Blattner (1999:34-38) – características de Dasein são habilidade

The Ability Thesis: All of Dasein’s characteristics are ability-characteristics.

“But surely,” one might object, “this Ability Thesis is indefensible: Jones has many state-characteristics, such as being six feet tall.” To defend the Ability Thesis I shall argue, first, that the state-characteristic of being six feet tall is closely associated with a self-interpretive ability-characteristic, and, second, that Dasein is only to be identified with the related ability-characteristic, not with the state-characteristic. Jones is six feet tall. She also, however, has stature: she comports herself as a tall person. This comportment embodies Jones’s self-understanding of her physical (35) height. Stature, in this sense, is not purely physical, is not the sort of characteristic a tree of the same physical height can have. A person who understands herself as unusually tall might talk down to people, use her height to lord it over them; on the other hand, she might be embarrassed by her height, more shy about physical encounters. Similarly, although being a female is a biological fact about Jones, being feminine is her way of interpreting that biological fact. (Think of the way in which we speak of degrees of femininity and masculinity, and the way in which baby-name books sometimes categorize baby names by how feminine or masculine they are.)¹ Thus, closely related to the state-characteristics of being six feet tall and female are the self-interpretive characteristics of being tall and feminine.

Furthermore, self-interpretive characteristics are abilities. One must know how to be them. Being six feet tall or biologically female is a state, not an ability; it involves no know-how. But being tall (in the stature sense) or feminine is an ability. It is a way of handling oneself and relating to others. Abilities are easiest to notice when they break down. Imagine someone bad at being tall, say, someone who tries to lord it over others physically but fails. He would seem rather foolish trying. He sets his shoulders back, cocks his head downward, and says, “Um, excuse me, please.” Being tall is learned, sometimes mastered, and can be done better and worse. We are socialized into or are taught our self-interpretive stature-characteristics, just as with many other, more obviously self-interpretive characteristics (being American, being bourgeois, etc.). These characteristics are one and all abilities. Hence, each of the state-characteristics we have considered (being six feet tall, female) is closely associated with a self-interpretive ability-characteristic (being tall, feminine).

One might think that the force of the argument above depends on contrasting a physical state-characteristic with a self-interpretive ability-characteristic. But this is not so. Jones is not only six feet tall, but also, say, the leader of her weekly book discussion group. That is clearly self-interpretive: one is not the leader of a group naturally, but rather only by being socially and interpretively situated in a certain way. But is it a state-characteristic? Heidegger would argue not. Jones must know how to be a group leader; she must be capable of it. Being a group leader is having and exercising a set of abilities: the ability to organize a group’s meeting, the ability to control a discussion, even the ability to use a phone. So what (36) appear to be interpretive state-characteristics turn out, in the final analysis, also to be state-characteristics. Consequently, none of Dasein’s interpretive characteristics are state-characteristics, and thus the argument does not trade on narrowing our focus on state-characteristics to physical ones.

The second leg of the defense of the Ability Thesis is the more difficult one: the claim that Dasein is only to be identified with these self-interpretive characteristics, not with its factual state-characteristics. Because I have already argued that what appear to be self-interpretive state-characteristics are really ability-characteristics, I can now argue that Dasein is only its ability-characteristics by arguing that Dasein is only its self-interpretive characteristics.

Dasein is properly only its interpretive, or existential, characteristics and is not conceived properly through its factual characteristics:

entities that are not worldless, e.g., Dasein itself, are also occurrent “in” the world, or more precisely stated, can, with a certain legitimacy and within certain limits, be conceived as merely occurrent. To do this, it is necessary to look completely away from, or better, not to see the existential makeup of being-in.² This possible conception of “Dasein” as something occurrent and only occurrent should not be confused with Dasein’s own manner of “occurrentness.” (SZ:55, note the scare-quotes)

Heidegger makes three significant claims here. (1) One can “with a certain legitimacy” conceive Dasein as something occurrent. In this context, the term “occurrent” appears simply to pick out all things unlike Dasein, that is, nonexistential entities, including the available.³ One can therefore “with a certain legitimacy” conceive Dasein as nonhuman, nonexistential. (2) In doing this one must prescind from Dasein’s “existential makeup.” That is, one can conceive Jones factually, if one abstracts away from Jones’s properly Daseinish, existential features. This abstraction thereby grasps a nonexistential element or aspect of Jones, in the first instance, one would think, her biology. (3) This nonexistential abstraction is not the same as Dasein’s “proper occurrence,” that is, its facticity. “Facticity” is the name that Heidegger gives to Dasein’s determinacy as an (37) existential entity. I shall explore the concept of facticity later in this chapter. Despite Heidegger’s referring to it as “Dasein’s own manner of ‘occurrentness,’ ” or even precisely by using “occurrentness” here in scare-quotes, he wants to contrast it with whatever might be natural in Dasein. Let me formulate the overall claim of this paragraph in another thesis:

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).