Martin Heidegger: Dasein.

 He lived between 1889-1976. He is an existentialist which means that his ideas or philosophy concerns human existence or Dasein. Hegel used the term presence or existence, while Heidegger used the term Dasein which means being-in-the world. Being in the world is not just for the sake of being in the world but being in the world is understood as an “activity of existing”. Dasein or existence is not passive but active involvement or active participation.

Why is Heidegger talking about active involvement?

He calls for active involvement in the immediate world because he knows that life is temporary. The past has gone and the future is not here yet and the only real is the presence. Make the present meaningful. How to make it meaningful? It is to get involved. Life is not forever but all are going toward death (homo viator) or zein zum tode. Death completes the Dasein or existence. Death is certain and human beings should accept it and should always be aware that someday he is going to die while still living he/she should be involved in the world or caring for the immediate world.

Dasein is Care.   

In the course of his existential analysis, Heidegger argues that Dasein, who finds himself thrown into the world (Geworfenheit) amidst things and with others, is thrown into its possibilities, including the possibility and inevitability of one's own mortality. The need for Dasein to assume these possibilities, is, the need to be responsible for one's own existence.   

Heidegger and the Authentic and Unauthentic existence or authentic and unauthentic person.

His view on unauthentic and authentic people is based on his view on unauthentic existence. Unauthentic existence means there is an unauthentic way of existing through time. In the unauthentic existence, the past is no longer held. The future becomes non-existence. Only the objective present is real. The past and the future are real only by becoming present. Thus, the self is viewed as an object lying in this temporal dimension. We live today, the present.  An unauthentic person is bound to agree on the everyday world. He views himself as relatively stable within the world. He imagines very little about his death and declines to care about the indispensable value of his conscience. Their existence is dominated by drives or interests directed by sense and imagination and therefore have a restricted range of objects and a truncated future. The interest is to get its objects. Focus on it and then be satiated and satisfied. (just enjoy life)

The authentic person feels that time is close to his inner being. He reflects that to give time to something is to give himself. To lose time is to lose himself. His case is dominated by futurity.  This future is no longer a non-existent present but the guiding phase of his being. The future is restricted by death. He realizes that his time is ending, he cannot postpone existing. Therefore, he has to make the best out of it. He is aware that time is temporal and thus it makes sure to live authentically.  

 

 

   

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