HEIDEGGER ON PRACTICAL REASONING:

MORALITY AND AGENCY

STEVEN CROWELL

1. Agency and Practical Reasoning

We are still far from pondering the essence of action decisively enough.
We view action only as causing an effect.1 Of action, praxis, Aristotle
noted that it is something which is itself its end and thus cannot be
understood as a cause that brings something about.2 Of course, action
does bring things about, but that does not exhaust its meaning. It can be
hard to find a way to talk about that meaning without falling into the
language of causing and producing, but unless we do we will miss Hei-
deggers contribution to the philosophical elucidation of practical reason.
For that contribution does not lie in explaining what makes an action
rational, what it is to act according to reason; rather it lies in clarifying,
phenomenologically, what it is to be an agent. For this reason, if we wish
to determine where morality fits in to Heideggers ontology we should
look not to the quality of character (virtue) or to the maxim of acts
(duty) but to the nature of agency.
The concept of practical reason has roots in Aristotles concept of
phronesis. In contrast to that sort of reason episteme, theoria that has to
do with what is not even capable of being otherwise (as in mathem-
atics or metaphysics), phronesis concerns what is capable of being other-
wise above all, human affairs, ethics and politics (NE 1139b, 1140b).
While this way of distinguishing practical from theoretical reason has its
uses, it is too bound up with the details of Aristotles metaphysics to be

1 Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, in Basic Writings, ed. David Farrell Krell (Har-

per: San Francisco, 1993), 217.

2 Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, in The Basic Works of Aristotle, ed. Richard McKeon
(New York: Random House, 1941), 1026. Henceforth cited in the text as NE, according
to the pagination of the Bakker edition of the Greek text of Aristotle e.g., here, (NE
1140b).
50 Steven Crowell

of much help in reading Heidegger.3 But Aristotle offers another, more

salient, way of distinguishing the two. Practical reasoning, deliberation,
aims to reach a decision about what to do; it pursues a chain of inference
that ceases when the reasoner has brought the moving principle back to
himself and to the ruling part of himself (NE 1113a), whereby the reas-
oner becomes a cause, that is, an agent. In the kind of causal thinking
Heidegger criticized above, action (that is to say, the act) is identified as
the cause that brings about some effect; for Aristotle, in contrast, it is the
agent who is the cause insofar as he brings about the action. Heidegger
registers this distinction with his claim that the essence of action is not
causality but accomplishment (Vollbringen).4 What then is the relation
between practical reason and the accomplishment of action?
Phronesis is the virtue or excellence of practical reasoning; it is that
which accomplishes praxis. But what makes practical reason itself pos-
sible, such that through it there is agency and not merely causality? Aris-
totle would find this question absurd we are simply rational animals
but Heidegger tries to answer it. Prior to being animal rationale, Dasein is
Care (Sorge); thus Heidegger cannot take rationality for granted but must
demonstrate its origin in that being in whose being that very being is an
issue for it.5 For Heidegger, the roots of agency do not lie in phronesis,
but in that which makes phronesis possible, namely, Gewissen: conscience
as the call of Care (BT 319/274).
To speak of conditions for the possibility of phronesis is to frame the
discussion in Kantian terms, and in the matter of practical reason, as in
all others, the Heidegger of Sein und Zeit seeks to recover the insights of
both Aristotelian and Kantian thought by way of phenomenology.6

3 For Heideggers own discussion of this distinction, see Martin Heidegger, Platon:
Sophistes, Gesamtausgabe Bd. 19, ed. Ingeborg Schler (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1992),
21-60.
4 Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 217.
5 Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, tr. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New
York: Harper & Row, 1962), 32 (H 12). Henceforth cited in the text as BT with English
pagination first, followed by the German pagination in the Niemeyer edition e.g., (BT
32/12).
6 Arguments for this claim can be found in Steven Galt Crowell, Hussserl, Heidegger,
and the Space of Meaning: Paths Toward Transcendental Phenomenology (Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 2001).
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 51

Though Kant, too, sees agency as a kind of causality, his understanding

of practical reason augments Aristotle in a way that will be decisive for
Heideggers approach to morality. For Kant, the will itself is practical
reason itself.7 Wille, in this sense, is a normative notion; not choice itself
but its standard, viz., whatever reason requires in a given situation. If my
end can be attained only by carrying out a certain rationally determined
series of actions, to carry out such actions is my Wille. But I may not
carry them out; I may reason improperly about what is required or I may
be inclined not to do what I know I must to attain what I (putatively)
desire. These are matters of Willkr, choice that actually initiates some
series of actions.
Kants approach to morality focuses largely on Wille; Heidegger, in
contrast, has no normative concept of practical reason. Wille is always only
Willkr. The choice of what I ought to do is not normatively grounded
in reason. On what is it to resolve? Only the resolution itself can give
the answer (BT 345/298). I can resolve upon something for a reason,
but the normative force of this reason does not derive from its status as a
reason. Hence Heideggers account of morality cannot be based, in Kann-
tian fashion, on reasons character as law. Because agency is not the
cause of some effect but the accomplishment of action, the concept of
law is out of place. Nevertheless the determination of morality that arises
from Heideggers phenomenology of agency is closely aligned with his
ontological understanding of practical reason. As I will argue, to be an
agent is to relate to factic grounds as to normative reasons, and because
Dasein is Mitsein, agency also entails the unconditional that is, moral
obligation to be accountable to others. A Heideggerian agent is thus one
for whom practical reason, as reason-giving, is a moral obligation.
A leitmotif of my argument arises from dissatisfaction with one wide-
spread interpretation of Heideggers analytic of Dasein. Since the public-
ation of Heideggers lectures from the 1920s, it has become something
of a commonplace to see Sein und Zeit as an existential re-working of
Aristotles practical philosophy.8 Gadamers report that Heidegger ident-

7 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, tr., Mary Gregor (Cambridge, UK: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1996), 13.

8 Franco Volpi, In Whose Name? Heidegger and Practical Philosophy, European
Journal of Political Theory (DOI: 10.1177/1474885107070828), 40, calls it an ontologiza-
tion of praxis. See also Franco Volpi, Dasein comme praxis: Lassimilation et la radical-
52 Steven Crowell

ified phronesis with Gewissen9 seems to authorize a reading according to

which Division I provides a phenomenology of poiesis (making) and
praxis (acting, doing), while Division II lays out praxis in its authentic
mode, i.e., phronesis. But while it is certainly true that Aristotles Nichom-
achean Ethics is central to Heideggers thinking, this way of interpreting
Sein und Zeit is seriously misleading. For it fails to note how the system-
atic relation between Division I and Division II is governed by Heideg-
gers appropriation of Kant. Division I does comprise an ontologization
of Aristotelian insights, but as such it already encompasses phronesis. Di-
vision II is only incidentally an account of the phronemos; essentially, it is
an ontologization of Kantian insights not to be found in Aristotle. Ra-
ther than equating Gewissen and phronesis, Division II demonstrates that
the former is the latters ground.10 Phronesis is an intellectual virtue of

isation heideggerienne de la philosophie pratique dAristote, in Heidegger et lide de la

phnomnologie, ed. F. Volpi, et al. (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 1-42; Theodore Kisiel, The
Genesis of Heideggers Being and Time (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993);
Alejandro Vigo, Phrnesis aristotlica y Verstehen heideggeriano, in Arqueologa y Aleteiolo-
ga y otros estudios heideggerianos (Editorial Biblos: Buenos Aires, 2008), 213-230.
9 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Martin Heidegger and Marburg Theology, in Philosophical
Hermeneutics, ed. and tr. David E. Linge (Los Angeles: University of California Pres,
1976), 201. In Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes, 56, one reads: Aber es ist doch aus dem Zu-
sammenhang deutlich... da Aristoteles hier auf das Phnomen des Gewissens gestoen ist.
Die phronesis is nichts anderes als das in Bewegung gesetzte Gewissen, das eine Handlung
durchsichtig macht. One should note, however, that Heidegger here identifies phronesis
not with Gewissen full stop, but with das in Bewegung gesetzte Gewissen. In Section 4
below I will argue that this distinction is decisive for understanding the role of Gewissen in
Sein und Zeit.
10 My interpretation thus both agrees with, and departs significantly from, Hubert
Dreyfuss reading of the relation between Divison I and Division II in his What Could
be More Intelligible than Everyday Intelligibility? Reinterpreting Division I of Being and
Time in Light of Division II, Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society 24/3 (2004), 265-274.
Dreyfus agrees with Kisiel that Division I elaborates on techne (everyday skill) and Divi-
sion II on phronesis (practical wisdom) (p. 266), but he also holds that Division IIs Kier-
kegaardianism allows Heidegger to recognize a phenomenon unknown to the Greeks,
namely, creation or the disclosure of a new world (p. 272). But while it is true that
Division II provides an account of an aspect of Existenz that did not find expression in
the philosophical vocabulary of the Greeks, this aspect is not properly understood as a
new level of skill. As I shall argue below, Kisiels judgment (partially endorsed by Drey-
fus) that Heidegger, in his account of resolute Dasein in Division II, is working out
Aristotles phenomenology of practical wisdom (p. 269) cannot be correct, since that
working-out is accomplished essentially already in Division I. But Dreyfus is right to see
that Division II analyzes what is required to make possible the virtuosity of the Heideg-
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 53

praxis; Gewissen, in contrast, belongs to an existential situation where nei-

ther deliberation nor praxis is possible. This is why Heidegger can say
that the existentiell possibility of being good that is, of acting as the
phronemos acts can subsist only within an essential conscienceless-
ness (BT 334/288).
To understand what this means is to be in a position to assess the
place of morality in Sein und Zeit. Thus the following section of the paper
will show how Division I incorporates an analysis of praxis; a second sec-
tion will construct the Heideggerian account of deliberation, together
with its virtue, phronesis; and a final section will show how Gewissen pro-
vides the condition of possibility for minded action while entailing rea-
son-giving as a moral obligation.

2. Mindless Coping and the Mindedness of Action

In Sein und Zeit Heidegger breaks with the intellectualistic and Cartesian
understanding of the subject, according to which the intelligibility of
action is a function of thinking of reflecting, planning, and representing
to oneself. Thus Hubert Dreyfus once approvingly described the every-
day coping skills of Dasein as mindless.11 In a debate with Dreyfus,
John McDowell argued that even when there is no spontaneity, no ex-
plicit reflection and thought, our behavior is not mindless coping but is
minded, that is, infused with the intelligibility that will subsequently
serve as the basis for explicit thinking.12 There are real issues at stake in
this dispute, but others are merely terminological. For both McDowell
and Dreyfus, action is worldly in Heideggers sense that is, possible

gerian phronimos (p. 271). The crux of our disagreement lies in the fact that Dreyfuss
reading fails to appreciate the role Kant plays in Division II.
11 Hubert Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heideggers Being and Time, Di-

vision I (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1991), 3.

12 The exchange was occasioned by Dreyfuss APA Pacific Division Presidential Ad-
dress (2005), Overcoming the Myth of the Mental: How Philosophers Can Profit from
the Phenomenology of Everyday Expertise. Subsequent contributions can be found in
Inquiry 50/4 (2007): John McDowell, What Myth? (338-351); Hubert Dreyfus, The
Return of the Myth of the Mental (352-365); McDowell, Response to Dreyfus (366-
370); Dreyfus, Response to McDowell (371-377).
54 Steven Crowell

only within a space of intelligibility or meaning. Thus, so long as we keep

in mind that the ontologization of praxis in Division I is undertaken pre-
cisely to illuminate the worldhood of the world (BT 91/63), it matters
little whether we indicate the meaningfulness of action with the term
minded (as we shall do here) or with some other term. It is only im-
portant that we understand rightly the relation between the meaningful-
ness of acting and the Bedeutungsganzes that is world.
Heidegger begins his phenomenology of worldhood by noting that
everyday Dasein is not a theoretician but deals with things practically.
Things show up as equipment (Zeug), that is, in light of what they are
good for. What they are good for is what they are used for. Thus, to
grasp a pen as a pen is not to predicate something of it but to use it to
write. I encounter a hammer as a hammer when I wield it in order to
drive nails. The nails, in turn, are encountered as nails when I use them
to fasten plywood to the joists. Equipment is thus possible only in a hol-
istic context of references or assignments (BT 105/74), and these ref-
erences have a normative aspect: the pen is appropriate for...; the ham-
mer is suitable for... ; the nails are serviceable for.... Such norms
i.e., the standards of appropriateness, suitability, and serviceability are
relative to the work to be done. This fountain pen is appropriate for
writing a letter but not for labeling a CD; this claw hammer is suitable
for joining two-by-fours to frame a wall but not for joining the corners
of a delicate picture frame; these ten-penny nails are serviceable for mak-
ing a bookshelf but not for making a birdhouse.
Heidegger initially approaches worldhood through a phenomenology
of work; that is, what Aristotle calls poiesis. This is not the whole story,
however, for the work (ergon), that which is produced, is not sufficient to
account for the norms that constitute the being (intelligibility) of equip-
ment. These latter are relative to the work, but the work itself stands
under a further norm, a measure of what it is supposed to be. Say I have
produced a wooden artifact with huge nails sticking out on one side and
another side barely attached by tiny brads. Is it a birdhouse or a work of
art? As the former it is a dismal failure, but as the latter it might be wildly
successful. And only if I know which it is can I encounter the nails as
suitable or unsuited. In Heideggers terms, the equipmental totality can
be what it is only within a Bewandtnisganzheit, a totality of relevance that
circumscribes what is being done or made (BT 114f/83f).
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 55

The work belongs to this relevance totality but it does not exhaust it;
what the work is supposed to be refers back to that for the sake of which all
these actions are being carried out. Heidegger writes: But this totality of
relevance itself goes back ultimately to a towards which in which there
is no further relevance... The primary towards which is a for-the-sake-
of-which. But the for-the-sake-of always pertains to the being of Da-
sein, for which, in its being, that very being is essentially an issue (BT
116-17/84). In other words, what is being made is determined by what I
am doing. And what I am doing, in turn, is in an important sense deter-
mined by what I am trying to do.13 The standards that govern the as-
structure of equipment derive from such trying. Making is minded be-
cause in exercising a particular ability or skill I understand myself as up
to something. In understanding a context of relations... Dasein has as-
signed itself to an in-order-to, and it has done so in terms of a potential-
ity-for-being [Seinknnen] for the sake of which it itself is (BT 119/86).
To understand, in Heideggers existential sense, is to try to be some-
thing, and in this I can succeed or fail. On this basis I will hazard the
following thesis: For Heidegger, the Worumwillen or for the sake of is
the ultimate source of all particular norms.
The Umwillen is a possibility of Daseins being, where possibility
is not something I represent to myself but something I am in the sense
of something I am able to do. Possibility is an ability to be (Seinknnen),

13 This notion is meant to capture certain aspects of the phenomenon of existential

commitment as analyzed by John Haugeland. See, for instance, Truth and Rule-Fol-
lowing, in Having Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 305-360,
and Truth and Finitude: Heideggers Transcendental Existentialism, in Heidegger, Auth-
enticity, and Modernity. Essays in Honor of Hubert L. Dreyfus, Vol. I, ed. Mark Wrathall and
Jeff Malpas (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000), 43-78. I would like to forestall one
objection here. What I am doing can be distinguished from what I am trying to do in
various ways. I might be trying to defuse a dispute between two people by conveying in-
formation to one of them, whereas what I am in fact doing is enabling that dispute because,
unbeknownst to me, the information has implications that fuel it. In such cases (which of
course are legion) the distinction between doing and trying is a distinction between third-
and first-person perspectives on the same action. For our purposes, however, this dis-
tinction is irrelevant, since Heideggers ontology of action is phenomenological, i.e.,
fundamentally first-personal. This is not the place to examine the validity of such an
ontological approach in general, but it should be noted that it does not entail that what I
am doing is always what I think I am doing. The reasons for this will be spelled out in
Section 3 below.
56 Steven Crowell

whose modal character derives from the fact that it is only in being an
issue for me something I can succeed or fail at being in trying to be it.
Being a lawyer, being a carpenter, being a father, teacher, lover, or friend:
all of these are possibilities, that is, things that I am up to, capable of;
roles and practices I engage in more or less ably. I join these boards in
order to make a house, but it is for the sake of being a carpenter that I
do it in just the way I do. Of course, I make the house in order to live in
it, but that is not why I exercise myself in just the way I do; rather, it is
because I am trying to be a carpenter, I am trying (and so perhaps failing)
to live up to what the practice requires, acknowledging the claims they
make on me. Only so do those requirements take on normative force (i.e.,
actually govern my behavior). Thus, to understand myself as suspended
between success and failure to exist in a normative space is possible
only because my being is Care. Here I will posit a second thesis: all
normative force depends on Care.
Making (poiesis) rests upon this sort of existential possibility. Doing
something in just the way I do exhibits my skill, my know-how. I know
how a table is made; that is, I am able to make one. Such know-how is
not necessarily something I can articulate theoretically, but it is not whol-
ly mechanical either; it is techne or art. What distinguishes a carpenter
from a carpenter ant is art, a kind of mindedness that stems from the way
I understand myself in trying to be a carpenter. Carpenter ants can suc-
ceed or fail at making something, but only the carpenter can succeed or
fail at what he is trying to be. The carpenters skill or techne is an intellectual
virtue, not mere instinct, because to try to be a carpenter is to act in light
of the norms that govern the practice. The intelligibility of making, then,
depends on norms that govern not only the product but the process,
norms that govern what it is to be whatever Dasein is able be.
This shows that Heideggers analysis of everyday Dasein includes not
only the principles of making but the principles of acting (praxis) as well.
For being a father or a friend is an Umwillen, but no one least of all
Heidegger will confuse these with modes of making something. Being
a good friend is not just knowing how to write a congratulatory letter but
knowing when to write it, in what sort of medium, the character of the
one to whom it is addressed, and so on. I may be able to write a congrat-
ulatory letter, but if I do so too late, or by email, or with rhetorical flour-
ishes when its recipient dislikes verbosity, then, even if I have succeeded
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 57

in making something, I have failed at being a friend. Being a friend is

praxis not a property but a project. Like poiesis, it involves a kind of
know-how, an intellectual virtue; it is minded. Even if I dont think
about it thematically, being a friend that is, trying to be one is not
something I do mechanically; in understanding myself as a friend I act
not merely in accord with the norms of friendship, but in light of them.14
For Aristotle, the intellectual virtue that grasps the normative light that
governs praxis is not techne but phronesis. Practical wisdom is the ability to
carry out some project in the way that it is supposed to be carried out,
the way that it is best carried out, i.e., in such a way that the praxis is ac-
complished.
Thus both techne and phronesis belong within the scope of the Umwillen
analyzed in Division I of Sein und Zeit, and we have seen that the norma-
tivity upon which both depend derives from the ability to try to be some-
thing that is, from Care. If that is so, it should be possible to construct
a Heideggerian account of deliberation already on the basis of Division I.
Doing so will enable us to see why Heidegger needs Division II: not to
describe the phronemos in ontological terms as authentic Dasein but to
show how minded agency (and so also phronesis) is possible at all.

3. Deliberation and the Man

For the most part, I am absorbed in the world; praxis is, for the most
part, simply going with the flow. But it often happens that my projects
are disturbed by glitches and snags that disrupt the flow, major or minor
breakdowns that make it difficult for me to go on. At such times I am
forced to take stock of my situation, to reflect, to consider what should
be done. At such times, I am forced to deliberate.
Heidegger says very little about deliberation. This has led one com-
mentator to hold that Heidegger banishes reason from human exis-
tence and to deny that there is, in Sein und Zeit, anything remotely

14 To speak of acting in light of norms does not entail that these norms are formul-
ated anywhere; they are not rules. Thus acting immediately (i.e., without explicit delib-
eration) is not incompatible with acting in light of norms and not merely in accord with
them.
58 Steven Crowell

resembling the concepts of deliberation, reasons, norms.15 This rather

widespread view seems all the more plausible since Heideggers analysis
of choice and resoluteness, in particular, does not mention deliberation.
It appears both decisionistic and solipsistic.16 However, this view fails to
understand the transcendental role that the analysis plays, which is pre-
cisely to specify the conditions of possibility for the picture of deliber-
ation implicit in Division I. More broadly, the analysis of resoluteness
establishes the ontological roots of practical reasoning itself.
Heidegger explicitly discusses deliberation in the section of Sein und
Zeit devoted to the ontological genesis of the theoretical attitude, but
the gist of the concept was introduced already in 32 of Division I, Un-
derstanding and Interpretation, which analyzes how the relevance total-
ity that is normatively grounded in my project comes to be made explicit:
All preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, rounding-out, are
accomplished in the following way: we take apart in its in-order-to that
which is circumspectively ready-to-hand, and we concern ourselves with
it in accordance with what becomes visible through this process (BT
189/148-9).
Later, Heidegger links this sort of interpretation to the reasoning and
reflection that formulates options for action when he defines deliber-
ating [berlegung] as a specific way of bringing the object of concern
close by interpreting it circumspectively. He calls deliberation circum-
spective because its aim is practical; one engages in deliberation in order
to get on with the task that has been interrupted. Thus, in contrast to
theorizing which thematizes or objectifies things in such a way
that they can throw themselves against a pure discovering (BT

15 Ernst Tugendhat, Self-Consciousness and Self-Determination, tr. Paul Stern (Cambridge,

MA: The MIT Press, 1986), 215; Ernst Tugendhat, Wir sind nicht festgedrahtet: Hei-
deggers Man und die Tiefdimension des Grundes, in Aufstze, 1992-2000 (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 2001), 150. Volpi, In Whose Name?, 43, argues, somewhat less emphatical-
ly, that Heideggers ontologization of praxis produces, so to speak, the dissolution of its
specific weight as acting, and the loss of the ethico-political character Aristotle gave to
praxis.
16 For the charge of decisionism see the writings by Tugendhat mentioned in the pre-
vious note. Further oft-cited sources are Jrgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of
Modernity, tr. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1987), Chapter Six,
and Richard Wolin, The Politics of Being (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). For
the charge of solipsism see Volpi, In Whose Name?, 46.
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 59

414/363) deliberating belongs to the project in which Dasein is already

engaged. Theorizing occasions a change in being in the entities it ob-
jectifies, a change from the available to the occurrent (BT 412/361). Del-
iberating, in contrast, is embedded in specific practices and thus draws
upon the norms that belong to them. It receives its light from that
potentiality for being on the part of Dasein for the sake of which concern
exists as care (BT 410/359).
In everyday praxis I circumspectively comport myself toward things
as a doctor, father, teacher, or friend that is, I try to be these possibil-
ities for being, to act in light of the norms that govern them. Within such
comportment, Heidegger writes, the scheme peculiar to deliberation
is the ifthen; if this or that, for instance, is to be produced, put to
use, or averted, then some ways and means, circumstances, or opportun-
ities will be needed (BT 410/359). Heidegger does not mention reason
explictly, but he seems to conceive deliberation as instrumental reason.
Does this mean that he conceives praxis in terms of poiesis after all? Can
his analysis of deliberation accommodate acting without reducing the lat-
ter to a kind of making? With the help Christine Korsgaards concept of
practical identity, I will argue that it can.
Korsgaard defines practical identity as a description under which
you value yourself.17 To value yourself in a practical sense is not mere-
ly to take satisfaction in contemplating yourself under some description
but to be motivated to act in a certain way. To value myself under some
description is to act in light of the norms it involves, to want to live up
to them and to try to do so. Thus practical identities give us reasons in
the sense of internal or motivating reasons to do things.18 Because
being a father is my practical identity, I have a reason to attend my sons
violin recital rather than join the usual Wednesday night poker game with
my friends. But dont I already have such a reason just because I am a
father, even if I dont value myself under that description? To the extent
that fatherhood is an institutionally defined condition rather than an
existential project, I do have such a reason; but only if I care about
fatherhood will that reason have normative force for me. And if I act on

17 Christine Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-

sity Press, 1996), 101.

18 Korsgaard, Sources of Normativity, 101-2.
60 Steven Crowell

it without caring (say, because it is my duty), I will still not fulfill the
normative demands of being a father. I will fail to be a good father be-
cause good fathers care about being fathers and so feel the normative
force of the reasons stemming from their practical identities. They do
not merely recognize such norms but are beholden to them, committed.
Thus interpreted, Korsgaards concept of practical identity tracks
Heideggers Worumwillen and allows us to see that his account of deliber-
ation need not be limited to the sort of instrumental reasoning charac-
teristic of making. For if practical identities provide me with reasons for
acting in a certain way, so too do Heideggerian projects. This sort of
reason is not well expressed as an in-order-to; I do not attend the violin
recital in order to be a good father but for the sake of being one. Phron-
esis has to do with this sort of reason, a sort to which the phronemos is
especially attuned. The importance of this distinction becomes clear if we
look into what Aristotle says about choice.
Choice (prohairesis) is the origin of action its efficient, not its final
cause; and the origin of choice, in turn, is desire and reasoning with
a view to an end that is, desire and deliberation. Hence choice can-
not exist either without reason and intellect or without a moral state
(NE 1139a). More specifically, minded agency requires reason and intel-
lect because it does not merely tend toward an end through desire but
chooses it; that is, acts in light of that which tends to attain what is good
(NE 1142b), the sorts of things that conduce to the good life in gener-
al, the things that are good and bad for man (NE 1140a). To see the
end in light of the good is itself a specific sort of practice, one whose ex-
cellence, Aristotle says, is a kind of correctness other than the correc-
tness of knowledge and opinion that is, other than the kind of cor-
rectness pertinent to formulated judgments and propositions. This prac-
tice is deliberation or, as Aristotle says, thinking, and practical wisdom
(phronesis) is correctness in thinking (NE 1142b).19

19 Dreyfus, What Could be More Intelligible, 268, is thus right to emphasize that
phronesis (cultural expertise) is not ratiocination but rather an immediate response to
each situation. But given Aristotles distinction between correctness in thinking and the
correctness of explicitly formulated propositions, such immediacy does not exclude del-
iberation or thinking and can thus be an instance of acting in light of norms rather than
merely in accord with them. See footnote 14 above.
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 61

But there is no such thing as thinking in general, so deliberation is

always thinking with a view to some specific desired end. If minded
agency, praxis, concerns the good life rather than something made,
whence comes its conception of what the good life is? It cannot come
from practical wisdom, which is an excellence of thinking and not of
what is thought. As Aristotle famously claimed, the end is given by char-
acter. For this reason, choice cannot exist... without a moral state, i.e.,
a character of some kind. Character is something like the habitus of my
desires as a whole, that whereby I perceive the end (the good) in some
particular circumstance where the issue is to bring the moving principle
back to myself. Thus character seems close to Korsgaards motivational
sense of to value oneself, which means that character will always be
manifest in some particular practical identity for the sake of which I act:
to be a good father, a good politician, a good teacher or friend. In deliberating
I will be guided by the norms of these roles. I will make them explicit
(within the limits of my ability to think) as that in light of which I act,
that to which I am, through my character, beholden in short, as my rea-
sons. Thus the reasons we draw upon in deliberation do not have the
structure of instrumental reasons; instead, they provide normative justif-
ication for what I do i.e., they state not what must be done but what it
is best to do in these circumstances, given a particular practical identity.
If it is in light of the norms of my practical identity that I have rea-
sons to act in this way rather than that, then all deliberation will be tied,
in Heideggers terms, to das Man the always historically and culturally
specific way that things are normally (and in that sense normatively)
taken for granted as being. For what counts as being a good father or
friend can never be entirely divorced from the public norms that currently
allow us to recognize fathers and friends. I can only try to be a father if I
try to do what a father does what anyone who is a father should do
that is, only if I do what one does (BT 164-5/126-7).20 Heideggers das
Man embodies this necessarily anonymous, public character of practical

20 There are several interrelated senses in which the phrase what one does may be
understood among them: (1) a sociological, third-person sense; the statistical norm;
what is normally done; (2) a psychological, first-person sense: roughly, my assumptions
about what the sociologically normal is; (3) an ontological sense, which I take to be
Heideggers, which involves the philosophically relevant ambiguity between what one
really ought to do and what one does in sense (2).
62 Steven Crowell

identities and the norms that govern them. I can try to be a father in my
own way, but if in so doing I cannot at all be recognized by others as
trying to be a father, then I am not doing anything at all. I can transgress
some of the norms that everyone knows to govern fatherhood (for
instance, being the breadwinner) and still succeed in being a father; I
may even reshape the norms to some extent.21 But one cannot simply
decide that fatherhood will henceforth mean, say, what we now mean
by baseball player. If I transgress too many of the current norms of
being a father, I can neither succeed or fail at being one. To try in the
existential sense is not a matter of what I think I am doing. For even if I
think that in pitching and batting I am trying to conform to the norms of
fatherhood, that does not mean that I am failing at being a father. It just
means that Im crazy.
Thus we may add a third thesis to those posited in the previous sec-
tion: One always deliberates from within some practical identity or other,
or some combination of them. They alone give me justifying reasons to
do X rather than Y. All practical reasoning including moral reasoning
thus remains within the scope of current public norms. If, as Heidegger
says, the one itself articulates the referential context of significance
that is, world (BT 167/129) it is the one-self (das Man-selbst) who
reasons and deliberates. Indeed, deliberation is nothing but the think-
ing part of ones practical identity. And since phronesis is the virtue or
excellence of deliberation, phronesis too will always be tied to some prac-
tical identity, without which it could have no purchase on what that
good is. This is the basis for Aristotles claim that it is impossible to
be practically wise without being good (NE 11144a). One must be a

21 This is what is importantly correct in Dreyfuss claim (What Could be More Intel-
ligible, 272) that Heideggers move beyond Aristotle lies in recognizing the possibility of
a cultural master who can disclose new worlds. One need not hold that such cre-
ative transformation is an ability toto caelo distinct from the expertise of the phronemos,
however; Dreyfus himself acknowledges that disclosing new worlds happens when the
master takes up a marginal practice from its cultural heritage and uses it to transform
the present. The point is that the world cannot be altogether transformed; the new norms,
and intelligibility, cannot arise out of whole cloth. But whether there is a radical distinc-
tion between expert and master is finally irrelevant, since the systematic role of the
analysis of authenticity does not lie in a further development of the skills and practices
focus of Division I but in an account of what, beyond practical abilities, I must be in order
to be beholden to norms, to act in light of them.
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 63

good doctor, friend, or citizen in order to possess the virtue of practical

wisdom in relation to those things, since only the good father, friend, or
citizen possesses the end to be attained in deliberation; only he knows
what makes him do his work well (NE 1106a) because only he knows
what it is to do his work well, where knows what it is means, in Hei-
deggers terms, is able.
With this we have located the place of phronesis in Sein und Zeit, but we
have not made any reference to the account of authenticity in Division
II. This is because authenticity is not a virtue in Aristotles sense intel-
lectual or otherwise but an existential condition in which I act in light
of the fact that I am responsible for the normative force of the norms in
light of which I act. And though there is a connection between this con-
dition and phronesis, it is something for which Aristotles account has no
room. This can be seen if we recall Aristotles discussion of what a virtue
is. Virtue, Aristotle says, is typically understood to be a state which is in
accordance with right reason (NE 1144b). But this is not sufficient,
since virtue is not merely the state in accordance with right reason, but
the state that implies the presence of right reason. In other words, virtue
does not merely act in accord with the norms of ones practical identity
but in light of them; that is, it acts with practical wisdom, since phronesis
is right reason about such matters. But and this is the payoff of
Aristotles distinction between thinking, on the one hand, and knowledge
and opinion, on the other to act in light of such norms is to be claimed
by them, to be beholden to their normative force; it is not necessarily to
be able to articulate them as principles. The man of practical wisdom,
then, acts in light of right reason as though it were inscribed in his char-
acter as second nature that is, its normative force will feel as inevit-
able as what is entirely by nature. But if it really were inevitable, justify-
ing reasons could not be distinguished from causes and agency would
disappear.
Let us recast these points in Heideggers idiom. Minded agency oc-
cupies a continuum between mindless coping (inauthenticity) and anti-
cipatory resoluteness (authenticity). At any place on this continuum the
agent will be the one-self; that is, he or she will be acting in light of
norms that govern a public and to that extent anonymous and inter-
changeable practical identity. The phronemos will be more adept than
others in the kind of thinking that praxis involves; that is, he or she will
64 Steven Crowell

be able to navigate the intricate demands and implications of the norms

of the cultures practical identities more effortlessly than others can. Its
nuances and complexities and not just its platitudes will be second
nature to him or her. What distinguishes such agency from first nature
is the fact that the phronemos is trying to live up to those norms, whereas
nature doesnt try. But this distinction cannot be captured ontologically
with the conceptual tools of Division I because the one-self just is the
practical identity in which it finds itself. Such a practical identity is first
nature for it, since the one-self is finally nothing but a third-person
anonymous role or practice. What needs to be accounted for ontological-
ly, then, is that it is I myself who acts, I myself who is able to try. As the
one-self I have my reasons for what I do, but the one-self as such cannot
really be distinguished from the carpenter ant who acts in accord with
norms but not in light of them. If action is to be truly minded, intellig-
ent, ones reasons have to be able to become my reasons in a stron-
ger sense; the agent must be capable of a kind of responsibility that does
not have the structure of an Aristotelian virtue. The Aristotelianism of
Division I is adequate to the phenomenology of phronesis, but it is not ad-
equate to the phenomenology of being I-myself, the genuine first-person
stance.

4. Agency, Morality, and the Essential Consciencelessness of Action

Where does the Division I account of agency leave Heidegger vis--vis

morality? Heidegger says very little about morality in Sein und Zeit, and if
one looks for an account of what our duties are, or of what is morally
good or evil, one will find only what seems to be an irritating swerve
from the topic: After remarking that the concept of moral guilt has not
been ontologically clarified in previous philosophy (BT 328/283), Hei-
degger asserts that Daseins essential being-guilty is... the existential
condition for the possibility of the morally good and for the morally
evil that is, for morality in general and for the possible forms which
this may take factically (BT 332/286).
Heidegger never returns to the question of what is specific to moral
guilt; nor does he say anything about the morally good and evil. Under
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 65

these circumstances, one might try to construct these missing accounts.22

On the other hand, if one attends to Heideggers Kantian language here,
one might be inclined to see his analysis of essential being-guilty as
itself a contribution to moral philosophy, in the way that Kants search
for the ground of moral obligation in the Groundwork is such a contribu-
tion. This will be my approach. Completing the account of minded
agency, Division II clarifies how it is that I-myself can be beholden to
normative distinctions of better and worse, success and failure, and in so
doing it uncovers the ground of a distinctly moral obligation.
What it means to say that being-guilty is the existential condition for
the possibility of morality can be approached via Heideggers putative
equation between phronesis and Gewissen. In this regard Heidegger makes
two intriguing claims: First, factically... any taking-action is necessarily
conscienceless; and second, the existentiell possibility of being-good
is found only within an essential consciencelessness (BT 334/288).
Now if conscience were phronesis Heidegger would not be able to make
these statements.23 Even if one takes phronesis to be embodied only in the
practice of explicit deliberation, it cannot be identified with conscience,
since conscience does not deliberate it does not try to set going a sol-
iloquy in the self to which it has appealed but rather discourses in the
mode of keeping silent (BT 322/277). It follows that being-good is also
necessarily conscienceless. For Dasein, to be something is not to have

22 Some interesting, though very different, starts in this direction have been made by
Frederick Olafson, Heidegger and the Ground of Ethics (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1998); Werner Marx, Is there a Measure on Earth: Foundations for a Non-Metaphysic-
al Ethics, tr. Thomas Nenon and Reginald Lilly (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987); Joanna Hodge, Heidegger and Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1995); Lawrence Hatab,
Ethics and Finitude: Heideggerian Contributions to Moral Philosopy (Lanham: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2000); Frank Schalow, The Renewal of the Kant-Heidegger Dialogue (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1992).
23 How then should we explain Heideggers claim (Platon: Sophistes, 56), noted above,
that [d]ie phronesis is nichts anderes als das in Bewegung gesetzte Gewissen, das eine
Handlung durchsichtig macht? The key point is that conscience and phronesis are not
equated; phronesis is conscience set in motion. To set conscience in motion is, as I will
argue in this section, to take over the essential consciencelessness of action. To make
action transparent in this sense is to act in light of ones responsibility for the norm-
ative character (force) of those norms in light of which one acts. Gewissen itself, however,
belongs to the existential condition in which I grasp myself as responsible in this way; it is
a mode of self-awareness that is possible only when I do not act.
66 Steven Crowell

it as a property but to try to be it, that is, to act in light of its norms. If to
be a carpenter, for instance, involves taking-action as a carpenter does,
then to be a good carpenter is to accomplish, in taking action, an exem-
plary instance of what it means to be a carpenter. According to Heideg-
ger, then, being-good at anything will involve a certain consciencelessness.
But what is conscience, such that taking action and being-good essential-
ly exclude it?
The passages about consciencelessness appear among a series of ont-
ological equations in which Heidegger summarizes the phenomenology
of conscience that he had provided earlier in the chapter (BT 334/288).
Consience is a call, a mode of discourse, and thus something heard.
To hear discourse is to understand. To understand, in the existential sense, is
not to grasp thematically but to be able-to-be, to exercise an ability. Thus
to hear is to do something: Understanding the call is choosing. But it is
not a choosing of conscience, which as such cannot be chosen. One
cannot choose when to have the call call: it comes from me and yet
from beyond me and over me (BT 320/275). Instead, what is chosen is
having-a-conscience as being-free for ones ownmost being-guilty. Under-
standing the appeal means wanting-to-have-a-conscience. And it is precisely
this wanting-to-have-a-conscience that becomes the taking-over of that
essential consciencelessness within which all taking-action, all praxis,
and so also any existentiell possibility of being-good subsists.
What does it mean to take over the essential consciencelessness
of praxis? In taking over that is, in the choice that constitutes Daseins
understanding the call Dasein lets its ownmost self take action in itself
in terms of that potentiality-for-being which it has chosen (BT 334/288).
Taking-over is thus a kind of doubling of action: the potentiality-for-
being which [Dasein] has chosen is nothing other than the practical
identity as which it is engaged in a conscienceless way. Let us call this
choice1. In hearing the call this is subtended by another doing un-
derstanding the call is choosing in which Dasein lets its ownmost
self (that is, its most primordial potentiality-for-being) take action...
in terms of choice1. Let us call this choice2. But Daseins most primor-
dial potentiality for being is being-guilty [schuldig] (BT 334/288).
Wanting-to-have-a-conscience thus transforms everyday praxis (choice1)
by taking over its essential consciencelessness in light of my being-guilty
(choice2). Thus, everything depends on what being-guilty, in the phenom-
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 67

enological sense, means. Earlier in the chapter Heidegger defined it as

Grundseinbernehmen (BT 330/284). To take over the essential conscience-
lessness of praxis, then to understand the call of conscience is to take
over being a ground. What this means becomes clear only if we first
understand how the phenomenon of conscience falls outside the continu-
um of minded agency, the continuum of essential consciencelessness that
stretches from mindless coping to authenticity, to anticipatory resol-
uteness as the state of having taken over being a ground.
Here we must be brief:24 Together with Angst and death, the call of
conscience belongs to a liminal condition of the Care-structure (disposi-
tion, understanding, and discourse): existential breakdown. In such break-
down I cannot act because my disposition has alienated me from all
those practical identities that provide me with the kind of motivational
force necessary for minded agency: Angst takes away from Dasein the
possibility of understanding itself... in terms of the world and the way
things have been publically interpreted; I confront myself not as this or
that but as sheer being-possible (BT 232/187); public norms appear as
lifeless facts, without normative force: The world has the character of
completely lacking significance (BT 231/186). Belonging to the dispo-
sition of Angst is the existential ability-to-be (understanding) that Hei-
degger calls death namely, the possibility of no longer being-able-
to-be-there (BT 294/251). Death is the form that my self-understanding
takes in Angst: to be aware of myself as sheer being-possible is to be
aware of myself under no description that is, to understand myself in
terms of the impossibility of being-there, where being-there means
some practical identity. Hence there is a sense in which I can understand
myself that is, be someone even when all my practical identities
have fallen away, and with them all their (moral and non-moral) norm-
ative motivational force. Death is my ability-to-be no-one, that is, to oc-
cupy the first-person stance in a radical way, to be I-myself as opposed to
one-self.25

24 For more, see my Conscience and Reason: Heidegger and the Grounds of Inten-
tionality, in Transcendental Heidegger, ed. Steven Crowell and Jeff Malpas (Stanford: Stan-
ford University Press, 2007), 43-62.
25 See my Subjectivity: Locating the First-Person in Being and Time, Inquiry 44

(2001), 433-54.
68 Steven Crowell

This point is crucial for understanding the analysis of conscience. The

third aspect of the Care-structure is discourse (Rede), which, according to
Heidegger, articulates understanding. Thus conscience, as discourse,
will articulate the self-understanding that belongs to existential death.
According to Heidegger, this self-understanding is expressed as guilty!
(BT 314/269). Such guilt does not derive from the transgression of any
law or ought (BT 328/283), since it is nothing but the articulation of
death the possibility of the impossibility of being-there; that is, it artic-
ulates the being of first-person selfhood, what it means to be I-myself.
And because Daseins being is to-be, guilty is not a simple property of
the first-person, in the way that, say, the pre-reflective cogito is for Sartre.
Rather, it is something I must try to be. To be guilty is to try to be I-my-
self, and that, finally, is to try at taking over being a ground. This is what
it means to take over the essential consciencelessness of praxis, and it is
this that brings comportment its mindedness, its beholdenness to norms
as such.26
Heidegger glosses being-guilty in the following passage: The Self
which as such has to lay the ground for itself can never get that ground
into its power; and yet, as existing, it must take over being-a-ground (BT
330/284). This must is not the must of obligation; rather, it expresses
the essential structure of selfhood as thrown projection. Dasein can ne-
ver come back behind its thrownness, and so the latter is something like
a ground (Grund) that Dasein has not laid... itself but reposes in the
weight of. We may think of such thrown grounds as reasons in the
sense of causes or given conditions of my being as, for instance, what
Kant calls inclinations. But Dasein, whose being is essentially an issue

26 The crux of my disagreement with Dreyfus is found here, for his interpretation de-
pends on seeing two kinds of anxiety in Division II, and so two levels of authenticity. I
can find no textual justification for this reading. According to Dreyfus (What Could be
More Intelligible, 271), the phronemos possesses the anxiety of guilt i.e., the sense
that the everyday social norms of its society are thrown rather than grounded and so have
no final authority but is not yet fully authentic because he does not face the anxiety
of death i.e., that Dasein has to be ready at all times to give up its identity and its
world altogether. The sort of distinction Dreyfus draws between two kinds of anxiety is
phenomenologically intelligible in existentiell terms. Heidegger, however, does not sever
the meaning of guilt and death in this way, because the point of his analysis is to un-
cover the ontological condition for what makes praxis any praxis, not just some special
form possible, namely, my ability to be I-myself.
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 69

for it, does not possess its thrownness, its inclinations, as an apple pos-
sesses its color. Rather, Dasein is this thrown ground... only in that it
projects itself upon possibilities into which it has been thrown. This is
what it means that Dasein must take over being-a-ground.
Heidegger continues: In being thrown, Dasein has been released from
its ground, not through itself but to itself, so as to be as this ground. Self-
hood, being a self, is to be the being of its ground, a ground that is
never anything but the ground for an entity whose being has to take over
being-a-ground (BT 330-31/285). Taking over being-a-ground cannot
mean that I create myself; my inclinations are not mine to create. Rather
to take over the ground into which I am thrown is to see my inclinations
in a normative light, that is, as possible rather than inevitable grounds of
my behavior; it is to see them as potentially justifying reasons. In taking
them over I become responsible for them either by making them my rea-
sons or refusing to do so. Only by understanding the call in this sense
can Dasein be responsible [verantwortlich] (BT 334/228).27
We are now in a position to understand the concept of authenticity as
anticipatory resoluteness (BT 349/302). One might think of it this way:
Aristotle has a one-level conception of action prohairesis is choice in the
sense of choice1 above. Phronesis is excellence in such choices. Heideg-
gers notion of authentic choice, on the other hand, is two-tiered: the
practical identity in light of which I act (choice1) is accompanied by a
choosing to choose (choice2): to be resolute is to act as I-myself, that
is, in anticipation of the possibility of breakdown. More specifically,
it is to act in light of what is revealed in breakdown, namely, my responsib-

27 How does this notion of responsibility square with Heideggers formalization of

the concept of guilt as being the null basis of a nullity (BT 329/283)? This phrase is of-
ten understood as indicating Daseins finitude i.e., the ontological fact that there are
dimensions to Daseins being over which it has no control (and so for which it cannot be
responsible in the ordinary sense). Finitude thus distinguishes Dasein from the
hyperbolic claims for the rational, autonomous subject of the transcendental tradition
from Kant to Husserl. But while such interpretations are fine as far as they go, they do
not go far enough. For Heidegger subsequently deformalizes the formally-indicative notion
of being the null basis of a nullity, articulating it concretely and phenomenologically as
Grundseinbernehmen, which I interpret to mean treating ones factic grounds as (potential-
ly) justifying reasons. But to say this is not to say that all action is rational or that Daseins
ability to give reasons for what it does does not give out at some point. Inhabiting the
space of reasons, so to speak, does not conflict with the idea of finitude, i.e., the idea that
I do not reason on the basis of any kind of absolute standard.
70 Steven Crowell

ility for the normative force of those standards (reasons) in light of

which I act. Authenticity is thus only a modified way in which... every-
dayness is seized upon (BT 224/179), an existentiell modification of
the one (BT 168/130).
Anticipation of breakdown that is, acting as I-myself rather than as
the one-self makes praxis transparent [durchsichtig] (BT 354/307), so
that, though still conscienceless, it contrasts with the self-forgetfulness
that characterizes everyday praxis. To be authentic is to have a certain
stance toward the reasons provided me by my practical identity. This is
not the stance sought by the rationalist critics of Heidegger namely, a
grasp of some normative concept of reason that could serve as the mea-
sure for all the contingent, historically specific, goods and reasons that
derive from practical identities. It is rather my taking responsibility for
those reasons. I am not responsible for their existence; their existence
derives from das Man. But in being authentic I make them my reasons by
taking responsibility for endorsing them.
To be authentically I-myself does not mean that I take such reasons
to be arbitrary; it means that I recognize their motivational force as
stemming from my commitment to them. Stated otherwise, I recognize
that the norms embedded in practical identities are simply claims to
validity, i.e., that second nature is not nature. Whether or not such norms
can be rationally grounded, they remain at issue for me, dependent on my
commitment for their status as part of my motivational set. It follows
that no deliberation can justify that commitment rationally. To the extent
that practical reasoning is practical that is, to the extent that it does not
simply yield theoretical conclusions but provides reasons that motivate
me such reasoning will always presuppose a prior commitment of
some kind, some practical identity to whose norms I am actually trying to
live up. Authenticity is simply transparency with regard to this fact, and
to be responsible is to take over the one-self as I-myself that is, to
take over that essential consciencelessness within which alone the
existentiell possibility of being-good subsists.28 What are the con-
sequences of this for the question of the morally good in Sein und Zeit?

28 From this point of view we can see that Dreyfuss interpretation in What Could
be More Intelligible sets the bar of authenticity too high, since authenticity is ascribed
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 71

If the argument of the previous section is correct, then all deliber-

ation including moral deliberation is possible only within the norms
of a practical identity and so within an historically specific world or
culture. By moral deliberation I mean reasoning not about what con-
duces to the good of some particular practical identity but what con-
duces to the good of man in general, what all human beings, simply as
such, ought to do. Thus it is the universality of an obligation that makes
it specifically moral. But are there any obligations that pertain to me sim-
ply as being, and not as being this or that? Though the language of oblig-
ation is foreign to Aristotle, his idea of a highest life for man a life
that cultivates the faculty that makes us human: reason or speech (logos)
yields a kind of moral obligation: Act so that your action promotes, in
yourself and in others, what is highest or best in human being: rationali-
ty. For rationality, as mindedness, is the condition of all other goods in
their specifically human form.29 Can anything of this sort be found in
Heidegger? Does Heidegger have a doctrine of what is highest in us, and
so of the good for man?
The short answer is no. Certainly, authenticity is not such a good. For
Heidegger, as for Kant, the notion of what promotes human flourishing
(happiness) is an Ideal of imagination, that is, too indeterminate to
support practical inferences to what one universally ought to do to attain
it.30 In Heideggers terms, what one ought to do derives from ones prac-
tical identity, and being human is not a practical identity.31 Even in the
case of practical identities, however, only the resolution itself can give
the answer as to what one ought to do (BT 345/298), because what it
means to be (e.g.) a father cannot be defined with sufficient specificity to

only to the phronemos or the fully authentic cultural master. But while these (rare) indiv-
iduals may be authentic, surely Heideggers concept is not limited to them.
29 John Drummond develops a phenomenological version of this sort of Aristotelian-
ism on the basis of what he calls transcendental goods. See Drummond, Respect as a
Moral Emotion: A Phenomenological Approach, Husserl Studies 22 (2006): 127. Kors-
gaard argues for something like this from a Kantian perspective in Sources of Normativity
(123), where she presents a transcendental argument to the effect that valuing ones
humanity is a condition for valuing oneself under any other practical identity.
30 Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, tr. H. J. Paton (New York:

Harper & Row, 1964), 86.

31 For the argument here see my Sorge or Selbstbewutsein? Heidegger and Korsgaard

on the Sources of Normativity, European Journal of Philosophy 15/3 (2007), 315-333.

72 Steven Crowell

yield more than prudential imperatives in deliberating on how to bring

the moving principle back to myself. Being a father is not a work but a
Seinknnen, i.e., something the norms of which are themselves always at
issue. If Daseins being is Care, then no specific good for man can be
specified, since what it is to be such a being is always at issue. Because this
is so, we have no obligation to be authentic or to promote authenticity.
Might Care nevertheless be the ground of another sort of moral oblig-
ation?
Kant located the ground of obligation in our nature as rational
beings. He could do so as Heidegger discusses at length in the Second
Part of Vom Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit32 because he took freedom to
be a kind of causalilty and thus modeled moral reasoning on the kind of
reasons relevant in a causal context, namely, necessary connections or
laws. As distinct from mere natural things, which act according to (caus-
al) laws, rational beings can act for reasons which means, for Kant, ac-
cording to the idea of law.33 On such a view, to act for reasons at all is to
act as though ones maxim expressed a universal law; and this, for Kant,
means that there is an obligation incumbent on all rational beings, name-
ly, to consider their maxims in light of the standard of what could in fact
be a universal law.
We need not enter into the controversies surrounding this conception
in order to appreciate Heideggers modification of it. First, in defining
Dasein as Care rather than reason Heidegger rejects Kants equation of
freedom with a kind of causality.34 Thus, acting for reasons cannot eo ipso
be seen as a way of acting in accord with (putatitvely) universal law, and
Heidegger cannot appeal to the idea of law as a criterion for determining
which maxims are morally impermissible. Nevertheless the Care-struc-
ture does entail something akin to Kants idea that agency involves acting

32 Martin Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Menschlichen Freiheit: Einleitung in die Philosophie.

Gesamtausgabe Bd. 31, ed. Hartmut Tietjen (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1982), 139-298.
33 Kant, Groundwork, 80.
34 Summing up his argument in the Second Part of Vom Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit
(303), Heidegger writes: Freiheit is die Bedingung der Mglichkeit der Offenbarkeit des
Seins von Seienden, des Seinsverstndnis. But if that is so, then freedom cannot be
thought in terms of causality. Eine Seinsbestimmung unter anderen aber ist die Kausali-
tt. Kausalitt grndet in der Freiheit. Das Problem der Kausalitt ist ein Problem der
Freiheit und nicht umgekehrt.
 Heidegger on Practical Reasoning 73

in light of, and not merely in accord with, reasons namely, Daseins es-
sential being-guilty. Though it yields no test for the morality of ones
maxim, it does yield something like a moral (that is to say, universal) ob-
ligation.
To have Care as ones being to be an issue for oneself means to
see things in normative terms, to understand ones factic inclinations in
relation to the very idea of what is best (as Plato would say), of better
and worse. This is to treat them as only potentially my reasons that is, to
treat them as normative reasons rather than causes. But Dasein is essent-
ially Mitsein, and thus to be responsible is equiprimordially to be answerable
(ver-antwort-lich) to others, accountable to them. The constitutive hori-
zon of responsibility in which alone I can be I-myself thus includes
among its references every other Dasein, all those to whom I am ac-
countable, i.e., all those who may call upon me to justify or give an ac-
count of myself. Thus to be I-myself is to be under an obligation to offer
reasons to others for what I do. My nature as Care entails a moral ob-
ligation insofar as taking-over-being-a-ground obliges me to take up the
practice of giving and asking for reasons, a kind of meta-practice that be-
longs among the norms of all particular practical identities.
Phronesis always remain tied to concrete practical identities, since these
alone provide the necessary ends or standards of success or failure.
And on Heideggers view, morally practical reasoning is also tied to such
identities, since moral responsibility cannot be defined in terms of reason
or law as the criterion for a concrete, but identity-transcending, universal
good. Because Dasein is always an issue for itself, such goods are also al-
ways at issue. Thus, ontologically considered, practical rationality is es-
sentially practical reasoning that is, the dialogical practice of offering rea-
sons to others for what I do and demanding the same from them. What
such reasoning should find to be the right thing to do cannot be det-
ermined in advance by any theory but depends on actual argumentation.35
What it means to be a good father, friend, or carpenter and so also
what it means to be a good person, morally good is always the sub-
stance of the conversation that we ourselves are. Nevertheless, we do

35 On this point, compare Jrgen Habermas, Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program

of Philosophical Justification, in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, tr. Christian
Lenhardt and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1999), 42-115.
74 Steven Crowell

have something like an moral obligation to engage in practical reason-

giving, since that is an essential part of what it means to be a social creat-
ure who can say I.36

Rice University
Houston, Texas
USA

36 Previous versions of this paper were delivered at a conference on Racionalidad

Prctica: Intencionalidad, Normatividad, Reflexividad (University of Navarra), Fordham
University, and the tenth annual meeting of the International Society for Phenomenol-
ogical Studies. I have benefitted greatly from discussion with participants at each of these
occasions. I would particularly like to express my thanks to Alejandro Vigo, Franco Vol-
pi, John Drummond, Joseph Rouse, and Hubert Dreyfus for some extremely helpful
proposals and provocations.