Askay: Resposta de Heidegger a não tratar do corpo

What, then, was Heidegger’s rejoinder to the objections raised by the French concerning his lack of treatment of the body? What, according to Heidegger, is the nature of the relationship between bodily being and existence?

Heidegger’s account (echoed and developed by Boss in the Foundations) is most easily understood when we see it as a series of interconnected claims.

(1) Bodily being belongs essentially to existence.16 Man would not be able to be in relation to that which he apprehends as that which addresses him, if he did not have a bodily nature. (GA89   292) Bodily being is always already involved in the experience of that which is present. (GA89   248) Bodily being co-determines Dasein’s existence as being-in-the-world. (GA89   115, 122, 126)

(2) Bodily being presupposes being-in-the-world (i.e., Dasein, as openness, as the ecstatic dwelling in the clearing of being). (GA89   113, 122, 244) Bodily being is the necessary yet insufficient condition for Dasein’s being-in-the-world. (GA89   232)

(3) Bodily being does not encompass being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world includes more than bodily being, e.g., the understanding of being, the limit of the horizon of Dasein’s understanding of being, etc. (GA89   244) Yet it is not merely added on to bodily being. (GA89   248)

(4) The most primordial ontological characteristics of Dasein include: being-in-the-world, openness, presence, ecstatic dwelling in the clearing, etc. Bodily-being is “founded upon” Dasein’s responsiveness to the clearing. (GA89   232) One must begin with the basic constitution of human existence as existence, as a domain of the openness toward a world in light of which the significant features of what is encountered addresses man. (GA89   292)

(5) Bodily being is possible because our being-in-the-world always already consists “of a relatedness in which we perceive-apprehend that which addresses us out of the openness of our world.” (GA89   293) As the ones who are addressed, we are always already directed toward the given facts of the world which are disclosed. It is due to this directedness that we are able to be bodily beings in the first place. Dasein’s existence is the precondition for the possibility of bodily being. (GA89   113)

In order to elucidate Heidegger’s account, a concrete everyday example might be useful. Consider the fact that you are currently reading this text. In order to read this text you must have bodily being, else you would not be able to relate to this journal to begin with. It is because your way of addressing the text necessarily includes a kind of directedness that you are able to distinguish between the front and back of the book, its right side from its left, its top and bottom, etc. Yet, your bodily comportment while reading this article presupposes and does not entirely encompass your being-in-the-world. As you [33] read this text, you, in your implicit understanding of being, are trying to make sense of some subtle nuances in Heidegger’s philosophy. You do this against a multiplicity of backgrounds: your training in philosophy in general, your previous familiarity with Heidegger’s philosophy, your physical health, your level of interest, how things are generally going in your life, etc. Hence, your reading this text is not reducible to your bodily comportment toward this text. In order for you to even see the ‘text’, you must already have at least an implicit understanding of being on some level. This text has meaning for your being-in-the-world because you are the kind of being which can apprehend-perceive that which addresses you out of the openness of our world. That is, you are open to and the necessary condition for the field of meaning (which includes the text with which you are presently involved and your bodily comportment toward it) in which you are immersed.