Abstract
Heidegger conceives Dasein’s death as a peculiar type of negation, i.e., a negation that is not simple disappearance, and so is, in some sense, survived by Dasein. This paper argues that Heidegger’s technical terminology for this type of negation is the “deficient mode.” The ontological structure of the deficient mode is characterized by Heidegger as a mode of the “nur noch,” which is a way of just being. And to just be, in the sense that deficient modes just are, is grounded in the unique identity conditions characteristic of a being that can exist in deficient modes—its identity is an unnecessary necessity, and so its loss is a possible impossibility. Hence, the connection with Dasein’s death, which Heidegger defines as “the possibility of the absolute impossibility of Dasein.” Death is Dasein in a deficient mode. This interpretation of Heideggerian death is then used to address the debated issue concerning Heidegger’s distinction between death and demise.
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Notes
Heidegger (2010, p. 233).
Heidegger (2010, p. 236).
Heidegger’s notion of the deficient mode has received little attention from commentators, which is not surprising, given the rarity with which the phrase occurs in Being and Time, as well as the fact that Heidegger does not, explicitly, give particular importance to the deficient mode. For an extended treatment thereof, see Hartmann (1974). For a shorter discussion, see Prauss (1999, pp. 17–19.) Both Hartmann and Prauss are critical of the Heideggerian deficient mode, and find it to be, ultimately, untenable. These criticisms will be addressed below.
Heidegger (2010, p. 57).
Heidegger (2010, p. 57).
This aspect of Heidegger’s characterization is lost in both the Macquarrie and Robinson translation (Heidegger, 1962, p. 83) and the Stambaugh translation (Heidegger, 2010, p. 57). The original German maintains that deficient modes of taking care are “alle Modi des ‘Nur noch’ in bezug auf Möglichkeiten des Besorgens.” As a first approximation, I will use the phrase “just barely” to translate “nur noch,” per the suggestion of Macquarrie and Robinson, in their translation’s footnote to this passage.
This follows from what I take to be the common sense belief that an object either possesses a property or simply lacks it, in which case minimal possession is still possession, however minimal. Although Heidegger does not address this type of just-barely, we can infer his position regarding it from his interpretation of the traditional ontology—the “ontology of the present-at-hand” (See Heidegger, 1982, pp. 147–148). According to Heidegger, this ontology views all beings as objects, and conceives of their way of possessing properties in the same way that common sense does. That Heidegger sees the traditional ontology as maintaining this conception of the possession of properties can be seen in his attribution of a view of essences to Kant (whom he regards as representative of the tradition) that maintains a strict division between the possession of properties and their lack (See Heidegger, 1982, pp. 34–35).
See Heidegger (2010, pp. 61, 73, 87, 145, 229).
Heidegger (2010, p. 61). See also p.145.
Heidegger (2010, p. 73). See also pp. 87, 229.
For a discussion of the relationship between the ready-to-hand and the present-at-hand in this regard, see Tanzer (1995, pp. 149–150).
Heidegger (2010, p. 57).
Heidegger (2010, p. 57).
Hartmann’s criticism fails to notice this aspect of the deficient mode. According to Hartmann, the danger of invoking the notion of a deficient mode is that it “bears a formal likeness to an ideological stand” (Hartmann, 1974, p. 124); it seems to imply that “anything could be claimed as a mode of anything” (Hartmann, 1974, p. 123), rendering its invocation trivial. Hartmann notes (Hartmann, 1974, p. 124) that this problem had been recognized by Karl Löwith. As Löwith makes the point, “[t]he existential-ontological interpretation is correct in every case, because opposition to it only proves itself to spring from a ‘deficient mode’ of what is to be demonstrated” (Löwith, 1995, p. 266). Hartmann argues that Heidegger attempts to avert this danger by interpreting deficient modes as negative in relation to existential disclosure, but positive in relation to categorial disclosure. These relations obtain insofar as Heidegger views the latter type of disclosure as itself a deficient mode of the former type. However, Hartmann maintains that this requires a further “overarching theoretical framework” (Hartmann, 1974, p. 127) to connect the existential and categorial frameworks. Otherwise, they are simply unrelated, or else related but only trivially. And because Heidegger does not provide such an overarching framework, the deficient mode is rendered trivial.
But, according to our interpretation of the deficient mode, Heidegger is not left with a choice between deficient modes being simply unrelated to their correlative positive modes, and thus not amounting to deficient modes of them at all, and deficient modes as related to their positive modes, but merely trivially. For this dilemma only arises in the absence of an allegedly required third overarching framework. Such a non-trivial unifying framework, however, need not be a third term. Rather, once we recognize that the identity of a being, that can exist in deficient modes, is an unnecessary necessity, we can see that correlative positive and deficient modes are connected, despite being opposed, insofar as such a being maintains its identity even when it falls into deficiency, thereby losing that very identity. In this way, correlative positive and deficient modes are intrinsically linked, not requiring Hartmann’s third term.
According to Prauss, Heidegger invokes deficient modes, in order to show that knowing is a type of concern, and thus a type of doing. Specifically, Heidegger argues that knowing shares, with doing, the structural similarity of being capable of occurring in deficient modes, designating them both as types of concern. However, Prauss asserts, against Heidegger, that while doing can occur in deficient modes, knowing cannot. Thus, knowing, unlike doing, is not a type of concern, and so the Heideggerian deficient mode fails to demonstrate their alleged kinship (Prauss, 1999, pp. 17–19). However, Heidegger’s position is not, as Prauss contends, that knowing and doing are akin because they are both positive modes that can also occur in deficient modes, but rather that knowing is a deficient mode of doing. Hence, Heidegger is able to interpret both as types of concern insofar as doing is a type of concern, and knowing is a type of doing.
Prauss does not recognize his interpretive mistake because he sees Heidegger’s position, at the point in Being and Time where Heidegger introduces the deficient mode, as identifying “merely looking” (das pure Hinsehen) with “simply lingering with…” (Nur-noch-verweilen-bei…) (See Prauss, 1999, pp. 2–4). In this way, Prauss confuses the disappearance of doing with a deficient mode of doing. As in the case of Hartmann’s misinterpretation, Prauss’s would have been avoided if he had recognized the distinctive way in which a being that can exist in deficient modes possesses its identity. For it is this type of identity-possession that distinguishes lack in the mode of disappearance from lack in the mode of deficiency.
Heidegger (2010, p. 242).
Heidegger (2010, p. 241. See also p. 251).
Heidegger (2010, p. 254).
Heidegger (2010, p. 236).
I borrow this categorization from Iain Thomson (2013).
Proponents of the traditional approach include Michael Gelven (1970); James Demske (1970); Stephen Mulhall (2005); and Piotr Hoffman (2006). Herman Philipse (1998) also assumes the identity of death and demise, but rather than try to justify Heidegger’s distinction, interprets Being and Time’s treatment of death as incoherent unless recognized as part of a strategy to engender a religious transformation in the reader. Paul Edwards (1979), too, identifies death and demise, and then proceeds on a book-length dismissal of Heidegger’s position, inexplicably grounding his anti-Heideggerian arguments on the very identification that Heidegger denies. Proponents of the recent approach include Hubert Dreyfus and Jane Rubin (1991); William Blattner (1994); John Haugeland (2000); Taylor Carman (2003); Carol White (2005), and Iain Thomson (2013).
Heidegger (2010, p. 229).
Heidegger (2010, p. 229).
Heidegger (2010, p. 49).
Heidegger (2010, p. 49).
Krell points out this apparent problem (1992, pp. 51, 56).
Heidegger (2010, p. 49).
See Heidegger (2010, pp. 49, 237).
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Tanzer, M. Heidegger on death as a deficient mode. Cont Philos Rev 55, 19–33 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09551-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-021-09551-y