Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling: Angst and the Finitude of Being

162 Pages·2008·0.7 MB·English

by  Sharin N. Elkholy

Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from
Continuum. The series features fi rst-class scholarly research monographs
across the fi eld of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major
contribution to the fi eld of philosophical research.
Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan
Badiou and Derrida, Antonio Calcagno
Badiou, Balibar, Ranciere, Nicholas Hewlett
Deconstruction and Democracy, Alex Thomson
Deleuze and Guattari’s Philosophy of History, Jay Lampert
Deleuze and the Meaning of Life, Claire Colebrook
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
En countering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan-Wortham and
Allison Weiner
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Heidegger and the Place of Ethics, Michael Lewis
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger’s Contributions to Philosophy, Jason Powell
Husserl’s Phenomenology, Kevin Hermberg
The Irony of Heidegger, Andrew Haas
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Sartre’s Ethics of Engagement, T. Storm Heter
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Ricoeur and Lacan, Karl Simms
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Heidegger and a Metaphysics
of Feeling
Angst and the Finitude of Being
Sharin N. Elkholy
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Sharin N. Elkholy 2008
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN-10: HB: 0-8264-9875-2
ISBN-13: HB: 978-0-8264-9875-5
Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
Elkholy, Sharin N.
Heidegger and a metaphysics of feeling: Angst and the fi nitude of being/Sharin N. Elkholy.
p. cm.
ISBN 978–0-8264–9875-5
1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889–1976. Sein und Zeit. 2. Anxiety. 3. Finite, The. 4. Truth.
5. Aletheia (The Greek word) I. Title.
B3279.H48S4629 2008
193--dc22
2008001251
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddles Ltd, King’s Lynn, Norfolk
For my father
who gave me a world,
and the world
And as for our future, one will hardly fi nd us again on the paths of those
Egyptian youths who endanger temples by night, embrace statues, and want
by all means to unveil, uncover, and put into bright light whatever is kept
concealed for good reasons . . . We no longer believe that truth remains truth
when the veils are withdrawn; we have lived too much to believe this. Today
we consider it a matter of decency not to wish to see everything naked, or to
be present at everything, or to understand and ‘know’ everything.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix
in Songs, tr. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974).
Table of Contents
Introduction
The Yoking of Angst to Aletheia: Heidegger
and a Metaphysics of Feeling 1
Chapter 1
Introduction to the Project and Method of
Being and Time: Preliminary Outline of the
Existential Structures of Da-sein 13
Chapter 2
Being-toward-death—Stage one of Angst:
The Groundlessness of Being and the
Unboundedness of Da-sein 43
Chapter 3
Being-guilty—Stage two of Angst:
The Temporalization of Angst and how
the Nothing becomes Something 69
Chapter 4
Angst and Aletheia: Finitude and the
Nondialectical Relation of Da-sein and Being 95
Conclusion
Angst and Historicity: From the “They” to the “We” 119
Notes 135
Bibliography 145
Index 149
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Introduction
The Yoking of Angst to Aletheia : Heidegger
and a Metaphysics of Feeling
The problem starts with Plato. But never having been recognized as a
problem, it continues to plague philosophy, that is, before Heidegger came
onto the scene to expose how Western metaphysics had gone awry. The
problem is summarized in his essay Plato’s Doctrine Of Truth. It is the problem
of metaphysics bequeathed by Plato. Through his reading of the “allegory
of the cave,” Heidegger argues that Plato inaugurates a remarkable shift in
the essence of truth that simultaneously founds both the essence of Being
as “presence,” and the orientation of the human being toward this essence.
Prior to the shift, Heidegger’s Greeks understood truth—aletheia—as an
“unhiddenness” in relation to a “hiddenness” that remained beyond the
grasp of subjective self-assertion. “Truth originally means what has been
wrested from hiddenness.”1 However after Plato, “being present is no longer
what it was in the beginning of Western thinking: the emergence of the
hidden into unhiddenness.”2 After Plato, what originally appeared ceased
to show itself in relation to the mystery of the hidden; but instead came to
be yoked to the outward appearance of what is made visible by the “idea.”
“A ληθεαι comes under the yoke of the ιδεα.”3
Heidegger goes on to explain, by positing the idea as that which brings
forth the unhidden as well as that by which the unhidden is recognized,
Plato comes to construct truth as correctness in the sense of catching sight
of the idea as it is manifest in the world. The idea, particularly the Idea of
all ideas, the Good, replaces the hidden as the source of beings that are no
longer understood in an “attunement” to the hidden but in terms of percep-
tion. “Ever since, what matters in all our fundamental orientations toward
beings is the achieving of a correct view of the ideas.”4 According to
Heidegger, this shift inherited from Plato founds both the notion of Being
as “objective presence” and the notion of truth as correctness that continue
to plague Western metaphysics.
Inseparable from this change in the essence of truth is a parallel change
in the essence of education that “has to do with one’s being and thus takes