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In the previous seminar, we took up several issues from chapters 2 and 3 of Being and

Time section 1. Specifically, we focused our attention upon what Heidegger means by the

being-in of Dasein, and the ways in which the distinction between present to hand

(Vorhandenheit) and ready-to-hand (Zuhandenheit), the way Heidegger parses the distinction

between sheer presence and equipmentality (Zeughaftigkeit), corresponds to the notion of

being-in that Heidegger gives, in addition to briefly treating the concept of world. In order to

summarily readdress these concepts, it is perhaps important to briefly recall the basic

parameters of being-in, and accordingly, how Heidegger defines the two aforementioned

concepts of things as either present or ready to hand.

Recall Heidegger’s basic distinction between what is Existenzial and Existenziell.

There is a close relationship between the two, just as in the two introductory chapters we saw

that there is a close relationship between how we are able to conceive the ontological and

ontic nature of what is called Dasein. Recall too that we said that there is a sense, albeit one

qualified through Heidegger’s own positioning of the text vis-à-vis Kant and Husserlian

phenomenology, in which we might say that Heidegger is engaging in a kind of

transcendental analysis of what makes Dasein itself. Said otherwise, at stake in both

distinctions, the distinction between the Existenzial and Existenziell and the distinction

between the ontological and ontic priorities of the analysis of Dasein, is the constitution of

Dasein, how Dasein is. With the concept of being-in, Heidegger repeats and perhaps deepens

this point.

The being-in of Dasein is not, Heidegger writes, to be confused with the kind of

spatial, ontic, presence of things next to or in other things. This is a point we made clear

through a summary of how Heidegger is using the preposition ‘in’ (bei) in a deliberately

inverse fashion with regard to its normal, everyday, use. The following passage captures the

point Dr. Moore was making. “The »being in« the world as Existenzial never means
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something like the being-present-to-hand-together (Beisammen-vorhanden-sein) of occurring

thing. There is not something like the »next to each other« of a being called »Dasein« with

other beings called »world«” (p. 55). Whatever we are to say about the being-in of Dasein,

we know that it cannot in fact be what is meant in our everyday or ontic sense of the term.

With this passage we encounter an aspect of Heidegger’s thinking and writing that we

paused to note – namely, the function of the hyphen to express the unitary structure of the

phenomena Heidegger describes. What is being expressed by being-in as an Existenzial is a

phenomenon, and thus, following the description Heidegger gave in the second introductory

chapter of phenomenology as an apophatic ( or άποφαίνεσθαι) “letting to be seen of

something in its together-with (Beisammen) something as something” (p. 33), this

phenomenon is singular in his phenomenological description as it’s occurring. It is this

meaning of phenomenon and phenomenology that allows for us to speak of being-in not in

terms of its ontic character, but as an Existenzial, as constitutive of how Dasein is (p.54).

We thus arrive at the concepts of being-in and world that we sketched out last week

and which are constitutive of being-in-the-world as a kind of inhabiting that simply is Dasein.

As Heidegger writes, and as we repeated, the sense of the being-in of Dasein is not reducible

to the everyday sense of presence, but is, rather a non-derivative structure basic to whatever

we might say Dasein is in its occurring (p. 56). Being-in, thus, founds the possibility of our

daily, existential, notion of space (p. 56) and appears in conjunction with the phenomenon of

concern and circumspection (p.57, 76), of being-in essentially such that the presence of the

presence-to-hand character of objects is possible as such (p. 62).

From here we then discussed Heidegger’s definition of equipment in chapter 3. The

phenomenon of concern appears to us in our engagement not with generic things, but rather

within our having ready for-us things that matter for some purpose (um zu), equipment as that

which has been brought close in being significant (entfernte) to us. This phenomenon is itself
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brought to our attention when something interrupts the process of the use of equipment for

the sake of said purpose (p. 74-75).

In this second portion of my presentation, I want to briefly take up this idea of

equipment as a question vis-à-vis how we are to understand Heidegger’s phenomenological

method. I do so because in the last seminar we paused to ask whether or not it is possible to

conceive equipment without at the same time, concurrently, conceiving the purpose for which

said equipment is to be used. To my mind, that question again brings us back to the way

Heidegger conceives phenomenology, phenomena, and perhaps more importantly, the idea of

structure or constitution (Verfassung). Heidegger repeatedly refers his readers to the idea that

what he is talking about are not present-to-hand things, nor are they accidental characteristics

of a being, but rather essential structures of Dasein’s being. It is this notion of structure that I

want to put into question here.

Specifically, I am curious as to whether this notion of structure is the most appropriate

term for what Heidegger is trying to describe in these chapters. My question springs out of

the following premises. Equipmentality is, according to Heidegger, a basic mode of Dasein’s

being-in-the-world. Methodologically speaking then, equipmentality is noted in order for us

to glimpse something about what is called the phenomenon of the world, and by extension

and going further back into chapter 2, something of the being-in of Dasein. This is done,

again, according to a phenomenological method that is characterized by a letting to be seen of

something, in this case, the unitary phenomenon of being-in-the-world. Yet, if this is all a

unitary phenomenon, how is possible to speak in terms of constitution or structure without

lapsing into an idea of observation and presence?

The question that I thus want to pose is whether the language of structure obscures the

eventful character of phenomenon as such. The letting to see, the so-called apophantic nature

of the phenomenological method employed here, seems to imply that what is happening can
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somehow, indirectly, be perceived and made explicitly conceptual. I grant this point. But

wither the idea of structure rather than something like the latter formulation of the event? The

example of our discussion regarding equipmentality is, again, instructive for understanding

what I mean.

Our disagreement centered around the fact that we do in fact find things simply and

generically as things – that is, present-to-hand. This is our sense of physical and indifferent

presence, the sheer fact that stuff exists spatially. Heidegger of course does not dismiss this

point. Yet, Heidegger’s analysis of being-in-the-world is again predicated upon the fact that it

is possible to elucidate from our everyday experience some ‘thing’ that is basic to the being

of Dasein that is not ‘there’ in this derivative or sheerly ontic way. The analysis of the idea

itself of equipment offers a way into this phenomenon insofar as the notion of equipment

seems to already presuppose a way of relating to that which I take to not be myself, a way

that is more basic than a theoretical construal of sheer presence. Granting this, there seems to

me to be an impossibility here of speaking in terms of structure if what is sought is, basically,

a notion of what is both proximate and simultaneous to what, for a lack of a better term, I will

call myself.

A further question that I think could help clarify my confusion is as follows. What is

the role of indirectness in Heidegger’s idea of phenomenology? It seems to me that a lot of

Heidegger’s analyses to this point in the text are premised upon the idea that phenomena are

given as such, as phenomena, indirectly. For example, looking at the everydayness of Dasein

makes something more basic appear. How does this idea of indirectness correspond to how

Heidegger is positioning the concept of equipmentality and how does this perhaps solve the

difficulty I am having with the language of structure?