International Phenomenological Society Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
International Phenomenological Society Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
DISCUSSION
603
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
604 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
use (or misuse) of "nothing" but neither said anything about Heidegger's
peculiar way with dread and dread of. It is my thesis that Heidegger's
famous rejection of "logic" (including "logistics") stems from his phe-
nomenological, or pseudophenomenological, analysis of dread. It is that
analysis which seems to require that intentionality be both asserted and
denied in connection with dread, and it is the assertion and denial which
lead to the ambiguous use of "nothing" noted by Carnap in which
"nothing" functions as both noun and logical particle.
It is only by using "nothing" as - to follow Carnap - "a logical
particle that serves for the formulation of a negative existential state-
ment" that Heidegger can distinguish his dread from, say, anxiety. It is
only by using "nothing' as the target of dread that Heidegger can make
his mood significant. (For if "Dread reveals nothing" meant only "There
is not anything which dread reveals" or - "Dread does not reveal
anything" there would be nothing to talk about.)
But Heidegger is free to reply that the mood of dread, as an undeni-
able datum of experience, justifies the ambiguous use of "nothing." It
is clear that an attack on Heidegger's lecture, if it is to be forceful,
cannot simply start with the fact that Heidegger misuses "nothing" or
makes up sentences (such as Das Nichts selbst nichtet) which Carnap
cannot symbolize. There is no doubt, as Heidegger is the first to insist,
that - by all ordinary criteria - he misuses "nothing" and goes against
logic. However, if Heidegger's analysis of dread is in order it is so much
the worse for ordinary language and logic.
The first question to ask is: Is Heidegger right about dread? Is there
(could there be) such a mood? What Kraus and Carnap say about the
"Nothing" may be taken as an indirect proof that there is no such mood
but indirect proofs are as suspicious in philosophy as they are to the
intuitionist philosopher of mathematics.
For Heidegger himself the consequences of his analysis of dread lead
him to suppose that logic itself has been put in question - not the mood
of dread. He certainly has sympathizers on this score.5 It may even be
claimed (turning the tables on Carnap) that Heidegger is a really pure
empiricist who will not allow logic to stand in the way of things as they
actually are experienced. After all, an indirect proof works only if one
5 See, for example, William Barrett's very interesting "Negation, Finitude, and
the Nature of Man," in his well-known Irrational Man (Doubleday Anchor Books,
Garden City, N.Y., 1962), pp. 283-292; H. Kuhn, "Existentialism and Meta-
physics," Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 37-60; G. A. Schrader,
"Heidegger's Ontology of Human Existence," Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 10,
No. 1, pp. 35-56; John Wild, The Challenge of Existentialism (Indiana U.P.,
Bloomington, 1955).
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HEIDEGGER'S "WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?" 605
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
606 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
Dread reveals the radical contingency of the universe (Sartre),10 dread reveals
the breakdown or possible breakdown of the principle of sufficient reason (the
well-known existential "absurd"), dread reveals the inevitable fact that I am
going to die. Dread reveals that it is up to me to let the world of beings-in-
the-world be or let the world 'world,'" dread reveals that my world is going
to vanish, dread forces me to ask why I am here or why anything at all is
here (or both), dread reveals the importance of the future and the need for
me to have the courage to be, dread reveals that I am condemned to be free,
dread reveals all of the above.
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
HEIDEGGER'S "WHAT IS METAPHYSICS?" 607
There are two things to be noted about these candidates (taken sepa-
rately) for the conceptual product of what is primordially given or "in-
tuited" in dread. Firstly, it is hard to see how anyone could, for example,
know that the world is radically contingent if he did not already possess
the concepts "necessity" and "contingency" and have reason to suppose
that, say, "There is a world" is not a necessary truth. Neither Heidegger
nor, so far as I can see, any other phenomenologist of existentialist
leanings does anything at all to; show that the mood of dread is the
source rather than the result of information about the world (or, more
precisely, the result or emotional offshoot of what is taken to be infor-
mation about the world). Is it dread that reveals to me that I am going
to die, or is it my knowledge that I am going to die which, at least
partially, accounts for my dread? There is no need to multiply ques-
tions here so I will turn to the second point I wish to, note.
None of these revelations goes against logic. Logic "tells" one anything
but that the world is necessary, that my world can go on without me, or
that my existence is necessary. Logic has nothing to say about any of
this and none of this has anything to say against logic. None of the
candidates for dread reveals the truth of a logical contradiction.
It may well be true to say that some of them reveal implications drawn
from the study of logic (as in the analytic-synthetic distinction) and
implications drawn from various areas of knowledge and belief. But this
returns us to my first point: is it at all unlikely that dread reflects knowl-
edge and belief rather than producing belief?
Perhaps I have left out a candidate which really does go against
"logic" (and, therefore, by implication what usually counts as knowl-
edge). Certainly I have left out the famous "Das Nichts selbst nichtet"
(given in Brock's collection as "Nothing nihilates, of itself" - page 339 -
and which I would prefer to translate as "The Nothing itself nots") but
here Heidegger is investigating the separate question of the essence of
Nothing and his famous statement comes so late in the essay that
I am not sure that he holds that dread reveals the essence of Nothing
(or The Nothing). But even if "Das Nichts selbst nichtet" were admitted
as a candidate I do not know what it would mean to understand this
proposition against all logic. What I make out of it (and this implies
what I - assuming the role of a phenomenologist -would make out
of my reflections on dread if I took it that, in dread, I somehow intuited
a noting nothing) is simply that in dread the fact that the world need
not be is strongly impressed upon me. The fact refers to a potentiality
of the world: not-being or Nothing. The "noting" refers to the impressing
of this fact which, as a potentiality, is not given in any ordinary way.
If "Das Nichts selbst nichtet" must refer to a logical impossibility
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
608 PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH
This content downloaded from 132.64.31.253 on Sun, 11 Aug 2019 20:35:00 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms