ISSN 2227-7242 (Print), ISSN 2304-9685 (Online)
Антропологічні виміри філософських досліджень, 2022, Вип. 21
Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research, 2022, NO 21
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
PROBLEMS
IN
THE
HISTORY
OF
PHILOSOPHY
1*Oles Honchar Dnipro National University (Dnipro, Ukraine), e-mail victor7754@i.ua, ORCID 0000-0001-8606-677X
On the purity of European consciousness in the existential anthropology of early M. Heidegger
Purpose. The purity of consciousness in European culture has practically been turned into an abstraction. Because of this, there are so many discrepancies in understanding its nature. For Heidegger, the question of the purity of human consciousness remains open. Our purpose is to study the purity of European consciousness in the work of M. Heidegger. Theoretical basis. We draw on the deep foundations of existential, phenomenological, hermeneutic, religious-philosophical and postmodern Western and Eastern thought. Originality. While the early Heidegger was thinking under the sign of Dasein, he did not hear the nature of the "pure consciousness" of human. Nevertheless, temporality for him was such a fundamental property that it determined the depth of understanding not only of being, but also of human consciousness itself (like Dasein). In this context, we begin to understand that the depth of consciousness in the concept of early Heidegger can be associated with its temporality. In fact, towards the end of "Being and Time", Heidegger, thinking more and more about the understanding of time from the horizon of being, begins to form similar ideas about understanding itself, that is, about human consciousness, in the sense that consciousness itself arises from the horizon of time (and being). What, then, is pure human consciousness the pure time? Does not this mean that the original meaning of consciousness is in its directed temporalizing. This temporalizing of consciousness of human (as a thinking being), which arises from the future, is perceived in three modes and reveals the fundamental nature of the consciousness itself (thinking is a stream of consciousness and, in such a context, directed understanding). Paraphrasing Heidegger, we say that the ontological meaning of pure human consciousness is revealed as temporality. Already after writing Being and Time, Heidegger thinks about the origins of the European consciousness, its comprehending from the depths (originality) of the being of European culture. Conclusions. The early Heidegger seeks the purity of being and, at the same time, strives more and more to understand the essence of the purity of human thinking. All of Heidegger’s work is a consistent transition from human understanding of the purity of being (Dasein) to the purity of thinking of a human himself. In this sense, there is a transformation of M. Heidegger’s consciousness from fundamental ontology (Dasein) in the early period to existential anthropology (human consciousness) in the late period.
Keywords: human consciousness; pure European thinking; pure being; existential anthropology; M. Heidegger
A person immersed in a state of inner integrity and concentration has always evoked a feeling of misunderstanding and mystery. Even from the down of human thought, a spontaneous distrust arose as to the fact, whether human thought itself is clear and transparent to itself (and others). Easily coping with the understanding of the external objective world, human thinking could not localize, and, consequently, fix the topos, or rather, the mode of existence of thought itself. This is probably why, even from the down of the formation of ideas about the world, people could not catch a way of fixing a thought or a way of expressing it. Having a good sense of direction in the form of expression of the external world in relation to it, thought, in fact, always eluded understanding of itself. Such an unusual property of the existence of a human who knew everything about the world around him and knew nothing about himself, indicated the mystery, unusualness, and even concealment of the inner nature of the human himself (his thinking). In fact, from the very beginning, from the very moment of the origin of thought in mythological culture, the world seemed to human divided because of the impossibility of fixing oneself in this world. Clarity and evidence in the understanding of the external world turned into a complete unclarity of oneself. The thinkers both at the origins of the emergence of cultural environments, and in modern society, have fixed this unclarity. Man’s place in nature (Scheler, 1962), Thoughts (Pascal, 2009), Civilization and its Discontent (Freud, 1930), The Secret of the Veda (Sri Aurobindo, 1998) and others are those modern texts, which indicate the difficulty of understanding human nature. These difficulties have not changed since the moment a human first comprehended his existence. The challenge is that the millennia-long way of cognition the humanity travelled from its origins, never allowed fixing any specific facts of understanding the inner nature of human. Neither in antiquity (in the statements of Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, etc.), nor in modern culture (S. Freud, C. G. Jung, E. Husserl, M. Scheler, M. Heidegger, K. Levi-Strauss, M. Foucault, J. Habermas, A. Badiou, etc.), we have not made any progress towards understanding the inner nature of human. As if it is covered with some kind of secret code (illusion, appearance, maya), hiding from us the authenticity and the depth of comprehension of human consciousness. That is why, to recognize this hidden nature of human (or divine) consciousness, the most advanced thinkers used the ultimate concepts and categories that allow at least to some extent fix this inner world of consciousness. In this context, different approaches were used: being, depth, purity, self-evidence, truth of thought. Those are the few examples of a human’s self-immersion into his inner world in European, Indian, Chinese and other cultures.
Nevertheless, despite such a close attention to this problem in many cultural, worldview, and personal areas of thought formation, we would like to focus on its narrower localization associated with the work of one of the largest thinkers of our time, M. Heidegger.
This is related to the fact that all the work of the German philosopher deals with the radical turn from the phenomenological understanding of human nature (the way of existence of his consciousness) in Being and Time to the understanding of historical nature of being of the European culture (as anthropology) in the works Contributions to Philosophy (of the Event), Heraclitus. The Beginning of Western Thinking, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude, Solitude, Parmenides and to comprehending the essence of European thinking in his latest work What is called thinking?. Being a pupil of E. Husserl (1983), who developed new instruments of understanding the nature of consciousness, M. Heidegger brought us closer to resolving the perennial problem of European culture: whether the thinking based on the general concepts can fix the presence of a "single" (or better to say, integral) human being. The discrepancy between being and thinking is so fundamental that the most universal minds of humanity (Plato and Aristotle, T. Aquinas and I. Kant, Lao Tzu and Confucius, Shankara and Ramanuja) tried, but could not find a way to unite them in a single concept. In such a context, "pure consciousness" is only that ultimate level of human being, in which truth, reality, a genuine unity of the existence of consciousness is revealed. After all, to reveal the way of "being" of consciousness actually means to find that fundamental topos, where existence and consciousness coincide, which goes beyond any logical-rational (and in this sense of all classical) European thinking.
M. Heidegger is one of those who felt all the inconsistency and complexity of this problem very keenly. Therefore, he focused his efforts on the purity of being (see the works Heidegger (1962, 1968, 1979, 1983, 1992), as well as Heidegger and Fink (1979)). But what about the purity of human thinking in this case? In fact, in this place we find ourselves in the situation (trap) that quantum mechanics has fallen into, and as a way out of it, the principles of complementarity of M. Bohr and uncertainty of W. Heisenberg were discovered, which prohibits the simultaneous fixation of a point in space and time for elementary particles. From the philosophical point of view, combining being and thinking, we find ourselves in a similar situation, which prohibits the simultaneous fixation of the point (moment or situation) of presence (of a person) both in the field of existence and in the field of thinking. Therefore, Heidegger has set a difficult task: having accurately fixed the purity of being, in fact, in the early period, he deprived himself of the possibility of accurate fixation of the purity of human consciousness, which Plato, Aristotle, T. Aquinas, I. Kant, E. Husserl, M. Scheler and others have so much written about before him, and was forced to pave the way to pure consciousness (at the cost of ever greater distance from existence), although he preserved the image of fundamental ontological thinking itself until the end of his life.
Many modern experts have tried to understand the matter of this problem in the work of M. Heidegger in a broad general cultural sense. Here we can refer to the works of domestic researchers aimed at translating the works of M. Heidegger into Ukrainian and their comprehending. Within the framework of the purposeful learning of the work of M. Heidegger in Ukraine, A. Bogachov discusses the principles of correctness by translating Being and Time into Ukrainian (Bogachov, 2021b) and analyzes the work of modern researcher F. Westerlund Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena (Bogachov, 2021a). I. Karivets considers the features of Heideggerian fundamental-ontological understanding of direct thinking, within which it is impossible to "develop" thinking or "teach" to think meaningfully, because this is a voluntary affair. The author is pessimistic about the Heideggerian project of thinking (Karivets, 2020). However, as our research will demonstrate, Heidegger himself (especially the late one) is pessimistic about both modern and classical European thinking. Another Ukrainian author, R. Kobets, focuses on the concept of scientific character, which is characteristic of Heidegger’s "early" thinking. The author focuses on the specifics of Heidegger’s explication of the existential concept of science and seeks to show that the fundamental-ontological projection of thinking is a kind of "science of knowledge", that is, the Dasein project is focused on scientific knowledge (transl. by V. O.) (Kobets, 2020). From our point of view, this is greatly exaggerated, since the project of existential analytics itself is mainly aimed at studying the human essence (Dasein) able to comprehend being, which is fundamentally impossible within the framework of scientific research.
A number of foreign experts also carefully studies Heidegger’s existential-anthropological project. We would like to refer to the works of such modern researchers as A. Badiou (2003, 2005), E. Boliaki (2012), Meindert E. Peters (2019), Liran Shia Gordon and Avital Wohlman (2019), etc. G. Fried explored the problem of Heidegger’s connection with German nationalism, biological racism and anti-Semitism and, accordingly, his views on collective subjectivity. He argued that Heidegger was a cosmopolitan and, nevertheless, insisted on "ontologizing" the principles of "blood and soil". In such a context, the almighty reign of Being violates Dasein (of a human), makes Dasein into the site of its appearing, envelops and pervades (Fried, 2019). F. Westerlund (2020), whose work was analysed by A. Bogachov, sought to reveal the essence of understanding the phenomenon in the work of M. Heidegger and criticized his radical historical understanding of thinking, which, in his opinion, does not allow us explaining either the historicity of our understanding, nor the ethical and existential meaning of co-existence with other people. G. Petropoulos seeks to reveal the inconsistency of Heidegger’s views on Plato, that is, the fact that in his early works, Heidegger still demonstrates neglect of the problem of the relationship between being and truth, and already in the forties a positive understanding of this issue can be traced. Hence, the conclusion that both Plato and Heidegger are transitional thinkers and are related with the transition from the originary to the derivative conception of truth (Petropoulos, 2021).
In relation to Heidegger, R. Huttunen and L. Kakkori tried to reveal the essence of one of the two types of thinking – calculative and meditative thinking. They claimed that Heidegger is a "technological essentialist", that is, according to him, a human cannot overcome the technicality of thinking. As a way out, they offer education and training in accordance with the right norms (for example, the environmental imperative) (Huttunen & Kakkori, 2022). But the fact that Heidegger saw the technology of European thinking (starting with Plato) does not mean that it applies to Heidegger himself. Rather, Heidegger’s "technologicity" is a sentence to everything preceding the European thinking, which we are trying to show.
M. Lambeth, analyzing C. Engelland’s idea of Heidegger, who studied the Kantian influence on Heidegger’s work in different periods, concluded that phenomenologically Kant’s views are a kind of guiding thread for Heidegger (and Kant is superior to Husserl in this regard), that the question of how Dasein gets access to the meaning of being in Being and Time remains open and thinking is not enough to gain access to the entities (objectivity is not enough to do this). In this context, the later Heidegger gets rid of the logic priority "focusing on affectivity" and analyses the history in terms of "fundamental dispositions", that is, fundamental ontology (or, in other words, Kant’s transcendental realm is revealed to us due to the fundamental disposition). Based on this approach, the author concludes that early and late Heidegger distanced himself from Kant’s transcendental philosophy (Lambeth, 2020). One can agree with the author that late Heidegger is searching for the solution in the human affectivity. In such a context he overcomes Kantian transcendentalism, but these conclusions are not yet sufficient to understand what is called thinking.
Z. Vereb (2020), referring to a group of authors analyzing the role of Kant in modern philosophy, writes that today there is a curious lack of works that put Kant in dialogue with continental thinking (such philosophers as Heidegger, Derrida, Irigaray, and Arendt), that Heidegger borrowed several Kantian insights for his fundamental ontology, while remaining critical of the Kantian interpretation of time as a form of inner feeling. R. Baiasu (2020) explored Heidegger’s understanding of the Kantian transcendental philosophy. A. Vrahimis asks if Heidegger is right in his interpretations of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche in Being and Time, where he developed a consistent critique of the specificity of philosophy and science, which is a consequence of Western metaphysics? Answering the question, he shows that Heidegger considers not only aesthetics, but also any science as a general field for overcoming the metaphysical thinking, because any specialized field of study of one specific type of being should somehow be based on a preliminary understanding of Being as a whole.
This leads Heidegger to content that in order to enter into modes of questioning about beings, these specialised forms of inquiry are required to become oblivious to fundamental questions about Being in general. A forgetfulness of the ground from which they stem is necessary for their existence. (Vrahimis, 2020, p. 72)
G. Tsagdis, R. Uljée and B. Zantvoort have linked together the three central figures of modern European thought – Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida. They came to the following conclusions: in Hegel, history becomes an inevitable condition of modern thought (itself thinking has a history) for the first time; for Heidegger the whole development of his thought from Being and Time to the imaginary Kehre and beyond revolves around the relationship between temporality as an existential characteristic of Dasein, the history of Being and the function and meaning of the Event; that Derrida relies on Heidegger’s project, where thinking can only exist in the continuous deconstruction of its own history, and in this context Derrida tries to show that the structural necessity of the hierarchic prioritization and conditioning of temporality over historicity will be the rock upon which the project of Being and Time will wreck (Tsagdis, Uljée, & Zantvoort, 2020). In other words, the project of the temporality of consciousness will destroy the main ideas of Being and Time. In this context, G. Tsagdis, R. Uljée and B. Zantvoort already really understood the essence of Heidegger’s transformation of philosophy from fundamental ontology to fundamental anthropology.
We have already researched these problems in our earlier works (Okorokov, 2016, 2018, 2020). In fact, this research continues the earlier research.
Purpose
The purity of consciousness in European culture has practically been turned into abstraction. Therefore, there are so many discrepancies in understanding its nature. If for Kant the purity of consciousness is related to categorical forms, for Hegel it is associated with purity of spirit, for Kierkegaard it is associated with religiosity, for Nietzsche – with pure life, for Graf Yorck – with the power of historicity, for Dilthey – with internal coherence, for Husserl – with self-evidence, then for Heidegger the question of the purity of consciousness remains open.
It should be noted that Heidegger’s (1962) path to understanding anthropology lies through the understanding of ontological foundations (p. 38). According to M. Heidegger (1968), pure consciousness in the 20th century is only just beginning to reveal itself to European human. Surprisingly, the very this purity was the subject of research by Indian sages during the Upanishads formation. It was commensurate with the unmanifested (in this sense, pure) Brahman. In such context, European culture, which developed in line with the rational (logos) tradition, bequeathed, according to Heidegger (1979, 1983), by Anaximander, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, only in its non-classical form has begun to listen to the authenticity of the origins of consciousness. After all, existential consciousness, according to Heidegger, is only the first since antiquity (non-classical) attempt to get not only to the depths of being, but also to the origins of consciousness (to its purity), where for the first time in European thinking it was implemented the scenario of overcoming "dirty" logical-rational approaches in understanding the human nature (his inner nature).
Completely in a similar vein, European thinkers of the 12th-20th centuries were searching for the purity of music (F. Brentano, K. Stumpf), the purity of space and time (natural philosophers Heaviside and Einstein, E. Mach, the same Brentano and Stumpf), pure beauty (not the purity of the idea of it – in Baumgarten) (Heidegger), pure goodness (religious thinkers K. Barth, H. U. von Balthasar, D. Hart, etc.). In exactly the same way, solution of the problem of the consciousness purity requires a "pure instrument" that could fix this purity (for example, as is customary in the Eastern tradition, a pure, cleaned from karma or liberated soul). For the same Plotinus, the first purity of God manifested itself in goodness and only then in the first emanation of being. Why is it given to some people (Bach or Mozart) to hear the purity of music, to others (Pythagoras or Einstein) it is given to hear the purity of space, to others (Ap. Paul or St. Augustine) – the purity of goodness, while others are not given? Does this mean that we are all different in essence, and purity is only an ideal, we can only approach to? These are the questions that cannot be answered without such delicate instrument, as the human consciousness. Therefore, in every European philosophical concept, first of all, one tried to purify this delicate instrument for understanding the genuine, real or true nature of the world and human. M. Heidegger is that outstanding European thinker who felt the inner world of human very keenly. His existential philosophy is a decoding of what he saw there, in the depths of the pure "I" or the inner world of a human.
M. Heidegger begins his study of the problem of being with the remark that "being" is the most general and most empty concept. As such, it cannot be conceptually defined (Heidegger, 1962, p. 21). It is evident that we can say the same about the consciousness. Therefore, the general vector of M. Heidegger’s existential anthropology is directed to gradual transition from thinking about the nature of "pure being" to studying the problem of "purity" of European consciousness. Aristotle wrote that being is the most general concept. The German thinker also begins his research with this statement, but ultimately inverts this formula and strives for the idea that consciousness is the most general being (apparently, this implies the ultimate formula of his follower J.-P. Sartre: nothing is the deep foundation of being). After all, time is the horizon of any intelligibility of being (Heidegger, 1962, p. 39), but even Heidegger’s teacher Husserl led us to the idea that consciousness is a flow that includes retention, now-point and protention. Thus, the transition from temporalizing and consciousness of being to the being of consciousness is obvious. Heidegger before the turn (in the work Being and Time) was in the field of attraction of the fundamental ontology: being is conceptually oriented and, therefore, always directed towards consciousness (perhaps in different dimensions). As, the only source of the fundamentality of being (the connection of the future with the past) is consciousness, which was well understood by Augustine. It is not without reason that Heidegger (1962) in Being and Time, when interpreting being, almost immediately turns us towards "logos": the "truth" of the logos as truthfulness, αληθευειν, means to remove the being in question in λεγειν as αποφαινεσθαι from its hiddenness and make it seen as unhidden (αληθες) (p. 56). To see, to express in speech the hidden (being) – is not Heidegger appealing to the consciousness here? Indeed, this topos hides not only what is captured, but also what captures. It is also hidden. It includes everything related to being as well. "This Being can be covered up so extensively that it becomes forgotten and no question arises about it or about its meaning" (Heidegger, 1962). Does not this mean that immersion into the depths of the hidden is a long (in time) process, so long that the consciousness does not have time to grasp it (in itself) entirely, forgetting about the beginning of the path. But being is the being of entities in this sense, and consciousness can grasp itself as entities only in a limited area. And since the consciousness is always on the way, the truth begins to be more and more comprehended as the correctness of the way of grasping the entities, which in the Eastern tradition is called the path of liberation (the path of truth). Comprehension of wholeness (and purity) is a path of increasing purification, which cannot be instantaneous. And Heidegger will propose a way to comprehend being from the horizon of time, meaning the way of movement towards being. Existential philosophy is the doctrine of being, but this doctrine, is rather about the way of comprehending being, about the way of grasping being by consciousness. Entity in itself is only a fiction of a crude (impure and inaccurate) grasping of essence from the present. The classical European tradition has learned well such a crude grasping from the present, due to gross negligence of the true possibilities of consciousness. In such a context, consciousness turns from a way into a repository of entities (memory of entities, ideas, presence).
If classical culture neglected being, according to Heidegger, then this means that consciousness had been trained to focus on the world of existence, neglecting the fundamental quality of consciousness – to be in the movement of thought, to be on the way. The consciousness of European human was stopped and trained to grasp instantly ideas, categories, concepts, beings, in a word, to convert processes into species, events into entities. The presence is entity (Heidegger, 1962). The presence turns into entity, and human into a casual observer, who is present during the logos grasping of the being. Continuing consciousness and singular being were separated in such a way that both of them were taken out of the brackets of thinking. Human, from a recipe of Socrates, found himself in the middle of topos of rational thinking. According to the question of Heidegger (1962), has not the Being of entities within-the-world been dissolved into "pure thinking?" (р. 121). But in Heidegger here (in Being and Time) "purity of thinking" is only a hyperbole (universal); he, in fact, has not yet turned in the direction of the historicity of consciousness and is still looking for a way to set the coordinates (measurements) of being. To do this, the early Heidegger sacrificed the truth (and genuine purity) of consciousness, transferring it to the way of existential development of his essence (or such an elusive (divergent) existence). Existentials forced the categories out of consciousness, however, they closed the way to understanding consciousness itself. No wonder Dasein is, in fact, a human, not consciousness. While Heidegger was thinking under the sign of Dasein, he did not hear the nature of "pure consciousness". It has turned into a being-in-the-world, which J.-P. Sartre noticed in Being and Nothing. Consciousness as being for oneself is closed to understanding in the early Heidegger. Therefore, "Dasein is its disclosedness" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 171). Human as Dasein only has a review; he turns into an observer who grasps being, but is not able to grasp his consciousness. This is Heideggerian retribution for the search of the purity of being. Human consciousness (Dasein) becomes divergent, and this divergence closes the processes taking place in consciousness itself (in fact, this is Husserl’s model, which Heidegger borrowed from his teacher). "Being is that which shows itself in the pure perception which belongs to beholding" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 215). In such a context, "the existential-ontological foundation of language is discourse or talk" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 203), throwing oneself by the consciousness into the outside world (scattering, dispersion, according to Derrida, divergence). Consciousness discovers being (including its own) only on the initiative of the being itself, which has understanding in itself (in the early Heidegger). All the difficulties of this model of Heidegger lie in the fact that there is no source of absolute consciousness (God), the being itself is understanding. This is the difference between early Heidegger and Plotinus and Thomas Aquinas, Shankara and Ramanuja, who assumed a model of external consciousness (for example, divine). Therefore, following Nietzsche, he called the return (logical-rational) process of consciousness to oneself (the early Heidegger did not see another consciousness) a fall (as opposed to openness). Being of such consciousness, "spraying" its "purity" on the outside world, the German philosopher called the project, (logically-rational, in its ancient nature, anticipation) care.
At the moment, when consciousness resists such its nature, according to Heidegger, a deep fear appears. "Fear is anxiety, fallen into the 'world', inauthentic, and, as such, hidden from itself" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 234). It comes as a retribution for the attempt to hear the meaning of a hidden (and yet rationally own) being. Rather, the early Heidegger is still trying to formulate his vision of "pure being". He believes that "'Consciousness of Reality' is itself a way of Being-in-the-world" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 254), a way of fixing the reality which is revealed in being as a co-knowledge. Consciousness of reality is still an external process, comprehension of the external world from the horizon of being-time. This is such an external process that "the ideas of a 'pure 'I'' and of a 'consciousness in general' are so far from including the a priori character of 'actual' subjectivity that the ontological characters of Dasein’s facticity and its state of Being are either passed over or not seen at all" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 272). Again, the purity of consciousness is hidden behind beingness, coarsened by it (like maya of Shankara). In such a model, being and truth exist equitably, that is, they arise simultaneously in the conceptually conditioned world, in other words, when being and truth arise, both entity and time appear, which are a condition for the manifestation of consciousness with which the presence is revealed.
But Heidegger understands the meaninglessness of conceptual grasping of being, so he invents a new approach and now speaks of the meaning of being. And the conclusion of the first section of Being and Time is that "within the horizon of time the projection of a meaning of Being in general can be accomplished" (Heidegger, 1962, p. 278). But does such an approach in the second section change the attitude towards the purity of consciousness, when Heidegger (1962) immerses us in the system of existentials (and Dasein exists) (p. 303)? For now, Heidegger (1962) immerses us into the topos of a new existential consciousness, which clearly grasps being towards death and hears the call of conscience, and which locates all understanding (pp. 310-318), i.e., it is oriented, and, therefore, has a source of orientation. The German philosopher, like once Parmenides, begins to endow this orienting and understanding topos with fundamental properties, in particular, a focus on the future as a call of care, a call of conscience and being towards death. Existing consciousness turns out to be polarized. In such a context, "I" is the bare consciousness that accompanies all concepts. It presents nothing more than a transcendental (pre-experimental) subject of thought. "Consciousness in itself (is) not so much a representation … as it is a form of representation in general. The 'I think' is the form of apperception, which clings to every experience and precedes it" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 366). But Heidegger here still does not dare to speak about pure consciousness, and writes "bare", which, at the same time, as a form, organizes the system of concepts in the form of a representation, becomes the forming structure of the representation. "In existing, Dasein understands itself, and in such a way, indeed, that this understanding does not merely get something in its grasp, but makes up the existentiell Being of its factical potentiality-for-Being" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 372). "I" in its existence understands itself as its ability to be, but realizes this ability in the essential form of care, that is, in understanding the purpose of its presence. "Entities 'have' meaning only because, as Being which has been disclosed beforehand, they become intelligible in the projection of that Being-that is to say, in terms of the 'upon-which' of that projection" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 372). Does not this mean that consciousness forms disclosedness of its being as a sketch, in which the meaning is manifested, in fact, in its understanding, it becomes entity (but the limiting entity). That is, consciousness can be both factual (entity) and ontological (empty). And again, the question about the origin or purity of consciousness arises. Now all forms of the world can be interpreted as limitations (modes) of consciousness (in particular, the past, present, and future can be interpreted as improper (essential, grasped in limitation, understanding of time)). Heidegger’s care is his own (deep) understanding of the form of consciousness, and the modes of time are improper (external). However, the German thinker connects them and argues that "the primordial unity of the structure of care lies in temporality" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 375). Thus, temporality becomes a fundamental property that determines the depth of consciousness. Can we really associate the depth of consciousness in Heidegger with his temporalizing? This is close to phenomenological interpretation of time in Husserl. Of course, Heidegger, is a pupil of the phenomenology founder, but is it so much that the reverse side of the ideas about being forms a similar idea of time, in the sense of that form-creating ontology that consciousness arises from the horizon of time. And then, what, pure consciousness is pure time? Heidegger (1962) writes of "phenomenal character of primordial temporality" (р. 379). Temporality turns into the meaning of care (of the consciousness realized or turned in time). Such own (pure or deep) temporality temporalizes and turns the consciousness in three dimensions (past, present, and future), and only in such hypostasis the existential meaning of consciousness is formed. And since, according to Heidegger (1962), "time is primordial as the temporalizing of temporality, and as such it makes possible the Constitution of the structure of care. Temporality is essentially ecstatical. Temporality temporalizes itself primordially out of the future" (р. 380), does not this mean that the initial meaning of consciousness is in its directed temporalizing. This temporalizing arising from the future already implies turning of the consciousness in three modes and its fundamental essence (thinking is a stream of consciousness and, in such a context, directed meaningfulness). The purity of consciousness is related (in Being and Time) with its strict (fundamental) marking of the temporal flow of thinking (from the future to the past). All structures of existential consciousness appear from such an understanding of its own temporalizing (where presence is revealed in its dailiness, historicity and intratemporality). Paraphrasing Heidegger (1962), for whom "By now, however, some light has been cast on the meaning of Dasein’s Being as temporality" (pр. 421-422), we say that the existential meaning of consciousness is revealed as temporality. Does not the fundamental ontology of consciousness divert from its purity? Is it really that by penetrating the depths of existential consciousness (according to Heidegger) or the depths of phenomenological consciousness (according to Husserl), we achieve purity of consciousness? The question remains open, since too many associated conditions (presence, historicity, temporality, everyday life, etc.) can close or hide from us the purity of consciousness in Heidegger’s teaching. Husserl distanced himself from answering this question, having pointed to the self-evidence of consciousness. Heidegger immerses consciousness in the element of being, thereby filling it with content, but the problem of purity remains. Nevertheless, the German thinker indicates the direction of the search for this purity – primordiality, because the ontology of consciousness calls for the search for its primordiality. Heidegger (1962), in search of these European origins, argues that "Hegel has made an explicit attempt to set forth the way in which time as ordinarily understood is connected with spirit. In Kant, on the other hand, while time is indeed 'subjective', it stands 'beside' the 'I think' and is not bound up with it" (р. 480). In this context, for Hegel "time is the concept itself, which is there [da ist] and which represents itself to the consciousness as an empty intuition" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 485). The appeal to Hegel indicates that, on the one hand, this thinker of the 19th century had a rather significant influence on Heidegger’s interpretation of being (and consciousness), and on the other hand, he turned his thought in the direction of the fullness with time (and, accordingly, consciousness) of that, who understands being. But this historical turn in the understanding of being leads Heidegger to great difficulties: does the path lead from the original time to the meaning of being? "Does time itself manifest itself as the horizon of Being?" (Heidegger, 1962, р. 488). This significant turn to the originality of being and in viewing of time there at the origins of being results in great contradictions, now time is also filled with being and is viewed from being (time, in fact, is ontologizing). This return to the origins of time being makes one wonder if time opens from the horizon of being of consciousness? Heidegger has no answer in Being and Time. Therefore, searching for the answer to all these questions, he turns towards the historicity of being, the search for its primordiality. But together with Heidegger we are thinking about the primordiality of consciousness, about the primordial being of consciousness. Should not we turn to the origins of European culture in search for pure consciousness, following Heidegger?
Here in Heidegger (in Being and Time) "purity of thinking" is only hyperbole (universal); which, in fact, has not yet been turned towards the historicity of consciousness. The early Heidegger is searching for a way to set the coordinates (measurements) of being. To do this, he sacrifices the truth (and genuine purity) of consciousness, being in the element of existential understanding of consciousness (or such an elusive (divergent) existence).
Existentials forced the categories out of consciousness, however, they closed the way to understanding consciousness itself. No wonder Dasein is, in fact, a human, not consciousness. While Heidegger was thinking under the sign of Dasein, he did not hear the nature of "pure consciousness". Consciousness as being for oneself is closed to understanding in the early Heidegger.
Human as Dasein only has a review; he turns into an observer who grasps being, but is not able to grasp his consciousness. This is Heidegger’s retribution for the search of the purity of being. Human consciousness (Dasein) becomes divergent, and this divergence closes the processes taking place in consciousness itself (in fact, this is Husserl’s model, which Heidegger borrowed from his teacher).
Nevertheless, in early Heidegger, temporality is such a fundamental property that it determines the depth of understanding not only of being, but also of consciousness itself. In this case, can we really associate Heidegger’s depth of consciousness with its temporalizing?
This is close to Husserl’s phenomenological interpretation of time. Heidegger, as a pupil of the founder of phenomenology, turned his ideas towards understanding the purity of being, however, towards the end of Being and Time, symptoms of a turn towards the purity of time, and at the same time to the purity of consciousness, are already seen. In fact, turning his ideas about time from the horizon of being, Heidegger forms a similar idea of consciousness in the sense of the form-creating ontology that consciousness arises from the horizon of time. And then, what, pure consciousness is pure time? Does not this mean that the initial meaning of consciousness is in its directed temporalizing?
But temporality turns into the meaning of care (of the consciousness realized or turned in time). Such own (pure or deep) temporality temporalizes and turns the consciousness in three dimensions (past, present, and future), and only in such hypostasis the existential meaning of consciousness is formed. And since, according to Heidegger, time is primordial as the temporalizing of temporality, does not this mean that the initial meaning of consciousness is in its directed temporalizing. This temporalizing arising from the future already implies turning of the consciousness in three modes and forming its fundamental essence (thinking is a stream of consciousness and, in such a context, directed meaningfulness). The purity of consciousness is related (in Being and Time) with its strict (fundamental) marking of the temporal flow of thinking (from the future to the past). All structures of existential consciousness appear from such an understanding of its own temporalizing (where presence is revealed in its dailiness, historicity and intratemporality). Paraphrasing Heidegger, we say that the existential meaning of consciousness is revealed as temporality.
The subsequent historical turn in the understanding of being leads Heidegger to great difficulties: does the path lead from the primordial time to the meaning of being? After all, in Heidegger, time reveals itself as the horizon of Being? This significant turn to the primordiality of being and in viewing of time there at the origins of being results in great contradictions, now the time is also filled with being and is viewed from being (time, in fact, is ontologizing). This return to the origins of time being makes one wonder if time opens from the horizon of being of consciousness? Heidegger has no answer in Being and Time. Therefore, searching for the answer to all these questions he orients on the historicity of being, the search for its primordiality. But together with Heidegger we are thinking about the primordiality of consciousness, about the primordial being of consciousness. Should not we turn to the origins of European culture in search for pure consciousness, following Heidegger?
Conclusions
Heidegger is searching for the purity of being, and at the same time strives more and more for the purity of thought. All Heidegger’s work is a consistent transition from the purity of being to the purity of thinking, the way of transformation of consciousness (from fundamental ontology to existential anthropology). Reflections of the late Heidegger on the purity of European consciousness will be published in the next issue of the journal.
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LIST OF REFERENCE LINKS
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Badiou A. Being and Event / trans. by O. Feltham. New York : Continuum, 2005.
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Богачов А. Гайдеґер і феноменологія. Westerlund, F. (2020). Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena. London: Bloomsbury. Sententiae. 2021. Т. 40, № 1. С. 116–119. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31649/sent40.01.116
Богачов А. Про еквівалентність перекладу "Буття і часу" Мартина Гайдеґера. Sententiae. 2021. Т. 40, № 3. C. 83–91. DOI: https://doi.org/10.31649/sent40.03.083
Boliaki E. Jnana, Bhakti, and Karma Yoga. Sankara and Ramanuja on the Bhagavad-Gita. ϴΕΟΛΟΓΙΑ. 2012. No. 1. P. 323–332.
Freud S. Civilization and Its Discontents. 1930. URL: https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FreudS-CIVILIZATION-AND-ITS-DISCONTENTS-text-final.pdf
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Heidegger M. Being and Time / trans. by J. Macquarrie, E. Robinson. Blackwell, 1962. 589 p.
Heidegger M. What is Called Thinking? Harper & Row, 1968. 246 p.
Heidegger M. Heraklit. Frankfurt am Main : Vittorio Klostermann, 1979.
Heidegger M. Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik. Frankfurt am Main : Vittorio Klostermann, 1983. xx, 544 s.
Heidegger M. Parmenides. Frankfurt am Main : Vittorio Klostermann, 1992. 252 s.
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Карівець І. Справа мислення Мартина Гайдеґера. Філософська думка. 2020. № 1. С. 70–79. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15407/fd2020.01.070
Кобець Р. Екзистенційне поняття науки у фундаментальній онтології Мартина Гайдеґера. Філософська думка. 2020. № 1. С. 37–51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.15407/fd2020.01.037
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Okorokov V. Limits of Thought in the Light of Nature and Divinity. A Return to Ancient Thought or the Quest for the Being of Primordial Thinking in the Later Heidegger. Philosophy and Cosmology. 2018. Vol. 20. P. 170–184. DOI: http://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/20/17
Okorokov V. In-Depth Time Compaction in Fundamental Measurement of Consciousness by Husserl-Heidegger-Badiou (According to the Recipe of Einstein’s General Relativity Theory). Philosophy and Cosmology. 2020. Vol. 25. P. 118–129. DOI: https://doi.org/10.29202/phil-cosm/25/10
Паскаль Б. Думки / пер. з фр. А. Перепадя, О. Хома. Kиїв : Дух і Літера, 2009. 704 с.
Peters M. E. Heidegger’s embodied others: on critiques of the body and 'intersubjectivity' in Being and Time. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. 2019. Vol. 18, Iss. 2. P. 441–458. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11097-018-9580-0
Petropoulos G. Heidegger’s Reading of Plato: On Truth and Ideas. Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. 2021. Vol. 52, Iss. 2. P. 118–136. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2020.1814678
Scheler М. Man’s Place in Nature / trans. by H. Meyerhoff. New York: The Noonday Press, 1962. 105 p.
Shia Gordon L., Wohlman A. A Constructive Thomistic Response to Heidegger’s Destructive Criticism: On Existence, Essence and the Possibility of Truth as Adequation. The Heythrop Journal. 2020. Vol. 61, Iss. 5. P. 825–841. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.13273
Sri Aurobindo. The Complete Works of Sri Aurobindo. Vol. 15: The Secret of the Veda. Pondicherry : Sri Aurobindo Ashram Press, 1998.
Tsagdis G., Uljée R., Zantvoort B. Of Times: Arrested, Resigned, Imagined. Temporality in Hegel, Heidegger and Derrida. International Journal of Philosophical Studies. 2020. Vol. 28, Iss. 3. P. 313–316. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09672559.2020.1766878
Vereb Z. Revisiting Kant’s Legacy in Continental Philosophy. Con-Textos Kantianos: International Journal of Philosophy. 2020. No. 12. P. 614–621. URL: https://www.con-textoskantianos.net/index.php/revista/article/view/559
Vrahimis A. Wittgenstein and Heidegger against a Science of Aesthetics. Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics. 2020. Vol. 57, Iss. 1. P. 64–85. DOI: http://doi.org/10.33134/eeja.29
Westerlund F. Heidegger and the Problem of Phenomena. London : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. 274 p. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350086500
В. Б. ОКОРОКОВ1*
1*Дніпровський національний університет імені Олеся Гончара (Дніпро, Україна), ел. пошта victor7754@i.ua, ORCID 0000-0001-8606-677X
Про чистоту європейської свідомості в екзистенційній антропології раннього М. Гайдеґґера
Мета. Чистоту свідомості в європейській культурі практично перетворили на абстракцію. Через це так багато різночитань у розумінні її природи. У М. Гайдеґґера питання чистоті свідомості залишається відкритим. Нашою метою є вивчення чистоти європейської свідомості у творчості Гайдеґґера. Теоретичний базис. Я спираюся на глибинні основи екзистенціальної, феноменологічної, герменевтичної, релігійно-філософської та постмодерної західної й східної думок. Наукова новизна. Поки ранній Гайдеґґер мислив під знаком Dasein, він не чув природу "чистої свідомості" людини. Тим не менш, тимчасовість у нього була настільки фундаментальною властивістю, що визначала глибину розуміння не тільки буття, а й самої свідомості людини (як Dasein). У цьому контексті ми починаємо розуміти, що глибину свідомості у концепції раннього Гайдеґґера можна порівнювати з її тимчасовістю. Фактично, Гайдеґґер ближче до кінця "Буття і часу", все більше замислюючись про розуміння часу з горизонту буття, починає формувати схожі уявлення про саме розуміння, тобто про свідомість людини, у тому сенсі, що і сама свідомість виникає з горизонту часу (і буття). Що ж, у такому разі, чиста свідомість людини є чистий час? Чи не означає це, що вихідний сенс свідомості у її спрямованому руху внутрішнього часу. Цей внутрішній рух часу свідомості людина (як мислячої істоти), що витікає з майбутнього, сприймається у трьох модусах і розкриває фундаментальну сутність самої свідомості (мислення – це потік свідомості й у такому контексті спрямоване розуміння). Перефразовуючи Гайдеґґера, говоримо про те, що онтологічний сенс чистої свідомості людини розкривається як тимчасовість. Вже після написання "Буття і часу" Гайдеґґер замислюється про витоки європейської свідомості, її осмислення з глибин (витоку) буття європейської культури. Висновки. Ранній Гайдеґґер шукає чистоту буття і водночас дедалі більше прагне зрозуміти сутність чистоти мислення людини. Вся творчість Гайдеґґера – це послідовний перехід від розуміння людиною чистоти буття (Dasein) до чистоти мислення самої людини. У такому сенсі відбувається трансформація свідомості М. Гайдеґґера від фундаментальної онтології (Dasein) у ранній період до екзистенціальної антропології (свідомості людини) у пізній період.
Ключові слова: людська свідомість; чисте європейське мислення; чисте буття; екзистенціальна антропологія; М. Ґайдеґґер
Received: 14.01.2022
Accepted: 26.05.2022
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
doi:
https://doi.org/10.15802/ampr.v0i21.260495
© V. B. Okorokov, 2022