Abstract
The paper discusses Martin Heidegger’s account of the anyone in Being and Time in connection with his reinterpretation of Aristotle’s categories of poiesis and praxis, carried out in his Lecture on Aristotle’s Ethics. The main purpose of the paper is to rethink the relation between production and action developed in Hannah Arendt’s Vita Activa, by understanding them as two different ways of enacting our relation to the world. By showing the inseparability between anyone and self in Heidegger’s account, and therefore by drawing a parallel between these two different ways of existing and Heidegger’s phenomenological interpretation of poiesis and praxis, the paper aims at reformulating Arendt’s distinction between work and action. The purpose is to show – with and against Arendt’s conception – that there is no authentic action without a transformation of the sphere of production. Furthermore, by analyzing the constitutive ambivalence of the activity of building, the paper describes – with and against Heidegger’s perspective – the possibility to transform the self-assurance involved in each making, i.e. in our productive way of being. This transformation points to an ongoing process and lies in facing our self-assurance, thereby acknowledging our constitutive groundlessness and building a public and political place.
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Notes
- 1.
Heidegger’s Being and Time is quoted following the 1962 translation by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson. I have modified translations throughout. Other texts by Heidegger are taken from the English edition. With these sources, I first indicated the page number of the English edition, followed by the page number of the Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann).
- 2.
The uncanniness is not only related to anxiety as Grundstimmung (BT §40), rather it plays a pivotal role in the analysis of the existential meaning of death (BT 252–253), as well as in the phenomenological description of the silence of conscience as authentic talk (BT 277). From this perspective, the uncanniness as groundlessness and nullity is involved in our attunement - which already implies, as such, an understanding -, in our understanding as being-torward-death, which is cooriginally attuned, and in our attuned understanding as being towards things, which the Talk as call of conscience spells out. This sense of uncanniness as nullity and groundlessness involves the “whole structure of care” as such. (BT 285)
- 3.
The distinction between securitas and certitudo as two different dimensions has been introduced by Augustinus and developed in detail by Luther. According to Luther the Certidudo is “jene Gewissheit, die völlig von Menschen, seinem Bewussstein und seinen Leistungen bei ihrer Begründung absah. Dagegen bezeichnet securitas den “Versuch des Menschen, das Fundament für sein Heil und die Gewissheit in irgendeinem Wert innerhalb seines eigenen Verführungsbereichs zu finden, und die aus diesem Versuch entspringende Haltung’ der superbia als Selbstsicherheit” (Schrimm-heins 1991: 208).
- 4.
See footnote 2.
- 5.
Rentsch adopts the theological concepts of certitudo and securitas to spell out what he calls the “interexistentielle Unverfügbarkeit”, understood as the “Unmöglichkeit der technischen Sicherung interpersonaler Verhältnisse” (Rentsch 2011: 222).
- 6.
As Vitiello points out: “the fundamental thesis of Being and Time states: Höher die Wirklichkeit steht die Möglichkeit and can be translated only in the Greek Aristotelian language. Thus, it offers an overturning of the fundamental Aristotle’s thesis” (Vitiello 1992:122; translation L.G.).
- 7.
This point is deeply analyzed by Heidegger his 1927 Lecture “Die Grundprobleme der Phänomenologie”. (Heidegger 1989). In particular, see the relation between Greek ontology and the paradigm of production, analyzed in §11. Moreover, the title of the section where the relation between the paradigm of production and the modern idea of subjectivity is introduced, is particularly eloquent: “Being in the sense of being-produced as perspective in order to understand the person as finite spiritual substance” (trad. L.G.). The original quote in German states: “Sein im Sinne von Hergestelltsein als Verständnishorizont für die Person als endliche geistige Substanz” (Heidegger 1989, 209).
- 8.
About the meaning of place, I agree with Malpas’ position (2014) against Levinas’ (1990) in understanding the concept of place. According to Levinas, the concept of place, which is implied in Heidegger’s thought, is a reactionary one, as well as the concept of place as such. Rather, I would agree with Cacciari’s view, discussed and reported by Malpas, which states that “Heidegger urges us to face up to the placelessness of modernity as our inevitable condition”, without facing the consequences of his understanding of modernity.
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Guidi, L. (2017). A Groundless Place to Build: The Ambivalence of Production as a Chance of Action Between Martin Heidegger and Hannah Arendt. In: Schmid, H., Thonhauser, G. (eds) From Conventionalism to Social Authenticity. Studies in the Philosophy of Sociality, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-56865-2_10
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