Blattner (1999:32-34) – Dasein autocompreensivo e ocorrente

A tese da dualidade: O Dasein   pode ser considerado tanto na sua forma própria e ontológica, como essencialmente autocompreensivo, e de uma forma abstrata e factual como algo que meramente ocorre (naturalmente).

The Duality Thesis  : Dasein can be considered both in its proper, ontological makeup as essentially self-understanding and in an abstracted, factual way as something that merely occurs (esp., naturally).

This Duality Thesis is central to Heidegger’s ontology. Of immediate relevance is this: only with the help of the Ability and Duality Theses can Heidegger maintain the Existentiality Thesis. The general strategy for responding to potential counterexamples to the Existentiality Thesis is to distinguish factual characteristics from the existential ability-characteristics that are interpretations of them. The three theses come together as a package deal in Being and Time  .

We can clarify the Ability Thesis further by approaching it again from a slightly different angle. Let us begin with a deceptively direct comment by Heidegger early in Being and Time:

The characteristics that can be exhibited by [Dasein] are thus not   occurrent “properties” of an occurrent entity that “looks” such and so, but rather possible ways for [Dasein] in each case to be and only that. (SZ:42)

One might think this sentence simply says that whatever Dasein is (its characteristics) are possible for it. Of course, this is a mere triviality, since it just states that all of Dasein’s (actual) characteristics are possible (characteristics). But Heidegger offers it byway of explicating the Existentiality Thesis: it directly follows the sentence, quoted above, "The ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence" (SZ:42). And it is hard to see how a triviality could explicate something so difficult and putatively innovative as the Existentiality Thesis. In order to see the passage (and hence, Heidegger’s entire ontology of Dasein) as more than merely trivial, we must figure out what special content is carried by Heidegger’s phrase “possible ways for Dasein to be.”

Heidegger suggests that there is a special notion of possibility that applies to Dasein, one quite unlike that that applies to, say, a tree:

Being-possible, which Dasein in each case is existentially, is distinguished just as much from empty, logical possibility as from the contingency of something occurrent, insofar as with the latter this and that can “happen.”

 

[38] As a modal category of being-occurrent, possibility means the not yet actual and the not ever necessary. It characterizes the merely possible. . . . Possibility as an existentiale, on the other hand  , is the most originary and last  , positive  , ontological determination of Dasein. (SZ:143-4)

Heidegger is here clearly trying to argue for a third sort of possibility other than logical possibility and the “contingency of something occurrent” (which I shall call “occurrent possibility”). But what sort of possibility is that? To answer this question, it is helpful to examine his characterization of occurrent possibility.

Richard Schmitt (1969, p. 178 fif.) has addressed this passage directly and helpfully. I want to borrow from his reading of it. Unfortunately, one aspect of his interpretation   is clearly wrong. He interprets occurrent possibility as “physical possibility.” But this is not right for two reasons. First, occurrent possibility is supposed to apply not only to the naturally and physically occurrent, but to any sort of occurrent item, whether it be physical, mental, mathematical, or whatever. Second, because Heidegger does not carve out any special notion for the available, I suggest that he is here using the term “occurrent” in its broad sense to apply to anything unlike Dasein. If so, “physical possibility” is yet more inappropriate, because not only is the available far from exclusively physical, but also the possibilities that govern even the physically available are not primarily physical possibilities (e.g., how a hammer can be used).

Heidegger’s explanation of the concept of occurrent possibility makes no mention of “physical possibility.” He says simply, and unfortunately darkly, that occurrent possibility is the “contingency of the occurrent,” and that “with the latter, this and that can happen.” The idea   seems to be this: let me regiment the phraseology “with the latter, this and that can happen” as “with respect to something, some event can take place.” Consider the tree: with respect to the tree, a burning down can take place; put otherwise, the tree can be the subject of a burning down. If this parsing of Heidegger’s language is correct, then occurrent possibility is simply the contingent taking place of an event.

Now, Dasein’s possibilities are, according to this passage, supposed to be different in kind. How? The rest of the paragraph in which this passage occurs focuses on Dasein’s ability-to-be. This leads naturally to the suggestion — this is Schmitt’s significant contribution — that Dasein’s possibilities are abilities. We can say, “The tree can burn down,” but we should not thereby mean “The tree has the ability to burn down,” at least not in [39] the precise sense that the tree has some competence. But this is what it is to say of Jones that she can be a translator; it is to say that she is able to translate, that she has that competence.

Schmitt’s reading of Heidegger’s concept of existential possibility fits in ready with the overall interpretation I am offering. Dasein’s possibilities are abilities, and as Heidegger says on p. 42, all Dasein’s characteristics are existential possibilities, that is, abilities. Furthermore, the very idea of distinguishing two different sorts of possibility, occurrent and existential, reflects the Duality Thesis. We ought not, in a careful, ontological analysis, conflate the two different ways in which we can consider Dasein: abstractly as occurrent and properly as existential. This distinction runs so deep that we must even introduce distinct notions of possibility to do it justice. To reiterate: the Heideggerian defense of the Existentiality Thesis is carried out by way of the Ability and Duality Theses. We end up with a dualistic picture of Dasein, who when conceived properly is characterized only as having self-interpretive abilities, but when conceived improperly (abstractly) is also characterized as having state-characteristics.