A Protocol Paper on Contemporary Philosophy
Some
people stay while some people go. Some people remain the same while some people
change. Why do we need to change? Why do we need go away? Why do we need to
die? Death and Change are the two important topics that are going to be
discussed in this paper. Before discussing them, let us first define death and
change. What is death? According to Webster’s Universal Dictionary and
Thesaurus, death is the end of life, the state of being dead and the
destruction of something, while change is to be different, to alter, to
transform, and to exchange. Is there a relationship between the two? Of course,
the two has a relationship with each other. Death will never be fulfilled
without change. How? Using the definition of death as “the destruction of
something”, we could say that nothing will be destroyed if there is no being to
be destroyed at all, and if there is something to be destroyed, it can be
destroyed, but this something cannot be destroyed without change. Change or the
transformation of things is the cause, but not really the real cause, of the alteration
of a being from its living to is dying. There must be changes first before a
thing can be destroyed, and these changes happened from the past to the present
to the future until the death of a being.
Martin Heidegger
There
is a philosopher who focused on the two terms, Death and Change, I said a while
ago, and he is Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher born on September 26,
1889, in the Black Forest region of Messkirch. He began gymnasium at Constance
in 1903 but later transferred in 1906 to Bertholds gymnasium. In 1909,
Heidegger entered th Society of Jesus at Tisis in Austria to study as a Jesuit;
however, most likely for health reasons, his candidature was rejected. He then entered into study for the priesthood
at the Albert-Ludwig University in Freiberg while boarding at the archdiocesan
seminary of Saint Georg. At this time,
Heidegger first began lecturing and publishing papers, and he was first exposed
to Husserl's writings. For reasons that are unknown, Heidegger was directed by
his superiors to change his path of study from theology to mathematics and
philosophy. Heidegger took their advice, and, before long, had diligently read
the works of Husserl and went on to complete his doctorate. Heidegger married his wife, Elfride Petri, in
March, 1917 and shortly thereafter, Heidegger entered into the German
army. He was promoted from private to
corporal ten months later, but was soon discharged for health reasons. After the birth of his son, Jorg, Heidegger,
in a letter to a colleague, wrote that he had decided to break with "the
dogmatic system of Catholicism." Heidegger began primarily as a Christian Aristotelian. He
was born to a rural German family and raised to be a clergyman. He was
influenced as teenager by Aristotle
mediated through Christian theology. The concept of Being, in
this traditional sense, dating back to Plato, was
his first exposure to an idea he would plant at the core of his most famous
work Being and Time. His family
was not wealthy enough to send him to university and he required a scholarship,
which itself required he study for the religious order. Mathematics was also
his early major. During his time as a
student he left theology for philosophy as he was able to find other academic
funding. His doctorate was on John Duns
Scotus, a fourteenth century ethical and religious thinker.
He studied
at the University of Freiburg
under Edmund Husserl, the
founder of phenomenology and in 1919, Heidegger became Husserl’s
assistant at Freiburg. There, he lectured and first met Karl Jaspers; from
thereon, they would form a correspondence relationship for many years. During this time, Heidegger's second son,
Hermann, was born. By 1924, Heidegger moved on to become an associate at the
University of Marburg, where he wrote his magnum opus, Being and Time
(Sein und Zeit). At Marburg, Heidegger also met Hannah Arendt, who became his
lover. Through his brilliant lectures at Marbug, Heidegger influenced many
thinkers, including Herbet Marcuse, who became a primary figure in critical
theory. His own students at various
times included Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel
Levinas, Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul
Sartre, Jacques
Derrida. Regarded as a
major, if not indispensable, influence on phenomenology, existentialism, and
deconstruction. (Holy Trinity College Seminary Handbook on Contemporary
Philosophy, 2009) He was elected rector of the University in 1933, and for a
brief period, he was a member of the Nazi party. In less than a year, in 1934,
he resigned as a rector and for the next ten years, he taught courses critical
of the Nazi interpretation of philosophy. He was drafted into the “People’s
Militia”, having been declared in 1944 the “most expendable” member of the
Freiburg faculty. The French occupying forces did not permit him to his
teaching post until 1951, one year before his retirement. Even after his
retirement, he published several essays and interpretations of the history of
philosophy, including a two-volume study on Nietzsche (1961) and his last work,
The Matter of Thinking (1969). (Stumpf,
S. & Fieser, J. (2008). Socrates and Sartre and Beyond. ( 8th
Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill. Page 426) Heidegger died in Frieburg on May 26th,
1976. In the United States, the news of
his death went largely unheeded.
Interestingly, the news of Heidegger's death was received with
widespread coverage in Japan. The
connection of Heidegger' s thought to the East has not received much attention
over the years. But it is clear that he first had his greatest impact in Japan
with the writings of Count Kuki Shuzo.
Heidegger also carried on a relationship with D. T. Suzuki, whom he met
with on several occasions. He also attempted to translate Lao Tzu into German,
but never finished the project. (Holy
Trinity College Seminary Handbook on Contemporary Philosophy, 2009)
DaSein
Heidegger takes a similar approach
in Being and Time and attempts to
understand Being in general by first understanding human beings. The notion of
“human being” can be deceptive. Inspired by Husserl’s phenomenology, Heidegger
avoids defining people in terms of properties or attributes that divide them
from the world. Heidegger took seriously the meaning of the Greek word
phenomenon as “that which reveals itself.” It is our human existence that
reveals itself, and this is a quite different conception of “human being” than
we find in traditional philosophy. So he coined the German term DaSein, meaning
simply “being there.” (Stumpf, S. &
Fieser, J. (2008). Socrates and Sartre and Beyond. (8th Edition).
New York: McGraw-Hill. Page 426)
There are Essential Features of
DaSein, DaSein as being-in-the-world, Dasein as Care, DaSein as Inauthentic and
as Authentic towards Death, and DaSein as Time.
Dasein
as Being-in-the-World.
Dasein cannot be separated from the world and the world cannot be
separated from Dasein. Dasein is the
world and the world is Dasein. Another relationship that Dasein has with the
world is a cognitive relationship: Dasein knows the world. Dasein as an I or a knowing subject is
somehow apart from the world, separated from the world, and standing in a
detached intellectual relationship to it.
Viewed in this way, Dasein is not an object in the world at all, but
rather the world is an object for Dasein, a subject that lies beyond the world.
Dasein is a Being whose essence is determined by what it makes of itself. What I am is what I have created, what I am
creating, and what I will create. There
are, of course, objects that Dasein has not created but much of the world is
what Dasein has created. Insofar as we
think of Dasein as human being in a state of civilization, much of the world is
an organized set of objects that Dasein has created, “ready-at-hand”. It follows then that to grasp the world we
must grasp Dasein, since Dasein makes there to be a world; conversely, to grasp
Dasein we must grasp the world, since human beings cannot be understood apart
from what they do, and what they do is create objects in the world. To grasp
Dasein as a Being-in-the-world is to understand Dasein as a being with a place
in the world, as a being that understands its place in the world, ansd as a
being that has dealings with the world. We are agents that choose some possible world
and some possible essence for ourselves on the basis of our situation and
through communication.
Dasein’s
Being as Care. The
various aspects of life “are not pieces belonging to something composite, one
of which might sometimes be missing; but there is woven together in them a
primordial context which makes up that totality of the structural whole which
we are seeking.” Dasein is a continuum that retains its strict
identity through time. It cannot be
divided into a multiplicity of temporal parts.
To answer the question about the possibility of the unity of a single
life, there is a need to take into account what I have been, what I am,
and what I will be, that is, the
past, present, and future of Dasein. These
three must not be thought as three separate entities that are somehow
connected. The past, present, and future
of Dasein are one in a sense in which
the past, preset, and future of a piece of chalk are not.
Ordinary
objects can be thought of as a succession of temporal parts, some of which are
pasts, others of which are future, and one of which is present. We can understand what a piece of chalk is by
viewing any temporal part of it in isolation from any other. In the case of Dasein, however, you cannot
separate the past, present, and future and regard them as three distinct
features of Dasein. For you cannot
understand what Dasein is by examining one temporal part. You cannot understand Dasein’s past apart
from Dasein’s present and future, its present apart from its past and future,
or its future apart from its present and past.
The past, present, and future of Dasein are one, and each one cannot be
understood apart from the other. It is
precisely the inseparability of Dasein’s past, present, and future that
constitutite the unity of Care. The future that Dasein projects for itself can
be understood only as the future that has grown out of the past and present of
a single Dasein. It is the past and
present of Dasein that makes intelligible our future choices. My present is
inseparably connected with my past and future.
The unity of Dasein can also be seen by noting that my past cannot be
understood apart from my present and future.
I can understand my past only
insofar as I can understand how and why my past gave rise to what I am now and
what I hope to be in the future. The
interpretation that we give to our past actions must take into account what I
am doing and what I will do: my present and my future. There is a single Dasein that is past, present,
and future.I can understand what I am
doing only if I connect it with what I have done in thepast. For what I am doing now makes sense only if
it is seen as a logical outgrowth of what I have done before. To
understand what I am now, you must understand what I intend to be, for my
present actions make sense only in the light of what I see them as leading to. To
understand me now, you must understand how my present actions are related to
what I want to be. Each element of
the human story is logically dependent on the other in such a way that Dasein
cannot be understood piecemeal. We
cannot understand Dasein by viewing an isolated temporal aspect. To understand Dasein we must view Dasein as
an indivisible whole, a single being that does not have distinct temporal
parts.
Dasein
as Authentic and Inauthentic and a Being-towards-Death. To
grasp the Being of Dasein is to grasp that Dasein is not simply a composite
totality with many different aspects, but a structural whole, all of whose
characteristics are inseparably united.
We should not view then the different levels, or even the different
aspects of each level, as isolated phenomena but rather picture each level as
superimposed on the other. Heidegger is primarily concerned with the uniqueness
of Dasein – how Dasein is totally unlike anything else – and that is why he
reaches these two levels of Dasein by a consideration of the pehnomenon of
death. When we view Dasen as something
that faces death we get at the inner nature of Dasein, its uniqueness. This is because death individualizes each of
us from all other objects (present-at-hand and ready-at-hand) and it
individualizes us from all other human beings. Death individualizes us from all
other objects because only Dasein reaches its “wholeness” in death. At death Dasein comes to an end; there are no
longer possibilites in its future, since Dasein is no longer a
Being-in-the-world capable of projecting and acting on future possibilities. In the very ceasing of Dasein there is a
coming to be of the essence of Dasein.
Dasein is not “whole” until death, for when it ceases to exist it then
acquires a kind of Being that it never had when it was alive and making
choices. When I die I achieve a certain kind of being – an essence – that I
never really had when I was alive.
Ordinary objects are such that their essence precedes their
existence. On the basis of this
difference we may say that death individualizes Dasein from all objects. Death
individualizes or isolates each of us from all other individuals. In general, and with regard to virtually
everything that we do, we are replaceable.
“Indisputably, the fact that one
Dasein can be represented by another belongs to its possibilities of Being in
Being-with-one-another in the world.” Since one is what one does, and since what we
do can always be done by someone else, we are, as it were, specimens of a kind
substitutable without qualification by any other member of the species homo sapiens. And yet there is a sense in which this is not
true, for there is something that is absolutely unique about me, and about
which I am irreplaceable, namely, my death. Dying has existential
significance. It is that about which
Dasein is absolutely unique and irreplaceable, and it constitutes the wholeness
of Dasein. The phenomenon of death
because it is unique to each existing individual can help us to understand the
distinction between Dasein as inauthentic and Dasein as authentic, and it can
also lead to existential self-awareness. Death constitutes the totality of
Dasein and it is the point at which Dasein reaches wholeness. Death is not just one event among many for
Dasein, but that it is a basic and distinctive feature of the Being of Dasein. “Death
reveals itself as that possibility which is one’s ownmost, which is
non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped.” Death as a possibility is not one possibility
among many; it is the possibility of there being no more possibilities. In this respect death corresponds to
understanding and Being-ahead-of-itself.
Dasein is thrown into the world of its concern
(Being-already-in-the-world), and through its state-of-the-mind has disclosed
to itself its Being-towards-the-end. It
is thrown into a possibility which is not to be outstripped, in that death is
an inevitable and necessary possible. Our communicating about death
(Being-alongside) primarily and for the most part is by way of falling. Our typical dealings with death involve
fleeing in the face of it, attempting to avoid it. Death is thus essential to Dasein’s Being for
we can understand the basic structures of death in terms of the basic
structures of Being. In our everydayness we live in the “they”, in that we tend
to think of ourselves as “das man’ or a human being in general. We view ourselves not as individuals, but as
members of a kind. In much the same way
the common everyday mode of Being-towards-death is inauthentic. Our ordinary attitude towards death treats it
as something that happens to everyone in the end, but right now it has nothing
to do with me. Someone or other dies or
“one dies,” and one’s own death is thought of as “one like many.” It is a biological fact, an event that
happens to all living things, but not one that I must especially concern myself
with. This way of viwing death amounts to a flight from the fact of one’s own
individual death. We avoid facing our
own death by viewing it as a certain objective event that is encountered in the
world. But to view death as an event
among events is to fail to face the fact of the uniqueness of one’s own death
and the uniqueness of oneself. It avoids
the realization that death constitutes the end of one’s own Dasein and that
therefore one has to continually create what one will be until the possibility
of there being no more possibilities is realized. The attempt to avoid facing
the fact of one’s own death takes ingenious forms. We try to convince the dying person that he
or she will escape death as a way of consoling the person and keeping his or
her ownmost non-relational possibility-of-Being completely concealed. The
“they” tries to tranquilize our anxiety in the face of death by transforming it
into an approaching event which it is cowardly to face. The result of branding the anxiety over
death, fear, and cowardice, is to alienate the Dasein from its ownmost
possibility and this is the mark of falling.
Dasein
and Temporality. Temporality is the fundamental basis of the
unity of Dasein, since all the other structures are ultimately unified and
understood in terms of past, present, and future. To understand Dasein as temporality is to
understand Dasein as the Being who is the fundamental ground or basis for our
ordinary conception of time. Since our
ordinary conception of time is really an abstraction from the temporality of
Dasein, we must first understand the temporality of Dasein in order to
unders6and our ordinary way of conceiving time. We ordinarily conceive of time
as a single thing that is composed of an infinite sequence of moments each of
which is now. Some of these moments are past, others
present, and others future. The past and
future have some kind of reality, but not the reality of the present. This concept is, however, problematic. For if we think of our experience of time as
a sequence of nows, as events flowing by, then we can have the experience of
the present, but we cannot have the experience of past and future. Dasein
originates time because Dasein itself is a single Being, a unity, that is now
(and always) past, present, abnd future.
I am now past because what I am now is in part determined by my
past. At this moment my past has some
reality, since my past is part of me. I
am now also in the future, in that what I will be is part of what I take myself
to be. My present conception of myself depends
in part on what I intend to be in the future.
So even my future is now, insofar as what I am now is in part determined
by what I take myself to be in the future.
Dasein is now (and always) past, present, and future. In relfecting upon Dasein’s temporality,
Dasein can come to think that time is a single entity in which past, present,
and future are all real. The ordinary conception of time as an endless sequence
of now, although founded upon the temporality of Dasein is not an authentic way
of viewing time. For the ordinary
conception of time allows us to conceive of the present solely as a time for us
to do something. The present is when we
become very busy meeting people and making appointments. The inauthentic individual by viewing time
solely in terms of the now does not become aware of the potentiality for the
future, one’s own freedom. Nor does one
become aware of the influences of one’s past on the present. To become aware of
one’s potentiality of the future is to become aware of one’s freedom. By concentrating or thinking of time as being
in the now and what is going on now, one doe not think in terms of the future
. One does not think of the fact that I
could make this or that future for myself.
One is fixated on the now and so loses the sense of there being
different possible alternative ways of viewing the future. The correct, or
rather the authentic, conception of time is one in which the present is viewed
as the point at which we must project a future for ourselves while retaining a
knowledge of one’s past as having contributed to that present. One is not captured or consumed by the
present, but always views his or her entire life. One is continuously projecting and acting on
possibilities for the future at the same time one is viewing one’s past, not as
something over and done with, but as something that must be taken into account
in determining the possibilities for the future. (Holy Trinity College Seminary Handbook on Contemporary Philosophy,
2009, page 109-117)
Agree and Disagree
There
are parts of Heidegger’s discussion which I agreed upon and there is a part
that I do not agree with. I agree on the discussion of Heidegger regarding the authenticity
towards the three tenses in English: the past, the present and the future.
When we say past, we know that it already happened either a while ago or a
long, long time ago. When we say present, we know that it is happening right
now, as in the event that occurs now. And when we say future, we know that it
is not yet happening but will happen or is going to happen. I agree on his
thought that these three are related to each other and they coexist with each
other, just like the DaSein.
All beings are one and many. (Que, N. SJ. (1995). Central Problems of
Metaphysics: Being as One and Many. (1st Edition). Ateneo de Manila
University. Page 37-38) So just like the three tenses, they are one and, at
the same time, many. How did this happen? All things are related to each other
that’s why they are one, and they are also diverse from each other that’s why
they are many. For example, as a family, we are one as a family, but we also
have differences and uniqueness. Relating to the three tenses, they are the
same and they are coexisting and depending on each other. Past can never be
past if there is no present and future, present can never be present if there
is no past and future, and future can never be future if there is no past and
present. Through this notion, it proves that they are one, but speaking of
diversity, it is very obvious that the three occurs in different aspect of
time. The oneness of the three, which summarizes the essence of the three
tenses, is what we call “NOW.” Now
can never occur without any disturbances from the past, present can never occur
without the worries about the future, and future can never occur without the existence
of both past and present. For example, in my love life, I can never live my
life now if I haven’t learnt from my
past and at the same time, I can never move on to my future. We must always be
authentic for us to live a life happily. But how can we be authentic towards
it? Learn from the past, be who you are today or in the present for you to be
prepared for a beautiful future waiting for you.
Regarding authenticity towards death,
it is very important for us to live and practice this authenticity. Why?
Imagine a life always worrying about your death. You would always say, “When I
am going to die?” and “How am I going to die?” Never worry because it will
cause too much stress and too much suffering to you. In the church, we would
always see most of the mass attendees are of old age. Why is it? Because we
know that when we are old, it is near for us to face our death. My questions
are, why do we not practice the mass and the good deeds when we are still
young? What if it is our time to die even in young age? To other people, they
already practice good deeds, but to some, they haven’t done it or they just
realized to do it just now. This is the problem why we are not that authentic when
we are about to face death, that we are not ready. It is advised, even in the
sermons of the priests, to be ready even if it is not yet your time because
death is like a thief in the night that would steal our precious life from us.
So, all we need is to live our life first, to accept that, in time, our end
will come, and to keep in our minds the saying, “for
you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the
night.” (1 Thessalonians 5:2)
And
now, I already expressed the part that I have agreed with Heidegger. Now, it is
time for the part where I disagree with him when he said that “Death is the
completeness of Dasein.” (Holy Trinity College Seminary Handbook on
Contemporary Philosophy, 2009. Page 112). With all respect to Heidegger, I also
understand his point. But for me, death is not the completeness of life, death
is not the completeness of “being there” for man, while he is alive, can
experience the feelings of completeness. For example, a guy found his one and
only love, a lady, if he is straight, then he would say to that lady with all
emotions, “You complete me.” By this situation, completeness is already seen
and expressed by a single being, so, for me, death is not the completeness of
life, but the true completeness is the feeling of a person by which all the
gaps and all the holes in him are all filled up with joy.
A Decision?
I believe that there is no fate.
Why? Many people would say, I got this because of fate. I got you because of
destiny, but for me, there is no fate or destiny because it is only us who give
ourselves what we deserve. It is only our decisions in life that give us the possibility
to achieve or not to achieve a thing.
For example, there are two options A
and B. If A was chosen, it will lead to choices C and D, but if B was picked,
it will lead to E and F. Then, with the options C and D, and E and F, there are
choices again that will lead to many more options, and so on. So, when we say
that a man was once a poor person (and that time I chose A), and now I am a
billionaire (because of choice Z), it does not technically mean that what
happened to that man is fate or destiny. It is his will, his choice and his
decisions that raised him from the bottom to the top.
Then, what really is death? Death is
not completeness, but a decision. How come? When we say completeness, it means
that a person achieved already his goals. He has a happy life, living with his
wife and children, with all the luxuries, and with all the success, if that is
his criterion for happiness. In short, it is our happiness that gives us the
completeness we are searching for.
Why is death a decision? It is said
that there are two choices towards death: authenticity and inauthenticity, and
we all know that during the time of death, or even days, months, or years,
before it snatch our life, we must be authentic towards it. If we need to be
authentic towards death, acceptance is needed. If we need to accept, decision
is also needed, because acceptance occurs after a decision is made. We cannot
accept a simple thing without deciding whether to accept or reject it. And with
this decision, decisions will appear soon – when we do things to make us ready
such as confessing our sins, return to God, and be a true Christian. Through
these decisions, we can achieve things happily and authentically.
And
so, by all means, we must not forget the rationality that we have, we must use
not only our mind, but also our heart, and we must use the freedom that we have
because life is a decision.
Bibliography
Webster’s
Universal Dictionary and Thesaurus
Holy
Trinity College Seminary Handbook on Contemporary Philosophy, 2009
Stumpf,
S. & Fieser, J. (2008). Socrates and Sartre and Beyond. (8th
Edition). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Que,
N. SJ. (1995). Central Problems of Metaphysics: Being as One and Many. (1st
Edition). Ateneo de Manila University.
The New
American Bible
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