Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology

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Heidegger, Dreyfus, and the Intelligibility of

Practical Comportment

Leslie A. MacAvoy

To cite this article: Leslie A. MacAvoy (2019) Heidegger, Dreyfus, and the Intelligibility of
Practical Comportment, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 50:1, 68-86, DOI:
10.1080/00071773.2018.1507419

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2018.1507419

Published online: 11 Sep 2018.

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THE JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY
2019, VOL. 50, NO. 1, 68–86
https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2018.1507419

Heidegger, Dreyfus, and the Intelligibility of Practical

Comportment
Leslie A. MacAvoy
Department of Philosophy & Humanities, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, TN, USA

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Most scholars agree that meaning and intelligibility are central to Heidegger; conceptual
Heidegger’s account of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, but there is v. nonconceptual
some confusion about the nature of this intelligibility. In his intelligibility; practical
comportment; Hubert
debate with McDowell, Dreyfus draws on phenomenologists like
Dreyfus; interpretation
Heidegger to argue that there are two kinds of intelligibility: a
basic, nonconceptual, practical intelligibility found in practical
comportment and a conceptual, discursive intelligibility. I explore
two possible ways that Dreyfus might ground this twofold
account of intelligibility in Heidegger: first in the distinction
between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as”, and second in the
presence and absence of the as-structure. I argue that neither
approach succeeds because practical intelligibility is always
already discursive and discursive articulation is a condition of
practical comportment.

It is not so much that we see the objects and

things but rather that we first talk about
them. To put it more precisely: we do not
say what we see, but rather the reverse, we
see what one says about the matter.1

1. Introduction
One of the great contributions of phenomenology, in general, is the attention it has given
to the role of meaning in experience. Heidegger, in particular, has pointed out that things
in the world are always already intelligible to us because we encounter them and under-
stand them through a framework of meaning which is given to us as the structure of the
world. Thus, in contrast to those who would hold that meanings are a subjective value
added on to what is objectively experienced, Heidegger insists that there is no experience
outside of meaning. The world is always already open to us as a sphere of intelligibility.
This openness of the world in understanding is due to the existential structure of
Dasein’s Being that Heidegger calls disclosedness.

CONTACT Leslie A. MacAvoy [email protected] Department of Philosophy & Humanities, East Tennessee State
University, Box 70656, Johnson City, TN 37614, USA
1
Heidegger, History of the Concept of Time, 56, translation modified. Hereafter, cited as HCT.
© 2018 The British Society for Phenomenology
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 69

While most readers of Heidegger would accept these claims about the centrality of
meaning and intelligibility to his account of Dasein and its Being-in-the-world, there is
some confusion about the nature of the intelligibility revealed in Heidegger’s analysis.
In his debate with John McDowell over the pervasiveness of conceptual content in percep-
tion and bodily comportment, Hubert Dreyfus draws upon phenomenologists such as
Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in support of the view that there are two kinds of intellig-
ibility: a nonconceptual, practical intelligibility associated with practical comportment or
skilled coping and a conceptual, discursive intelligibility. If practical intelligibility pertains
to what we see or do, then conceptual discursive intelligibility pertains to what we say or
think about what we see or do. I shall argue that this view is problematic because it misses
the way in which what we see or do is related to what we say. The discursive articulation
of the world that Heidegger describes in Being and Time is not an intelligibility that is
extraneous to or secondary to practical comportment; it is rather a condition of its possi-
bility. That is, practical comportment involves a kind of interpretation that is possible on
the basis of a prior discursive articulation of the world. This disclosedness is the existential
structure of Dasein’s Being that accounts for the openness of the world in understanding.
These features of Heidegger’s thought reflect the transcendental dimension of disclosed-
ness and are key to the idea that understanding is hermeneutic.2
In what follows I will discuss, first, Dreyfus’s position as it emerges in his debate with
McDowell, and show how his account is related to his overall interpretation of Heidegger.
In the next two sections, I will explore two possible ways to ground the thesis that there are
two kinds of intelligibility in Heidegger’s work and show why each fails. These sections
offer a closer examination of the relationship between understanding, interpretation,
and discourse and shed more light on the notion of disclosedness, its importance, and
the role it plays in Heidegger’s position. This discussion will establish that the discursive
articulation of the world undergirds and makes possible the intelligibility characteristic of
practical comportment.

2. Two Kinds of Intelligibility: Practical/Nonconceptual and Discursive/

Conceptual
Hubert Dreyfus’s influential interpretation of Being and Time emphasizes Heidegger’s
analysis of Dasein’s dealings with the ready-to-hand and has inspired what is frequently
known as the pragmatist reading.3 This reading is dominated by the conceptual opposition
between the theoretical and the practical and emphasizes the priority of the latter. On this
view, Heidegger’s analysis of the ready-to-hand indicates an emphasis on practical com-
portment and the practical attitude in opposition to the tradition’s emphasis on theoretical
understanding and the theoretical attitude. The distinction Dreyfus draws in the debate
with McDowell between “mindless” and “minded” coping is related to this distinction,
2
Though the transcendental and hermeneutic aspects of Heidegger’s thought are sometimes seen as opposed (Lafont,
Heidegger, Language and World-Disclosure, 253–9), this view results from an overly formal understanding of the trans-
cendental. Tate objects to the transcendental reading of Heidegger on these grounds and points to Heidegger’s notion
of transcendence as an alternate way of understanding his use of the term “transcendental” (‘On Heidegger’s Root and
Branch Reformulation’, 62–4, 69f). Tate is right to emphasize transcendence. This is the ontological feature of Dasein’s
being that grounds disclosedness. However, I am less dismissive of the value of articulating the transcendental dimen-
sion of Heidegger’s thought in relation to the work of Kant and Husserl.
3
This interpretation is put forward principally in Dreyfus, Being-in-the-world, esp. Chs. 1, 3, and 4. Hereafter cited as BW.
70 L. A. MACAVOY

and his position on intelligibility is most clearly articulated in this context. “Minded”
coping is distinguished from “mindless” coping by the use of concepts. His claim is that
concepts are absent in mindless coping and only present in minded coping.
The pragmatist interpretation of Heidegger has generated considerable critical response
in the secondary literature, particularly centred on the pragmatist and anti-representation-
alist theses that it forwards. It is often argued that the pragmatist reading neglects other
important aspects of Heidegger’s position in Being and Time.4 Olafson, for instance, has
argued that Dreyfus essentially assimilates Heidegger to Wittgenstein in ways that diminish
the ontological dimension of his view.5 It has also been argued that the focus on Division I
mistakes the role of the account of everydayness in Heidegger’s analysis and leads to a dis-
torted view of authenticity and inauthenticity.6 The transcendental reading, which has
emerged as the principal position opposed to the pragmatist reading, holds that Being
and Time presents an analysis of the transcendental conditions of the practices that are
so central to everyday Being-in-the-world. Its proponents argue that the pragmatist position,
in its focus on practical comportment, misses this transcendental dimension of Heidegger’s
thought and thus the philosophical goal of his work.7 The reading of Heidegger’s text that
forms the basis for the critique offered here is a version of the transcendental position in that
it maintains that disclosedness is a condition of the possibility of practical comportment and
thus holds that the descriptions of practical dealings that Heidegger offers are preliminary to
an analysis of the modes of disclosedness that such dealings belie. This article differs from
these others, however, in showing the implications of such a reading for Dreyfus’s thesis
about the twofold intelligibility of practical comportment.
Critics of the pragmatist reading have also focused on Dreyfus’s claims about Heideg-
ger’s critique of representationalism. Dreyfus views Heidegger as an ally in endorsing an
anti-representationalist account of the mind, and takes his critique of both Cartesianism
and Husserl as support for this position. Christensen disputes this claim, arguing that Hei-
degger’s critique of Descartes does not imply a wholesale rejection of representationalist
intentionality, but only of a certain kind of representationalism.8 He also argues that
Dreyfus overstates the degree to which Heidegger challenges Husserl’s position.9
Dreyfus offers additional support for the anti-representationalist thesis by arguing that
the understanding evident in practical activity is directed at a background that can
never be made fully explicit, but which must be understood in some way for us to be
able to do or attend to anything. The issue of the nonrepresentability of the background
has received some critical discussion but with less direct attention to the question of

4
Blattner has objected to labeling Heidegger a pragmatist altogether. He argues that doing so is misleading because
there are important differences between his position and that of a philosopher like Dewey (‘The Primacy of Practice
and Assertoric Truth’, 241–8). However, his target in this critique is not Dreyfus. Blattner has also argued, based on
his interpretation of originary temporality, that Heidegger’s position is better characterized as existential rather than
pragmatist (‘Existential Temporality in Being and Time’, 100, 114–17).
5
‘Heidegger à la Wittgenstein’, 46, 49–53.
6
MacAvoy, ‘Overturning Cartesianism and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion’, 470–4.
7
A good brief overview of what is at stake in reading Heidegger as a transcendental thinker can be found in Crowell and
Malpas, Transcendental Heidegger, 1–9.
8
Christensen, ‘Heidegger’s Representationalism’, 79, 86–8, 93. See also Christensen, ‘Getting Heidegger Off the West
Coast’, 80–1, 85.
9
Christensen, ‘Getting Heidegger Off the West Coast’, 67–5, 82–3. Blattner defends Dreyfus against some parts of this
criticism, arguing that he is right that understanding is nonrepresentational but concedes that interpretation is not,
so there is a place for representational intentionality in practical comportment. See Blattner, ‘Is Heidegger a Represen-
tationalist?’, 194f.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 71

whether Heidegger’s text supports this claim.10 While Dreyfus’s anti-representationalist

interpretation of Heidegger is likely related to the conclusion he eventually reaches that
Heidegger is a nonconceptualist, most of this scholarship pre-dates the debate with McDo-
well and therefore does not engage directly with the issue of the conceptual versus non-
conceptual intelligibility of practical activity nor with Dreyfus’s position as it is
articulated in the course of that debate. Therefore, a closer look at the debate with McDo-
well and the details of how Dreyfus draws the distinction between mindless and minded
coping and the intelligibility of each is warranted.11
In Mind and World, McDowell argues for the view that experience is conceptual “all
the way out”. That is, if our experience is to provide justification for our beliefs, then
that experience must be located within the space of reasons, which means that it
must be conceptual. McDowell offers this view as a sort of “middle path” between an
empiricism that falls victim to the Myth of the Given on the one hand and a coherent-
ism that results in idealism on the other. In objecting to this position, Dreyfus claims
that in holding that all experience must be conceptual, McDowell has succumbed to
the “Myth of the Mental”.12 Against this, he urges that there must be a kind of experi-
ence that is non-conceptual but nonetheless meaningful, an experience that occurs in a
realm intermediate between the meaningless space of causes and the meaningful space
of reasons (OMM-05 55–8). Accounts of such experience, he claims, are found in
Merleau-Ponty’s treatment of perceptual motor skills and in Heidegger’s account of
Being-in-the-world. As Dreyfus develops this point in the ensuing exchange with McDo-
well, he insists upon a distinction between a practical, motor intentionality and a con-
ceptual intentionality.13
The Dreyfus-McDowell debate has garnered some scholarly attention in its own right.
In a recent collection of essays dedicated to it,14 most of the contributors engage the debate
by addressing one of two central issues: first, the question of whether practical activity –
either perception or action – has a nonconceptual component and second, the role of mind
or self-consciousness in practical comportment. A number of essays challenge Dreyfus’s
position on these points, but most do not engage with his reading of Heidegger.15

10
See Stern, ‘Practices, Practical Holism, and Background Practices’, 61–6; Wrathall, ‘Background Practices, Capacities, and
Heideggerian Disclosure’, 94–9; and McManus, ‘Rules, Regression, and the “Background”’, 433–6, 443–5.
11
The distinction between mindless and minded coping may have been inspired by Dreyfus’s reading of Samuel Todes,
Body and World, where Dreyfus makes much of a distinction between perceptual and conceptual intelligibility in Todes’s
reading of Merleau-Ponty. See Dreyfus, ‘Todes’s Account of Nonconceptual Perceptual Knowledge and its Relation to
Thought’, 92–3, 100, and 102 (originally published in 2001). For a different view of Todes’s relevance for the debate
with McDowell, see Rouse, ‘Mind, Body, and World’, 38–40, 43–52.
12
See Dreyfus, ‘Overcoming the Myth of the Mental: How Philosophers Can Profit from the Phenomenology of Everyday
Experience’, 52; and Dreyfus, ‘Overcoming the Myth of the Mental’, 46. Because of the similarity in title, I will cite the
original APA address from 2005 as OMM-05 and the modified version published in Topoi in 2006 as OMM-06.
13
Dreyfus, ‘Return of the Myth of the Mental’, 360. Hereafter, cited as RMM. For McDowell’s response to Dreyfus, see McDo-
well, ‘What Myth?’. In the same volume Dreyfus and McDowell respond to each other once again. See Dreyfus, ‘Response
to McDowell’ and McDowell, ‘Response to Dreyfus’.
14
Schear, Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World.
15
Pippin thinks Dreyfus’s opposition to concepts is based on a questionable set of assumptions (‘What is “Conceptual
Activity”?’, 91–6), while Noë thinks Dreyfus is guilty of over-intellectualizing the intellect (‘On Overintellectualizing
the Intellect’, 180–2). Montero argues against Dreyfus’s view of skilful coping as mindless (‘A Dancer Reflects’, 310–
15), and Rouse argues that Dreyfus’s arguments address descriptive but not normative accounts of conceptual under-
standing, and thus are insufficient to show that practical activity is actually nonconceptual (‘What is Conceptually Articu-
lated Understanding?’, 252–5). Gardner finds it odd that Dreyfus appeals to Heidegger, a thinker in the transcendental
tradition, for support of what is essentially not a transcendental position but rather a naturalizing of phenomenology
(‘Transcendental Philosophy and the Possibility of the Given’, 111). The one essay in the volume that deals with
72 L. A. MACAVOY

Indeed, this is true of most of the literature addressing the debate.16 Dennis is an exception
to this and argues against Dreyfus’s claim that Heidegger is a nonconceptualist.17 While I
agree with Dennis’s conclusion, the aim of this essay is to engage with Dreyfus’s interpret-
ation of Heidegger more broadly in order to show that the way he deploys Heidegger in the
context of his debate with McDowell is a development and extension of his broader
interpretation of Heidegger and points to deeper issues and problems with that interpret-
ation. In this regard, I hope to accomplish what Buskell notes as important: that to really
engage with Dreyfus, one needs to engage with his reading of Heidegger.18
Consequently, what is important in this essay is not the Dreyfus-McDowell debate as
such nor which side should prevail, but rather Dreyfus’s position and in particular how
he musters Heidegger’s thought in support of it. He claims that for Heidegger our practical
comportment in the world, our skilful coping, is nonconceptual (OMM-05 51; OMM-06
46), and that Being-in-the-world is mindless.19 Although Dreyfus maintains that mindless
coping or comportment is something we share with infants and animals, his preferred
examples of such coping involve the highly skilled activity of experts. For instance, the
blitz chess player plays at a very high level but without thinking and Dreyfus insists
that the Grandmaster does not make moves for reasons (OMM-05 53).20 He claims
that mindless, skilled coping can be given a conceptual content if one examines the
skilled behaviour and asks why the chess player made some move, but this is a retroactive
rationalization, and Dreyfus insists that the conceptual content is not there in the chess
player’s original experience and does not guide him in his actions.
The baseball player, Chuck Knoblauch, is another favourite example. On Dreyfus’s
reconstruction, the difficulties Knoblauch developed with his throwing ability were due
to thinking. If the situation required him to react before he could think, he could exercise
his skill, but if he reflected on his action or thought about what to do, he could not perform
skilfully. Thus, Dreyfus concludes that “the enemy of expertise is thought” (RMM 354).21
Both examples are meant to show that absorbed coping is mindless and involves motor
intentional content that is wholly distinct from conceptual content. Dreyfus writes: “the
phenomena show that embodied skills, when we are absorbed in enacting them, have a
kind of content which is non-conceptual, non-propositional, non-rational (even if rational

Heidegger relies mostly on texts from Heidegger’s later work and does not engage with Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger
(Braver, ‘Never Mind’).
16
For additional discussion of the Dreyfus-McDowell debate, see Heras-Escribano and Pinedo, ‘Are Affordances Norma-
tive?’, 568–9 and Nulty, ‘Hubert Dreyfus and the Last Myth of the Mental’, 49–64. Discussion of the philosophical
issue of conceptual versus nonconceptual content in perception and action can be found in Gottlieb, ‘Unreflective
Action and the Argument from Speed’, 345–53 and Montero and Evans, ‘Intuitions Without Concepts Lose the
Game’, 175–94, though these writers do not focus on the Dreyfus-McDowell debate as such nor refer to Heidegger. Drey-
fus’s discussion of skilful coping has also received some critical attention, but again these critics have not engaged with
Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger. See Rouse, ‘Coping and its Contrasts’, 8–18; Buskell, ‘How to Be Skillful’, 1457–60; and
Bergamin, ‘Being-in-the-Flow’, 405–6.
17
Dennis, ‘Was Heidegger a Nonconceptualist?’, 109–15.
18
Buskell notes, rightly I think, that “Dreyfus’s characterization of skill and skill acquisition is deeply intertwined with his
exegesis of Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Merleau-Ponty” (‘How To Be Skillful’, 1458). Although he objects to a critic who
does not engage with the existential-ontological framework that this background entails, Buskell also does not engage
with Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger.
19
“ … I think that analytic philosophers could profit from pursuing the question of how these nonconceptual capacities are
converted into conceptual ones – how minds grow out of being-in-the-world – rather than denying the existence of the
nonconceptual” (OMM-06 48).
20
See also Dreyfus, ‘The Myth of the Pervasiveness of the Mental’, 35.
21
See also Dreyfus, ‘Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality’, 103.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 73

means situation-specific) and non-linguistic” (RMM 360). Could conceptual content be

there implicitly? Dreyfus denies it:
to focus on the motor intentional content, then, is not to make some implicit conceptual
content explicit – that’s the myth – but rather to transform the motor intentional content
into conceptual content, thereby making it available for rational analysis but no longer
capable of directly motivating action. (RMM 360)

The distinction between a nonconceptual skilful coping and a “minded” activity that
expresses a conceptual intentionality yields the view that there are two kinds of intelligibil-
ity. Minded relations are conceptual and involve bringing concepts to bear on our experi-
ence. For both McDowell and Dreyfus such relations belong within the space of reasons,
and obviously there is an intelligibility that belongs to these relations. This is not in
dispute. What is in dispute is whether there is any nonconceptual comportment
(among humans) and, by extension, if there is, whether it must be relegated to the
domain of meaninglessness. Dreyfus seems to think that McDowell is driven to the
Myth of the Mental because he thinks all relations must be brought within the scope of
the space of reasons to preserve their intelligibility. Dreyfus does not think this is necess-
ary. Skilled coping is mindless, hence nonconceptual, but is nevertheless meaningful and
therefore intelligible. But the intelligibility characteristic of this type of comportment must
be different from the intelligibility that belongs to the conceptual. This commits him to the
view that there are two kinds of intelligibility: an intelligibility that holds for practical com-
portment and an intelligibility that holds for thinking and talking about that comport-
ment. Since the latter is conceptual, it must also be discursive, and the former, if it is to
be conceived of as nonconceptual, would then have to be nondiscursive. In short, this is
a distinction between a practical yet nondiscursive and nonconceptual and a discursive/
conceptual intelligibility.22
It is not always clear what Dreyfus means by the conceptual, but as others have pointed
out, some features can be extracted from his discussion. One can infer that conceptual
intentionality involves deliberation, application of rules or rule-following, and judge-
ment.23 This suggests that it entails those features of reasoning that Heidegger associates
with the theoretical attitude. In his contribution to Mind, Reason, and Being-in-the-World,
Dreyfus attempts to further clarify his position. The conceptual has to do not only with
propositional structure and judgement, but with assuming a distanced stance with
respect to a thing and this distance disturbs the absorption characteristic of skilful
coping.24 Thus, nonconceptual absorbed coping is immediate whereas conceptual inten-
tionality or comportment is mediated by conceptual content.25 These clarifications
suggest that Dreyfus’s position may be mapped onto the contrast between the practical
and the theoretical that is so prominent in his well-known reading of Heidegger, especially
since he explicitly enlists Heidegger’s position as support.

22
It should be noted that this use of “discursive” is not the same as Heidegger’s. Here it refers specifically to a conceptual
intentionality that Heidegger would associate with the theoretical attitude and the apophantic “as”. This is discussed
further in Section 3.
23
McManus thinks Dreyfus identifies conceptual activity with rule following (‘Rules, Regression, and the “Background”’,
435). Gottlieb thinks he associates it with deliberation (‘Unreflective Action and the Argument From Speed’, 343–5),
while Pippin reads him as associating it with a cognitive act that involves shaping content, such as might occur in a
judgement (‘What is “Conceptual Activity”?’, 91–6).
24
Dreyfus, ‘The Myth of the Pervasiveness of the Mental’, 17, 19, 21.
25
Ibid., 23.
74 L. A. MACAVOY

For Heidegger, the theoretical attitude is first and foremost an attitude of detachment
and disinterestedness from which entities are disclosed as present-at-hand and which can
then feature as objects about which propositions and judgements can be formed. On his
view this theoretical attitude is derivative, a modification of a more primordial existenti-
ality typified by absorption in and engagement with things in the world. Following the
Greeks, Heidegger refers to this engagement as a kind of praxis and the things revealed
there as pragmata,26 and following him Dreyfus refers to this comportment as practical
comportment.
Dreyfus often elaborates on the distinction between the practical and the theoretical
by drawing on a distinction between “knowing how” and “knowing that”, which we
may infer also underlies the distinction he draws between nonconceptual, skilful
coping and conceptual intentionality in the debate with McDowell. Heidegger refuses
the tradition’s exclusive association of understanding with the theoretical attitude,
insisting that there is an understanding and “seeing” (Umsicht) that belong to Being-
in-the-world more generally. Dreyfus interprets this notion of understanding as a
kind of knowing how, and emphasizes that it is evident in practical comportment.
On this view, understanding has to do with knowing how to use tools, how to negotiate
an equipmental context in order to accomplish some task, etc. (BW 184–6).27 Knowing
that, on the other hand, is associated with a theoretical understanding accomplished in
the theoretical attitude. To know that is to have a thought that has conceptual content
and a propositional structure. To know how, then, must lack these features. The overall
picture suggested here, then, is that knowing that represents a second layer or second
order attitude with respect to the understanding exhibited in practical comportment,
and this view is evident in Dreyfus’s claim that there is no conceptual content in
the skilled coper’s actions, but that this content is introduced when one talks about
those actions or explains them.
To summarize, then, mindless coping involves a practical, nonconceptual intelligibility
involved in know-how. This is the intelligibility of what we do. Mindful coping, on the
other hand, involves a discursive intelligibility brought to bear when conceptual capacities
are utilized in a more theoretical knowing that is cashed out in terms of propositions and
judgements. It is the intelligibility that pertains to what we say about what we do. It is clear
that Dreyfus distinguishes between these two types of intelligibility, and that he conceives
of them as layers or tiers since he often uses the metaphor of stories or floors of a building
to characterize them (OMM-05 47, 61).28 It is less clear, however, what the relationship is
between the layers and how the conceptual/discursive is arrived at from the nonconcep-
tual/practical.
One possibility is that the discursive conceptual layer is added to the nonconceptual
practical layer. Evidence for this additive account can be found in various features of Drey-
fus’s discussion. First, it is suggested by the building image involving upper stories built on
top of lower floors, above. To say that the conceptual “floors” are built on top of the
26
Heidegger, Being and Time, 68. Hereafter cited as SZ. I will generally follow the Macquarrie and Robinson English trans-
lation, but will cite the German pagination.
27
Understanding in Heidegger does not, in fact, primarily have to do with knowing how to do something (e.g. how to use a
hammer or build a birdhouse). It has to do with knowing how to be (SZ 143). Heidegger is clear that understanding is
disclosive of Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Thus, the restriction of understanding to a “knowing how” tends to restrict its
scope to circumspection. This gloss distorts Heidegger’s position in a way that favors the pragmatist reading.
28
See also Dreyfus, ‘Response to McDowell’, 376.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 75

nonconceptual “lower stories” suggests that they are added. Second, the contrast between a
mindless and a minded coping also suggests addition. To claim that there is no mind in
skilful coping and that mind only comes on the scene when conceptual capacities are
brought to bear suggests that mind is added.29 This is illustrated in Dreyfus’s examples
of expert coping. For instance, Knoblauch’s difficulties begin when he starts to think,
i.e. when he adds thinking to action, and the chess player example also highlights the
addition of a knowing that to a knowing how. For Dreyfus, the blitz chess player’s
actions do not involve concepts but when one discusses those actions or tries to explain
them, one brings concepts to bear in a rational reconstruction, thus adding conceptual
content to what was originally nonconceptual. Finally, the characterization of theoretical
intentionality as mediated by concepts in contrast with an immediate nonconceptual
intentionality suggests that the mediating third term is something added in theoretical
intentionality.
And yet, not everything Dreyfus says fits with this additive account. The use of the Hei-
deggerian distinction between the practical and the theoretical might suggest a more sub-
tractive account insofar as the practical attitude has priority and the theoretical attitude is
achieved through a kind of detachment or disengaging from the practical. Dreyfus fre-
quently refers to this detachment whenever he emphasizes the absorption of skilful
coping and its disruption by thought or reflection. This disruption effects the detachment
that seems to enable conceptual capacities to be utilized and conceptual intelligibility to be
introduced.
This ambiguity in Dreyfus’s position complicates the task of determining whether a
twofold account of intelligibility can be grounded in a Heideggerian account of Being-
in-the-world. The question has three elements: first, to what extent do we find any-
thing like two kinds of intelligibility in Heidegger and what distinction would it be
linked to; second, what relationship would the terms of this distinction bear to each
other (i.e. additive or subtractive); and third, are these terms distinguished as concep-
tual and nonconceptual? While I do not dispute that Heidegger draws a distinction
between the practical and the theoretical, I do not think it can do the work that
Dreyfus wants it to do. In what follows, I will explore two possibilities for grounding
a twofold account of intelligibility in Heidegger. First, following the lead of the prac-
tical/theoretical distinction, I will focus on the related distinction between the herme-
neutic and apophantic “as”. This argument will show that this distinction rules out an
additive account, and tends in favor of some version of a subtractive account, but it
does not support the claim that practical comportment is actually nonconceptual.
Next, in section 4, I will turn to a second possible locus for a distinction between
practical/nonconceptual and discursive/conceptual comportment, and show why it
too does not work.

29
Although Dreyfus turns to Heidegger in support of this position, it is doubtful that Heidegger would accept the distinc-
tion between mindless and mindful coping. The concept of mind at work here resembles the one that we have inherited
from the tradition, and thus, the distinction between mindless and mindful coping seems to invoke a mind-body dualism
that is antithetical to Heidegger’s philosophy. McDowell makes a similar observation when he says that Dreyfus is behol-
den to the Myth of the Disembodied Intellect, which he later characterizes as the Myth of Mind as Detached. Dreyfus
clearly does not intend to invoke this dualism, but the terms in which he expresses his position seem, almost despite
him, to reinscribe a version of it. See McDowell, ‘What Myth?’, 349–50 and McDowell, ‘The Myth of the Mental as
Detached’, 41.
76 L. A. MACAVOY

3. Grounding the Practical/Nonconceptual and the Discursive/Conceptual

in the Hermeneutic and Apophantic “as”
Based on the interpretation just forwarded of how the Heideggerian distinction between
the practical and the theoretical operates in Dreyfus’s position, one might conclude that
conceptual discursive intelligibility is operative when the apophantic as-structure is
operative. One might arrive at this conclusion as follows. The apophantic “as” correlates
with the theoretical attitude because it is the “as” of predication as it appears in judge-
ment. For instance, to judge that “the paper is white” is to predicate whiteness of the
paper and thus to characterize it “as white”. This clearly falls within the scope of
what Dreyfus would consider to be conceptual intelligibility. But as we have seen, he
argues against McDowell that there is also an intelligibility associated with practical
comportment that is nonconceptual. He bases this on his reading of Heidegger’s
notion of understanding, stressing that understanding is not the understanding of a
“bare given”, but a taking of something as something prior to predication (OMM-05
59). Dreyfus reads Heidegger correctly here, and emphasizes the interpretive dimension
of circumspection that Heidegger associates with the hermeneutic “as”. Thus, what
would guarantee the intelligibility of practical comportment is the presence of the as-
structure. To say that this taking of something as something is prior to predication
suggests that the difference between conceptual/discursive and nonconceptual/practical
comportment should be understood in relation to Heidegger’s distinction between the
apophantic and hermeneutic “as”.30 The apophantic “as” is the “as” of predication
and is associated with assertion, while the hermeneutic “as” is the taking of something
as something in circumspection.
If this is the case, then we can see that Dreyfus’s position is ambiguous in a way that
Heidegger’s is not. Dreyfus uses a set of parallel distinctions to elaborate on the two
kinds of intelligibility and, as already noted, the relationship between them is characterized
as additive in some cases and as subtractive in others. It is worth noting these distinctions
so we can see how things stack up.

Practical/Nonconceptual Discursive/Conceptual
1. Mindless Minded (additive)
2. Knowing how Knowing that (additive)
3. Immediate Mediated (additive)
4. Practical Theoretical (subtractive)
5. Hermeneutic “as” Apophantic “as” (subtractive)

As demonstrated in section two, Dreyfus uses distinctions 1–4 to distinguish between the
nonconceptual/practical and the conceptual/discursive. Of these, distinction 4 is drawn
directly from Heidegger, while distinctions 1–3 are drawn from Dreyfus’s interpretation.
The Heideggerian distinction between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as” (distinction
5) would have to be considered subtractive rather than additive because for Heidegger
the apophantic “as” does not add anything that was not already there in the hermeneutic
“as”. In fact, assertion does not add anything at all; it subtracts. Heidegger writes that in
assertion:
30
“The primordial ‘as’ of an interpretation which understands circumspectively we call the ‘existential-hermeneutical “as”’
in distinction from the ‘apophantical “as”’ of assertion” (SZ 158). See also SZ 151.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 77

The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification. In its function of appro-

priating what is understood, the “as” no longer reaches out into a totality of involvements.
As regards its possibilities for Articulating reference-relations, it has been cut off from that
significance which, as such, constitutes environmentality [Umweltlichkeit]. The “as” gets
pushed back into the uniform plane of that which is merely present-at-hand. It dwindles
to the structure of just letting one see what is present-at-hand, and letting one see it in a
definite way. This levelling of the primordial “as” of circumspective interpretation to the
“as” with which presence-at-hand is given a definite character is the specialty of assertion.
(SZ 158)

Thus, assertion modifies the hermeneutic “as” of interpretation into the apophantic “as”
by abstracting the object from its context. This abstraction is subtractive because it
detaches the object from the totality of involvements, and this detachment mirrors the
detachment of the subject characteristic of the theoretical attitude. In this regard, it
seems that Heidegger is pretty consistent in holding to the view that the relationship
between the practical and theoretical attitudes should be considered subtractive as
opposed to additive. Therefore, if the practical/theoretical distinction is the dominant
one in Dreyfus’s position, the supplementing of that distinction with the distinction
between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as” might allow us to disambiguate the position
in favor of a subtractive account.31
In fact, the distinction between the hermeneutic and apophantic “as” is quite useful in
clarifying what is going on with the blitz chess player in Dreyfus’s example. However, it
does not support the view that practical comportment is nonconceptual. While it may
be true, as Dreyfus insists, that the chess player is playing too quickly to be deliberating
about his moves and thus might appear not to be thinking or to be using concepts to
guide his actions, he still moves the pieces in an appropriate manner. That is, he moves
pawns in the way that pawns are supposed to move in contrast, say, to the way knights
are supposed to move, and that means that at some level he grasps or recognizes a
given piece as a pawn as opposed to grasping it as a knight. This is a case of the herme-
neutic “as” in action. For Dreyfus, concepts only enter on the scene when we start talking
about what the blitz chess player is doing, and he insists that no concepts are involved in
the action, but this seems wrong insofar as taking something as something necessarily
involves identifying it or recognizing it as an instance of one thing or another. Talking
about what the blitz chess player is doing seems only to be drawing out and rendering
in a different form the interpretation that is already there in the action itself.32 This is
in fact how Heidegger characterizes the difference between the interpretation involved
in assertion and that which takes place in circumspection. Assertion merely presents
the as-structure that is there in circumspective interpretation in a different form. There-
fore, it seems that the hermeneutic “as” is not actually nonconceptual and does not rep-
resent a different kind of intelligibility. While this picture might support some sort of
subtractive account, it does not ultimately support Dreyfus’s position.
The prior point suggests that conceptuality is connected to the as-structure itself. In
defence of Dreyfus’s position that there is a nonconceptual intelligibility, one might

31
However, it is important that the distinctions Dreyfus uses to gloss Heidegger’s position are not consistent with such an
account, suggesting that these “glosses” are somewhat misleading.
32
Rouse makes a similar point when he draws the distinction between descriptive and normative use of concepts. See
‘What Is Conceptually Articulated Understanding?’, 252–5.
78 L. A. MACAVOY

argue that it is necessary to distinguish mindless coping from a comportment that involves
the hermeneutic “as”.33 That is, perhaps what marks the difference between the concep-
tual/discursive and the nonconceptual/practical isn’t the form of the as-structure but
the presence or absence of the as-structure. In this case, the as-structure would have to
be absent in practical comportment, and that comportment would have to manifest intel-
ligibility despite this absence.

4. Grounding the Practical/Nonconceptual and the Discursive/Conceptual

in the Absence or Presence of the As-structure
Thus, we arrive at a second possible way that Dreyfus might ground the claim that there
are two kinds of intelligibility in Heidegger. According to this approach, Dreyfus might
simply reject the claim that there is any as-structure present in practical comportment
in an effort to preserve its nonconceptuality. Although this position seems inconsistent
with the position put forward in most of the texts that figure in the debate,34 Dreyfus
does indeed make a statement at one point that corroborates this interpretation. In his
“Response to McDowell” he states that he had initially assumed that McDowell held
the view that concepts must be general and that he had objected on Heideggerian
grounds because the skilled coper has to be responsive to concrete features of a situation,
and therefore practical comportment could not involve the use of general concepts. But he
subsequently realized that he had mistaken McDowell’s view, and that in fact McDowell
holds that conceptuality is situation-specific. So, Dreyfus rephrases his objection, again on
Heideggerian grounds. He claims that Heidegger grants that we might use concepts in
“situation-specific” ways when, for instance, equipment is not working well. In such
cases, he says an item can show up “as something”. For instance, if the hammer is too
heavy for the job, it will show up as “too heavy”. But he continues: “Heidegger points
out that most of our activities don’t involve concepts at all. That is, they don’t have a situ-
ation-specific ‘as structure’”.35 In such situations, equipment does not show up as anything
at all, and no concepts – not even situation-specific ones – are in play. In this statement of
the view, conceptuality is linked with the as-structure itself, which means that conceptual-
ity enters not just at the level of assertion but at the level of the hermeneutic “as”, and
therefore is characteristic of interpretation in general. So if practical comportment is non-
conceptual, it must lack the as-structure altogether.
The view that practical comportment contains no as-structure seems wrong in light of
the blitz chess player example discussed in the previous section. It would require us to con-
ceive of the as-structure as something added to understanding in interpretation and that
would necessitate drawing this distinction in a manner that is supported neither by the
phenomenology nor by the discussion of circumspective concern in Heidegger’s text. In
this section, I will show, first, that practical comportment and the intelligibility associated
33
I am grateful to Sean Kelly for pointing this out.
34
Dennis has also noticed this inconsistency (‘Was Heidegger a Nonconceptualist?’, 114). It could be argued however that
this position is consistent with Dreyfus’s view about the nonrepresentability of the background noted earlier. If practical
comportment requires familiarity with the background, and the background is nonrepresentable, then perhaps it is also
nonconceptual, and a comportment that demonstrates an understanding of that background would be as well. Such a
view implies, I think, that the background not only isn’t articulated, but perhaps isn’t even articulable. I dispute this view
in this section.
35
Dreyfus, ‘Response to McDowell’, 371.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 79

with it depend upon discursive articulation because this comportment involves

engagement with significations that are only articulated through discourse. Second, I
will explore the implications of this for the relation between understanding and interpret-
ation. The analysis will show that the hermeneutic “as” is always present in practical com-
portment, and therefore the view that practical comportment contains no as-structure
must be wrong and cannot be used to support the claim that it is nonconceptual.
Third, I will discuss the relation between discourse and interpretation in order to clarify
the sense of articulation that belongs to each. These three points taken together establish
that discursive articulation is a condition of practical comportment and thus practical
intelligibility is not distinct from discursive conceptual intelligibility. Furthermore, prac-
tical comportment always contains an interpretive dimension and therefore is
hermeneutic.
Discussions of practical comportment in Heidegger, including those offered by Dreyfus,
typically focus on Heidegger’s analysis of equipment in which he shows that anything
ready-to-hand has what he refers to as an “in-order-to” (um … zu), i.e. a serviceability
for something (SZ 68). The relation between the equipment and what it is for is called
an assignment or reference (Verweisung) (SZ 68). Thus, when I encounter an item of
equipment, I understand it in terms of its reference. But Heidegger maintains that a
tool is rarely encountered in isolation, but is generally grouped with other equipment
with which it belongs. In other words, equipment is intelligible in relation to other equip-
ment, and it follows from this that I really understand equipment in terms of a totality of
references (Verweisungsganzheit). This understanding is made manifest in my dealings
with equipment. So, when I am making a cake, I reach for mixing bowls, whisks, spatulas,
measuring cups, and spoons. I understand what each of them is for and use them accord-
ingly in the performance of the task of preparing my cake batter. Further analysis of the
dealings with equipment reveals that included in this totality of references are the work to
be accomplished, the larger objective to be achieved in doing it, the material to be used, the
people for whom the work is being done, and so on. Such dealings are thoroughly
embedded in a complex web of relations in terms of which or in relation to which the indi-
vidual components are understood.
Heidegger characterizes the “seeing” through which we perceive a tool or piece of
equipment in terms of its reference as circumspection (SZ 69). My dealings with equip-
ment are guided by circumspection because it is through this that I grasp the totality of
assignments with reference to which I disclose the equipment that I use in performing
my task. Circumspection is the kind of understanding belonging to practical comportment
that Dreyfus characterizes as a “knowing how”, and what is understood and demonstrated
here is what he calls “practical intelligibility”. Under the interpretation of his view that we
are considering, this intelligibility would have to hold without reference to an as-structure.
That structure would belong to a secondary discursive/conceptual intelligibility. My claim
is that this understanding, this negotiating of practical intelligibility, depends necessarily
on a prior discursive articulation. From this it follows that discursive intelligibility is not
extraneous to practical intelligibility; rather, without discursive articulation, there simply is
no intelligibility.
By “intelligibility” I mean simply what Heidegger calls “Verständlichkeit”. The intelli-
gible is the “understandable”. As we have seen, things are understood in practical intellig-
ibility insofar as they belong to totalities of reference – or to put it more simply, because
80 L. A. MACAVOY

they belong to a world.36 To see why discursive articulation is necessary to practical intel-
ligibility, the role of discourse in articulating totalities of reference must be established.
Heidegger says that discourse “underlies both interpretation and assertion”, and the
reason he gives is that “the intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even
before there is any appropriative interpretation of it” (SZ 161). Thus, the articulation of
intelligibility that discourse performs occurs prior to interpretation, and presumably
makes interpretation possible. The reason for this is that discourse articulates the totality
of significations (Bedeutungsganze),37 and “this [totality of significations] can be dissolved
or broken up into significations” (SZ 161). We will return to this issue of articulation, below.
The concept of signification (Bedeutung) is explicitly linked with that of reference.
Reference expresses a relation between two things such that the presentation of the one
leads one or directs one to the other.38 So when Heidegger uses the term “reference” in
the context of equipment, he means to suggest the way one piece of equipment in an
equipmental totality refers to the others both individually and as a whole. He further
states that while reference has various meanings, the one he wants to isolate is “be-
deuten” (to mean) (SZ 87).39 Since “bedeuten” is not one of the meanings of “verweisen”,
this is odd but the hyphenation of “be-deuten” in the passage suggests that “verweisen”
might be related to “bedeuten” through “deuten”, the most relevant sense of which here
seems to be “to indicate”.40 So a reference indicates that to which it points and in this
regard could be said to signify it. Heidegger certainly does not mean that the first term
is a sign for the second in any straightforward sense since the phenomenon described
here is supposed to be more general than what is characteristic of signs. But the first
term indicates and thus directs one to the second. In this regard, referring is a signifying,
and thus Heidegger justifies his claim that references are significations.
A totality of references is not just a sum of references; it is really an ordered whole in
which each component refers to the others in a structured web of relations.41 The world is
this structured whole. If references signify, then the totality of references is a totality of
significations, and the structure of the world would be the structure of these significations
(SZ 87). But this structure has an order, a sense, and perhaps “verweisen” can mean
“bedeuten” because the overall order of references constitutes a sense in terms of which
it becomes possible for any particular thing to have the reference it has and thus to
signify. Thus, encountering anything ready-to-hand requires that its reference and sign-
ification be understood in terms of the totality of references and significations in which
it figures. This necessitates a prior familiarity with these totalities and how they are articu-
lated, but this articulation is performed by discourse. Hence discursive articulation is
necessary for the intelligibility of the situations and things we encounter and with
which we engage in practical comportment. This discursive articulation is exemplified

36
Heidegger writes: “it [the world] has already been disclosed beforehand whenever what is ready-to-hand within-the-
world is accessible for circumspective concern” (SZ 76).
37
“That which gets articulated as such in discursive articulation [Artikulation], we call the ‘totality-of-significations’” (SZ 161,
translation modified).
38
Heidegger holds that all references are relations (HCT 204). See also SZ 77. Among the uses of verweisen listed in the
Duden Stilwörterbuch, there is one that seems most appropriate here: referring someone to someone or something.
39
Heidegger has a similar discussion in HCT, but there he does not hyphenate “bedeuten”. See HCT 201; 274 in the German.
40
This is not to be confused with what signs do. Macquarrie and Robinson translate “zeigen” as “to indicate”. Heidegger is
claiming that the signifying of signs is a specific type of reference.
41
That the “totality” is a whole is suggested by Heidegger’s use of the term “Ganzheit” and its cognates in the German.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 81

as much in the blitz chess player example as it is in the cake baking example. The chess
player understands the game as a whole with its rules and goals, distinguishes the
different pieces, and moves them appropriately.
Thus, what Dreyfus calls practical intelligibility actually requires a prior discursive articu-
lation which suggests, first, that there are not two kinds of intelligibility but only one, and
second, that this intelligibility is not nonconceptual since it depends on a discursive articu-
lation. To drill deeper into this, we need to see if there is a practical comportment in Hei-
degger that does not involve the as-structure. Since the hypothesis is that we might locate
this in understanding, as opposed to interpretation, we need to take a closer look at this dis-
tinction. To do so, we need to consider Heidegger’s claim that interpretation is a develop-
ment of understanding, a making explicit of what the understanding understands.
Circumspection is understanding as it manifests itself in practical comportment, but Hei-
degger also says that interpretation already occurs in our seeing things in circumspection (SZ
149–50).42 So both understanding and interpretation are present here, and the question is
how they are to be distinguished. Heidegger frequently refers to understanding as disclosive
of Being-in-the-world as a whole, and since Dasein’s Being is Being-in-the-world, this means
that this understanding discloses Dasein’s Being. But insofar as it is disclosive of the world as
part of this, this suggests that understanding is horizonally directed. Thus, it is more appro-
priate to say that we understand a totality of references or involvements or understand the
world than that we understand specific objects. This observation suggests that if interpret-
ation is a development of understanding (SZ 148), it perhaps consists in focusing more on an
object or piece of equipment than would be the case in understanding. If this is right, then
interpretation occurs when some item of equipment is grasped in its readiness-to-hand for
some purpose or with respect to some task:
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. That which has been circumspectively taken apart with regard to its “in-order-
to,” and taken apart as such – that which is explicitly understood – has the structure of some-
thing as something. (SZ 148–9)

So in circumspection one takes hold of an object as something or other against the back-
ground of a totality of references. One understands this totality, and on its basis one inter-
prets the reference of the particular item. Heidegger suggests that understanding is
primarily directed toward the horizon of intelligibility of some equipment that is ready-
to-hand insofar as understanding discloses the totality of involvements that serves as its
frame of reference.43 But interpretation articulates the particular involvement of the par-
ticular item in question and thus frees it for its involvement:44

42
For instance, “in dealing with what is environmentally ready-to-hand by interpreting it circumspectively, we ‘see’ it as a
table, a door, a carriage, or a bridge” (SZ 149). In this section, Heidegger argues that the only time we experience some-
thing without the “as” is when we experience it as present-at-hand, i.e. in “pure perception”, which is certainly not the
practical comportment Dreyfus is aiming for.
43
“In the mere encountering of something, it is understood in terms of a totality of involvements; and such seeing hides in
itself the explicitness of the assignment-relations (of the “in-order-to”) which belong to that totality. That which is under-
stood gets articulated when it is brought close interpretatively by taking as our clue the “something as something”, and
this articulation lies before our making any thematic assertion about it” (SZ 149, translation modified).
44
“Interpretation does not throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, and does not stick a
value on it; but rather when something within the world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has
82 L. A. MACAVOY

the ready-to-hand is always understood in terms of a totality of involvements. This totality

need not be grasped explicitly by a thematic interpretation. Even if it has undergone such an
interpretation, it recedes into an understanding which does not stand out from the back-
ground. And this is the very mode in which it is the essential foundation for everyday circum-
spective interpretation. (SZ 150)

Thus, understanding is directed toward the background or horizon, and interpretation

pulls some part into the foreground.45 This pulling into the foreground is the articulation
involved in interpretation, and it occurs on the basis of something that is given or “had” in
advance, namely something that is understood.46 For interpretation to make explicit a
signification such that something can be seen as something, the whole that is understood
in understanding and which serves as a basis for interpretation must itself be articulated
into a totality of significations, and this is the function of discourse. Discourse is the articu-
lation of intelligibility or understandability (SZ 161).
If both discourse and interpretation involve articulation, then how do they differ? They
must be different because the articulation of discourse underlies interpretation. Heidegger
claims that “the intelligibility of something has always been articulated, even before there
is any appropriative interpretation of it” (SZ 161). This makes sense insofar as discourse
articulates the totality of significations toward which understanding is directed such that
interpretation grasps only one signification against the backdrop of this totality. If
interpretation differs from understanding in focusing on one signification or reference
and, as it were, carving it out of the whole that is understood, I would suggest that dis-
course parses intelligibility into meaningful bits, thereby making it possible for interpret-
ation to carve out one of those bits. If interpretation carves at the joint, discourse identifies
where the joints are.47 Applied to the chess example, discourse articulates the whole com-
prised of the game into intelligible bits – its pieces, rules, etc. The player’s understanding of
the game is oriented toward this discursively articulated whole. Interpretation occurs in
the player’s move when he takes the piece as, say, a knight as opposed to a pawn, and
this interpretation presumes this prior understanding.
This analysis establishes, first, that discursive articulation is a necessary condition for
practical comportment because that articulation is a precondition of interpretation and,
second, that this interpretation occurs in the circumspective concern that defines practical
comportment. In other words, practical comportment, if it is to be understood as a kind of

an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world, and this involvement gets laid out by the interpret-
ation” (SZ 150, translation modified).
45
Earlier it was noted that Dreyfus holds that the background is nonrepresentable and therefore presumably unarticulated.
The position here is that for Heidegger it must be already articulated. Heidegger writes: “if the ‘as’ is ontically unex-
pressed, this must not seduce us into overlooking it as a constitutive state for understanding, existential and a priori”
(SZ 149, my emphasis).
46
This is basically what Heidegger means by the fore-having (Vorhabe). The articulation by which something is pulled into
the foreground is described by Heidegger as an act of appropriation, and this act is guided by fore-sight (Vorsicht). The
fore-sight is characterized as a point of view that “‘takes the first cut’ out of what has been taken into our fore-having”
(SZ 150). So the fore-sight carves out of the fore-having the bit that is to be interpreted. This act then makes it possible
for the entity to be interpreted to be conceived in one way or another through the interpretation. This is the fore-con-
ception (Vorgriff), i.e. that the entity will be conceptualized, taken as something or other. Taken together, the fore-
having, fore-sight, and fore-conception are known as the fore-structures of the understanding, and interpretation is
founded upon them (SZ 150–1). Interestingly, the fore-structures are not “fore” only in that they come in advance of
interpretation. They are “fore” in that they are in some sense cast ahead by the projective structure of understanding
(SZ 151).
47
This turn of phrase is suggested by both Macquarrie and Robinson’s footnote, p. 195 in the English translation, note 1,
and BW 215.
 JOURNAL OF THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR PHENOMENOLOGY 83

meaningful comportment, must be understood as an engagement with what Heidegger

calls the hermeneutic “as”. This means we cannot make sense of practical comportment
as comportment without the as-structure. The interpretation of Dreyfus’s view under con-
sideration denies that the as-structure goes all the way down; it maintains that there is no
hermeneutic “as” in absorbed coping. But this cannot be true. In our comportment we are
“taking things as” all the time. If I grasp a pen and use it to write, I take it as a pen, but
when I drop it into my open book to hold my place, I take it as a bookmark. Both are
takings as; both are interpretations that occur in absorbed coping; both involve a herme-
neutic “as”. Though we can distinguish between understanding and interpretation, they
are not distinguished by the presence or absence of the as-structure. This second argument
for Dreyfus’s position cannot be supported.

5. Conclusion
Dreyfus claims there are two kinds of intelligiblity, a ground floor of practical intelligibility
that requires no conceptuality upon which the higher floors of discursive, conceptual intel-
ligibility are built. I have explored two possible approaches to supporting this view using
Heidegger’s phenomenology, and have shown why each fails.
Dreyfus’s interpretation of Heidegger is overly dominated by the opposition between the
practical and the theoretical, on the one hand, and the corresponding distinction between
knowing how and knowing that on the other. These distinctions structure Dreyfus’s analysis
and ultimately distort Heidegger’s position because the intelligibility that he associates with
discourse cuts across the distinction between the practical and the theoretical.
This is reflected in the difficulty that Dreyfus’s analysis has in locating the intelligibility
of discourse. Much of the time Dreyfus likens the conceptual to the theoretical. Since he
also often says that the conceptual enters in with what we think or say about what we do,
this implies that the conceptual is discursive, and therefore that the discursive is also theor-
etical. But that position does not make sense on Heideggerian grounds since discourse is
pre-predicative, and predication is a function of the theoretical. Therefore, we cannot
simply locate the operation of discourse within the theoretical. In fact, Dreyfus’s own com-
mentary on Being and Time locates discourse on the side of the practical, maintaining that
discourse has to do with discriminating among things in action (BW 210–12).48 But since
Dreyfus wants practical activity to be nonconceptual, this discriminating would have to be
discursive but nonconceptual, and that position does not seem to make sense either as is
borne out in the phenomenological analysis of examples like the blitz chess player, which
clearly show that the as-structure is pervasive in the intelligibility of action. What we ought
to conclude is that discourse is conceptual, but not theoretical.
For Heidegger practical comportment expresses a familiarity with a discursively articu-
lated space and is not possible without this. The pragmatist account tends to reduce the
disclosedness of the world, in which discourse plays an important role, to the practical
comportment that occurs on the basis of this disclosedness. This narrow view of practical
comportment obscures the fact that the work of discourse is in some sense a priori relative
to practical activity. When I engage in practical comportment, I am already expressing an
understanding not just of practical intelligibility but of the discursive articulation of my
48
For a discussion of this pragmatic sense of discourse, see Carman, Heidegger’s Analytic, 227–32.
84 L. A. MACAVOY

situation. The intelligibility of practical comportment is not separable from the intelligibil-
ity of discourse because the dealings that make up practical comportment express a fam-
iliarity with a totality of significations articulated by discourse. Furthermore, without this
discursive articulation, there really is no intelligibility because the features of my situation
cannot be disclosed or cleared for me in a meaningful way without it. Thus, Heidegger
claims that “we see what one says about the matter” (HCT 56). The articulation performed
by discourse is not secondary or extraneous to dealings with the ready-to-hand; it is a con-
dition of it. The engagement with things demonstrated in circumspection is based on a
prior discursive articulation of the totality of significations. Indeed, it seems as though
practical comportment is the interpretive expression of discursive intelligibility. That is,
I show how I have understood the discursive articulation of my situation, i.e. that I
grasp discursive intelligibility, by doing something.49

ORCID
Leslie A. MacAvoy http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0699-7791

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49
I would like to thank the International Society for Phenomenological Studies for an opportunity to present an earlier
version of this paper. I would also like to thank the following individuals for their useful comments: Bill Blattner, Lee
Braver, Taylor Carman, Dave Cerbone, Steve Crowell, Sean Kelly, Mark Lance, Mark Okrent, Joe Rouse, Joe Schear,
and Kate Withy.
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