Heidegger on language and death : the intrinsic connection in human existence

225 Pages·2011·1.598 MB·English

by  Heidegger, Martin, O'Brien, Mahon

Heidegger and Authenticity
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
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
Art and Institution, Rajiv Kaushik
Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach
Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller
Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan
Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon O’Sullivan and
Stephen Zepke
Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
Derrida: Profanations, Patrick O’Connor
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner
The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi
Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy
Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler
Heidegger and Logic, Greg Shirley
Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin
Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte
Kant, Deleuze and Architectonics, Edward Willatt
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
The Movement of Nihilism, edited by Laurence Paul Hemming, Kostas Amiridis and
Bogdan Costea
Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove
Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future, edited by Jeffrey Metzger
Philosophical Hermeneutics in Relation, Paul Fairfi eld
Place, Commonality and Judgment, Andrew Benjamin
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte
Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought, Robin Small
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman
Heidegger and Authenticity
From Resoluteness to Releasement
Mahon O’Brien
Continuum International Publishing Group
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© Mahon O’Brien, 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
EISBN: 978-1-4411-9641-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
O’Brien, Mahon.
Heidegger and authenticity: from resoluteness to releasement / Mahon O’Brien.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ).
ISBN 978-1-4411-1118-0
1. Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976. 2. Authenticity (Philosophy) I. Title.
B3279.H49O27 2011
193–dc22
2011007409
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain
To the memory of my grandparents

Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations x
Introduction 1
1. Being and Time – A New Departure 9
Heidegger’s Question 10
The Tradition’s Missteps 14
The Existential Analytic 17
2. The Initial Version of the Dynamic – The Turn to
Authenticity 27
Morbidity, Psychology and the Phenomenological Role of
the Analysis of Authenticity 28
Authenticity and Death 32
Conscience’s Call 37
Being Authentically with Others and Some Criticisms 45
Heidegger’s Idea of Authentic Social Existence:
A Prospective Retrospective 53
3. Introduction to Metaphysics – From Publicness to Gestell 63
The Fundamental Question, Fallenness and Spiritual Decline 64
Habermas’s Polemic Revisited 72
Zimmerman, Voluntarism and the Discontinuity Thesis 78
Davis: The ‘Turn’ from Resoluteness to Releasement 81
4. Gestell and the Dynamic of Co-Disclosure 91
The Extraordinary Question of Technology’s Essence
and the Causal Poetry of Production 92
Technology as Revelatory and Modern Technology’s
Mode of Revealing 100
The Standing-Reserve, the Enframing and
Modern Physical Theory 105
Enframed Destining and Enframed Freedom 108
Danger and the Saving Power 111
viii Contents
5. Heidegger and the Continual Re-turn – A Tale of Two Letters,
Interviews and Essays 121
Humanism, Metaphysics and the Turn 123
Fried and the Abiding Signifi cance of Being and Time 129
The ‘Reversal’ in the “Letter to Richardson” and within the
Project of Being and Time 132
“Only a God can save us now” 136
“On The Essence of Truth” and “The Turning” 140
Time and being 147
Conclusion: The Way Ahead 163
Notes 177
Select Bibliography 203
Index 209
Acknowledgements
I am grateful in the fi rst place to Brendan O’ Mahony whose course on
Heidegger at University College Cork in 1997 set me on my ‘way’. I would
also like to thank Brian Fitzgerald who has been a constant source of advice
and guidance from my fi rst faltering steps as an undergraduate. Boston
University’s Philosophy Department was a place of tremendous intellectual
excitement and I am especially grateful to both Victor Kestenbaum and
Krzysztof Michalski who have been generous to a fault from my earliest
days in Boston. I would also like to thank Gregory Fried who has been a
fi gure of support and inspiration all through. The School of Philosophy
at University College Dublin welcomed me into a vibrant philosophical
research community, and I am indebted to the Irish Research Council for
the Humanities and Social Sciences whose fellowship funded my research
at UCD. Above all, I wish to thank Daniel Dahlstrom for his unwavering
support and for encouraging me to publish this work.
All of my friends, of course, have played their own parts in their own
ways. In particular, since I moved back to Ireland, I am grateful to Nigel,
Nessa, Dorothy, Joe and Bernard for affording me a life away from my desk.
And, fi nally, I would like to thank my family, who gave me the space to
complete this work at home in the West of Ireland. As I look out across the
valley from my old bedroom study, I fi nd myself at peace in the world into
which I was ‘thrown’ all those years ago. For me it has been the best of all
possible worlds, and, for that, I owe thanks.