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HERMENEUTIC OF BEING The central philosophical problem embodied and delineated in Heidegger’s philosophical works is the problem of Being. It is especially the themesong of Heidegger’s magnum opus Sein Und Zeit – Being and Time. The problem has been posed by Heidegger in various formulations as here under a)	What is Being ? b)	What is Being of entities ? c)	What is the meaning of Being ? (Marlein Heidegger, Being and Time, Part 1, trans. John MacQuarrie and Edward Robbinson New York : Harper and Row, 1962, p. 1)	In his another work in ‘Introduction to Metaphysics, the question becomes,: d) Why are there entities rather than nothing (M. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Manheims, New York, 1961, p. 1) The subsequent formulation for the same question are worked out as hereunder: Why, that is to say, on what ground ? From what source does the Being derive? On what ground it stand? (Ibid, p. 2) We are asking for the ground of the being; that it is and is what it is and that there is not rather nothing (Ibid., p. 26). Thus Heidegger is asking various questions pertaining to being. He is asking the analytical question with regard to the meaning of the expression of Being. This question asks us as to what are we saying of a thing then we assert that it exists. The answer to this question is to provide a set of criteria of some sort for determining whether or not a thing exists, regardless of what particular thing or type of thing it is. Secondly, Heidegger is asking a metaphysical question as to what is Being? Or what is the ground of Being? In response to this metaphysical question, Heidegger often suggests that the expressions we used to discuss. Being do not faithfully capture the correct concept of Being Heideger believes that we shall have to go beyond our present language to develop a better language for capturing certain philosophical insite. Heidegger actually develops various neologisms with a view to capturing presumably certain crucial metaphysical insites. In view of the same understanding Heidegger becomes all the more difficult. The earlier Heidegger advances the thesis that our everyday language is incapable of capturing essential truths about Being. The later Heidegger advances the generalized thesis that no language can capture these truths at all. Thereafter, Heidegger’s philosophy shifts away from ontological concerns of Being and Time to a peculiar sort of non theological mysticism. The third question as to why is there Being rather than nothing at all, sounds to be theological according to Robert C. Solomon (Solomon from rationalism to existentialism, Humanities Press, 1972, p. 192). The question, “why are there Being?” appears to be a search for an explanation of beings. It also sounds like a search for justification for there being entities. It sounds like the theological question as to why did God create the world. On the other hand we may assume that the question as to why there are things is not a question for an explanation of why the things ought to exist. It may be a simple question for an explanation of what it is for something to exist. Nevertheless, the question, “why there is Being rather than nothing?” does have teleological and even Qusi-theological implications. It is a question for meaning and justification of Being with special reference to human being and any response to this question has wider cultural implications. The following lines from Heidegger will make it clear that Heidegger concern with Being is not entirely shorn of or innocent of crucial ethical, axiological and teleological implications: Philosophy always aims at the first and last grounds of the being, with particular emphasis on man himself and on the meaning and goal of human being – there (Introduction to Metaphysics, op.cit., p. 8). This question with eminence axiological and teleological is asked by recourse to a leap rather than arrived at by way of conceptual analysis: We find out that this privileged question, “Why” has its grounds in a leap through which man thirst away all the previous security, whether real or imagined, of his life. The question is asked only in this leap; it is the leap; without it there is no asking (Ibid., p. 5). The question of Being in this axio-teleological sense is of profound significance for the history culture and politics of nations, in fact, for the rise and fall of the civilizations. Heidegger brings out that man as well as nations in their greatest movement and traditions are linked to being. Their falling out of being was the most powerful and the most central cause of their decline (Ibid., p 30). In fact, all philosophical question about Being are interminability, interlinked with the meaning or goals involved in Being. Metaphysics is inseparably interlinked with ethics in Heidegger’s philosophy. Heidegger contends that despite the central and vital significance of Being for philosophy as well as wider culture, philosophers and men in general have fallen out of Being. Philosophers have not asked the question of Being and made it the centrepoint and cynosure of their philosophical investigations and interpretations. However, historically speaking philosophers have always being concerned with the problem of Being or question of existence. Ancient Greek philosophers, Medieval Christian philosophers and Modern European philosophers have been deeply engaged in metaphysical and ontological inquiries. However, they have asked metaphysical questions which Heidegger thinks are not germane to an inquiry into the problem of Being. Philosophers have asked the questions as to whether a particular entity exists viz: “Is there a God?”, or whether a particular type of entity exists, for example, “Are there members of a certain class?”. However, Heidegger is not primarily interested in asking such questions. He is interested in asking as to what it is that is been asked in such questions or what it is for anything to be philosophers according to Heidegger, have precisely not asked the question as to what it is to anything to be. The question with regard to Being is different from the question with regard to entity. Being according to Heidegger become cancelled from us (Solomon, p. 193, Limentus Heidegger) we do say that animals, trees, stones, human feeling and ideas and mathematical numbers do exists. However, we do not ask as to by virtue of what they exists. Philosophers have ignored or sidelined this question. For example, Kant in his Refutation of the ‘Ontological Proof’ of God’s existence has advanced the thesis that existence is not a property of a kind or a predicate of any kind. Hegel does treat Being as a concept, but adds that it is the empitiest of all concepts. For Aristotle, Being is the most universal of all concepts. However, such characterizations of Being refuse to see the seriousness of the philosophical problem of Being. This, according t Heidegger, is what constituent the fallenness of philosophers from Being. Heidegger concedes this pre-Socrates philosophers did seriously engaged themselves with the problem of Being. Modern German idealists such as Kant, Fichte, Schelling and Hegel have almost negotiated movement of “disclosure” of Being. They almost unlocked what forgetfulness of Being hides. However in the middle of the nineteenth century German idealism collapsed for the age was no longer strong enough to stand up to the greatness, breadth or originality of such a spiritual project (Introduction to Metaphysics, p. 37). Nietzsche, according to Heidegger, is a prime example of a philosopher who has forgotten Being or fallen out of Being, for he has categorically asserted that the question of Being is not only not empitiest of all problems of philosophy. It is also devoid of any sense of significance. However, not with standing such radical disavowals of the problem of Being, understanding of Being – of what it is for anything to exist – is the basis problem of not only of philosophy but of all human fields of endeavor and all human beings in general. Philosophical search for foundations can never be accomplished unless the concept of Being is categorically illuminated and understood. The problems pertaining to the foundations of mathematical, physical and biological sciences are also intimated to the problem of Being. In fact the basic tensions of modern culture is also a function of our failure of understand Being. Our refusal to even attempt to provide an analysis of Being constituent our fallneness from Being. It is one thing to be able to recognize thing as existing: it is something very different to recognize what it is for something to exist. All ontological investigations remain perverted if they do not clarify the meaning of Being and conceive this clarification as its fundamental task (Introduction to Metaphysics, p.11). According to Heidegger we need a clarification not about entities but about the Being of entities. The problem of the existing particular entities must await a clarification of the central and fundamental problem of Being. Heidegger claims that in the entire history of western philosophy he is first one to raise the problem of Being : In Sein Und Zeit the question of the meaning of Being is raised and developed as a question for the first time in the history of philosophy (Introduction to Metaphysics, op.cit., p. 70). Heidegger was deeply impacted by the phenomenological investigation Edumund Husserl. Heidegger’s masterpiece, Being and Time is written primarily in accordance with phenomenological method advanced by Husserl. However, while Heidegger was deeply soaked into the phenomenological standpoint, yet he advanced an alternative account of phenomenological investigations and brought out various formulations which radically topsy-turveyed the Husserlian phenomenological interprise. Heidegger’s enormous philosophical debt to Husserl notwithstanding, he accuses his teacher of having “fallen out of Being” along with other philosophers. Heidegger does admit Husserl’s brilliant phenomenological method. However, despite Husserl’s path breaking methodology, he could not recognizes the problem of Being. Husserl’s philosophical researches explicitly began on a fundamental distinction between phenomenology and ontology. Such a distinction, according to Heidegger presupposes that the phenomenon encountered in the one were different from the entities encountered in the other. This suggests that the entities that appears to us as phenomena are not entities in themselves. Husserl, of course, does reject such a conclusion and argues that the “transcendental constitution” of objects ensures that phenomenon are the things themselves. Heidegger challenges such a possibility. He contends that we cannot first distinguish between phenomenology and ontology and then bring them together again. Separating phenomenology from ontology or phenomena from entities we are trapped in the skepticism Husserl so assiduously wished to avoid. Heidegger does accept Husserl’s phenomenological method but challenges Hussserl’s application of that method. He is in agreement with Husserl that the job of philosophy is to examine phenomena. However, he sharply disagreed with Husserl as to how these phenomena are to be encountered. The starting point of Husserl’s philosophy is phenomenological epoche or “bracketing of the natural standpoint” such a Husserlian perspective entails suspension with regard to existence and inquiring into essences. However, such a perspecting, according to Heidegger, brings out that phenomenology has no concern with the existence. Such a neglect of existence cannot so easily resorted to, for, according to Heidegger the problem of Being – what is it to a thing to exist – is the problem of philosophy. Thus, Heidegger rejects the methodological step “bracketing”. Our unprejudiced examination of the world, according to Heidegger, is not an experience of entities capable of being bracketed. Our familiarity with the entities in the world is not a philosophical theory imposed on us. Our belief in the existence of entities is not philosophically directed. It is an essential aspect of our most ‘primitive experience’. Heidegger does accept Husserl’s direct appeal to phenomena though he rejects Husserl’s appeal to objects or things themselves. Heidegger’s goal is an understanding of Being. However, no knowledge, howsoever direct, can ever help our understanding of Being. The following lines from Heidegger bring out his contention in this regard : How are we going to find our famous particulars, the individual trees as such, as trees; how shall we able even to look for trees, unless the representation of what a trees in general in shines before us? Unless we are guided by a developed knowledge of treeness… we can look over thousands and thousands of trees in vain – we shall not see the tree for the trees (Solomon, p. 197). An examination of individual objects does not amount to phenomenological investigation for Heidegger. His phenomenological investigation is constituted by an examination of the very phenomenon of Being as such. Heidegger does not go in for Husserlian piecemeal analysis. For Heidegger, the world is not a totality of objects. All entities put together do not add up to the word. The world is, howsoever peculiarly, an independent object for examination. One of the central theses of Husserl’s phenomenology – One that is deemed by Husserl to have solved the problem of our knowledge of external world – is that there is a transcendental constitution of objects by the ‘pure’ or ‘transcendental ego’. However, this Husserlian thesis of pure or transcendental ego along with Cartesian cogito, Kantian ‘transcendental self’ or Ego and Hegelian spirit, generates an antithesis of astonishing philosophical implications at the hands of Heidegger – one that has the potential and salience of challenging and changing the very climate as well as the landscape of Western and world philosophy at large. Heidegger’s antithetical response to Husserlian thesis of ‘transcendental ego’ constituting the world is a flat and categorical denial of any ‘transcendental ego’ constituting a world at all. For Husserl, it is the ‘pure ego’ which performs the acts of constitution which yield the ‘world’. Husserl’s method of ‘transcendental reduction’ explicitly reduced all objects of intuition to products of this ‘pure ego’. For Heidegger, on the other hand, Husserlian ‘ego’, Cartesian ‘cogito’, Kantian ‘I think’ (as a unifying principle for knowledge) etc. reflect an innocent or willful problematisation of philosophy the net result of which is an irresolvable epistemological skepticism. For Heidegger, the radical subject-object dichotomy borrowed from grammar and syntax and transmuted into an ontological dualism by Descartes, Kant and Husserl, has drastically misdirected the significant philosophical investigations of Modern Europe. Heidegger passionately espouses a radical denial of the very notion of ‘ego’ or ‘ecogito’ and stipulates man to be nothing but ‘Dasein’ or “Being-in-the-world” entailing that ‘man’ without the world and the ‘world’ without man, are both unthinkable as well as unacceptable. Both man and the world are inextricably linked together. The man is as much in the world as the world is in man. The following lines by Solomon, in this regard, are categorically articulative and illustrative: There is, to be sure, an important grammatical necessity for self-reference when talking about experience of the world. We have a grammar which distinguishes subjects from predicates, and thus the language of perception necessarily speaks of a perceiver-subject and a perceived-object Why should we accept this distinction, grammatically necessary or not? Why must we suppose that the necessity of referring to a subject is any sort of necessity other than grammatical necessity? Why need we postulate a “thinking substance” or “ego” as this subject, as Descartes did? Or, why should we even accept this notion of ‘I think’ as a necessary condition or a ‘unifying principle’ for knowledge, as Kant did? Why should we accept the host of metaphors, accepted by Husserl as well as by Descartes and Kant, to the effect that there is an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ to consciousness (compare the notions of ‘immanent’, ‘transcendent’, ‘subjective’, ‘objective’, ‘mental contents’ and ‘in my mind’). Why do we accept the notion of “the ‘external’ world” (usually with quotation marks) as a sensible expression much less as a serious problem? In short, why do we accept a distinction between subject and object? Heidegger suggests nothing less radical than the rejection of this most basic common sense distinction, and with it, the rejection of the myriad of epistemological problems which have plagued modern philosophy. According to Heidegger there is no ego, there is simply “Being in-the-world”. The world is no more ‘bracketable’ than the ego is necessary. Once we rid ourselves of the ego, we save ourselves from philosophical skepticism as well. It is here that Heidegger splits the “phenomenological movement” in two, and establishes “existential phenomenalogy” (not so called by Heidegger) as an effective threat to Husserl’s entire enterprise even among his own followers (Solomon, p 198).

Hermeneutic of Dasein The most important philosophical problem which inspired elaborate phenomenological investigations of Heidegger is the problem of Being. However, Heidegger’s Being and Time provides a detailed accounts of a particular kind of Being i.e. human beings, for it is human beings who persistently asked the question as to what is Being. Heidegger’s technical terms or special designation for human being is Dasein meaning “Being there” or “Being-in-the-world”. Dasein is not one among numberless entities comprising the world. It is a special entity in view of the fact that Being is an issue for it and Being is disclosed to it. The characterizing feature of Dasein is its capacity for understanding Being. It is Dasein which is the fountainhead or springwell of all ontological investigations or interpretations (“Being and Time”, op.cit., p. 13). An interpretation of the meaning of Being is the fundamental task assigned by Heidegger to philosophy. The Being of Dasein needs to be thoroughly interrogated with a view to accomplishing this fundamental task of philosophy for Dasein, on its own, is oriented towards an explication and interpretation of the meaning of Being(Being and Time, op.cit., pp. 14-15). The central significance of Dasein or man being “Being-in-the-world” should not be construed with the significance attached to ‘cogito’ by Descartes or, to ‘non-empirical ego’ by Kant or to ‘consciousness’ or ‘pure ego’ by Husserl. An analysis of Dasein is not an investigation or examination of the subject of experience. Descartes argument proceeds on the assumption that we know ourselves best and foremost. For Heidegger, the truth is that we are as remotest from ourselves as any X is from any y (Introduction to Metaphysics, pp. 57-580. A human being as Dasein is “Being-in-the-world”. He is not a ‘cogito’, a ‘transcendental self’, a ‘pure ego’ a ‘pure consciousness’, or a ‘subject’. He is neither the ‘empirical self’ as distinct from a ‘transcendental self’. Dasein is neither a subject nor a natural objects neither transcendental nor empirical. Ontically Dasein is oriented to the ontological investigation or interpretation of Being. It is invested with existentielle or empirical structures and existential or a priori structures (Solomon, op.cit., pp. 199-200). However, Heidegger’s phenomenological investigation finds no locus standi for traditionally entrenched concepts of ‘ego’, ‘consciousness’ and ‘subject’ for they do not accord with our ‘primitive’ experience. There is no experience which can justify talk about an ego or consciousness. An accurate, ‘primitive’ view of our experience of the world cannot describe this experience as an experience of an ego. Phenomenologically we cannot even say with Hume that there are experiences for such a description entails the notion of a subject. Man is simply, according to Heidegger, is Being-in-the-World. Philosophers have interpreted a grammatical necessity for an ontological necessity. The Cartesian, Kantian and Husserlian as well common and general understanding of man is grammatically inspired. It does not refer to a special substance or even to a unifying principles. The ontological is radically falsely reified by the grammatical. We cannot make any legitimate distinction between ‘Transcendental Ego’ and a so called external world. Correspondingly, we cannot bracket physical entities outside of consciousness. Our so called contents of consciousness seem to be confronting physical entities owing to huge grammatical confusion leading to reification of ego or soul. Once we are disabused of this confusion and accept Heideggerian notion of Dasein or Being-in-the-world, traditional epistemological problems will become devoid of legitimacy or justification. By recourse to this very conception of Dasein Heidegger lays a devastating attack on the vary foundations of Husserlian phenomenology. The relationship of Dasein and world is unique. The world is an essential characteristic or structure of Dasein. Dasein is not in the world as one of the many entities. The fact that our bodies has spatial location shout not be construed that we are in space like other entities are space for Heidegger is projected by Dasein. It is one of its essential structures. Dasein and the world are inseparable. Dasein is the ‘Being-in-the-world’. Dasein without the world does not make a sense and the world without Dasein is also devoid of significance. The traditional idealistic and realistic positions are both unteneable. There is no pure self and pure consciousness to which all reality belongs as was maintained by idealist throughout the history of philosophy. Nor is there an independent world apart from Dasein as has espoused by realists of all hues and colours. The world is constituted by Dasein and Dasein is constituted by world. By launching this unique conception of Dasein, Heidegger has launched a powerful attack on the entire history of western philosophy which for him is essentially mistaken and misguided. Heidegger advances a crucial challenges against traditional philosophy by bringing out a radical alternative account of man-world-relationship. The philosophical accounts of Descartes, Kant and Husserl, infact the entire dominant tradition of western philosophy anchors man-world-relationship within “subject-object paradigm”. Man is deemed to be the knowing subject and the world considered to be a multicomplex aggregation of innumerable clusters of known objects. Heidegger contents that traditional philosophers have thoroughly mistaken in supposing that our consciousness of the world is primarily a knowing of the world. According to Heidegger this paradigm of knowing all the historically dominant is thoroughly monodimensional and needs to be replaced by an alternative holistic paradigm, as the traditional paradigm has underlined the significance of theoretical or descriptive knowledge at the cost of other highly significant modes of awareness for Heidegger this sort of knowing is not our original encounter with the world; rather it is a derivative of more practical relationship we engaged in or forge in multiple context of life. It is not the case that we only know things. We have far more primodial concerns with the things or entities of this world. There are things we have to do with, things we have to produce, things we have to attend, things we have to look after, things we have to use and things we have to give up etc. We do not only know, we also undertake, accomplish, evince, interrogate, consider, discuss, determine and so on and so far (Being and Time, op,cit, 56). These practical attitudes are characterized by Heidegger as “concern”. Dasein as Being-in-the-world primarily uses entities. These entities are not things, they are designated by Heidegger as “equipment”. Our knowledge of things is “knowing that”, our dealing with equipment is “knowing how”. Knowing how are all practical knowledge is primodial or fundamental and knowing that or conceptual knowledge is only derivative. Our primitive encounter with the world is non cognitive. Firstly we do not know the world or we do not ‘primitively’ confront things. The objects of the world we encounter are primarily equipments or tools. Our original relationship with the world is practical. Our primitive attitude to the world is not one of knowledge but of concern. This concernful structure of human personality is further defined by Heidegger as care. Care is to Heidegger what intensionality is to Husserl. As Heidegger sees it, Husserl concentrates his attention on intentional acts of knowing, believing, asserting, judging etc. and almost ignores such practical intensional acts as using ‘taking’, ‘advantage of’, ‘despassing’, ‘wanting to eat’, ‘looking for’, ‘giving’, ‘undertaking’, etc. (Solomon, op.cit., p. 207). The Husserlian ‘intensionality’ is to consciousness what Heideggarian ‘care’ is to Dasein. While Hsserlian consciousness is oriented to knowledge and cognition, Heideggarian Dasein is practically involved, concerned. R.C. Solomon’s in this context, brings out the distinction between Husserl and Heidegger, in the following words : Dasein’s structure as care is parallel to Husserl’s thesis that the structure of consciousness is intensionality. It is the nature of Dasein/consciousness to always be Dasein-in-the-world/consciousness of the objects. The vary nature of the Dasein/consciousness is as such that Dasein/consciousness must always find itself confronting an object. Of course…. The object has a vary different ontological status in the philosophies of Husserl and Heidegger (as Dasein is radically different form consciousness). Care is intensionality, but with a new emphasis on the more ‘practical’ and ‘non cognitive’ acts which were neglected by Husserl. Dasein as full of care and concern is not limited in its scope or extent of engagements and operations. Daseins is not just concerned to accomplish certain tasks or using certain tools to get certain jobs done. The ultimate concern of man is his own self. It is this ultimate concern which constituents the structure of care. The ultimate concern of man is very much philosophical. Man is not ultimately concerned about meeting out his needs or maximizing his pleasure. As is superficially assumed by shallow utilitarians or pragmatists. Man is primarily craving for philosophical enlightenment or wisdom. His fundamental concern is to find out who he is. His care is oriented to an exploration of self identity. This care or concern leads Dasein to relate to other persons objects and even to one’s own self. Man is primarily motivated by an insatiable and irresistible quest for self recognition and self-definition. Man wants to appreciate and understand the nature of his own existence. Heidegger works out this essential human quest for self identity. Philosophers may be most explicitly with this fundamental human quest but it is the privilege of very man as a Dasein to go in for self questioning. Every man while questioning his locus standi or modus operandi or raison de’tre or contemplating suicide or pondering over his impending death are questioning the need for his birth or necessity of his death, he is revealing the basic structure of Dasein – the structure of self-interrogating or self-questioning. However, the fact that every man is potentially ontological does not necessarily mean that every man is actually ontological. Ontological possibilities do not ensure ontological necessities. The ontological self-questioning is necessary for Dasein to live authentically. However, Dasein can choose to live authentically and suppress his potential ontological quest for self-identity, self exploration and self authentication. Dasein is not necessarily invested with any necessary or fixed qualities. The life styles, goals and values of Dasein have nothing necessary and fixed about them as well. In fact, Dasein can create or design his own styles, goals and values. Dasein can choose to make himself by appropriating his goals and values or he can choose to mark his existence by neglecting his ontological quest for self-authentication (Being and Time, op.cit., p. 12). Every Dasein does not seriously engage with the question of self-identity by choosing a life for himself. Majority of the people across the spectrum just opt for the official way or establishmentarian style or public mode of life. Most men choose parareflectivity a given way of life. Heidegger in his analysis of Dasein enumerates various existential structures. The foremost existential structure of Dasein is it’s Being-in-the-world. Space and time are also existential structures of Dasein. Self questioning of DAsein is an existential structure. So is Dasein’s primitive attitude towards the world as equipment an existential structure concern toward’s the world, choice, freedom, dread, guilt, and even death are very significant existential structures of Dasein. However, there are three vary significant existential structures of Dasein which Heidegger call’s (a) Existenz, (b) Facticity, and (c) Fallenness. Existence as a structure of Dasein is a projection of possibilities. Dasein is essentially its own possibility. It can choose itself and win itself. It can also loose itself and never win itself (Being and Time, p. 42). Each Dasein is invested with it’s unique possibility. Each DAsein can have its own project’s, goal’s and value’s. Each Dasein is free to appropriate its goal’s and value’s. There are no aprior justification’s for the choice of the appropriation of possibilities. There are no rational criteria for the choice of life styles. Such a choice has to be made on personal decision. Dasein always’s understand’s itself in terms of its existence. Every Dasein is a possibility of itself. It can choose to be itself or not to be itself. Either it choose’s its possibilities or gets or grows itself into them. Only a particular Dasein can decide its existenz. One can choose one’s existence either consciously or get into it by recourse to complete neglect (Being and Time, p.12). If Dasein can decide it’s existenz and choose it’s possibilities, it can line authentically. If it get’s into them or grow’s up in them or neglects it’s Existenz, it lives inauthentically. Existing signifies taking decisions and making choices. We can never define or clinche the nature of our self-identity. There are no a prior or essential definitions encapsulating the exact nature of a human being. We will always have to decide as to what to make of ourselves through making choices and making decisions. One can choose to be an artist or a politician or a scientist or a religious figure or an author or a revolutionary etc. These specific choices are open to a man. In fact, Dasein is blessed or burdened with an indefinitely large number of possibilities. However, according to Haidegger, Dasein has to choose in between two possibilities. It has to be either authentic or inauthentic. These two possibilities are essential to Dasein’s existenz. The choice of other possibilities outthere has to be either authentic or inauthentic. If we can explicitly and honestly recognize the necessity of making choices, we are authentic. On the other hand, if we refuse to recognize our choices as our own, we are inauthentic. Existenz signifies both the possibility and necessity of choosing onself. Each Dasein has to formulate a conception of oneself and a set of projects, goals and values for oneself. Dasein as existenz signifies free choices. Dasein as possibilities signifies the radical difference between man and non-human phenomena. Dasein can conceive any number of possibilities. Possibility, for Haidegger is an invisionable structure for Being in-the-world. All understanding of the world is at one and the same time an understanding of oneself. One’s concept of the world and one’s conception of oneself are inseparable. Dasein projects its possibilities through understanding. Understanding is the projection of fundamental possibilities into the future. It is through understanding that Dasein plans and designs the future possibilities. Understanding of the world is conceiving the world in terms of structuring and re-structuring; it implies structuring and re-structuring of oneself as well. The existential structure of Dasein is its’ facility. As Dasein is “Being-in-the-world”, it lives in some place, at some time, for a duration of time etc. We always recognize one existence in a particular world. We are not Cartesian cogito encountering the cogitation or the external world. Dasein necessarily finds himself in a particular, irreducible, unbracketable world of real objects. The world Dasein finds himself in, is always a multicomplex package of geography, race, ethnicity, history, culture, religion, world-view, value-system, economy, polity, society, caste, creed, colour, language, gender, class etc. He is an Austrain or Indian or Kenayan or Egyptian or Persian or German or Brazilian or Mexican or Canadian. He is a black African or red European or white Japanese or ducky Indian. He belongs to a distinct historical and cultural context. He inherits a world-view and a value-system. Socially, politically and economically he belongs to a particular class. Some caste, creed, colour or language definite characterize his profile. He can be in an advantageous or disadvantageous position gender-wise or class-wise. Dasein is always characterized, differentiated, conditioned, culturated, linguisticiated, historicized, classified and caught into a multicomplex web of hierarchisations and stratifications. Besides, Dasein is genetically determined, educationally directed and professionally or occupationally oriented. He is also burdened or blessed with an inevitable, unavoidable and inextricable body. He may try to ump out of his history, culture, language, economic class, religion and region; however, he just cannot jump out of his skin. A Dasein’s biological, psychological, genetic, geographical, historical, cultural and sociopolitical conditions are given or inherited and all these conditions total up to his ‘facticity’. All these given conditions constituting the facticity of a Dasein are to be encountered by or responded to by the Existenz of Dasein. However, the reactions or responses or attitudes of Existenz towards a given facticity are never determined or preordained. Our Existenz is fully free to choose any response or reaction or attitude in its’ encounter with facticity. Different persons with same or similar ‘givens’ of facticity can respond in diametrically opposite ways. The same or similar ‘givens’ of facticity can orientate one to communism, another to Christianity, another to Buddhism, another to Capitalism, etc. Facing similar ‘givens’ of facticity one can become a hyperoptimist and another an incorrigible pessimist; one can become a relentless activist and another an irreversible fatalist; one can become a political revolutionary and another can vortex himself into profundities of mysticism. Dasein is thrown into facticity, a determined or given facticity. Nevertheless, Dasein’s responses to his facticity are free. As a Dasein my Existenz can blossom or fructify into numberless responses to my facticity. While each Dasein has Existenz as an existential structure, it is not necessary that each Dasein does necessarily recognize his Existenz. Each Dasein is dangerously equipped with a radical tendency or existential structure too neglect Existenz or become indifferent or neutral to Existenz. Man’s orientation to neglect the possibilities of his Existenz is his fallenness. He is equipped both with Existenz and fallenness. Both are his existential structures or his a priori capabilities. The possibilities of Existenz ae too profound and even revolutionary to be realized by Dasein. On the other hand, the temptations of fallenness are too powerful, attractive and beguiling that most of us find it almost impossible not to yield to them. Man’s fallenness is his almost interminable engagement or involvement or pre-occupation with the concerns and chores of everyday life that the need for exacting and overtaxing reflection upon and responsiveness to the possibilities of existenz pales into insignificance. This very fallenness constitutes the core of inauthenticity. According to Heidegger, the primitive mode of man is undifferentiated everydayness. The everydayness of man is Dasein’s engagement with petty chores in the world of equipment. This everydayness is shorn or devoid of any reflective introspection. Man in this primitive everydayness is blissfully ignorant of his possibilities. He is not alive to his uniqueness but in his ontological somnombulance deems himself a part and parcel of the faceless and nameless populace at large. This undifferentiated primitive man is merged into the world of equipment or of tools wherein chores or petty tasks are to be done. Most of the man most of time of their lives prefer to or love to remain absorbed into this undifferentiated primitive everydayness. This undifferentiated primitiveness originating from and sustained by the interminable performance of petty everyday chores in the world of tools would naturally not have been conducive to the emergence and development of self-consciousness. With the emergence of larger societies in different parts of the globe and the gradually ever-increasing social interaction amidst different groups of the people across the spectrum, man’s self-consciousness sprouted forth slowly and steadily. For Heidegger, man is primitively a Being-with-others. Man is primarily establishmentarian, das-Man, social, average Dasein. His uniqueness, his Existenz and his self-consciousness are a function of the long drawn out interpersonal and inter-societal interactions carried out through the highways and byways of life or throughout civilisational evolution. The question as to how do we know others have minds dealt elaborately by Wittgenstein, wisdom, Ryle, Austin etc. originates from a deep confusion and is deeply confusing as well. Such a question arises against the assumption that we as self-conscious subjects or agents want to know how others are self-conscious. Some philosophers have argued that we know as to how others have minds by recurse to analogy and others have argued that we know others have minds by means of empathy. Heidegger refuses to accept that we know other persons have minds either analogously or empathetically. The argument from analogy or empathy is fallacious because we do not a prior ontological awareness of our own persons and therefrom derive the existence of the minds of others. Rather, our very existence presupposes the existence of others. Our knowledge of our very Being presupposes that we are Being-with-others (Being & Time, pp. 117-125). Modern European philosophers – both continental and British – led by Rana Descartes wrongly assumed or supposed that we are competent or capable of knowing ourselves without in anyway being dependent on interpersonal or intersocietal interactions. The ‘I’ in “I think, therefore I exist” is only grammatically or formally indicative or at best ontically or prereflectively in directive; it is never ontologically interpretative or prescriptive as to who this ‘I’ is. The grammatical, formal, prereflective or ontical indication of ‘D’ can be construed with the ontological interpretation or prescription of ‘I’ at the cost of a deep category confusion being worse confounded. Heidegger writes : The ‘others’ are not apart from us or isolated from us. We do not jump to their existence from our supposedly isolated ‘subjecthood’ or ‘egohood’. The so-called ‘I’ does not stand out against so-called ‘others’. The ‘I’ is indistinguishably and inseparably part and parcel of ‘others’. The ‘I’ is not ontologically precedent to ‘others’; rather ‘I’ is co-evally and equiprimordially one with the ‘others’. The relationship is not characterized by any priority or posteriority but by simultaneity. Our ‘Being’ is inextricably dependent on our ‘Being-in-the-world-with-others’. Thus, it is both false and invalid to argue from knowledge of myself to my knowledge of the existence of others. ‘Being-with-others’ is one of our most significant existential structures. We are inextricably “Being-with” even when we are physically isolated or even “rusticated” within an unapproachable polar island. Dasein’s “Being alone” IS simultaneously “Being with”. We are essentially pilgrims of the realm of “intersubjectivity” rather than being prisoners within the cage of “subjectivity”. Thus, the problem is not to argue analogously or empathetically from the fact of our “self-consciousness” or “subjectivity” to the existence of others as was wrongly assumed by British philosophers from J.S. Mill upto John Austin or even at one stage by Husserl himself. Rather, the problem is other way round. The Dasein is too inextricably a part of public at large to be capable of appropriating its’ authenticity. He is inseparable from others and in his everydayness is blissfully forgetful of his self. The identity of Dasein signifies the identity of others. Dasein as “Being-with” is identical with the public, with his social role and his identity and role are defined by the public. Dasein becomes forgetful of his Existenz and of his right to project his possibilities. The self of Dasein becomes the self of the anonymous public, of the das Man. Dasein becomes subservient to the tastes and criteria of das Man. He hyperredulously follows the standards of sneess and failure imposed by das Man. The individual differences of taste, degree, kind and evaluation are ironed out by das Man into everydayness and averageness. It is an ontical condition of das Man to sustain itself or to breathe through averageness. Human society inevitably and inexorably orients or adjusts itself to the norms and values of das Man. It is the das Man which defines all values and disvalues. Human successes and failures are measured against the criteria of evaluation promulgated and prescribed by das Man (Being & time, p. 127). This leads to the leveling down of all the possibilities of the Existenz of Dasein. All things sink to the same level. The intelligence, talent and intellectual power are replaced by average learning, by routine, by hard-work and by showing-off. Accordingly, Dasein while faithfully following the standards set by das Man, is himself relieved of the responsibility of setting his own standards of success and failure. The life of Dasein is made easy by das Man. The Dasein is transmuted into das Man, so to say. The das Man becomes the standard bearer and flag bearer of Dasein. The das Man takes hold of our Existenz, of our authentic self. Dasein is dispersed into das Man as well as absorbed into it. This dispersal and absorption signifies unqualified surrender of Dasein to das Man: An authentic Dasein openly and explicitly faces or confronts the question of Being, the question of his self-identity. He does not suppress the question of self identity or the question of the exploration of authenticity but explicates or articulates it to the best of his lights. He grasps the depth and range of the choices of existenz. He is radically cognizant of the extent of the possibilities he is either burdened with or blessed with. Asking and facing the question of Being or self-identity is an essential structure of all man. An authentic person honestly recognizes the range of answers while most of them inauthentically choose to suppress the question of choosing a way of life and lapse into some ready-made style of behavior appropriated and popularized by others (Solomon, p.209). Authenticity and inauthenticity are two modes of Dasein’s existence. These two modes refer to man’s relationship to himself. The thoughts and actions of an authentic person are oriented to an adequate understanding of his identity, personality or Being. On the other hand, an inauthentic person thinks and acts blindly thanks to his inadequate understanding of his identity or in view of the enforced refusal to recognize his possibilities or potentialities. Every Dasein is invested with the potentiality to be both authentic and inauthentic. Authenticity and inauthenticity are both existentialia of Dasein. Authenticity of a Dasein is a function of his adequate ontological recognition of his Existenz, facticity and fallenness. An inadequate recognition of one’s Existenz or a total forgetfulness of one’s possibilities and being smug and complacent in one’s fallenness signify inauthenticity. Authenticity, despite being an ontological potentiality, is an ideal to be striven for a severy one of us is also always potentially oriented to fallenness and even the most impeccable human actions and most immaculate human thoughts are inextricably, incorrigibly and ineliminably tinged with inauthenticity. The ideal of authenticity is rarely approximated and never fully appropriated. Most of the man for most of their lives strive ceaselessly to stay where they are; in the matter of fallenness, in the vortex of inauthenticity. They are incorrigibly oriented to self-refusal and self-denial or disoriented to self-recognition or to use a more traditional metaphor, self-realisation. The endless striving of man is oriented to becoming das Man. Man’s lifelong struggle is oriented to staying put in primitive undifferentiated everydayness or das Man’s averageness. The Dasein is bereft of his standards. He is innocent of his Existenz. He is powerfully capitivated by the standards advanced or practiced by das Man. He looses the capacity and blindly accepts public standards of thought and action. Man’s powerful rather irresistible orientation to inauthenticity and fallenness puts up a stout struggle against all attempts to a realization of one’s ownmost possibilities. Man in his forgetfulness of Being carries out an irresistibly strong and subtle repression of Being. While our inauthenticity refuses to ask the question of Being, Our primitive undifferentiated everydayness is philosophically too unsophisticated and ontologically too innocent to ask the question of Being. Authenticity entails, firstly, recognition of one’s facticity, secondly, understanding projecting one’s possibilities and thirdly, discourse or an underlying structure which makes disclosure of understanding articulatable. On the other hand, an inauthentic person does not discover his facticity, he finds himself in a state of ambiguity and is always immersed in activities that are both endless and meaningless. The understanding of an inauthentic person cannot function for he can scarcely make the distinction between what he inherits from das Man and what he understands on his own. Such an understanding cannot be self-questioning and cannot interrogate it’s own possibilities. Such an understanding degenerates to curiosity about things. A curious person can be a brilliant scientist or an outstanding scholar and can make highly significant and excellent contributions to scholarship and research. However, such a person cannot ask the fundamental questions pertaining to his Existenz and its’ possibilities. Authenticity and inauthenticity are existential structures. They are possibilities. Some men can decide to pursue authenticity in all its contexts, implications and ramifications. Some people can choose to live inauthentically and consequently blindly follow public standards and spend their entire lives in the pursuit of endless necessities and contingencies of everydayness. Man is not invested with any universal nature. Man has only possibilities. Our authenticity as well as inauthenticity both are qualified. Unqualified authenticity is as impossible of attainment as unqualified inauthenticity is. Our quest for total authenticity is always compromised by our perennial itch for “falleness”. The beguilements and reductions of inauthenticity too cannot totally consume us for the pull of Existenz is unyielding as well. The “satisfactions” and “reassurances” of average everydayness too are finally recognized or pierced through for what they are. Dasein is temporarily, he is Being-unto-Death. Dasein is temporality in the sense that there could be no time except for Dasein. On the other hand, the possibility of Dasein itself is radically hinged on there being time. Dasein is in time; he constitutes or projects temporality. Time is an a priori condition for Being-in-the-world. However, human consciousness or Dasein too constitutes an a priori condition of time. Dasein and temporality are ontologically dependent on one another. All Being-in-the-world is grounded in Dasein as temporality. Dasein can be characterized as Being-in-Time. The horizon of human understanding is time. It is time that makes understanding of being possible. Dasein is primarily historical. Dasein projects it’s possibilities through temporal horizon into the future. The three existential structures of Dasein viz. exisenz, facticity and fallenness, all the three are oriented to time. Existenz as projection of possibilities is equated with the future. Facticity as already being in the world corresponds to the past. Fallenness as preoccupatrion with everyday concerns corresponds to the present. Similarly understanding, authenticity, inauthenticity, discourse etc. too can be shown to be temporally oriented. Dasein and time, in short, are two sides of the same coin. Heidegger makes a distinction between authentic view of time and inauthentic view of time The authentic view of time is the original phenomenon of time which is manifest to us in our own Being. As against the original authentic phenomenon of time, the inauthentic view of time is derived from our everyday dealings and transactions. The authentic conception of time is grounded in ourselves as the origin of temporality. The inauthentic everyday conception of time is deemed to be a constant or interminable succession of instants or nanoinstants or nows. Such an inauthentic time is characterized by Heidegger as world-time and this conception of time has dominated the philosophical reflections throughout the history of philosophy. This inauthentic view of time can be objectively standardized or measured thereby facilitating our social, political and commercial transactions. The public utility or usefulness of this view of time can hardly be overemphasized. However, such a view of time hides from us the true or authentic time, the existential ontological structure of time, viz. that we are the source of time and temporality is imposed upon the world by us. Dasein originates time. Dasein is constantly oriented both origins i.e. past and goals i.e. future. He does not surrender to the concerns of the present. He is cognizant of his past and concerned about his future. The inauthentic public or commercial world-time is deemed to be infinite. Dasein’s time, however, is finite. His projection of possibilities has an end i.e. the death of Dasein (Solomon, op.cit., pp. 223-25). Heidegger defines Dasein as possibilities. Death is Dasein’s “innermost” possibility, his extreme or ultimate possibility. Death is the end or limit of Dasein’s possibilities. It is what makes Dasein’s temporality finite. Dasein is, in the final analysis, Being-unto-Death. It is the certainty, finality and unavoidability of death which can and does make authenticity possible. Facing death, enduring the inescapability of death and appropriating death as one’s ultimate possibility is what constitutes authenticity. Paradoxically enough, it is death that lends meaning and significance to life. It is death which orientates our call of conscience from our depths to our depths to be authentic. It is death which liberates us form the averageness, everydayness and inauthenticity of “here and now” and enables us to take an authentic, integrated and holistic view of our possibilities. It is death which induces in us the guilt of having wasted ourselves in the pointless and meaningless pursuit of averageness and everydayness. It is death which inspires in us the resolve to be and stay authentic (Solomon, op.cit., p. 227). Later Heidegger is not a rebuttal or rejection of early Heidegger mainly represented by “Being and Time”. The central problem for Heidegger throughout his philosophical career has been working out an explication or accomplishing an illumination of the problem of Being. Early Heidegger, however, was more focused on the study of the Being of particular entities including human Being. Later Heidegger is more focused on the problem of Being itself. Early Heidegger heavily emphasized on Dasein. Later Heidegger turns back to the problem of Being. However, the problem of Being remains central throughout as it was announced in the very “Being and Time” that investigation of Dasein was only a preliminary to the problem of Being. However, in his quest for the expression of Being itself or Being as such, Heidegger negotiates several twists and turns. Giving up routinised language of traditional philosophers, Heidegger comes up with radical use of not-so-traditional terms in “Being and Time”. After the publication of “Being and Time”, Heidegger increasingly turns to poetic use of language as an authentic expression of Being for poetic language is unmetaphysical and unconceptual and yet akin to philosophical quest for Being. He is also attracted to pre-Socratic philosophy as an authentic expression of the problem of Being. However, finally nothing satisfies Heidegger’s search for an unprejudiced language with a view to expressing Being itself. He gives up all his philosophisations. He gives up all ontological investigations. He gives up all efforts at disclosure of truth or expression of Being or revelation of Reality, so to say. He is landed into what may be called an idiosyneratic condition, into what may be characterized as mysticism of silence and patience. In silent patience Heidegger waits for the word of Being, for the self-disclosure of Being, for the self-revelation of Being. Heidegger gives up his earlier humanistic proctivities and predilections. He gives up his earlier thesis that Being has its’ ground in man or Dasein. Man does work out his representation of Being. He does appropriate his intuitions of Being. He does bring out his definitions of Being. However, all is reprsentations, intuitions and definitions are ineliminably and inextricably rooted in the impasse of his own humanity (Heidegger : Neitzsche, vol. I, p. 358). The quest for Being is inescapably humanized by man. Later Heidegger as against early Heidegger brings out that Dasein on its’ own cannot disclose Being to itself. The disclosure of the truth of Being is not worked out by Dasein. Such a disclosure is vouchsafed to Dasein to Dasein by Being. Such a disclosure is a gift of Being to Dasein. This disclosure is a function of an original mystery. Being is independent of Dasein. However, Dasein is dependent on Being : “It thus becomes necessary to escape this “inescapable humanization” if we are to understand Being itself, and this requires giving up the notion that Dasein himself discloses the truth of Being to himself. In these later writings, disclosure is not carried out by Dasein (as in Sein und Zeit), but is “granted” or “given” to Dasein by Being itself. This disclosure, or gift of Being, is no longer based on Dasein, but on an original mystery. Being no longer is for Dasein, but Dasein is for the sake of Being” (Solomon, op.cit., p. 242). Thus, in his later phase, Heidegger works out a radical shift or paradigm shift. The Being is not disclosed by Dasein himself. Rather, the Being discloses itself to Dasein. It is the Being that unfolds itself. Later Heidegger’s conception of Being quite vividly resembles the traditional transcendent Christian God. Man becomes a vehicle for the self-revelation of Being. This personified Being is to be approach with devotion and an attitude of reverence, rather than to be treated as a question of philosophical interpretation and ontological investigation. The religious and devotional fervor of the following lines from Heidegger cannot be missed by anyone: (i)	Being is the mission of thought : (Heidegger : Leter On Humanism; translated by E. Lohner in Twentieth Century Philosophy, vol. II, Edited by H. Aiken and W. Barrett, New York, 1962, p. 46). (ii)	Thought is the devotion to Being, nothing else (Ibid, p.42). (iii)	The need is: to preserve the truth of Being no matter what may happen to man and everything that is (Heidegger: What is Metaphysics, translated by A. Crick and R.F.C. Hull, in Existence and Being, edited by W. Brock, Chicago, 1949, p. 389). In fact, Heidegger exhorts us to be grateful to Being. We must express our thanks to Being for being graceful in endowing us humans with those qualities of head and heart that in our relationship to Being we can take over even the guardianship of Being (Ibid., p. 389). Man has been all along concerned with the capacity of language to express Being. Heidegger now talks about “the word” which is spoken by Being to man. Human thought is obedient to the Voice of Being. It seeks “the word” through which the truth of Being may be expressed (Solomon, op.cit., p. 242). This language is not the natural language or language of everydayness. The truth of Being cannot be brought out by careful preparation or systematization of our ordinary mode of thought. The truth of Being can be brought out through the utterance of a thinker which comes after long guarded speechlessness or silence and field-clarification. Poetry and thought born out of the cultivation of such silence and field-clarification nurse the most unadulterated or purest of utterances. In such moments of purity, the thinker utters Being and the poet brings out what is holy (Solomon, op.cit., p. 243). The Dasein does not constitute Being. On the other hand, it is Being that constitutes Dasein. The original and essential thought of the truth of Being is transcendentally if not divinely vouchsafed to man. The existence of man, according to Heidegger, is nothing but standing within the disclosure of Being (Heidegger: latter on Humanism, op.cit., p 13). “Language is the house of Being” is one of the catchprases of Heidegger. However, it should not be construed to be indicating that man is capable of using or mastering language with a view to understanding or expressing Being. Rather, it is language that uses man. It is the Being that grants disclosure to Dasein. It is the Being that imparts message to man. In fact, Being discloses itself to itself. Man is purely a vehicle for self-revelation of Being. The disclosure of Being to man is to be patiently striven for and gratefully and reverentially acknowledged. Traditional philosophy in all it’s ontological glory, cosmological resplendence and axiological radiance is irrelevant to Heideggerian “Theology of Being” or shall we say “Mystery of Being” or “Mysticism of Being”. This shift from Greek and Modern philosophy and Christian Theology to “Mysticism of Being” is a paradigm shfit of exceptional and radical consequences and implications.