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Being-for-Itself Consciousness
The being of the consciousness which is Consciousness is directed at the phenomenon
directed at being-in-itself is being-for-itself This consciousness is pre-reflective (or non-thetic)
(le tre-pour-sois) Example: I may count without reflecting on what I
am doing, but when asked, I say (reflectively) that I
It is not simply what is, but (in a way), it is am counting
what is not But there still must be a consciousness of the activity
Being-for-itself nihilates being, of counting, which organizes it
introducing a negativity not found in being- This self-consciousness is non-positional, and it is
in-itself not really distinct from the consciousness aimed at
the phenomenon
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Transcendent Being Analysis and Synthesis
Since consciousness is directed at the Descartes analyzed the world separate things,
phenomenon, it transcends itself body and mind, and tried to unite them in a
synthesis
So consciousness must , and depends on, a
Husserl did the same with noesis and noema
transcendent being, a being which is not
But a concrete unity cannot be achieved in this
consciousness itself way
This is the ontological proof Heidegger begins with a concrete object, being-
Husserl erred by making the noema unreal, in-the-world
dependent entirely on perception What is the meaning of being-in-the-world?
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An Example Absence
I have an appointment with Pierre at the Being fills the room, but it recedes and becomes a
caf but am late background
Pierre, in the foreground, is constantly slipping away
I find that he is not there, based on an
Pierres absence haunts this caf and is the
intuition of his absence condition of its self-nihilating organization as
This must be understood as involving non- ground
being, not just negative judgment But the absence of Wellington is just a judgment
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Can Something Come from Heideggers Conception of
Nothing? Nothingness
Temporally, being is prior to nothing Being and nothing are in tension with each
Nothing is always a denial of something, other, producing the real
and so is the denial of being as a whole Being is not treated as a universal
If we tried to think of nothing before being, The correlate of being, nothing, is not in the
we would therefore fail: it would be totally
indeterminate province of the understanding
The same holds if being were to disappear Human attitudes, especially Angst, make
Nothingness has only a borrowed existence possible an encounter with nothingness
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Anguish in the Face of the Past Motives
A gambler has resolved to stop gambling, There is a gap between motives and action
but is pulled toward it at the gambling table This gap is a nothing
He realizes the inefficacy of his resolution The ineffectiveness of motives makes freedom
Determinism is ruptured by nothingness possible, not vice-versa
The resolution must be freely re-made We cannot describe the nothing (it is not), but it is
The gambler is in the grips of anguish, made-to-be by the human being relating to himself
because he at once is and is not the Motives are only appearances for consciousness,
resolution that he made in the past which posits them
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Summary Flight
Anguish then is the reflective apprehension The standard reaction to anguish is to flee it
of freedom by itself. . . . It appears at the We flee anguish by taking refuge in psychological
moment that I disengage myself from the determinism
world where I had been engaged . . . . In This determinism is the basis of all excuses
anguish I apprehend myself at once as It tries to fill in the nothingness between past,
totally free and as not being able to derive present and future
the meaning of the world except as coming
This is done by giving actions a kind of inertia
from myself. (Essays in Existentialism,
136-7) In flight, I treat myself as a being-in-itself
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The Flight to Essence The Futility of Flight
Flight may be directed toward the past In order to hide anguish, we must already be
My essence is what I have been, and in flight I can acquainted with the fact that we have it
identify it with what I am Anguish, the intentional aim of anguish, the flight
But I deny that my essence is itself determined,
from anguish are all given in one consciousness
implying my action as a circle implies its
properties So fleeing anguish is only a mode of being
So I say an act is free just in case it reflects my conscious of it
essenceI am like a little Godbut an other Thus anguish, properly speaking, can be neither
Bergson disguises our anguish this way: the act flows hidden nor avoided
from me like children from a father
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