Reinterpreting Phenomenology: Heidegger's Revolutionary Perspective on the Meaning of Being

Phenomenology, literally translated as the study of phenomena, was turned on its head in the early twentieth century with Heidegger’s revolutionary text, ‘Being and time’. His theories around ontology were radically different to the more traditional ideas of Descartes’ famed subjectivism. Subjectivism meaning the idea that the only form of truth in the world, that is absolute, is our ability to recognise our consciousness. The human ability of self-evidence is a core aspect to Descartes’ methodology. Heidegger developed an alternate perception of phenomenology. Unlike Descartes, he interpreted our experience of the world, as well as our self-evidence, as a vital aspect of our knowledge. After researching phenomenology and identifying different interpretations of the phenomena of being, traditional ontology seems to focus too heavily on the psyche. For example, there’s a magnitude of different psychological issues that people experience which means their self-evidence is unclear. Instead, everyday items and experiencing them through their senses can help ground their existence. Another interesting counter argument to traditional ontology is humans haven’t always had the cognitive ability to ponder their own existence, the more intelligence that we have acquired over time has meant this ability has grown stronger and questioning our being has become more vital. The meaning of being can’t be separate from the world and our experience of it. Human life can’t solely be subjective with objects only existing through our interpretation of them.

Heidegger starts by remarking on the fact that the meaning of our being has not yet been determined. He described three major prejudices that caused no real desire for other philosophers to reinvestigate the phenomenon. Being is taken as a universal due to humans knowing that they exist and experience things. As Heidegger described, “it is said that “being” is the most universal and the emptiest concept”. Although being has a universal characteristic which suggests the meaning is commonly known, it’s indefinable as it seems to be beyond our capability of explanation. Being is so directly related to everything that it not having a definition feels obscure. Heidegger continues to describe more traditional ontological ideas by stating being as self-evident, i.e. we know we exist. The paradoxical nature of Heidegger’s explanation of the prejudices towards the question is exactly why the meaning of being needed to be reinvestigated. He shows that there was no real desire for people to ponder on the thought of being as it’s a presumed asset, i.e., people don’t tend to question the meaning of their existence in their day-to-day lives. Therefore, it was a task for Heidegger to relight an excitement to study the phenomena of being.

The primary finding from Heidegger that ‘being is presumed’ is plausible as the original findings of ontology don’t seem complete, or conclusive. Although it’s true to say that from one’s own perception they can conclude they exist, it misses the vital point of what the meaning of our being actually is. Heidegger rejected reasons for other philosophers dismissing the question. He wanted to stress the importance of how we interact with the world and how this influences the meaning of our being. He, vitally, introduces his invention of ‘Dasein’. Dasein represents a being who is aware of its being. To question the meaning of being, there needs to be a being capable of being questioned who is aware of their being. Dasein experiences the world and can interpret objects in a way that nothing else can. For example, a mattress touches the bed frame and works together to create a bed. However, the mattress is not aware of its relationship with the bed and nor is the bed of the mattress- they just exist. Dasein can conceptualise relationships between objects and their meaning of existence, this makes Dasein unlike anything else. The idea of Dasein is persuasive as the role of experience and relation with the real world is what was missing from traditional ontology. Traditional ontology does remark on the self-evident nature of our existence but not how we are entangled in the real world.

Heidegger makes a key point of differentiating between the terms ontic and ontological and Dasein’s connection with them both. Ontic refers to the ‘what’ aspect of our existence. This is concrete and factual, for example a human’s biological makeup is an ontic feature of being. Dasein’s ontic connection is its very being. Human existence is grounded in ontic characteristics. For example, the process of digesting food and absorbing the nutrients is merely an ontic aspect as it can be studied by a scientist which means that aspect of existence is definite. Although Dasein is rooted in its ontic characteristics, its very nature is ontological. The term ontological depicts a deeper state of existence, simply put, its Dasein’s awareness of existence or even Dasein’s consciousness. Therefore, there is an ontic-ontological relation for Dasein as its nature is ontic, but its perception is ontological. Dasein constantly is in between both as it can’t ignore the physical, nor the mental. Dasein is ontically close to oneself but also ontologically far away. So fundamentally Dasein’s nature involves its’ ontic relation with the body and the world, the physical, and its’ ontological awareness of being a being, a conscious entity. To me, the argument Heidegger is building is very strong. It respects the physical experience being accumulates, as well as beings aim to find meaning behind its very being. This is something I think is missing from more historical work on the question of the meaning of being. There must be a connection between human consciousness and experience of the world. Despite Descartes arguments around doubt leading to the only definite feature of existence available, it’s not persuasive to ignore the in-world connection beings have.

Another key aspect of Heidegger’s phenomenological argument is the idea of ready-at-hand and present-at-hand and, to take this further, being-in-the-world. Present-at-hand beings are mere things that make up the totality of the world. Ready-at-hand things are beings’ interaction with the world that, through history, have developed to make the objects even more accommodating. For example, the water bottle that holds my water so I can drink, is a ready-at-hand entity and shows my connection to the physical world. But, crucially, even without my understanding of what a water bottle is, it is still an entity that makes up part of the world. Take a more natural example, a cliff would still be a cliff without my understanding of it because of its cliff-like characteristics that existed before we deemed it a cliff. It would still show great height with a sudden drop, knowledge of that is discoverable to me but not a necessity for a cliff to be a cliff. Heidegger showed everydayness and Dasein’s relationship with that being-in-the-world. Although Descartes did reference this point by depicting an image of him looking at a ball of wax in his hand, showing there is a connection between the mental and physical, he doesn’t conclude the same connection as Heidegger does. It’s hard to imagine Dasein separate from the physical world, it’s almost impossible. This represents the vitality of the connection of being-in-the-world for Dasein, being worldly is part of Dasein’s nature. These ideas are highly plausible as being a being that’s aware of its being doesn’t mean that the physicality of the nature of being is not important. Things such as good food and water enable human beings to rationalise better and function to a higher degree. This clarifies that our, or Dasein’s, connection to the physical is more necessary than what early philosophers presumed.

A more traditional view is one which supports the subject-object schema. The basic idea on this matter is that there are subjects, consciousness, and objects, being. Being as in being in nature, so a part of nature. Consciousness here is a centre of acts, or a person of which has standings opposite them. Standings meaning entities in the physical or natural world which is separate from that idea of consciousness. Although that feels like an abstract idea, it basically suggests a divide between consciousness and the world. I can understand that divide to some extent as the only aspects of our being that can comprehend nature is our consciousness and understanding. Arguably, that separation only goes so far. It is correct that there is a conscious aspect to humanity which separates us from the rest of the physical world but in the same breath it’s not as though we were placed on this planet with that natural understanding. Over centuries, humans have become more intelligent. There are numerous reasons for the inclination of human intelligence. If one was to accept Darwin’s evolutionary theory, there was a grey area between humanity being merely animals and becoming more intelligent. When we were hunter-gatherers, there would not have been the same intellect that allowed them to sit and ponder their own existence. Over time obviously there was a slow change and development which meant human beings could have more intelligent conversations but that was not presupposed. There can’t be a huge distinction as that would suggest humans have always had an ability to cognise situations which isn’t convincing. Although Descartes might counter my point by asking how that knowledge is definite, evolution and the development of our consciousness is a highly intuitive and convincing approach to our physical existence, and a theory that is vastly accepted.

Reflecting on my counterexample on evolution and human development, although Descartes would refute this due to there being no way of knowing intuitively that even happened, his scepticism is very interesting and induces slight scepticism into one’s own thoughts after reading. This scepticism meaning the idea of Cartesian doubt which underpinned traditional ontology. Descartes started from a point of absolute scepticism, not taking anything to be real as, in his mind, i.e., one cannot be sure that anything at all is real. He viewed human beings’ bodily functions and physicality as animalistic and characteristics he thought one should be as far away from as possible. The only aspect that Descartes couldn’t doubt was the fact he was doubting. That would be a complete contradiction to say truthfully that one can doubt they are doubting. From this he can state securely that he knows he exists from that doubting methodology. Only things that can be rationalised, to Descartes, can be factual. From this he deduces many things in the world and of the psyche. He argued that things are only things through the conceptualisation of those things. He would argue that a brick wall would not in fact be a brick wall without a list of characteristics applied to it that was cognitively rationalised. Without that, it wouldn’t be a wall. Mathematics is a great example of these ideas, as it is purely rational but also can be applied to the world. Heidegger refuted this because he believed through that deduction, existence is presumed and no meaning to existence is given. What Descartes misses out, in my opinion, is that connection with the physical world and that the physical world is part of us. He focuses on a small part of the whole by placing such importance on the rationale. Although he seems to have a huge issue with the idea of our bodies and not being able to trust them, is the mind not just part of that body? Ideas in traditional ontology miss out key features of our existence which I think Heidegger covers successfully.

After just refuting ideas on traditional ontology, Heidegger’s approach feels more conclusive. Interestingly, instead of doubting time and lived experience, Heidegger sees temporality as a vital aspect of the meaning of our existence. He shows that temporality must be a mode of Dasein’s existence due to Dasein not being able to escape time constraints. It would be an impossible task to understand Dasein without considering temporality. Dasein’s nature is essentially temporal and therefore any examination into the understanding of the meaning of being must also conform to those temporal limitations. Everything about Dasein; it’s historicity that makes up everything about its existence is so attached to Dasein, more attached to it than any other of its characteristics. This differs massively from Cartesian ideas as Dasein cannot reject its own lived experience as that is a part of Dasein’s being and its characteristic, meaning history is vital which is something Descartes almost rejects. It must therefore be entangled in the meaning of being for Dasein if it’s something Dasein would never be able to escape. Temporality sets a horizon for the meaning of being, it brings us a small step closer to understanding this meaning. This is something Heidegger thinks has been passed over completely. The temporal meaning of being but also even looking into beings’ awareness of being and that in-world connection. The existence element is presumed, and the meaning is overlooked. This is a convincing aspect to the argument because, in my opinion, time is definitive to our existence. Especially now in everydayness, certain ages even go to the point of meaning certain freedoms. Heidegger successfully highlights the vitality of the temporal nature of what it means to exist.

Heidegger’s contemporary ideas on ontology are more successful, and persuasive, in coming closer to what the meaning of our existence actually is. He draws upon numerous aspects of the human connection to the world and how we interact with it. The most successful part of his argument, in my opinion, is his description of the temporal significance. This really represents a huge constraint on our existence and highlights that time determines everything, which is very intuitive. Another strong aspect is Heidegger’s focus upon defining Dasein as us being in the world, existing. This is an aspect missing from traditional ontology as it really identifies that its not even a strong connection, being in the world is part of existing. Heidegger’s revolutionary book, ‘Being and Time’, depicts many aspects of the meaning of being which had not been accounted for by previous philosophers. Previous philosophers, such as Descartes, saw too much of a distinction between the physical realm and beings’ perception of being. This is far more an abstract concept as his ideals are almost completely detached for the ‘everydayness’ of what it is to be a being. Although the Cartesian doubt is a definitive point for the conclusion of scepticism, Heidegger shows that there are in fact key problems for traditional ontology and vital aspects missed. The fallacy of traditional ontology focuses on a small aspect of existence and doesn’t account for the whole, which is the meaning behind it.