Heidegger's Being and Time
Chapter Three
Chapter Three:
The Worldliness of the World
§14: The Idea of the Worldliness of the World in General
We need to uncover the phenomenon of the world. We could tell of it, describe it so to show its outward appearance--but that gets us stuck in the ontic. We need to, instead, describe it phenomenologically, which means “to show and determine the being of beings objectively present in the world conceptually and categorically” (H.p.63). But, to start to do this, we say beings are things, things are natural and valuable … ugh, and then we get stuck in the thingliness of things. We want to know about how the thingliness of things is based upon the natural thingliness of things, which is based upon nature as such. But, the character of being of natural things is thingly, is substantial, substances. We need to get to the ontological dimensions of this, not the ontic. So, some may try to abstract everything substantial from the thing, but this just gives us a divorced pure idea, and is just as much not phenomenological as the mere outward appearance. Any discussion of “objective being” presupposes the “world” in some way, and we want to get to that very presupposition itself and lay it bare.
We need to uncover the worldliness of the world in general—the existential worldliness.
The Worldliness of the World
§14: The Idea of the Worldliness of the World in General
We need to uncover the phenomenon of the world. We could tell of it, describe it so to show its outward appearance--but that gets us stuck in the ontic. We need to, instead, describe it phenomenologically, which means “to show and determine the being of beings objectively present in the world conceptually and categorically” (H.p.63). But, to start to do this, we say beings are things, things are natural and valuable … ugh, and then we get stuck in the thingliness of things. We want to know about how the thingliness of things is based upon the natural thingliness of things, which is based upon nature as such. But, the character of being of natural things is thingly, is substantial, substances. We need to get to the ontological dimensions of this, not the ontic. So, some may try to abstract everything substantial from the thing, but this just gives us a divorced pure idea, and is just as much not phenomenological as the mere outward appearance. Any discussion of “objective being” presupposes the “world” in some way, and we want to get to that very presupposition itself and lay it bare.
We need to uncover the worldliness of the world in general—the existential worldliness.
"'Worldliness' is an ontological concept and designates the structure of a constitutive factor of being-in-the-world." |
To help explain, Heidegger delineates four ideas of “world”:
- { 1 } World as ontic—the totality of beings which can be objectively present in the world.
- {... If Heidegger uses the term ‘world' in this sense, he will place it within quotation marks so as to set off its ontic usage ...}
- { 2 } World as ontological—the being of those beings objectively present, or how we use the idea when we talk about the “world of mathematicians” or the “world of art” (like a region of all possible mathematical concepts and objects or of art objects, etc.).
- { 3 } World as ontic with a pre-ontological, existentiell meaning—the “in which” a factical Dasein lives.
- Remember: “factical” is the “sense of a certain ‘factual objective presence’” of Dasein, but is “ontologically fundamentally different from the factual occurrence of a kind of stone”--it is not factual like a logical, counted idea of human; instead, it is “the way in which every Dasein actually is,” it “implies that an ‘innerworldly’ being has being-in-the-world in such a way that it can understand itself as bound up in its ‘destiny’ with the being of those beings which it encounters within it own world” (H.p.56)).
- {... Hence, when Heidegger hereafter uses the term ‘world’ or ‘worldly,’ this is the meaning he intends ...}
- { 4 } World as ontological and existential—the worldliness of the world; herein it can be the structural totality of particular worlds and the a priori of worldliness in general, which always underlies any structural totality.
Thus, Heidegger’s use of the term ‘world’ or ‘worldly’ is to be taken in the third sense—“terminologically ‘worldly’ means a kind of being of Dasein, never a kind of being of something objectively present ‘in’ the world” (H.p.65)—‘worldly’ is that in which Dasein as Dasein lives; it is never a theoretical, objectively present (Vorhandenheit) ‘in’ the world like the cup in the kitchen. We will therefore proceed in our investigation through use number three in order to get to use number four: the worldliness.
The purely ontological view of world “skips over” the phenomenon of worldliness. It ignores nature (in the Kantian sense of modern physics), treating it only as a boundary of the being of innerworldly beings, hence, it “de-worlds” world, and cannot, not ever, render bare worldliness. (In other words, the purely ontological idea overly purifies the world of that which it primordially is, and that by which we must seek to actually grasp.)
Now … what is important is that we must seek to understand why Dasein skips over worldliness when it “knows” world ontically or ontologically.
- (Compare this to Chapter Two, why we make mistakes about the world and how this ties to Dasein fleeing from itself, being inauthentic; think about this, too, in connection to how we cover over the primordial understanding, and what this might say about our Dasein—what does it mean that we have a tendency to cover over this sort of knowing?)
So … what we need to do is to being-in-the-world and the world itself as the subject of our analytic as the nearest kind of being of Dasein. Nearest to Dasein is “the surrounding world” [Umwelt] “environmentality” [Umweltlichkeit] (H.p.66). This implies something spatial, but think space thematically; that is, think it like “ethos,” the prevailing spirit or characteristic of one’s around-ness, not the actual dimensions of what is here-about.
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"What can it mean, to describe 'the world' as a phenomenon? |
A. Analysis of Environmentality & Worldliness in General
§15 The Being of Beings Encountered in the Surrounding World
Being-in-the-world is a being-in that is an association in, dealings in [Umgang in] the world with other innerworldly beings (i.e., other beings who are within this world). “Such dealings are already dispersed in manifold ways of taking care” (H.p.67).
This nearest kind of association is NOT perceptual cognition (knowing from a perceptual reaching out, sensorially, into the world to take in information—or, the knowledge described as preface to this chapter, from the end of chapter two, H.pp.61-2)—instead, this way of association has its own ‘kind’ of knowledge, IT IS: handling, using, and taking care of things ...
§15 The Being of Beings Encountered in the Surrounding World
Being-in-the-world is a being-in that is an association in, dealings in [Umgang in] the world with other innerworldly beings (i.e., other beings who are within this world). “Such dealings are already dispersed in manifold ways of taking care” (H.p.67).
This nearest kind of association is NOT perceptual cognition (knowing from a perceptual reaching out, sensorially, into the world to take in information—or, the knowledge described as preface to this chapter, from the end of chapter two, H.pp.61-2)—instead, this way of association has its own ‘kind’ of knowledge, IT IS: handling, using, and taking care of things ...
- NOTE: this is a type of knowledge that is NOT an abstraction from the world of use wherein one sees the deficit, suspends care, and grasps things in their objective presence (not strictly theoretical). Instead—it is a type of knowledge we might call PRAXIS (the knowledge activity is and offers, not quantifiable, but done and ‘had’ only in action, in the use, in the doing).
Pursuing this idea (trying to know what type of knowing is the using of things) gives us the pre-thematic being; our actual goal/theme is being, but this praxis-being gives us an entry.
So … we are starting our investigating by thinking of the Da-sein in the midst of daily living as a taking care of things in the world. “Every Da-sein always already is in this way; for example, in opening the door, I use the doorknob” (H.p.67). That is, we don’t adopt some strange perspective; we simply start from the way Da-sein naturally is in the world.
“Gaining phenomenological access to the beings thus encountered consists rather in rejecting the interpretational tendencies crowding and accompanying us which cover over the phenomenon of ‘taking care’ of things in general, and thus even more so beings as they are encountered of their own accord in taking care” (H.p.67).
Essentially, why we need Heidegger and his method is because the moment we start from the everyday and ask the meaning of something, we have already poisoned our question by letting “thing” in “something” slip in. We take beings as things (res), as substances extended in space, as material, as whatever, purify these definitions, or divide them up as valuable things, and load them up with judgments, values, biases, and completely cover over what we need access to by thinking ontically and ontologically themselves, and not phenomenologically (H.pp.67-8).
So … INSTEAD! Start with the Greek term for “things:” pragmata.
Pragmata: that with which one has to do in taking care of things in association (praxis).
Now, move away from the Greeks, because while they move on from there, we need to linger on the pragmatic character of the pragmata—it is not sufficient to simply call this ‘mere things.’
Let us better understand these ‘mere things,’ what we come across in the world, as the what I am concerned with in my (way of being as) concernfulness in the world (as the entire doing of being-in it and with it). More simply: these beings we encounter in the world are USEFUL THINGS (things for sewing, for making music, for playing with, for building with, etc.).
The ASSOCIATIONS of these things are that what they are FOR. But, we must also reveal what makes a useful thing a useful thing, hence, we must also understand their USABLE MATERIAL.
To be proper and precise, however, there IS no such thing as A useful thing. EVERY USEFUL THING’S BEING IS A TOTALITY OF USEFUL THINGS IN WHICH THIS USEFUL THING CAN BE WHAT IT IS.
A useful thing is essentially “something in order to …” The “in order to’s” can include: serviceability, helpfulness, usability, handiness, etc. All of these constitute a totality of usable things.
This structure of “in order to’s” contains a REFERENCE of something to something.
(Our current task is to being the multiplicity of references phenomenally into view.)
First, we see that useful things are always in terms of belonging to other useful things.
Then, we see that useful things never show themselves initially by themselves and then fill out the ‘sum’ of a room—instead, we first see the wholeness as “material for living.”
In the midst of this “material for living,” we see “ACCOMODATIONS,” in which we then see the actual useful things. The totality of useful things is always already discovered before the individual useful thing.
Associations (e.g., hammering with the hammer, writing with the pen) are never thematic graspings of things occurring; they are never knowings of using or of structures of things.
Hammering with the hammer is not knowing that this thing as having a useful character. Instead, actually hammering is the demonstration of the most adequate knowing of the useful thing.
So … we are starting our investigating by thinking of the Da-sein in the midst of daily living as a taking care of things in the world. “Every Da-sein always already is in this way; for example, in opening the door, I use the doorknob” (H.p.67). That is, we don’t adopt some strange perspective; we simply start from the way Da-sein naturally is in the world.
“Gaining phenomenological access to the beings thus encountered consists rather in rejecting the interpretational tendencies crowding and accompanying us which cover over the phenomenon of ‘taking care’ of things in general, and thus even more so beings as they are encountered of their own accord in taking care” (H.p.67).
Essentially, why we need Heidegger and his method is because the moment we start from the everyday and ask the meaning of something, we have already poisoned our question by letting “thing” in “something” slip in. We take beings as things (res), as substances extended in space, as material, as whatever, purify these definitions, or divide them up as valuable things, and load them up with judgments, values, biases, and completely cover over what we need access to by thinking ontically and ontologically themselves, and not phenomenologically (H.pp.67-8).
So … INSTEAD! Start with the Greek term for “things:” pragmata.
Pragmata: that with which one has to do in taking care of things in association (praxis).
Now, move away from the Greeks, because while they move on from there, we need to linger on the pragmatic character of the pragmata—it is not sufficient to simply call this ‘mere things.’
Let us better understand these ‘mere things,’ what we come across in the world, as the what I am concerned with in my (way of being as) concernfulness in the world (as the entire doing of being-in it and with it). More simply: these beings we encounter in the world are USEFUL THINGS (things for sewing, for making music, for playing with, for building with, etc.).
The ASSOCIATIONS of these things are that what they are FOR. But, we must also reveal what makes a useful thing a useful thing, hence, we must also understand their USABLE MATERIAL.
To be proper and precise, however, there IS no such thing as A useful thing. EVERY USEFUL THING’S BEING IS A TOTALITY OF USEFUL THINGS IN WHICH THIS USEFUL THING CAN BE WHAT IT IS.
- (For example, a pair of scissors is NOT simply a thing that cuts, no more and no less; instead, a pair of scissors is the being which can be that which cuts by also being, and along side being that which can be thrown, that which can be painted, that which can screw nails in, that which can be a weapon. “Scissors” is never divorced from the manifold of possibilities, nor is it ever divorced from (as we see below) references to paper, cutting, blade, kindergarden, running with them, clean edges, school supplies, schools, students, little kids, office workers, Da-sein, and the surrounding world.)
A useful thing is essentially “something in order to …” The “in order to’s” can include: serviceability, helpfulness, usability, handiness, etc. All of these constitute a totality of usable things.
This structure of “in order to’s” contains a REFERENCE of something to something.
(Our current task is to being the multiplicity of references phenomenally into view.)
First, we see that useful things are always in terms of belonging to other useful things.
Then, we see that useful things never show themselves initially by themselves and then fill out the ‘sum’ of a room—instead, we first see the wholeness as “material for living.”
In the midst of this “material for living,” we see “ACCOMODATIONS,” in which we then see the actual useful things. The totality of useful things is always already discovered before the individual useful thing.
Associations (e.g., hammering with the hammer, writing with the pen) are never thematic graspings of things occurring; they are never knowings of using or of structures of things.
Hammering with the hammer is not knowing that this thing as having a useful character. Instead, actually hammering is the demonstration of the most adequate knowing of the useful thing.
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“When we take care of things, we are subordinate to the in-order-to constitutive for the actual useful thing in our association with it. The less we just stare at the thing called hammer, the more actively we use it, the more original our relation to it becomes and the more undisguisedly it is encountered as what it is, as a useful thing” (Heidegger, Being & Time, H.p.69). |
USE, in other words, the active caring of things, the doing called forth by the useful character of beings/things, is that which most lays bare what the useful thing is.
- “The act of hammering itself discovers the specific ‘handiness’ [zuhandenheit] of the hammer. We shall call the useful thing’s kind of being in which it reveals itself by itself handiness [1]. It is only because useful things have this ‘being-in-themselves,’ and don’t merely occur, that they are handy in the broadest sense and are at our disposal [2]. No matter how keenly we just look at the ‘outward appearance’ of things constituted in one way or another, we cannot discover handiness [3]. When we just look at things ‘theoretically,’ we lack an understanding of handiness [4]. But association which makes use of things is not blind, it has its own way of seeing which guides our operations and gives them their specific thingly quality [5]. Our association with useful things is subordinate to the manifold of references of the ‘in-order-to’ [6]. The kind of seeing of this accommodation of things is called circumspection [umsicht] [7]” (H.p.69).
- [1] Hammering discovers the kind of being of the hammer (its handiness {Zuhandenheit}).
- [2] The hammer is handy because it is, in itself, a useful thing (its being is AS its usefulness).
- [3] Looking at the thingliness of the hammer will never reveal its handliness.
- [4] Handliness gives us a knowing of the being of the useful thing never had in theory alone.
- [5] HOWEVER, association (hammering the hammer, laying bare its handiness) is NOT blind; it has a way of knowing that directs us and gives the things their specific thingliness.
- i.e., we will see this developed more soon, that praxis has a current of theory, theory a current of praxis.
- [6] Our association with useful things (hammering the hammer) is SUBORDINATE to the manifold of references of the ‘in-order-to’—that is, our activity of using the useful is only ever because the totality of references of the purpose, the ‘for’ of the useful thing. The usefulnesses of useful things have precedence over our using useful things (i.e., an anti-‘man is the measure of all things’ idea, wherein one argues that tools only are because we came first, established tool, then used tool; instead, the possibilities of being used as the characterizing nature of the beings of useful things comes first.)
- [7] Coming to know this handiness for, coming to see these accommodations of things, is called circumspection.
*** Re - Summary ***
“Things” (pragmata) are that which one has to do with in taking care of things in association (praxis), i.e., they are beings (i.e., tools) one is concerned with (i.e., using, because they are their usefulness) when one is being-in (i.e., concernfully being/doing in the world) (H.p.68).
“Things” are “Useful Things.”
Useful things are “something in order to …”
\ They can be ‘in order to’ in the sense of being serviceable, helpful, usable, handy, etc.
\ The ‘in order to’ (structurally) contains a reference of X to Y.
\ References create chains … X to Y to Z to A …
\ i.e., Useful things are always ‘in terms of’ reference to other useful things
\ e.g., pen, paper, desk, lamp, rooms, homes, libraries, books, etc.
We never encounter a useful thing (nor a linkage of things that eventually, in sum, populate a room); instead, we encounter the room as the ‘material for living;’ only within this perspective do we then find ‘accommodations’ (givenness of vignettes as useful), and therein ‘individual’ useful things--i.e., the ‘given’ is a totality, a fullness, always already discovered before things.
Useful things are known through the doing of their usefulness, of their ‘in order to;’ looking at a thing as objective presence never gives us the “handiness” of the useful thing (of the tool) (H.p.69).
\ Handiness: Zuhandenheit ('handiness,' also called “ready-to-hand” or “readiness-to-hand”) … it's counter to Unhandiness, Vorhandenheit (‘objective presence,’ also called “present-to-hand”) & signifies a stepping back and staring at its outward appearance.
In the midst of hammering, the hammer is handy: you’re not thinking about it, you’re demonstrating your knowing of it by using it (H.p.69). Now, the hammer breaks … you curse it as a thing that just became unhandy, specifically, its being becomes ‘conspicuous’ with its wood all splintered. Or, the hammer is missing … you curse its absence, aware of it as ‘obtrusive,’ and seek the unhandy thing. Or, the handle keeps ‘obstinately’ rubbing your palm, creating an obstacle to your hammering, hence you curse and become aware of the shoddy thingliness of the unhandy tool (H.p.73).
Handiness is the useful thing’s kind of being: it is its use, and this use/thing is known to Dasein through Dasein’s using it (not looking at it).
{ If we want to look at it, consider the chains of associations or references that which make up the things’ “accommodations,” then this is called ‘circumspection’ (Umsicht).
However, this is not a pure theory/practice split. Praxis (the use) contains a degree of theory, while theory contains some insight of praxis. However, experientially, using a tool is done most when one isn’t thinking of it as a tool, as something useful.
\ e.g., driving a car—you have done this for so long, you simply do it, you do not think of what you have to do or what its parts are doing. To tell someone how to drive, you may have to mentally play back the doing of it to delineate the action into steps.
What ‘association’ instead focuses on, is the ‘work’ to be done—this is the “what-for” of the tool (70).
Work, too, invokes a chain of references: work is the ‘what-for’ of a ‘something for’ something, thus, contains within it a reference to ‘materials.’ Materials contain references to that from which they come, hence, to ‘nature.’ Nature might invoke the objectively present or the power of nature in general, but, most importantly, it invokes the ‘surrounding world’ (the ‘environmentality’). Within the surrounding world, there is the reference to the who, to the ‘users’ of tools (the ‘makers’), and the for-who, the ‘wearers’ of the made. Thus, we have references to ‘beings,’ which references ‘Dasein,’ which references the ‘public world,’ which references the ‘whole surrounding world.’
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§16 The Worldly Character of the Surrounding World Announcing Itself in Innerworldly Beings
Now we need Heidegger ... ... ... .
Now we need Heidegger ... ... ... .