Being-There-With-Others

Martin Heidegger
May ‘77

By making Dasein's being with others a given, Heidegger avoids
solipsistic arguments, arguments that deny the possibility of knowing
the other. Dasein exists through its communication with others. Dasein
existentially encounters others as being for, without, or against, and
is with others in its solicitude and considerateness. Thus, for
Heidegger, discoursing becomes just another one of Dasein's
(Being-in-the-world's) equiprimordial structures. Understanding one's
Being-in-the-world (depth of meaning) depends on how far one's own
Dasein has understood itself at the time. Depth of meaning is made
possible because Dasein exists--ontologically--as both an "issue for
itself," and as a whole, and, according to Heidegger, the significance
of Dasein-the ontological whole of Dasein-must be understood within
the light of authenticity.

Dasein lights up the worldhood of the world in understanding, state of
mind, being-with-others, and falling (thrownness). There is another
way, though, one where understanding, state of mind,
being-with-others, and falling light up not just the world of our
everydayness, but rather our ownmost being possible.

For the most part, concern--our concerns, originate in what Heidegger
calls inauthentic Dasein. People exist in thrownness and are none the
worse for it. Indeed, most people are happy in throwness, but for
those who need or want more, the possibility of existing apart from
thrownness starts when that person becomes aware of thrownness.
Setting a goal and attaining it is not the way one goes about existing
apart from thrownness. Rather, this possibility is first encountered
as an oddity, an extreme, and finally gets understood only after the
experience of an intensely felt aloneness—hence the turbulence.

In authenticity, when Dasein comes back to its own most having been,
it becomes free from all externality. But, in order to succeed in
this, Dasein must partake in a relationship where there is no further
involvement. In everydayness, Dasein goes about its business unaware
of that kind of relationship. In inauthenticity Dasein temporalizes
temporality; that leaves Dasein with its past and future, but never
with itself. Desiring wealth, power, fame, lust--worldly desires as
such, Dasein always involves itself further, but when Dasein honestly
faces the possibility of its own death, only then does it encounter a
relationship with no further involvement, only then does it encounter
the one possibility that cannot be outstripped by any other Dasein. In
everydayness, Dasein does not choose to recognize this not to be out
stripped possibility of itself. Instead, it passes over that
possibility as an unfortunate calamity of life--people die.
Occasionally, though, the thought of one's death does get experienced
with anxiety, but the cause of that anxiety is always left
unrecognized (if I knew what I was anxious about I wouldn't be
anxious). If, however, one lingers in anxiety's uncanniness, worldly
meaning starts to fall away, and the sound of Heidegger's "call of
conscience" starts to be heard.