More Primordial Ways of Being:
Heidegger's Critique of the Traditional "Subject," "Object," and "subject-Object" Distinction
Patrick Mooney
Philosophy 185
October 17, 2000
Heidegger claims that to begin a philosophical inquiry by "positing an 'I' or subject as that which is proximally given" is to "completely miss the phenomenal content of Dasein." (Heidegger 72)1 This objection to the primordiality of the way in which Dasein is is, essentially, an objection that there is a more primordial manner of Being2 for Dasein than the traditional "subject." This claim also has repercussions for the question of whether the traditional subject-Object distinction is accurate, and (if so) in what way or ways, and for the nature of the entities which Dasein encounters in the world, which have been traditionally taken as "Objects."
This claim that there are more primordial modes of Being than those exhibited by "subjects" and "Objects" implies a break with the modern philosophical tradition. Heidegger takes Descartes as the origin and example of this modern tradition in philosophy. This Cartesian tradition, in positing an isolated subject as "that which is proximally given," leads to a view of human Being as a "Thinghood" which is a "reification." These conceptions, he says, are indicative of a "notable failure" in the philosophical tradition "to see the need for inquiring about the Being of the entities thus designated." (72) Additionally, this critique of the primordiality of the view of Dasein as a Cartesian subject implies an inherent critique of the view that the entities which Dasein encounters in the world are primordially Cartesian objects. It also raises an objection to the traditional notion about the world.
Heidegger's Critique of the Cartesian "Subject"
This failure to inquire about Being is the central failure of the Cartesian tradition for Heidegger. The tradition fails to see the nature of Being as a problem and concentrates instead on the nature of the "subject." Heidegger points out that Descartes provides the "point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry with his discovery of the 'cogito sum.'" (71) Heidegger explains that Descartes investigates the nature of the thinking self ("the 'cogitare' of the 'ego'") but leaves the question of Being (the "sum" in his fundamental ontological realization) unexamined. (71-2)
Descartes' failure to investigate the nature of Being leads him to confuse the Being of Dasein with a type of Being that entities whose character is not that of Dasein have. Dasein, as an entity, is unique in that it is concerned by Being; Heidegger explains that Dasein "is ontically distinguished by the fact that ... Being is an issue for it." (32) The fact that Being is an issue for Dasein is important, because it distinguishes Dasein from all other entities. This is tautologically true: Although Heidegger never seems to settle on a single definition of "Dasein" that satisfies him completely, one of the ways in which he explains what he means by this word is by explaining that "Dasein" is "a term which is purely an expression of [this entity's] Being." (33)
Descartes, however, fails to investigate the distinction between the self-interpreting kind of Being that Dasein has and the kind of Being which entities whose character is not that of Dasein have. Heidegger explicitly criticizes Descartes for taking the idea of Being in general (without differentiating between the Being of Dasein and of other entities) as "permanent presence-at-hand" and for taking "the Being of 'Dasein' ... in the very same way as he takes the Being of the res extensa--namely, as substance." (130, 131) "Substance," traditionally and for Descartes, is the "term for the Being of an entity that is in itself" -- that is, a "substance" is an entity as seen as something that merely is. (123) Heidegger calls this mere Being "presence-at-hand" and defines this term as "tantamount" to what the tradition means by the kind of Being that "substances" have. (67)
This interpretation of Dasein's Being as the same kind of Being that present-at-hand entities have, Heidegger says, is fundamentally misleading. Presence-at-hand is "a kind of Being which is essentially inappropriate to entities of Dasein's character." (67) Heidegger has established that Dasein is fundamentally "an entity which, in its very Being, comports itself understandingly towards that Being." This self-interpreting Being which each Dasein has is "grounded upon ... 'Being-in-the-World,'" which is a "constitutive state" of Dasein's Being. (78) The "Being-in" of Dasein is not the kind of "Being in" which "entities extended 'in' space have to each other with regard to their location in that space," and the "World" of this constitutive state of Dasein's Being is not "the totality of those entities which can be present-at-hand within the world." (93)
Dasein's mode of Being-in is vastly different from the "Being in" of present-at-hand entities which happen to occur together. Heidegger explicitly says, "There is no such thing as the 'side-by-side-ness' of an entity called 'Dasein' with another entity called 'World.'" (81) The Being of Dasein towards the world, in which it dwells, is essentially a Being of concern. (84) The implications of this mode of Being as "concern" (a word which Heidegger uses to designate a certain structural concept, and by which Heidegger seems to mean something similar to what we mean when we say that we are "concerned with something") are broad. (84) The most important of these implications to the subject at hand is that the spatiality with which Dasein is most primarily concerned is not an abstract, "objective," or mathematical spatiality, but a spatiality of concern. Heidegger spends a portion of chapter I.3 (sections 22 through 24) discussing this spatiality of concern, which only becomes three-dimensional mathematical space when Dasein insists on "just looking at it." (147) This spatiality of Dasein's concern is not a spatiality in which "the Objective distances of Things" are relevant. Rather, this space is one in which Dasein is aware of "the remoteness and closeness" of useful things (the ready-to-hand) to its concern. (141) The Being-in of Dasein is fundamentally different from the "Being in" of present-at-hand substances because it occurs in a completely different kind of spatiality.
Dasein, then, is not a Cartesian subject for Heidegger because the Cartesian subject is something present-at-hand, a "substance," and Heidegger is emphatic that Dasein is never "merely present-at-hand," although it "can with some right and within certain limits be taken" this way. Doing so, however, completely ignores the fact that Being-in is a fundamental structure of Dasein's existence, and this Being-in is fundamentally different from the mere side-by-side-ness of present-at-hand entities. (82, 81) It even partakes of a fundamentally different kind of spatiality. This other mode of Being, the mode of Being of entities which have the character of Dasein and exist "in-the-World," is the phenomenal content which Descartes (and the Cartesian tradition) miss by "[positing] an 'I' or subject as proximally given." (72)
Heidegger's Critique of the Cartesian "Object"
This fundamental difference between the mode of Being of Dasein (as an entity which has Being-in as a fundamental characteristic of existence) and the mode of Being of entities which are purely present-at-hand is one of the most important things missed by Descartes and the Cartesian tradition, but it is by no means the only one. Positing a Cartesian subject as primordially given misses the nature of the entities with which Dasein deals because to posit that a Cartesian "subject" is primordially given is, for anyone who is not radically solipsistic, to posit that this subject relates to "Objects" in some way. Descartes, of course, is not a solipsist, as can be seen from the sixth of his Meditations: He writes, "God is not a deceiver. ... God has given me ... a great inclination to believe that these ideas issue from corporeal things. ... And consequently corporeal things exist." (Descartes 79-80)
Descartes is taken by Heidegger as the one who "is credited with providing the point of departure for modern philosophical inquiry." (Heidegger 71) That is, his view of the "Object" in "subject-Object" relations is indicative of the traditional view of the relationship between Dasein and the entities it encounters. Because Dasein is not a subject in the traditional sense of the word, it cannot engage in subject-Object relationships with the entities it encounters in the world. This does not necessarily mean, however, that the entities encountered by Dasein are do not in some sense have the character of "Objects" as traditional ontology sees them. In fact, entities encountered by Dasein in the world can be taken as objects in the traditional sense, just as Heidegger's Dasein can, but to do so is to miss a more fundamental manner in which objects can be. This more fundamental mode of being is readiness-to-hand.
Traditionally -- that is, in the tradition of Cartesian ontology -- an "Object," like a subject, is something merely present-at-hand. This is true because, as Heidegger points out, for Descartes all Being is "permanent presence-at-hand." (130) Heidegger, however, sees a more primordial way that Dasein relates to entities around it, and that way is "readiness-to-hand." Heidegger defines this term as "the kind of Being which equipment possesses--in which it manifests itself in its own right." Equipment, for Heidegger, means "those entities which we encounter in concern." (98, 97) He explains that individual Daseins are themselves the necessary condition which allow "entities which are encountered within the world," as we are involved in that world, to "make themselves known as they are in themselves." (121)
Readiness-to-hand is a more primordial mode of Being for entities whose character is not that of Dasein. Just as the spatiality of Dasein is a spatiality of concern, rather than a mathematical spatiality, the way in which we relate most fundamentally to entities encountered in the world is not one in which we see them as abstractified, merely present-at-hand "substances," but one in which we are concerned with these entities. Because concern is an existentiale, a fundamental characteristic of Dasein's Being, a concernful way of encountering entities is more primordial to us than one in which we "just stare" at something, or merely think about it in a theoretical manner. (83, 98)
A piece of equipment does not merely exist on its own, without a context; and the context in which it exists is a totality of structures of reference to other pieces of equipment in which it makes sense and is usable by Dasein. These references, which take various forms, are called a "referential totality" by Heidegger. "Equipment," he says, "always is in terms of other equipment." (97)
Perhaps most importantly, Heidegger explains that we discover the world through our use of equipment: He writes, "our concernful absorption in whatever work-world lies closest to us, has a function of discovering." (101) "Work" is always something which we accomplish in terms of the ready-to-hand: "The work bears within it that referential totality within which the equipment is encountered." (99)
This demonstration that there is a more fundamental mode of Being than that of what the ontological tradition sees are merely a present-at-hand "substance," or "Object," allows us to see what is wrong with that tradition's conception of entities encountered by Dasein: It is not actually "incorrect," because equipment can be taken as merely present-at-hand. This happens when a Dasein, in attempting to concern itself with the world by using a piece of equipment, is unable to use the piece of equipment to do so. This un-readiness-to-hand of the equipment reveals that the equipment "has constantly been present-at-hand too." (103) However, a piece of equipment which is un-ready-to-hand still has a readiness-to-hand of a sort; it is still seen as a piece of equipment, even if only as a piece of equipment "in the sense of something that one would like to shove out of the way." The presence-at-hand which the equipment reveals when it cannot be used, as Heidegger says, "is still bound up in [its] readiness-to-hand." (104)
This, then, is the problem with the traditional notion of entities as "objects" that stand opposite to "subjects": Since "Objects" are conceptualized as merely present-at-hand, they, like Dasein when it is seen as a "subject," are relegated to a mode of Being which is not primordially their own, but in which they can merely "be taken" as being. This is not factually incorrect, but it does not get at the heart of the matter and does not address the question of Being itself, which is important to Heidegger and which he accuses Descartes of ignoring in his investigation of his fundamental ontological realization. (71-2) The presence-at-hand which the Cartesian tradition attributes to an "Object" is a kind of Being which is only accessible to us under certain circumstances, and which is still "bound up in" the more primordial readiness-to-hand of the entity.
Heidegger's Critique of the "subject-Object-Relationship"
Heidegger says that the "'subject-Object-relationship' must be presupposed" because nothing seems more "obvious than that a 'subject' is related to an 'Object' and vice versa." He then protests, though, that despite the fact that the presupposition of this relationship is "unimpeachable in its facticity, this makes it indeed a baleful one," if the reasons why it is necessary and if its "ontological meaning" are ignored. (86) One of the major problems with the subject-Object distinction is that Dasein is not primordially a "subject" in the traditional sense of the word (although it can be taken as such under certain circumstances) and that the entities which it encounters in its dealings with the world, which primordially take the form of concernful dealings, are not primordially "Objects" in the traditional sense of the word. Both "subject" and "Object" are traditionally seen as "substances," which are present-at-hand entities, and neither Dasein nor the entities it encounters in its concernful dealings are fundamentally present-at-hand.
A second major problem with the traditional subject-Object distinction is the manner in which it understands the nature of the world and Dasein's relationship to it. This traditional method of viewing the world and Dasein's relationship to it are also exemplified for Heidegger by Descartes, and this is another reason that Heidegger takes Descartes as the example of the ontological tradition. Heidegger explains, "in Descartes we find the most extreme tendency toward such an ontology of the world" -- that is, an ontology which "[Interprets] the Being of the 'world' as res extensa." (95) Heidegger has pointed out that Dasein's Being has Being-in-the-World as a fundamental characteristic, and says that the ontological tradition has interpreted this structure purely in terms of a "phenomenon of knowing the world." This, in turn, is seen as a problem merely in terms of a "subject-Object" relationship. (86-7)
Heidegger points out the inadequacy of this view explicitly: "Subject and Object do not coincide with Dasein and the world," he says. (87) The fact that Dasein is not primordially a "subject" in the traditional sense of the word already problematizes the possibility of seeing this relationship of "knowing the world" in terms of a subject-Object relationship. An additional problem is that the world is not primordially an "Object" in the traditional sense, either.
The easiest and most obvious way to explain why the world is not a Cartesian "object" is to point out that, for Heidegger, it is not an entity at all, but rather a set of relationships. "The world" is most specifically defined by Heidegger as "that in terms of which the ready-to-hand is ready-to-hand." (114) "The ready-to-hand," as equipment, is ready-to-hand in terms of a referential totality, a set of structures by which the equipment gets its meaning from other pieces of equipment. (97) "The world," then, is not only that which is discovered by Dasein through its use of equipment, but also that which allows the equipment used by Dasein to have meaning as equipment. It is apparent, then, that this is not an entity which can be seen as the sum of other present-at-hand entities which merely sit in a mathematical space, and for this reason cannot be an "Object."
At a deeper level than this merely tautological one, however, is the fact that the Cartesian subject-Object distinction presupposes that "subject" and "Object" are isolated entities, in the sense that the subject is a mind that "knows" a world whose nature is fundamentally different from the knowing mind. This is not the case for Heidegger: Dasein is not merely a thinking thing and its mode of discovering the world is not primarily one of intellectual knowledge. Equally important is the fact that the world which the entity discovers is not one whose nature is fundamentally different from that of Dasein.
That Dasein is not merely, or even primarily, a thinking thing has already been demonstrated: Dasein's primordial way of relating to the world is not through thinking, but through the use of equipment. It is through the use of ready-to-hand equipment that Dasein accomplishes work; it is our "concernful absorption" in a work-world that allows us to discover a world at all. (101) This world, as a referential totality, is borne within the work itself. (99) That the world so discovered by Dasein is not fundamentally separated from Dasein is apparent from the nature of "the world," which Heidegger spells out explicitly by explaining, "'world' is not a way of characterizing entities which Dasein essentially is not; it is rather a characteristic of Dasein itself." (64) Rather than being a mere empty, three-dimensional space in which a "subjects" can discover the nature of an "Object" called "the World" and whose nature is fundamentally distinct from that of the "subject," Heidegger's conception of "world" becomes the explicit link (the referential totality) between Dasein (which the Cartesian tradition understands as a present-at-hand "subject") and the ready-to-hand entities encountered by Dasein in its concernful dealings (which traditionally are seen as present-at-hand "Objects").
The Cartesian tradition, then, misconceptualizes the nature of the relationship between Dasein and the entities Dasein encounters in the world as well as the nature between Dasein and its world. As has been demonstrated, the traditional Cartesian ontological view of the "subject-Object relationship" misses a more primordial mode of Being for each of these three terms: Dasein is not a Cartesian "subject," since it has a more primordial mode of Being than presence-at-hand; entities encountered in the world are not Cartesian "objects," since they are not primordially present-at-hand, either; and the relationship between Dasein and the entities encountered by it is not primo rdially the radically separated relationship which the tradition believes it to be, but rather one in which entities and World are bound up in Dasein itself. None of these misunderstandings of the primordial nature of entities or relationships are "incorrect," but they all obscure more modes of Being.
Essentially, these more primordial modes of Being of entities and the way in which they related to each other are what the tradition has missed. By insisting that "subject" and "Object" are isolated, present-at-hand entities, an investigator misses the modes of Being that both these types of entities reveal to phenomenological investigation; by insisting that Dasein and the entities it encounters relate to each other in a "world" which is merely a mathematical field which is itself an entity that can be known intellectually and in which extended things have a sort of "permanent presence-at-hand," the tradition misses the more primordial way in which Dasein encounters the world. (130)
References
Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy in Classics of Western Philosophy, Fourth Edition. Ed. Steven M. Cahn. Trans. Donald A. Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 19953.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1962.
Footnotes
[1] It seems worthwhile to say a few things here about conventions for quotations in this discussion, since Heidegger and his translators often use both language and punctuation in specific ways. The use of quotation marks has been altered to the standard usage in American English, in which an entire quotation from the text is set in double quotes and quotation marks inside the text are set in single quotes, regardless of whether they were single or double quotes in Macquarrie and Robinson's text. All page references refer to Macquarrie and Robinson's English edition, not a German edition of Heidegger. The bracketed German expressions set in Macquarrie and Robinson's English text have been eliminated, and any bracketed expressions in quotations are my own. Any italicization in quotes is Heidegger's own or has been introduced by the translators.
[2] I follow Macquarrie and Robinson's practice of capitalizing "Being" while speaking about what Heidegger uses the German word Seinfor, while using "being" or "entity" while speaking about what Heidegger uses the words seiend and Seiendes.
[3] References to Descartes' Meditations refer to the pagination of the original ur-text, not to the pagination in Cahn's Classics.
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