Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

History, Existence and the Self

Sergej Valijev

Wednesday 6 September 2023

12:00 - 12:30

 

In my paper, I am going to shed light on the notions of history, existence and the self as intertwined concepts endowed with a fundamental meaning in a phenomenological investigation of human being. Firstly, a phenomenological explanation of the notion of existence shall be provided, thus assuring the historical dimension within the existence itself. For this purpose, some insights of Heidegger’s existential analytic, exposed, in a magisterial way, in his Being and Time, will be cited. As Heidegger demonstrated, existence in no mere subsistence; instead, existence is related to Dasein’s understanding of being on the horizon of time, since Dasein’s being is always temporal. It is in and through the Dasein’s existence – that is, in his being as existence– that the question of history should be posed. That is to say, the question of history should be posed proceeding from the Dasein’s original temporality, i. e. from the temporality of his own being. In spite of Heidegger’s restriction – at least in the period of Being and Time – of using concepts others than Dasein to indicate the human being, I would like to highlight that this exclusion cannot be fully justified, taking into consideration his existential analysis itself – notwithstanding the restriction’s utmost methodological fruitfulness in the context of Being and Time. I argue for a possibility to revitalize traditional philosophic concepts and at the same time not to jeopardize the outcomes of the existential analysis. It is following this line that I would like to speak of the notion of the Self and its original temporal perspective in which history is founded. Finally, some examples from the literary works of art will be cited, underlining the Self in its fundamental temporality.