"Sense" in Being and Time

I claimed that Heidegger does not successfully (i.e., phenomenologically) demonstrate that the Seinsfrage must be formulated in terms of the focal sense of being, as contrasted with the many senses of being. There is, however, a further supposition Heidegger makes in his formulation of the Seinsfrage that cannot be passed over here: viz., that the sense of being, whatever it might be, can only be determined by reference to the "horizon" in terms of which beings are understood. The concept of the "horizon" is transcendental, and denotes an a priori condition of possibility (not in the Kantian, formal sense, but rather in the phenomenological, concrete sense of a condition that can itself be exhibited in phenomenological intuition and, therefore, evidence). An horizon gives light to whatever appears within its limits (peras), and here, what appears within its limits are beings. The thesis that the sense of being can only be determined by reference to an horizon is logically independent of the thesis that the horizon is time, however closely related these two theses are to one another in the conceptual economy of Being and Time (so closely related that we hardly ever distinguish between them). That the sense of being must be determined in terms of a horizon only means that, whatever the sense of being might be, it can only appear in the light cast by a transcendental condition. To assert that time is the horizon in which any understanding of being moves is to assert that it occupies the office of such a condition, and as such enjoys priority over being as the foundation of its sense (and, therefore, as what enables us to fix its sense). Thus, before Heidegger has even attempted to offer an interpretation of time, he has already assigned it a definite place in ontological inquiry: viz., that of a condition. Furthermore, because of the equivalence between (1) time as the horizon of the sense of being and (2) time as the horizon of Dasein's understanding of being, the next steps of the inquiry have been clearly delineated: it must be shown that time conditions Dasein's understanding of being. An existential analytic therefore becomes necessary. The concept of horizon interposes time between being and beings, such that beings understandingly appear to Dasein only insofar as they are temporally projected by Dasein via what Heidegger terms its "potentiality-for-being" (Seinkönnen; pouvoir-être). If (1) the Seinsfrage is formulated in terms of the focal, unified sense of being, which commands the totality of its many senses, and if, moreover, (2) this sense of being can only be disclosed, not via a definition of any sort, but rather as an horizon, and if, finally, (3) the horizon is itself defined as time, then it is only by way of Dasein's deployment of temporality in thrown projection that the sense of being can be disclosed. In this way of posing the Seinsfrage, time enjoys transcendental priority over being, so much so that fundamental ontology becomes reducible to "temporal science," where time is interpreted in an explicitly transcendental manner, due to the form of the Seinsfrage and, more specifically, the dependence of the sense of being on its horizon.

But Dasein is an entity whose sense is itself dependent on the prior givenness of the sense of being. Claude Romano has compellingly demonstrated that Heidegger's project in Being and Time and Basic Problems of Phenomenology fails because his analysis of Dasein's temporality ultimately yields only three senses of being, none of which can be identified with the sense of being in general. These three senses are Zuhandenheit, Vorhandenheit, and Existenz. The first two depend on the ecstasis of the present and its modification in the now (Gegenwart, Jetzt), and the third depends on the ecstasis of the authentic future (Zukunft). The problem is that these three ecstases, together with their corresponding schemata, do not in any way seem to converge in or disclose a focal sense, but are rather irreducibly diverse, so much so that they render the sense of being equivocal. Heidegger's interpretation of time does not establish the focal sense of being, but only mutually irreducible senses of being. To be sure, all of these senses refer to or are based on time, but they are mutually irreducible senses of different entities, and do not disclose a focal sense that encompasses them all. I agree with Romano's interpretation, which further confirms not only that Heidegger does not demonstrate in the introduction to Being and Time that the sense of being is given in and determines the understanding of being (and so can become an object of ontological inquiry), but also that he has not demonstrated this by the end of Being and Time and Basic Problems of Phenomenology, which contains "a new elaboration of Division 3 of Part 1 of Being and Time," where Heidegger intended to finally disclose the sense of being in light of the horizon of time. Heidegger's recognition of this failure led him to realize that his formulation of the Seinsfrage stemmed, not from die Sache selbst, but rather from the one aspect of the history of ontology that survived the otherwise radical Destruktion he carries out in Being and Time: the formulation of the Seinsfrage as a question about the sense of being, to which all other senses can be referred and in which they find their unitary ground. In the 1930s, Heidegger will abandon the project of trying to account for the sense of being by way of time. He will abandon the concept of "sense" in his formulation of the Seinsfrage. In the Kehre, he will focus on the co-belonging of Being and Time in the Ereignis, without prioritizing one over the other, according to a decidedly post-transcendental Fragestellung hinting in the direction of a phenomenology of givenness.