Haugeland (2013:121-124) – como não abordar o “quem”

The very word ‘who’ signals that our topic is people: those who live the way of life that dasein is. But it is not just another word for ‘person,’ as the architectonic already makes clear. As the counterpart of the world in the structure of being-in-the-world, the who (like the world) is a “level up” from all intrawordly entities—including individual people.

The main aim of the present chapter is to characterize this higher-level phenomenon ontologically—which is to say, existentially. As before, however, we approach “from below” via the relevant entities. In other words, in the order of exposition, people will play something like the part that equipment did in the world chapter. Yet, the parallel should not be overestimated. People differ from both equipment and substantial things at least as dramatically as those two do from each other.

The core idea of a substantial thing is independence: not needing anything else (save, perhaps, a creator) either to be at all or to be what it is. In particular, neither whether it is nor what it is “in itself” depends on any (122) actual relations to any other entities. (‘Being-occurrent’ is a kind of umbrella term for ontologies of this sort.)

Among the leading lessons of the previous chapter, however, was that equipment cannot be understood in this way. Equipment is essentially interdependent. What it is—its respective role—depends inextricably on role relations with other equipment and with users. If there were no such relations, there could be no such roles and hence no such equipment. (There could be no nails without hammers, no pens without ink, and so on.) As we have seen, this amounts to a sort of holism (a term that Heidegger did not have—though he surely had the idea).

People are interdependent, too, of course, and not only with each other but also with their equipment, projects, institutions, and the like. There could be no vendors without customers, and vice versa, not to mention products to sell and means of payment. Cases of dasein are unintelligible except as competently ensconced in a familiar world that is “holistic” not only practically but also socially.

(…)

At the beginning of his analytic of dasein, Heidegger gave two formal indications of its topic: first, that the essence of dasein lies in its existence, and second, that dasein is in each case mine.¹ In a discussion of the “who,” it is easy to suppose that the latter of these indications—in-each-case-mineness—is the more relevant. What is more, in highlighting Descartes’s I-myself, that is effectively what we have been doing.

But it is not obvious that this approach exhibits the “who” of everyday being-in-the-world:

It could be that I myself, in each case, am precisely not the who of everyday dasein. (SZ 115)

The point is not, of course, that mineness or the “I-myself” might be irrelevant to the question of the “who” but only that the connection is subtle and not what one might first suppose.

Even so, there remains an ostensible methodological argument that the investigation ought to begin with the “I-myself.” For is it not sound procedure to start with what is most evident? And is not the givenness of the T to itself more evident than anything else—more so, for instance, than that of the “external world” or “other minds”? Well, maybe sometimes and to some extent, but either way it is beside the point. The self-givenness of the “I,” whatever its credentials, is not the same as a mode of access to either being-in-the-world as dasein’s basic makeup—or, therefore, the who as one of its constitutive moments.

But there are further grounds for caution. Those credentials themselves are far from unimpeachable and for a fundamental reason. What is given in immanent self-reflection is conditioned from the outset by concepts and assumptions drawn from “sound common sense.” Indeed, the very idea of introspective self-knowledge and the incorrigibility that is sometimes (124) supposed to attend it is thoroughly commonsensical—which is why they are so easy to explain to undergraduates.

But common sense is not an infallible guide to philosophy and, above all, not in regard to questions of fundamentals. In particular, the question of the sense of being, including especially the being of dasein, is utterly alien to everyday understanding—which is why it is so hard to explain to anybody.

An understanding of dasein’s being is embodied in the very way of life that dasein is, and that implies that those who live that way all share in that public understanding, at least initially and usually. But that does not mean that it is not a misunderstanding. Quite the contrary: as will emerge, the default public understandings of dasein and of the “I-myself” always are misunderstandings in certain specific and nonaccidental ways.

Accordingly, Heidegger proposes (rather abruptly) that we temporarily reorient our discussion, giving more emphasis to the other initial indication: that the essence of dasein lies in its existence. And, in the same spirit, he stipulates that the “I” (“I-myself,” “ego”) should itself be understood—for the moment, anyway—only as a noncommittal formal indicator (SZ 116). This is tantamount to suggesting, as he explicitly points out, that we undertake to understand the “who” of everyday dasein existentially—that is, in terms of how the living way of life is lived. It also suggests—what he was not in a position to observe—that, for the moment, we adopt an orientation more like that of social holism.