Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

Conference | Paper

Personal Individuality and the World. Heidegger and Beyond

Sergej Valijev

Wednesday 4 September 2024

16:35 - 17:15

TU-Small Venue

In my paper, I am going, first, to turn attention to the individuality of Da-sein in Heidegger’s Being and Time, as expressed by the notion of Jemeinigkeit (cf. § 9 of Being and Time). Afterwards, the worldliness of the world and the spatiality of Da-sein will be highlighted (cf. §§ 14-18 and §§ 22-24). Thus, the essential insight of Heidegger regarding the Da-sein as a “place” where the question about the meaning of being takes place will be taken up in connection with the character of Da-sein as being-in-the-world. As care (Sorge), including and determining also taking care of things (Besorgen), is stated by Heidegger to be Da-sein’s being (§ 41), it follows that the world is disclosed by the being of Da-sein (§ 43a). Therefore, Da-sein manifests itself as a primary instance of sense which, although always placed within the world, transcends it in a way that the world is given a sense as part of Dasein’s quest for meaning of his own being. But how does it come that Da-sein is disclosed to itself at all? What is the character of his being-given, of his givenness? Hence a question arises, firstly, whether Heideggerian existential analytics reflects the human individuality and its relation to the world fundamentally enough; and, secondly, whether the concept of Da-sein should be overcome and some concept of a subject reintroduced in order to provide for a possible explanation of the world as a horizon of sense radically intertwined with human subject. Overcoming does not mean rejecting completely—thus, human subjectivity still has to be conceived in a manner that would prevent falling in the metaphysics of presence.