Heidegger, fenomenologia, hermenêutica, existência1. To be guilty is to be the basis of a nullity. If one looks at the overall enterprise of Heidegger’s thought, one sees that he is attempting to show how men can reason modally about their own existence, that such reasoning cannot depend upon any characterization of the world as made up of parts, since such a world is itself derived from the modal and is merely the result of one among several ways to interpret the world. In order to make a modal inquiry into human existence possible, however, the principle of discrimination between an acceptable and an unacceptable characterization of such modes must be shown to reside in the very way in which human beings can be said to exist.
In other words, the principles of discrimination between authentic and inauthentic existence — between, if you will, the "positive " and the "negative" ways to be — cannot be rooted in purely formal dimensions of thought, e.g., logic. The mere abstract negativa of logical concepts cannot illumine this all-important discrimination, since Heidegger has claimed that such concepts themselves are derived from the more important, i.e., the modal, way to reason and think. Thus Heidegger needs a sense of negative existence, which cannot merely be the concept of "that which does not exist" but, rather, "that which exists negatively." In other words, unless Heidegger can find in the basic ways in which humans exist a way which is the source and ground of negativity, he must abandon his claim that modal dimensions of existence constitute the primordial and absolutely non-derived discipline of thought. Is there, then, a way in which we exist which makes possible the negative meaning in existence? Is there a way to exist which, when properly understood, can provide one with the very source and ground of all subsequent negation ?
That Heidegger finds this way of being as the foundation of the "not" in the occurrence of guilt has been prepared by his analysis of conscience. Is there, though, any sense to describing guilt in this way? If Heidegger’s analysis is not to be seen merely as strategic to his philosophy, it must first be made clear that his analysis is not of any feelings of guilt or any psychological experience of shame or uncertainty about one’s worth or value. All such phenomenal dimensions are the result of being able to be guilty, and are hence not of an ontological significance. Heidegger’s question is about the basic or primary ability of man to be guilty; not the happenstance of his feeling guilty, and surely not the phenomenon of his sense of confusion and disorientation after having done something which we may feel should be censured. What, then, does it mean to be able to be guilty?
To be able to be guilty means to see one’s own existence as that at which one can fail or be inadequate, and that this failure is one’s own. One can be censured in act or for the adoption of a state of being only because it is first possible to be in such a way as to deserve the censure. Unless it lay solely within the dimensions of my own existence not to be myself, it would not matter whether I actually existed as myself or not. Such awareness of the ability to be "badly" cannot be accomplished by applying the logical functions of true and false or yes and no to certain experiences. Rather, such ability must be an essential part of the way I exist. One’s awareness of oneself, even in the non-philosophical but still honest moments of reflection, shows this to be the case. Just what it means to realize who one is is never as intense as in those cases in which one feels either the opprobrium of censure or the exultation of praise. The "I" found in sentences of cognition or empirical experience pales before the "I" in sentences of responsibility. One really "meets oneself" only on the roads to or from responsibility. The reason for this is that there is no further source, no other and "hidden meaning" to the success and failure of existence; there is nothing but the raw, unrelenting, stark, and inescapable "I" as the sole executor of my life. To be able to be as a failure, then, is one of the most essential ways to be in order to be a self at all.
It is always difficult to speak about those elements in any discipline or undertaking which are ultimate, simple, and basic. There is no more difficult task for the logician than to explicate the terms "true" and "false," since he uses them in all else that he does. "Energy" for a physicist is much more difficult to explain than the various ways in which energy manifests itself. In the same way, any attempt to describe the very basis for understanding existence as succeeding or not succeeding requires boldness of language coupled with a profound respect for the rigor of reflective thinking. Thus many unsympathetic readers are easily offended by Heideggeir’s attempt to awaken an understanding of how existence can be negatively at all; much less to show that the basis of this negative is in the ability of one to be guilty. In spite of the difficulty, however, one is not totally without philosophical resources in trying to grasp this idea . The point is that the "nullity" which constitutes human existence in the ability to be guilty has two dimensions: one, it must be seen as actually constituting one’s common understanding of himself as a guilty being (in the sense of being able to be guilty, not in the sense of feeling bad about a past event) ; on the other hand , it must also be seen as providing the all-important existential negative (or "nullity") without which any comprehension of human existence would be impossible. For without a sense of the negative in existence, there could be no discrimination at all, and hence no comprehension. Just as there could be no logic without the false, no moral reasoning without the bad, there can be no understanding of existence without a negative dimension to that existence.
If one were incapable of guilt, then, there would be no way in which one could confront oneself directly as the agent or determining ground of one’s existence; and if there were no such confrontation, there would be no possibility of fundamental ontology.
