept. But how would we be capable of saying "is," and asking what is this or that, if we did not have some (if ever so vague) comprehension of "is-ness"? Only because a primary awareness of Being-ness consti­tutes the original dimension and essence of human being-in-the-world is man constantly able to state that such and such "is." If it were otherwise, we would be even less capable of explicitly posing the philosophical question concerning the meaning of Being-ness. Above all, primary awareness of "Being-ness as such" (if ever so vague) is the fundamental condition for the possibility of being touched and affected by something, be it in a concrete manner or in the way of an emotional experience. It is also the condition for the possibility of conscious or "unconscious," "instinctual," reactions, of the capacity to "grasp" something, be it without reflection (as in the usual handling of tools) or with reflection (as when we obtain a conceptual "grasp" of science). Hence, we dispose of the often-heard objection that analysis of Dasein has relevance only for a psychology of consciousness.

Let us repeat that this primary awareness of Being-ness is—as the most fundamental feature of man's existence— not an attribute or a property which man has, but that man is this primary aware­ness of Being-ness, that he is in the world essentially and primarily as such. Man, then, is a light which luminates* whatever particular being comes into the realm of its rays. It is of his essence to disclose things and living beings in their meaning and content. This charac­terization of man's existence should not be mistaken and dismissed as an imaginative or poetic paraphrase without relevance for the investigations of psychologists and psychiatrists who want to deal only with real or so-called empirical facts. To speak here of a luminating light is by no means a far-fetched intellectual or con­ceptual abstraction either. It is, on the contrary, a very sober and

"Translator's note: My translation is intended to differentiate the quality of "shining forth" from that of "giving light to," i.e., from tZZuminate.

38 The Daseinsanalytic View of Man

direct description of the most concrete condition of man. For how would any perception, understanding, and elucidation of the mean­ing of a single thing or living being, any appearing and shining forth of this or that particular matter, be possible at all without an open realm of light, a realm that lends itself to letting shine forth whatever particular being may come into its elucidating openness? No wonder that a synonym of "understanding," "perceiving," and "becoming aware"—the word "elucidate"—has its very root in lux, or "light." No thing, no psychic apparatus or system of any kind, possesses the least ability to perceive itself, another thing, or, least of all, a human being as what it actually is. Nor has any thing ever had the ability to disclose the context of reference of any of these. Only because man—in contrast to the things he deals with— is essentially an understanding, seeing, and luminating being is he capable of going both physically and spiritually blind. To speak of a blind thing—of a blind rock, for instance—does not make sense. We need only recall here the statements of the schizophrenic patient (see pp. 11-13) in order to discover the congruency of the descriptions of her immediate experiences and the original Daseins­analytic characterization of man's existence. Did not our patient tell us, when speaking of her so-called hallucinations, that something approached her, addressed her from nowhere and from everywhere (but not from the inwardness of an individual "psyche")? This something communicated from beyond the drawing paper, from the high distance of a nocturnal airplane, from street noises, and from the creaking chair on which the psychiatrist was sitting. Something was sent to her, then, seeking admission to her awareness, and appearance therein. Where there is any appearing and shining forth of something, there must needs be some kind of light and clearance. How else could anything ever have been capable of appearing in the patient's presence if her existence as such, by its very origin and essence, had not been a clearing, of a luminating and elucidating nature? How else could the patient ever have recognized something as this or that if she had not been an essentially seeing and com­prehending being, open for that which she was to meet? If one objects that the appearing-something to which we refer was, in the case of our patient, only a psychotic hallucination without any significance for normal people, this objection can easily be rejected. Whether the something which is perceived by a human being is recognizable only for one person—as in the case of so-called hallu-

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