Logo, a hermenêutica não é a ciência fria da facticidade, não é uma metodologia que nos permite abordar friamente a vida de forma factual; pelo contrário, a hermenêutica é a vida factual pega em flagrante, vigilantemente pega no ato de se interpretar a si própria. A hermenêutica da facticidade não é como a botânica das plantas (GA63 15; cf. SZ 46), em que a vida vegetal é o objeto de uma ciência botânica; pelo contrário, dizer facticidade é dizer interpretação (…). Num certo sentido, o genitivo em “hermenêutica da facticidade” é tanto subjetivo como objetivo: a vida factual interpreta tanto como vive. Mas o que é que a vida factual inclui? O que é que ela exclui? Estas questões não são colocadas por Heidegger, talvez devido a uma certa solidariedade da vida, solidariedade com a vida, ou talvez devido a uma vigilância insuficiente. No entanto, temos uma ideia do tipo de vida a que Heidegger se refere quando o ouvimos dizer, no final do seu curso: “A vida dirige-se a si própria de uma forma mundana sempre que se preocupa (Sorge)” (GA63 102, Das Leben spricht sich im Sorgen weltlich an). A vida, o tipo de vida que fascina Heidegger, é a que tem um mundo, a que se relaciona com um mundo. Nas suas observações sobre a biologia teórica em 1930, nada de essencial terá mudado no que respeita à relação da vida com o mundo. E se entre as páginas dispersas das notas para o curso de 1923 sobre a hermenêutica da facticidade encontramos um pot-pourri de nomes — Aristóteles, o Novo Testamento, Agostinho, Lutero, Descartes e Kierkegaard — dois nomes se destacam, nomeadamente Dilthey e Husserl. O que Heidegger pretende é uma hermenêutica fenomenológica da vida histórica factual, uma tarefa que ele reduz a duas palavras: Dilthey destruiert, “Dilthey desconstruído”. (106-7).
(…) during his lecture course on the hermeneutics of facticity in SS 1923, Heidegger says, “Facticity designates the character of the being of ‘our’ ‘own’ Dasein” (GA63 7). Why the quotation marks or “scare-quotes” around “our”? Because Dasein lingers or tarries there in each case as this particular Dasein: Jeweiligkeit is under way to what Being and Time will call Jemeinigkeit, Dasein whiling away its hour of existence as in each case “my own.” Why the scare-quotes around “my” or “our” “own”? Because what may seem to be the property of Dasein is swept away in the larger questions of life, being, and (not quite yet, but lingering on the horizon, as the horizon) time. For the moment it is the being alive that captivates Heidegger: Sein—transitiv: das faktische Leben sein!” Being is to be understood transitively; it means that we are factical life—not as a soporific solipsism but as active vigilance (Wachsein). “If we take ‘life’ as a way of ‘being,’ then ‘factical life’ means our own Dasein (now without scare-quotes) as ‘there’ in every sort of ontologically explicit manifestation of the character of its being” (GA63 7).
Yet the larger questions posed to “our” “own” factical Dasein will not disperse, not even in Being and Time. If fundamental ontology appears to be constructed on the axis of the proper and the improper, the appropriate and the inappropriate (Eigentlichkeit/Uneigentlichkeit), the quotation marks around “own” have in fact already replaced more drastic question marks, or, rather, as we shall see, a single, drastic, ironic exclamation point (!). The scare-quotes and exclamation point cause that axis to tremble and perhaps even to shatter. Any reading of Being and Time in terms of “authenticity” would be put to riot by this catastrophe, inasmuch as the only authentic Dasein would be a dead Dasein. And yet such trembling, such shattering of the axis of propriety, would be a sign of life.
Hence hermeneutics is not the chilly science of facticity, not a methodology that allows us coolly to approach life matter-of-factly; rather, hermeneutics is factical life caught in the act, vigilantly caught in the act of interpreting itself. Hermeneutics of facticity is not like the botanies of plants (GA63 15; cf. SZ 46), whereby vegetable life is the object of a botanical science; rather, to say facticity is to say interpretation—as though (365) Dasein were goldenrod catching itself going to seed. In a sense, the genitive in “hermeneutics of facticity” is subjective as well as objective: factical life does the interpreting as well as the living. Yet what does factical life include? What does it exclude? These questions Heidegger does not raise, perhaps because of a certain solidarity of life, solidarity with life, or perhaps because of insufficient vigilance. Nevertheless, we gain some insight into the sort of life Heidegger means when we hear him say, toward the end of his lecture course, “Life addresses itself in a worldly way whenever it takes care” (GA63 102, Das Leben spricht sich im Sorgen weltlich an). Life, the sort of life that fascinates Heidegger, is what has a world, relates to a world. In his remarks on theoretical biology in 1930, nothing essential will have changed with regard to the world-relation of life. And if among the scattered pages of notes for the 1923 lecture course on the hermeneutics of facticity we find a potpourri of names—Aristotle, the New Testament, Augustine, Luther, Descartes, and Kierkegaard—two names stand out, to wit, Dilthey and Husserl. What Heidegger wishes to pursue is a phenomenological hermeneutics of factical historical life, a task that he reduces to two words: Dilthey destruiert, “Dilthey deconstructed.” (106-7).