海德格尔的形式指引及《存在与时间》的方法
Man and World30:413–430,1997.413 c1997Kluwer Academic Publishers.Printed in the Netherlands.
Heidegger’s formal indication:A question of method in Being and Time
RY AN STREETER
Department of Philosophy,Emory University,Atlanta,GA30322,USA
Abstract.For Heidegger,phenomenological investigation is carried out by“formal indica-tion,”the name given to the methodical approach he assumes in Being and Time.This paper attempts to draw attention to the nature of formal indication in light of the fact that it has been largely lost upon American scholarship(mainly due to its inconsistent translation).The roots of the concept of“formal indication”are shown in two ways.First,its thematic treatment in Heidegger’s1921/22Winter Semester course,“Phenomenological Investigations into Aristo-tle,”is examined to make clear what Heidegger silently assumes in Being and Time.Second, Heidegger’s adaptation of Husserl’s use of the term,“indication,”is outlined to clarify the concept even more.The enhanced understanding of formal indication granted by these two points leads to a better grasp of Heidegger’s concept of truth,for formal indication and truth are mutually implied for Heidegger.Finally,it is suggested that the reader of Being and Time, on the basis of what formal indication demands,approach the work not as a doctrine to be learned but as a task always requiring further completion.
We must be content,then,in speaking of
such subjects and with such premisses to
indicate the truth roughly and in outline.
Aristotle,Nicomachean Ethics,1094b19–211
1.
It is by now well known that for Heidegger the main problem with the occidental philosophical tradition is that it has forgotten Being itself and even how to ask about Being.In the sense of the Greeks’usage of the word,lethe, forgetfulness is the vice that has bound us to constant misappropriations of the philosophical project.For in our inability or unwillingness to take up the question of Being,we contaminate the project of thinking from the start if we do not clarify what“to be”means.Thus,getting at the question of Being requires an uncovering and a destruction of those accrued layers of philosophic misappropriation:lethe needs to be deprived of its hegemony. And in this very deprivation,there is the privative a-letheia,the action of getting to the truth of the matter about Being by uncovering what has been forgotten.2
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Therefore,right at the outset,Heidegger isolates hiddenness as the pre-condition for his investigation into the meaning of Being,an investigation that must be phenomenological if it is to be ontological(SZ35).More than that,this phenomenological investigation that goes back to the matter(Sache) of Being itself,in obedience to Husserl’s battle cry,must also be,as Paul Ricoeur notes,hermeneutical in character.Because the matter of Being has been covered up,phenomenology does not have simple ocular access to it and thus“becomes part of the struggle against dissimulation.”3In an attempt to successfully uncover what has been covered up,Heidegger situates himself closer to the original sources of Western thought,approaching ontological clues in a“hermeneutic of the logos”after the fashion of Aristotle’s disman-tling of the Platonic dialectic(SZ25).A hermeneutical phenomenology is wary of the solidi?cation of original experiences of factic life into assertions that can be handed down(¨u berliefert)as something present-at-hand,such that access to those experiences gets blurred or even completely shrouded in obliquity.4Thus the problem of trying to raise Being to the level of a phenom-enon,given that‘covered-up-ness’is the counter-concept to‘phenomenon’(SZ36):how does one gain access to the question of the meaning of Being without also engaging in the corruption of covering it up,especially since one must put into words–and thus?irt with the possible corruption that attends the mere recitation of assertions–the very investigation that seeks to do the uncovering?
Any how-question is a question of method.Heidegger has never been lauded for an explicit and clear usage of method,and rightfully so.For,as his most illustrious pupil,Hans-Georg Gadamer–taking cues from Heidegger–has evinced,method is contraposed to any successful approach to the truth.5 Nevertheless,Heidegger is acutely aware,on the one hand,that he needs a method–at least for a way to structure the approach to his problematic–but,on the other hand,that his project requires,in the very employment of method,that our eyes not be diverted away from our fundamental topic to methodical conclusions–in short,that we do not cover up what we are trying to uncover.He developed a method to suit this dual complexity.
This method has a name:formal indication(formale Anzeige).In coming to terms with Heidegger’s use of formal indication(Section II),we shall see its relation to his notion of truth(by way of the assertion)as well as the implications that it conveys to the reader of Being and Time(Section III). 2.
In recent American scholarship the notion of formal indication has begun to receive attention,the reason being that it sheds signi?cant light on just how
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME415 Heidegger was proceeding in Being and Time and what he expected the book
to accomplish.6Interest in Heidegger’s development throughout the1920s has stemmed largely from the awareness that the hastiness of the composition
of Being and Time resulted in certain conceptual and methodological gaps.
This awareness has required familiarity with Heidegger’s lecture courses
in order to?ll in the gaps.7One such gap is Heidegger’s usage of formal
indication without ever explaining what it is.This problem is not helped
by the fact that the English translators of Sein und Zeit have obscured the
infrequent appearances of formale Anzeige and its variants by translating it
inconsistently.
In the laborious effort to“say Being”in its immediacy,Heidegger begins by
clarifying the Being of that being for whom Being is a matter of importance
at all,human being:Dasein,Being-here/there.Beginning this project on
the correct footing is of utmost importance(SZ43).And it is the formal
indication of Dasein that is to get us started properly,by approaching the
matter of human Being-in-the-world in a philosophically appropriate way.The western tradition has,according to Heidegger,been plagued by the tendency
to characterize human Being as a thing instead of a modality,and has become
too preoccupied with what a human is at the expense of focusing upon how
a human is.Heidegger thus characterizes Descartes,who is the paradigmatic
culprit of this tendency,as having become lost in the analysis of the cogito
while forgetting to consider the sum,the“I am,”namely the Being of the
human.It is the task of formal indication to point to(an-zeigen)the direction
we should follow in our taking up the question of what it means to be.
Heidegger’s broadest formulation of how Dasein is to be characterized is to
say that Dasein is that very being that goes about(geht...um)its Being in
such a way that it“comports itself understandingly towards that Being”(SZ
53)and has a“relationship towards that Being”(SZ12):its Being is an issue
for it.8By this,he is“indicating[anzeigen]the formal concept of existence,”9
and he tells us at the beginning of12that that is what he was doing back in 9.Two fundamental features emerge as important in indicating human Being in this way,namely as a being who is in the mode of going about its very own
Being,care-fully comported to that Being.First,because the emphasis is not
on what a human is in terms of substances or particles or mere mental acts,
but on the way that a human gets around in life,the“essence”of being human
is to be found in human existence(Existenz).Thus,for perhaps the?rst time
in the western tradition,existence can be said to precede essence(SZ42,53).
Second,and perhaps not a point as popularized as the“existence-maxim,”10
this Being around which and toward which Dasein comports itself is“in each
case mine”(ibid).This latter point,in-each-case-mineness(Jemeinigkeit),
becomes increasingly important as we move through the analytic of Dasein,
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because not only is it the precondition for whether or not we are authentic (another well-known discussion),but also because it employs the personal pronoun,thus taking forms like“I am,”“you are,”“we are”(SZ42–43,53). There is a uniqueness and context-dependent character to the indication of Dasein much like Husserl’s use of“essentially occasional expressions,”to which we shall return below.For now it is important to see that this latter part of the second feature(the contextually-signi?cant aspect of Jemeinigkeit) belongs essentially with the former part(Jemeinigkeit as precondition of Being-authentic/inauthentic)of the second feature and with the?rst feature (existence as preceding essence).Reading Being and Time without grasping this essential notion leads to a misappropriation of the content of the book,for without understanding the implications of this indexical nature of the formal indication,Being and Time can easily become thematized into a manual for existential action,which it was not supposed to be.Thus,the following examination of formal indication will emphasize this aspect.
In a disposition remarkably close to Aristotle’s exhortation to move from what is clearer to us to what is clearer in itself,Heidegger’s project in Being and Time is to move from our common but mistaken grasp of what Dasein is to grasping it ontologically(SZ15,43).11It could be said that Dasein is too close to us,and for this reason we cannot see it enough to grasp it in an origi-nal way.We must come back to ourselves by laying bare the basic structures by which we are in each case every day.For instance,we tend to think that self-understanding is relatively complete if we have a comprehensive con-ceptual delineation of“human,”but the radicality of Dasein that is sketched in this return to its ontological foundations lies in its ever-incompleteness, its projection onto possibilities that it is not-yet.It is this aspect of Dasein that is dif?cult to grasp.It can therefore only be comprehended in a formal way.Dasein cannot be“presented thematically”like other objects with which we cross paths in our daily experience.We must therefore be vigilant in our attempt to present it in the right way,which must be a way that accounts for this incompleteness of Dasein(SZ43).Heidegger makes this point in the context of just having laid down the two general features of formal indication stated above,and it is no doubt the formal indication of existence that must account for Dasein’s incompleteness without completing Dasein once and for all.In short,the formal indication is itself marked by this incompleteness, and it must remain incomplete.
We learn at the beginning of Division Two that“existence”formally indi-cates the Being of Dasein as understanding potentiality-for-Being(SZ231). Dasein is essentially incomplete,for it always?nds itself in a context in which it seeks possibilities for itself,and never does it have all its possibilities ful-?lled such that it can rest comfortably in them and thus cease to project.This
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME417 much can be indicated,but no more,precisely for the same reason as Dasein’s
incompleteness:any formally indicating Dasein(in this case,Heidegger)can never hope to correctly and comprehensively project all of what needs to be
projected in any investigation so as to settle an issue once and for all,the issue
here being the constitution of that which each of us in each case is.That is
why Heidegger claims at the outset in25that he is only formally indicating Dasein’s ontologically constitutive state(SZ114),and that in considering the
“I”in order to establish the“who”of Dasein,he is employing a“non-binding
formal indicator”that is general enough to account for various forms of“I-
hood,”even when the“I”has lost itself(SZ116).Later,he reiterates what
he has formally indicated so as to tempt one to“try the?t”and see if the
existentials in Being and Time do not at least point one in a direction that he
or she can take up in an existential way that completes them(SZ313).12What
existence is can only be“said”in certain ways that call for interpretation:the
explication of existence in formally indicative(formalanzeigend)terms is the
putting into words for the?rst time that Being which we are and are always trying to interpret,namely Dasein.Accordingly,we must decide on the basis of the Being that we?nd ourselves to be whether or not that interpretation fruitfully renders that Being(SZ314–315).Any attempt to secure a founda-tion outside the circle of understanding itself springs from within the circle, for each such attempt to set forth something–whether it is a“worldless ‘I’,”“life,”or a“theoretical subject”–is an interpretive response to factic experience,even if it does not show itself clearly within that experience(SZ 315–316).13
The employment of formal indication in Being and Time is sparse.But
from the foregoing discussion,what emerges is that it is a matter of starting
points,not ending points,and that those starting points point at a direction
to be taken.14The direction indicated must be done in an empty and most
general way.This direction,following from the character of the method,is
incomplete,wanting completion in a concrete context although there is not enough in this direction itself to satisfy that want.That want must be satis?ed by those who appropriate the text in an existential way.Such an appropriation will serve not only to?ll in what is wanting but will also serve to con?rm or discon?rm the path that Being and Time has sketched out.It is to this end that the text ends:by questioning his own way of having sketched out an analytic of Dasein,Heidegger concludes that one may only decide as to the fruitfulness of this way after having gone along it.In fact,he does not really conclude anything,for he states that the entire text has been nothing other than an attempt to stir up the question of Being anew,and such a stirring has served only as a point of departure and is far from the destination(SZ437).15
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However,lest we think that these re?ections on incompletion are noth-ing other than wistful intimations of an approaching deconstructionism that emphasizes the impossibility of closure,Heidegger’s?nal words in Being and Time are consistent with that method that was borne out of genuine philosophical concerns and problems that occupied him in the years prior to the publication of the work,most notably in the Winter Semester course of1921–1922,which is an introduction to phenomenological research and method.16The central concern of the lecture course is how to properly gain access to the object of philosophical inquiry.The reason it is of central con-cern is because of the variety of problems within which we ensnare ourselves when we begin to try to deal with“objects.”Moving in a disciplined phe-nomenological vein,Heidegger states that the object of philosophy,like all objects,has a speci?c mode of access.It is precisely the mode that must be of moment in any philosophical inquiry.For the naive assumption that we can merely start running with“clear and distinct objects”is the source of a host of philosophical perversions:beginning our thought there is beginning to think too late.Thus our central concern must not be with objects per se but with how they come to be had(Gehabtwerden)–how we have them–that is,how we hold them in our grasp in advance(PIA18).17What he calls“having”(Haben)is the unthematic mode in which we entertain objects of our thought and of our doings.Thus,by attempting to make it a philosophical object,we are concerning ourselves with the Being-what-how(Was-Wie-Sein)of any object that we hold,grasp,conceive(ibid).Theodore Kisiel calls“having”the“assumption of the conditions that structure the decision to philosophize: having the situation of understanding and the passion for questioning,to begin with.”18This“having”is of monumental importance,for how we hold objects in a pre-re?ective way–whether they are concrete objects that we use everyday or abstract objects employed in thinking through,say,mathematical problems–will determine in large part onto which shore our boat arrives at the end of the investigation of whatever object is in question.Philosophy must try to have the how-it-has/holds.
Such a task,namely the analysis of the“how”of the apprehension of an object rather than the“what”of the object itself,is dif?cult.In such an analysis,we do not have any concrete objects that give us content from which we can universalize and form general conclusions.Any such investigation, however helpful in the study of natural objects,will always fall short of its aims in the study of the being of philosophical thinking.It is,therefore,the task of philosophy to do what other disciplines–preoccupied,as it were, with the“thingness”of the objects of their research–cannot do,namely to take up the object of its investigation by enacting it so as to come to comprehend it more fully.Philosophy is not a thing or object(Sache),but
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME419 rather a situation,a Habenssituation(PIA19).This“having-situation”must be indicated(anzeigend,PIA19–20).What results from Heidegger’s forming of the philosophical approach in this indicative manner is twofold:?rst,the exploration into the character of its object does not look into the content of that which is in question,and yet it yields something determinate and positive (PIA20,33);second,as an analysis of the how of the“having,”it is not just enough to analyze this modality at a distance.This“having”must be taken up in a comportment without which the questioning could not take place: philosophy is an ongoing philosophizing(PIA43,52).
What does it mean to say that formal indication does not recognize content and yet does recognize a positive yield on the object under consideration? Any“content”that comes to the fore in a philosophical investigation must not be heeded as central.What is more important is the way that gets pointed out and the point from which one begins.In the direction given,there is the potentiality for the ful?llment of that direction.For this reason Heidegger says that“having”is indeterminately bound with respect to content but is determinately bound with respect to ful?llment(PIA19–20).19Philosophy must take the path it sketches out for itself in its effort to make itself the object of itself.No content can be securely delivered up for speculation,and thus no object can be held in its grasp in an authentic or complete way,but the object of philosophy can be“genuinely indicated.”Any de?nitive content that gets presented in this indication must itself be understood“as indicated”(PIA32). The direction given by the direction of approach(Ansatzrichtung)is a de?nite one,and by being situated in it,I“savor to the full and ful?ll”(auskosten und erf¨u llen)the inauthentic indication by coming to the authentic ful?llment that only the way indicated can give.20In such a savoring and ful?llment,that which is indicated is set off from its background(PIA33).In this giving of a de?nite direction,there is more than just a lack of content;there is also a positive yield in this formality and attendant emptiness because every formal indication leads to the concrete.“The more radical the understanding of that which is empty as formal,the richer it becomes,because it is such that it leads into the concrete”(PIA33).As de?nite,completion will follow,and thus this indication is not of a static universal that maintains its dignity as a classi?catory genus,but of a way that always must be completed if it is to be a way at all.Also,the“formal”of formal indication is more than just the opposite of“material”and the equivalent to the eidetic.In its leading to the concrete,the formal“gives the‘approach-character’[Ansatzcharakter]of the enactment of the temporalization[Zeitigung]of the original ful?llment of that which is indicated”(ibid.).Formal indication is certain in its direction and sure to lead directly into the concrete experience of that to which it points, if one follows its cue.Gadamer summarizes well the positive yield of this
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method:“The‘formal indication’points us in the direction in which we are to look.We must learn to say what shows up there and learn to say it in our own words.For only our own words,not repetitions of someone else’s,awaken in us the vision of the thing that we ourselves were trying to say.”21
The second resulting aspect of Heidegger’s formulation of formal indica-tion,following in large part from the?rst formulation,is that philosophy must be a kind of comportment.Reading philosophy and then repeating“deep”thoughts learned during that reading,or getting caught up in metaphysical arguments that are suf?ciently logical but have forgotten whatever it was they set out to understand,or formulating theories based on an inadequate grasp of the Being of that about which one theorizes–each of these several instances fails to get at the object of philosophy in the original way that Heidegger sees as vital.He stresses that the“logic of the comprehension of the object”must be created out of the mode in which the object originally becomes accessible (PIA20).Philosophical ponti?cating never fails to miss out on what is phe-nomenologically most important:getting at the thing itself,which can only be accomplished by?nding the most original way to the object.“Philosophy is(formally indicated)a comportment”(PIA53).Comportment is not just random behaving or acting,but rather is always a comporting of oneself to ...(sich verhalten zu...),in keeping with Husserl’s fundamental thesis of intentionality,namely that all consciousness is consciousness of something (PIA52).22Heidegger is here radicalizing this a step further by isolating four senses of this comportment to...(PIA53).In being comported to...,one is situated in a sense of relation(Bezugssinn),which gives the unique way that one comports oneself to something.There is also a sense in which the content becomes important(Gehaltssinn),in that something is“held”by the one who comports;but one is also“held by”that something because one must interpret an object out of its“full sense,”which is the phenomenon.23A third sense is that of enactment or actualization(Vollzugsinn),that sense of ful?llment, in which,as remarked above,one“savors to the full”the object as it stands out in the shapeliness of its contours from its background.A?nal sense,not found in previous course texts,is a temporalizing sense(Zeitigungssinn)that embraces the“how”of the entire movement to ful?llment or enactment.24It captures the way in which the ful?llment process temporalizes itself(wie er sich‘zeitigt’)25out of factical life and existence,the situation,and the precon-ceptions one holds(PIA53).A temporal process structures any comportment to...,embracing the other three senses,and in its general,middle-voiced sense it lingers between the“time of the soul”and the“time of the world,”to borrow Ricoeur’s terms.26
These two resultant aspects of Heidegger’s development of formal indi-cation,namely that it yields something positive–i.e.,a?rm direction–in
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME421 its empty indicating and that it is a de?nite comporting to something,leave the philosopher in the position of needing to do more than mere theorizing: philosophical indicating(which is the only way to get at the philosophical object,namely,Being)is radically incomplete,and if it is to be completed, it must be done by the one for whom the indicating is done.Philosophy has as its object,through the analysis of“having”and“comporting to...”, an understanding comportment to beings as they are in their Being.Thus, in order to“have”this object in its original accessibility,philosophy must become a fundamental way of life–a way that retrieves the fundamental experiences of comportment to objects of all sorts so as to guard against falling into the irresponsible repetition of statements not undergirded by the experiences that gave rise to them(PIA58,80).Formal indication leads to what Daniel Dahlstrom calls“a reversing-transforming function,”which is the transformation of the individual who philosophizes through the original calling of oneself into question in the rigorous push to uncover what it is that one is.27Thus,formal indication is a process of gaining clarity,but not in a way satisfactory to those who wish to gain a total grasp on the content in question.Its logic is not like that of strict deduction or induction,but rather perhaps?nds an analogy in the logic of Aristotle’s second kind of persua-sion,that of putting the audience in the right frame of mind,but less forcibly so.28Heidegger has aroused through indication a speci?c realm closest to our immediate Being-here/there,but that realm remains an empty construct until the reader comes to know it in a re-freshing way.
Philosophizing in terms of formal indication is intimately related to Hei-degger’s conception of truth,to which I will draw attention below.But in order to come to the question of truth appropriately equipped,we shall brie?y examine the role of the assertion,which by the very demand of writing has to be what Heidegger employs(like any writer)to formally indicate,and yet which runs the risk of blinding readers to the truth.Before examining these matters,however,it is helpful to brie?y consider the extent of the Husserlian in?uence on Heidegger with respect to what Husserl called“essentially occa-sional expressions,”because Husserl’s formulation of the character of these expressions holds signi?cance for Heidegger’s development of his stance with regard to assertions,formal indications,and even truth.
3.
Heidegger held seminars in the early twenties on Husserl’s First Investigation,“Expression and Meaning,”from which he gleaned the term“indication”(Anzeige).29In the third chapter of this First Investigation,Husserl concerns himself with essentially occasional expressions,which are different from
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objective expressions,the latter referring to those expressions upon which
theories can be built and which do not depend on any particular circumstance for their meaning.Occasional(okkasionell)expressions,however,constitute
a conceptually uni?ed group of expressions that require an orientation of
their meanings to the speaker’s situation and the occasion(Gelegenheit)in
which they are uttered.30These expressions take several forms:they occur
as pronouns(“I am”,“you are”),demonstratives(“this”,“that”),and what
analytical philosophy generally terms“indexicals”(“here”,“now”,“above”,
“tomorrow”,etc.)(LU87–90,26,First Investigation).One can grant an
objective and universal meaning to such expressions,but whenever they are
used,they cannot fully be understood unless we look to the occasion of their
utterance.Thus,when a speaker says“I...”,the hearer gathers what that
speaker means only by looking to that speaker and the situation in which the
speaker says,“I...”To be sure,the use of“I”has a universal function,namely
“pointing out[Anzeichen]whatever speaker is designating himself,”but in
its use it can only serve as an indication(Anzeige)(LU87,88,26,First Investigation).Whenever I use this indication,my hearers do not understand
a universal semantic de?nition of“I”but understand me to be taking myself
as my immediate object.Thus the word“I”has no power in itself,as does
the word,say,“lion”,whose objective meaning is?xed in its utterance.“I”
is only?xed with respect to the context of its utterance(LU88,26,First
Investigation).
In the use of occasional expressions,then,there are actually two meanings
to each expression:there is the indicating(anzeigend)meaning and the indi-
cated(angezeigt)meaning,the former employed to draw one to the latter,in
which the intuitive ful?llment of what is indicated occurs.In saying“I”,the
speaker draws the hearer to his or her unique situation(LU88-89,26,First Investigation).31Occasional expressions are essentially ambiguous in that they incompletely express the speaker’s meaning and can imply an index-ical character without using the indexical expression:one may say,“There is cake”(Es gibt Kuchen),or“It is raining”(Es regnet),and yet be saying nothing about the nature of cake or rain in general;rather one means that cake is being served right here and now,or that it is currently raining here and now (LU92,27,First Investigation).
In the Sixth Investigation,Husserl revisits the notion of indication as exer-
cised in occasional expressions,clarifying the reasons as to why these expres-
sions are ambiguous.The ambiguity stems from the fact that the sequence of
indication is not the same for the speaker and the hearer.In saying“this”or
“I”,the speaker knows in advance what is being indicated.But for the hearer,
the situation is different,for in the absence of whatever is being pointed to,he
or she has access only to a general thought.A“full and authentic meaning”
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME423 comes to be only when a presentation is added(LU556–557,5,Sixth Inves-tigation).This makes sense at the level of presenting a tangible object(e.g., this paper),but what about at the conceptual level?The same applies,but there must be an actual re-establishment or recovery(Wiederherstellung)of a past thought that ful?lls the indication,which is also the empty intention in the form of an occasional expression.Thus the goal of all occasional-expressive discourse is not the general indicating meaning,but the intuitive ful?llment in the indicated meaning(LU557,558,5,Sixth Investigation).
Two basic factors in Husserl’s use of“indication”are notably present in Heidegger’s use of the same.First,the indicating meaning(formal indication) is“pointless”if it does not direct one to a ful?llment of what it says.In this way the indicating meaning,strong in its direction but unable in itself to ful?ll itself,depends on the ful?llment to truly have meaning.Second,the hearer (reader)occupies the role of the“re-enacter”,the one upon whom ful?llment depends if there is to be ful?llment at all.
In Being and Time,Heidegger betrays a de?nite Husserlian streak when he says,“The word‘I’is to be understood only in the sense of a non-committal formal indicator”(SZ116).The best way to understand this assertion is to cast it in Heidegger’s familiar terms:an assertion is a derivative mode of understanding(SZ33).Understanding is–equiprimordially with disposi-tion(Be?ndlichkeit)and talk(Rede)32–a fundamental mode of Being-in-the-world,and it is characterized by its future-directedness,which it makes manifest as Dasein constantly projects possibilities for itself(SZ145,160). This is a pretheoretical aspect of Dasein’s Being and is something that each of us in each case is doing.This projecting involves two important aspects that involve our present purpose.First,Dasein’s basic preoccupations are in the mode of possibility,not actuality,for it is constantly stretched out into what it can-be(Seink¨o nnen)but is not yet.In this way,understanding involves disclosedness,which is the“laying-open”of what is possible for Dasein.To disclose is to bring forth possibilities as a whole into the open from what is otherwise not seen as possible(SZ144–145;cf.75).A second aspect is that understanding involves meaning,and meaning is said to be“had”by Dasein when,according to its presuppositional framework,Dasein projects toward and upon something and makes it“understandable”(verst¨a ndlich)as something(SZ151).We are not here concerned with the“correctness”of the projection but rather how meaning happens in each case.Understanding is the unthematic ordering of a framework within which certain things get comprehended,and then they are taken as something:with all understanding, interpretation follows(SZ32).
The assertion,then,articulates this interpretation.In articulating it,the assertion points out something,makes something de?nite,and communicates
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something,each of these three features deriving from our pretheoretical pre-suppositional framework that consists of having,seeing,and conceiving in a certain way in advance(SZ154–155;157).Thus the assertion is existentially grounded in Being-in-the-world.However,because of its derivative charac-ter it becomes subjected to abuse,and this is because with the assertion,it becomes all too easy to bring our projection onto possibilities to a halt,so to speak.Although Dasein is always projecting,in its use of the assertion it can cover over the two basic aspects of projecting highlighted above:in “capturing”a subject matter by pointing it out,making it de?nite,and commu-nicating it,that subject matter can be taken to mean something present-at-hand and can be passed along like a tangible object.Thus the original“as”of an interpretation of a pretheoretic understanding gets lost because what was an interpretation gets hypostatized into a mere“what.”With this move from the sense of meaning as directional and contextual to meaning something present, the projection into a totality of possibilities also gets obscured or lost,and the assertion then loses the disclosiveness of the original understanding and inter-pretation(SZ158).33Talking(Rede)is a fundamental mode of disclosiveness, but if the assertion merely gets passed along without regard for what has been originally disclosed in it,then one cannot be said to“truly”understand the assertion(SZ161,224).For this reason,the assertion is,as John Caputo has remarked,“dangerous.34
So how does one“truly”understand the assertion of Heidegger’s that the use of“I”is a non-committal formal indicator?The obvious answer,which Heidegger himself gives,is:by grasping it in the fullness of the totality of possible signi?cations that it discloses(SZ116).The assertions that Heidegger must employ in formally indicating his topic follow the same rules as all assertions.It seems that the attempt to disclose the totality of implications out of which his assertions indicating human existence emerge is subject to constant misappropriation,and thus getting to the truth of the matter regarding Dasein is doomed to fail.
However,Heidegger does not say that every employment of an assertion automatically damns to hopelessness the possibility of coming to the truth through language.In fact,the role of the assertion is given a central role in coming to truth.But,whereas the western tradition has made the assertion the locus of truth(SZ154),for Heidegger truth becomes the locus of the assertion,which means that one traverses via the assertion into the realm of the original disclosedness where a phenomenon comes to light in its truth.Das Aussagen ist ein Sein zum seienden Ding selbst(SZ218).Truth,in the sense of the Greek aletheia,is?rst and foremost the uncoveredness of something brought out of the dark–its disclosure of it as it is.The assertion plays a central role in this moment of uncovering.Dasein expresses itself about
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME425 entities in the form of an assertion,and the entities uncovered by Dasein in its understanding interpretation get pointed out(SZ218,220).The function the assertion serves is to show the“how,”or mode of Being,of the entities that it points out(SZ224).If we,along with the tradition,become preoccupied with the“Being-uncovered”aspect of the assertion,then we only see the subject matter as it shows itself in the assertion and perhaps in the context(text at hand,conversation at hand)in which it is used.But if,against the tradition, we focus on the“Being-uncovering”aspect of the assertion,we become acquainted with the more primordial realm in which the subject matter was ?rst experienced and brought forth in the disclosedness of a multiplicity of possibilities(SZ220).Without the retrievability of the rich experience that “Being-uncovering”indicates,the“Being-uncovered”will not be grasped as it truly is.
Truth is what must be“wrested”from entities(SZ222).We are not interest-ed in showing entities merely from some restricted viewpoint.We want to see them as they are.In other words the aletheuein must be distinguished from the apophainesthai.Just because an assertion points out something does not guarantee its truth,for even false assertions point this way.An entity’s show-ing itself as it is in itself is an entity’s showing the“how”of its uncoveredness (SZ219).This requires,as Ernst Tugendhat argues,more than the assertion’s merely pointing out the givenness of some entity,more than just bringing something at hand out of concealment to unconcealment.There is also the direction the assertion provides that takes us from the subject matter to its self-manifestation.35That is,assertions concern more than objects we?nd in their immediate givenness,in that they concern the subject matter of whatever the assertion is drawing our attention to.The assertion directs us from the subject matter to the self-manifestation of that subject matter in the space opened up by the assertion.Tugendhat calls this the“functional-apophantic”character of the assertion.It is unique because it not only gives us insight into a conclusive assertion but also to the one that bears a truth-relation and leads along the way to truth.36
What,then,is the relation between the formal indication and truth?Formally indicative assertions are“functional-apophantic”assertions in Tugendhat’s sense,because they point the way to truth without making conclusive their claims about truth.In the movement from the subject matter to its self-manifestation,formally indicative assertions can only start the movement that must be ful?lled by the one for whom the assertions are made.The distinction that Heidegger makes between“Being-uncovering”and“Being-uncovered”plays a central role here(SZ220).The“Being-uncovered”performed by the assertion corresponds to the indicating meaning in Husserl’s sense:in an assertion our attention is drawn to whatever is expressed.But only when,by
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looking to that(context,totality of implications)from which the assertion arose and seeing the subject matter in its“how,”can we get a grasp of it as it is and thus experience it as the indicated meaning.In Heidegger’s terms, we grasp the subject matter in its“Being-uncovering,”the original mode in which something is disclosed as something,which in this case is as it is.In the Wiederherstellung–to use another of Husserl’s terms–of that mode of “Being-uncovering,”there is the primordial experience of truth.
All that has been said until now has given rather solid clues to the manner in which one is to read Being and Time,but we are now in a position to give those clues some solidity.The implications for reading Being and Time are such that they make the work much more modest in its task than some have taken it to be.Because Heidegger’s method is formal indication and not metaphysical theorization understood as the attempt to give a comprehensive account of the basic“attributes”of a human being,it is an“empty”book. This,of course,sounds odd given the immensity and technicalities of the work itself,but given the method Heidegger is employing,the work cannot be much more than,analogously speaking,an empty intention“awaiting”intuitive ful?llment.
In encouraging the appropriation of the matter of the text through formal indication,Heidegger is operating on the basis of a kind of wager.This wager, as I see it,depends upon two presuppositions.The?rst one is that we must presuppose truth,understood as the disclosedness of Dasein,in anything we do.Truth,in turn,makes possible any presupposing at all,and it cannot be “proved.”Insofar as we are beings that uncover matters,we are in such a way that not believing that there is truth makes living impossible(SZ227–229). The second presupposition is that of temporality and its basis for repetition. It is repetition that brings one to remember what one has forgotten:the fundamental character of one’s own existence in which one operates every day with an ontic familiarity while remaining ontologically distant(SZ339, 385–386).On the basis of these two presuppositions,Heidegger wagers that his readers will accept the urge given by his analysis to take up the formally indicating concepts and appropriate them in their basic experience.As human beings,they will presuppose with Heidegger that there is something basic to be uncovered,and they will through his analysis come to see what they have-been in such a way that the re-appropriation of past possibilities and accomplishments will yield con?rmation of the structures he has outlined. Husserl’s Wiederherstellung of a“past thought”becomes temporalized such that in each re-appropriation of something that I have been,something new happens that discloses a matter in its Being in a way more unique than the bare retrieval of something past(cf.SZ386).
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME427 It might be objected here that it does not make any sense to say that on the basis of certain structures in Heidegger’s analysis(e.g.,truth and temporality/repetition)one will come to see the analysis as yielding something positive,for it is precisely those structures that are in question.But,Heidegger might respond,that is just what a wager is.The wager bets that some one will assume the same presuppositions in order to“try out”the subsequent claims. For someone to reject,say,Heidegger’s analysis of truth and temporality,one must be able to give another account that does not presuppose what he has said;and Heidegger is wagering that that will be dif?cult,if not impossible. Even though Heidegger may be wagering that one will?nd his analysis compelling,he can only remain modest with respect to what his project in Being and Time can accomplish.Formal indication can only point and exhort others to carry out the direction in which it points.37This is what Heidegger meant when he said that all statements about Dasein have a formally indicative character and that they“at?rst mean something present-at-hand...but they indicate the possible understanding of the structures of Dasein and the possible conceptualizing of them that is accessible in such an understanding.”38Thus the present-at-hand meanings(content)of what has been said in Being and Time must be read and considered with respect to the possibilities they open up,and such possibilities can really only be opened up if they are left enough formal space.39Hence the method of formal indication.It serves to enkindle an interest in the question of Being and yet lends clarity to the lack of philosophical hubris in the line near the end of the text:“One must seek a way of casting light on the fundamental question of ontology,and this is the way one must go.Whether this is the only way or even the right one at all, can be decided only after one has gone along it”(SZ437).
Notes
1.Ross’translation in The Basic Works of Aristotle.ed.Richard McKeon.New York:Random
House,1941.“Such subjects”is referring to those of political nature,those having to do with action in interpersonal contexts.
2.The forgotten status of the question is introduced by the written“frontispiece”on page
one of Sein und Zeit(Halle:Niemeyer,1927.7th ed.,1953[hereafter SZ]),and it is taken up immediately at the beginning in1,pp.2–4References to the English edition are to Being and Time,trans.John Macquarrie,Edward Robinson.San Francisco:Harper and Row,1962.
3.Paul Ricoeur.Time and Narrative.vol.3.,trans.Blamey,Kathleen and David Pellauer.
Chicago:University of Chicago Press,1988.p.62.
4.I am referring here largely to Heidegger’s treatment of the assertion in33,which I will
examine more closely below.
5.As best evidenced by the disjunctive role of the“and”in the title of Gadamer’s Truth and
Method,his magnum opus.
6.For extensive treatment,see Theodore Kisiel.The Genesis of Heidegger’s Being and Time.
Berkeley:University of California Press,1993(GH).Formal indication appears frequently
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as a topic in several essays in Theodore Kisiel and John van Buren,eds.Reading Heidegger from he Start:Essays in his Earliest Thought.Albany:SUNY Press,1994(RHS).John van Buren makes frequent reference to formal indication in his The Young Heidegger:Rumor of the Hidden King.Bloomington:Indiana University Press,1994(YH).See also Daniel Dahlstrom.Das Logische Vorurteil.Vienna:Passagen Verlag,1994(LV).For two helpful article-length treatments,see Theodore Kisiel’s“The Genetic Difference in Reading Being and Time”.American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly.v.64,no.2,1995.pp.171–187 (GD),and Daniel Dahlstrom’s“Heidegger’s Method:Philosophical Concepts as Formal Indications”.Review of Metaphysics.47.June,1994.pp.775–797(HM).German scholars seem to have been familiar with the signi?cance of formal indication from the beginning.
For instance,see Otto P¨o ggeler’s Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers.3rd ed.,Pf¨u llingen: Neske Verlag,1990,esp.chap.10(DMH),and his“Heideggers Logische Untersuchungen”
in Martin Heidegger:Innen-und Au?enansichten.Frankfurt am Main:Suhrkamp,1989 (HLU);and see,Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Heideggers Ways.trans.John Stanley.Albany: SUNY Press,1994(HW).
7.Heidegger composed Sein und Zeit in one month,March1926,under–as Kisiel puts it–
“publish or perish”conditions(GD184,185).
8.Even though Macquarrie and Robinson rightly translate umgehen as“is an issue for”,it is
important not to lose the sense that comes with the German verb,viz.a sense of modality and activity,not just a sense of thoughtful re?ection.Note the related usage of Umgang at SZ66–67.
9.Macquarrie and Robinson have“calling attention to”for anzeigen.
10.Famous largely because of Sartre’s popularization of the thesis See L’?Etre et le n′e ant.
Paris:Gallimard,1943.p.61and L’existentialisme est un humanisme.Paris,1946.p.17.
11.See Aristotle’s Physics,184a17–18.
12.The beginning of the paragraph in question would be better rendered in the English edition
as“The formal indication of the idea of existence was guided....”“Die formale Anzeige der Existenzidee war geleitet...”
13.Implicit in these claims seems to be a critique of Descartes,Dilthey(and perhaps Nietzsche
and even Bergson),and Kant,respectively.
14.John van Buren makes this point:“Formal indication...indicates or points to what is still
absent in die Sache selbst,what is still to be thought and is on the way to language”(YH
42).
15.Van Buren has shown how this theme of the need for others to take up the question of Being
in their own way continues into the later Heidegger and was of constant concern for him, as evidenced by his exhortation to his seminar students:“There will be no heideggerizing here!We want to get at the topic”(YH45).
16.Ph¨a nomenologische Interpretationen zu Aristoteles:Einf¨u hrung in die Ph¨a nomenologische
Forschung.volume61(PIA)in the Gesamtausgabe.Despite the title,the lecture course has little to do with Aristotle but is perhaps one of Heidegger’s best treatments of the nature of phenomenology and its way of approaching philosophical problematics.Any translations from this text are my own.It should be noted that volume60of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe,that of the Winter Semester1920–1921,has recently appeared,in which Heidegger also treats the notion of formal indication at length.I will not,however,treat that text in this essay.
17.Heidegger is speaking generally here of what becomes well-known in Being and Time
as fore-having(Vorhabe),fore-seeing(Vorsicht),and fore-grasping/-conceiving(Vorgriff).
The present lecture course helps to understand these latter terms more fully,because Heidegger treats here much more comprehensively and thematically what he gives minimal attention to in Being and Time.See SZ150–151.
18.Kisiel,GH233–234.
19.“With respect to ful?llment”refers here to vollzugshaft:the idea is that the direction always
leads to an enactment of the way indicated,an idea to which I will turn below.
A QUESTION OF METHOD IN BEING AND TIME429
20.Heidegger has eigentlich and uneigentlich for what I have termed“authentic”and“inau-
thentic.”It might be better to translate these terms as“actual”and“non-actual,”for the point at hand here has more to do with the non-actuality of what is indicated and the actuality of its ful?llment,following the Husserlian schema of intentionality.
21.Hans-Georg Gadamer.“Martin Heidegger’s One Way”,trans.P.Christopher Smith,in
RHS,33.Otto P¨o ggeler makes a similar point when he says that formal indication points one to the happening of truth but not to its concrete ful?llment;it has a provocative character with the tendency to awaken(DMH272).
22.See the Logische Untersuchungen,V.2.13;and the Ideen,II.2.36.
23.Kisiel notes that this“containment sense”is formally broad enough to include all realms
of activity and passivity,from those realms in which we“have”meaningful objects to those realms in which the objects seem to“have us”in their grasp,as in addictions and preoccupations(GH234).
24.Kisiel,ibid,states that Heidegger had already developed the three basic senses of inten-
tionality in the War Emergency Semester of1919,and that the temporalizing sense is added here in the Winter Semester of1921–22.
25.Contained in sich zeitigen is the sense of becoming ripe,of coming to fruition,as wine
grapes come of season.
26.Ricocur,p.14,does use more technical terms for these phenomena,namely“psychologi-
cal”and“cosmological”time.
27.See PIA153,168–169.Dahlstrom,HM782–790,treats well this function as well as the
“referring-prohibiting”function of formal indication,both of which serve to reinforce the incompleteness of formal indication and its offer to the philosopher to take up the question of Being in fresh and new ways.For related remarks by Heidegger,see his,Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik:Welt,Endlichkeit,Einsamkeit.Winter Semester1929-30, volumes29/30in the Gesamtausgabe,pp.428–430.
28.Aristotle relies not only on the speaker’s character and the content of a speech itself in
persuasion but also on the speaker’s ability to arouse the right frame of mind in the audience by understanding how to bring about certain emotions at the right time(Rhetoric,1356a 1ff.).
29.Van Buren,YH328;406n.5.Van Buren notes that a student of Heidegger’s,G¨u nther Stern,
took up Heidegger’s reading of Husserl’s use of“indication”in a dissertation,which thus provides some documentation for this Husserl-Heidegger relation.
30.Edmund Husserl.Logische Untersuchungen vv XIX/I and XIX/2The Hague:Martinus
Nijhoff,1984(LU)p.8726,First Investigation.
31.For a treatment of meaning indications in occasional expressions,see Aaron Gurwitsch.
“Outlines of a Theory of‘Essentially Occasional Expressions’,”in Readings on Edmund Husserl’s Logical Investigations.ed J.N.Mohanty The Hague:Martinus Nijhoff,1977pp.
112–127.
32.Macquarrie and Robinson’s“state-of-mind”and“discourse,”respectively.
33.This process is what Jean Grondin calls the“propositional fallout of an existential relation-
ship to the world whereby the proposition levels everything to the language of the given (‘S is P’).”“Gadamer and Augustine:On the Origin of the Hermeneutical Claim to Uni-versality,”in Hermeneutics and Truth,ed.Brice Wachterhauser,Evanston:Northwestern University Press,1994.p.140.
34.For an insightful treatment of the notion of the assertion,see Caputo’s Radical Hermeneu-
tics,Bloomington:Indiana University Press,1984.especially pp.73–76.
35.Ernst Tugendhat.“Heidegger’s Idea of Truth,”in Hermeneutics and Truth,p.87.
36.Ibid.,pp.91–92.
37.Kisiel captures this exhortational aspect well:“[Formal]indications,like life itself,are
never?nal,are always tentative and provisional.As intrinsically shifting distributive universals,they ultimately perform a hortatory function in philosophy,exhorting each individual to assume the orienting comportment suggested by such non-generic universals that call for a proximating re-turn to the ineffable immediacy of our being,in order to
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intensify the inexhaustible sense of the immediate in which we already and always?nd ourselves.”(GD186).
38.Logik Die Frage nach der Wahrheit in Gesamtausgabe,volume21,WS1925–26.p.410.
39.As an example of the possibilities that can be opened up by such a method,one might
consider the ways to which Heidegger’s way of proceeding has given rise to,in a sense,the “three Heideggers”:the existentialist Heidegger found in the work of Sartre,the hermeneu-tical Heidegger found in the work of Gadamer,and the deconstructionist Heidegger found in the work of Derrida.