Heidegger, fenomenologia, hermenêutica, existênciaThus, we must begin with two questions: what is the place of ethics in Heidegger’s thought; and of what relevance to this place is being-with?
The answer to the first question is simple and quite unwavering throughout Heidegger’s long trek: the place of ethics is the ontological difference. Ethics, in its most originary sense, means dwelling near to being, seeking it and responding to it. (We shall examine this later in the Introduction, with a view to deflecting its many critics.) The answer to the second question is ‘everything’, although this may not be obvious at first glance, particularly since being-with seems to play such a minor and quickly forgotten role in Heidegger’s work as a whole. It is to correct such a misapprehension that this work sets itself, because in this way alone can Heidegger’s understanding of the place of ethics properly be determined.
Being-with is addressed by Heidegger in the most crucial way in Being and Time , the prime work of fundamental ontology and one governed by an understanding of being that does not in fact remain in place throughout Heidegger’s work: that is the understanding of ‘being’ as the Sein of the ontological difference between being (Sein) and beings (Seiende ). This understanding does not persist beyond the [2] ‘turn’ in Heidegger’s thought because there is a problem, if not a great many problems, with this understanding, as Heidegger himself came swiftly to realize. What I hope to show in Part I of this work is that it is being-with that may most strikingly bring these problems to light. The effect of this innocuous existentiale is thus to undermine fundamental ontology from within and initiate a crossing-through of the understanding of being which governs it, a crossing-through which is at the same time a rewriting or reworking of just what ‘being’ means. In other words, being-with initiates the crossing of Heidegger’s thought and demands that we embark on this passage which will leave behind the only apparently stable ground of the early thought of fundamental ontology. It is a signpost directing us towards the ‘turn’ in Heidegger’s thought, a monumental upheaval in the thinking of being whose radicality and suddenness are still under-appreciated.
Being-with refuses to be encompassed by the understanding of being in Heidegger’s early work precisely because the ‘with’, as Jean-Luc Nancy has suggested, is not understood at this time to be fully co-original with being itself [1]. This ‘with’ shall be the togetherness of being and beings itself, and for this reason the existential structure of being-with demonstrates that the ontological difference fails to think the relation between being and beings and merely posits or presupposes their separateness. While this presupposition is, of course, an advance on metaphysics, which submerges being in beings, it does not go so far as to think the relation and therefore the intimacy of being and beings as Heidegger’s later thought will. Here, the ‘with’ will occupy the very heart of Heidegger’s thought as he comes to think precisely the event of the ontological difference, the splitting apart of being and beings and the way in which this event is the very process of manifestation itself, an event presupposed by every phenomenon. Heidegger’s later thought is a thought of being with beings, of the very differentiation of the ontological difference which went «»thought in his early work.
