SZ – Befindlichkeit

La disposición afectiva representa una dimensión fundamental y mucho más originaria de la existencia humana que el simple conocimiento. Este último se caracteriza por imponer cierta distancia cognitiva, expresada en la aséptica relación de sujeto y objeto. La intencionalidad cognitiva suele describirse como el acto de un sujeto que busca alcanzar un objeto. La disposición afectiva, en cambio, implica un modo de aprehensión totalmente distinto, que nos pone de inmediato en contacto con las cosas y las personas sin ningún tipo de reflexión previa, sin necesidad de tener que poner en marcha un acto de conocimiento de orden superior. La disposición afectiva es una manifestación elemental de nuestro estar-en-el-mundo que precede a toda relación cognitiva, es decir, es «un originario modo de ser del Dasein, en el que éste queda abierto para sí mismo antes de todo conocer y querer, y más allá del alcance de su capacidad de apertura» (SuZ: 181 / SyT: 160). La disposición afectiva tiene, pues, un carácter social y público. Como es obvio, un individuo puede resistirse a las constelaciones afectivas dominantes. Sin embargo, el abanico de afecciones posibles está socialmente condicionado, porque la disposición afectiva en que se encuentra el Dasein emerge de su estar-en-el-mundo. Y este mundo está sustentado en un conjunto de papeles, categorías y conceptos socialmente determinados. ¹

Ser, para o Dasein, é ser/estar «aí». Mas, conforme salientámos, esta expressão não tem um sentido geográfico. O Da não tem uma dimensão ôntica, mas ontológica. «Situar-se» significa apresentar-se, encontrar-se: sich befinden. A «Befindlichkeit» exprime a situação fundamental pela qual o Dasein se encontra diante de si próprio, como que transportado e arrastado pelo seu próprio peso: «O ser torna-se manifesto como um fardo… O Dasein é deposto diante do seu ser como aí.» O «aí» é essa abertura que define o ser e pela qual ele se escapa a si próprio, sem saber donde vem, nem para onde vai. A esta fuga do ser, o Dasein tentará resistir quotidianamente. Mas em vão. Pois acabará também ele por ser arrastado no movimento de ek-sistência que submete o Dasein ao seu «aí»: «A maior parte do tempo, o Dasein esquiva-se ontico-existencialmente ao ser aberto pela disposição; mas o que isso significa ontológico-Existencialmente é o seguinte: naquilo para o qual essa disposição não se orienta, o Dasein é desvelado no seu ser/estar entregue ao Aí. Na própria esquiva, o aí é enquanto aberto.» (PASQUA, Hervé. Introdução à leitura de Ser e Tempo de Martin Heidegger. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget, 1997, p. 75-76)

Consider in particular Heidegger’s treatment of Befindlichkeit. “Befindlichkeit” is a notoriously difficult term to translate; for present purposes, I shall simply leave it untranslated. What concerns me here is, at any rate, not the content of the term but the form of reasoning in which it occurs. When Heidegger introduces Befindlichkeit at the outset of §29, his first move is to mark it out as an existentiale:

What we indicate ontologically by the term “Befindlichkeit” is ontically the most familiar and everyday sort of thing; our mood, our Being-attuned. Prior to all psychology of moods, a field which in any case still lies fallow, it is necessary to see this phenomenon as a fundamental existentiale, and to outline its structure. (SZ:134)

The first thing to notice here is the fact that Heidegger treats the same phenomenon as one that admits of either “ontic” or “ontological” analysis. Ontically, that phenomenon is the familiar psychological fact of being in a mood; ontologically it is Befindlichkeit. Having staked this claim, the following stretch of text sets out to establish it through phenomenological description. Accordingly, in the four paragraphs that follow, Heidegger describes the phenomenon of being in a mood. He begins with claims in the ontic mode, as for instance that Dasein is always in a mood (“Dasein always has some mood,” SZ:134). ²

Of the basic structures that have a specifically disclosing function, Heidegger names three: Befindlichkeit, which may be rather inadequately rendered as “attunement”; Verstehen, understanding; and Rede, discourse. The last will not enter into the discussion at present, and, since it may easily confuse the reader, it should be noted that by “discourse” Heidegger does not mean the ontic phenomenon of language, but an existential structure that makes language possible.

The existential concept of Befindlichkeit cannot be adequately expressed by any single English word. The common German phrase, Wie befinden Sie sich? means: How do you feel? How are you? Sich befinden (56) generally means how one is, how one feels, important also is the core of the word, sich finden, to find oneself. The whole expression may be explained as follows: Da-sein is a priori so that his being manifests itself to him by the way he feels; in feeling, he is brought to himself, he finds himself. The ontic manifestations of Befindlichkeit are familiar to everyone as the moods and feelings that constantly “tune” Da-sein and “tune him in” to other beings as a whole. To avoid having to coin some clumsy expression for Befindlichkeit, it is convenient to call it “attunement.”

In Heidegger’s interpretation, attunement must on no account be taken for a “lower” faculty which is at war with the “higher” faculty of understanding. For one thing, neither attunement nor understanding are faculties, but existentials, that is, ways of being. Each has its own character and way of disclosing that is not only not opposed to the other, but is in advance “tuned in” to the other. Attunement always has its understanding; understanding is always attuned. Each has a specific disclosing function in the whole of care.

The moods and feelings, which are apt to be dismissed by us as accidental and meaningless, are ontologically of great importance, because they originally bring Da-sein to himself as the factical self he already is. Each mood reveals in a different way—for example, in joy Dasein is manifest to himself as he who is enjoying himself, in depression as he who is weighed down by a burden, and so on. Tuned by moods and feelings, Da-sein finds himself in his thrown being, in the inexorable facticity that I am and have to be,” delivered over to myself to be as I can, dependent upon a world for my own existence.

Moods and feelings rise from Da-sein’s thrownness and bring him face to face with it. By “thrownness,” Heidegger does not mean that Da-sein is cast into the “natural universe” by a blind force or an indifferent fate, which immediately abandons him to his own devices, It means that his own “real” existence is manifest to Da-sein in the curious way that he can always and only find himself already here, and can never get behind this already to let himself come freely into being. But although he can never originate his being, yet he is “delivered over to himself”: he has to take over his being as his. Da-sein’s fundamental impotence and dependence, that he cannot make and master his own being, are originally and elementally revealed by attunement.

But moods and feelings tune Da-sein not as an isolated self; on the contrary, they bring him to himself in such a way that he finds himself there, in the midst of other beings. With this “in the midst of. . . Da-sein is already lifted into a world, surrounded by beings that are always manifest in a certain wholeness. Why this is so cannot yet be shown, but that it is so is not an accident; it lies in the structure of (57) attunement itself to refer Da sein to the possibility of other beings as a whole. Moods and feelings, far from being “inarticulate,” have a distinctively articulated structure. This can best be demonstrated by Heidegger’s analysis of fear as a specific mode of attunement (SZ, § 30), which we shall now consider as far as it is relevant to this discussion. ³