Sloterdijk: Eigentlichkeit-Uneigentlichkeit (Autenticidade-Inautenticidade)

Heidegger’s movement of thought (Denkbewegung) seems to already exhaust itself: in a formal   salvaging of the authentic, which of course, can look exactly like the "inauthentic." But mere assertions are not   enough; ultimately, the much-entreated authentic existence requires something "special for itself in order to be somehow distinguished. How we are to find it remains the question for the time being. In order to make things really exciting, Heidegger emphasizes on top of it all that the "habituatedness (Verfallenheit  ) of existence as Anyone in the world is not a fall from some kind of higher or "original state," but rather that existence is all along "already-always" habituated. With dry irony, Heidegger remarks that Anyone lulls itself into thinking that it leads a genuine, full life when it throws itself unreservedly into worldly goings-on. On the contrary, it is precisely in that that he recognizes habituatedness [201]. It must be admitted that the author of Sein und Zeit   knows how to torture the reader who impatiently awaits the "authentic" and — let us be frank — it is a torture by means of a "pronounced" "deep platitude." He leads us, fantastically, explicitly, through the labyrinthine gardens of a positive   negativity; he speaks about Anyone and its talk, its curiosity, its degeneratedness into the goings-on, in brief, of "alienation," but he assures us in the same breath that all this is established without a trace of "moral   critique." Rather, all this is supposed to be an analysis "with ontological intent," and whoever speaks of Anyone is by no means describing a downtrodden self but a quality of existence that originates simultaneously with authentic being-as-self. That is how it is from the beginning, and the expression "alienation," oddly enough, does not refer back to an earlier, higher, essential authentic being without estrangement! Alienation, we learn, does not mean that existence had been wrenched from ifself," but rather that the inauthenticity of this alienation is from the start the most powerful and the most primitive mode of being of existence. In existence there is nothing that, in an evaluative sense, could be called bad, negative, or false. Alienation is simply the mode of being of Anyone.

Let us try to make the unique choreography of these leaps in thought clear: Heidegger pushes the labor of thinking, which strives toward realistic sobriety, beyond the most advanced positions of the nineteenth century. If the previous grand theories only had the power for realism when they possessed a Utopian or moral counterweight for balance, Heidegger now extends "nihilism" to include the utopian-moral area. If the typical pairings of the nineteenth century were liaisons between theoretical science and practical idealism, realism and utopianism, objectivism and mythology, Heidegger now sets about a second liquidation of metaphysics. He proceeds to a radical secularization of ends. Without much ado, he notes the unquestionable freedom from ends characteristic of life in its authenticity. We do not at all move toward radiant goals, and we are not commissioned by any authority to suffer today for a great tomorrow. Also with regard to the ends, one needs to think beyond good and evil.

The distinction between authentic and inauthentic seems more puzzling than it really is. So much is clear from the beginning: It cannot be the difference in a "thing" (beautiful-ugly, true-false, good-evil, great-small, important-unimportant), because the existential analysis operates prior to these differences. Thus, the last   conceivable difference remains that between decided and undecided existence — I would like to say, between conscious and unconscious existence. However, the opposition between conscious and unconscious should not be understood in the sense of psychological enlightenment (the undertone of decided-undecided points more in the direction intended). Conscious and unconscious here are not cognitive oppositions, or oppositions in information  , knowledge, or science, but existential qualities. If it were otherwise, the Heideggerian pathos   of "authenticity" would not be possible.