Browsing by Subject "Dasein"

In Being and Time (1927), German philosopher Martin Heidegger is tackling the question of the specific way of being proper to human beings. To conduct this project, he situates himself explicitly in the field of phenomenology and ontology, which he regards as being at the core of philosophical study. The innovation of his thesis on the particularity of the human being revolves around the concepts of Dasein, the entity of “being-there”, and of In-der-Welt-Sein, the structure of “being-in-the-world”. With these concepts, he aims to transcend the Cartesian split between mind and body, offering a more fundamental and unbiased depiction of human life. Early commentators have noted that Being and Time sets ambitious expectations for a phenomenological exploration of human corporeality. Problematically, Heidegger himself admits not to address the question of the body directly. According to scholars, this neglect of the body threatens to invalidate his entire ontological project. This raises several questions: Would it be possible to draft a theory of embodiment based on a careful reading of Being and Time? Can we understand this supposed neglect of the body of Heidegger by investigating thoroughly the existential analytic of Dasein? Might there be an implicit theory of human bodily nature hidden behind the ontological primacy of ability-to-be, attunement and disposedness? In this master’s thesis my argument is that because the notions of Stimmung (mood) and Befindlichkeit (disposedness) are so central for Being and Time’s fundamental ontology’s architecture, Heidegger is committed all along his masterwork to characterize the human being as embodied. But the terms “body” and “embodiment” are too suggestive of the mind/body dualism to serve the holistic metaphysical account that Heidegger tries to unfold. An explanation of the notions of occurentness and availableness suggests that the human body is much more than just an object or an equipment. Rather human bodily nature is directly linked to Dasein’s ability-to-be and facticity. A careful reading of Being and Time’s fundamental ontology and of the notions of ontic concretion and ontological difference, reveals that there is a central dimension of embodiment operating in the analytic of Dasein. The importance of the concepts of Stimmung (mood) and Befindlichkeit (disposedness) in Heidegger’s fundamental ontology leaves no doubt that there is a strong theory of human bodily nature at the core of Being and Time.