1.

Heidegger’s Dasein, however, does not revolve around a general notion of ‘being’ but rather towards a more philosophical name that implicitly acknowledges, and, at the same time, blinds itself to, the very nature of “the
specified reality: man, or more importantly the Human Being. Dasein in common German vernacular often moment of the turn or the detour (du tour ou du détour)” that characterizes metaphor. Derrida argues that
refers to being-there and translated into the English language as existence. Heidegger, however, is quite through metaphorical language, we have a better grasp of the essential meaning of a word and what it refers to
adamant that to simply dismiss it that way is inappropriate and calls to our attention the fact that the human since there is a link between our expression of the word and the idea which we wish to relay regarding the
being cannot be seen as other than a being that exists within a world and among other things, or beings; reality of a particular being. There must, therefore, be some one set of concepts which is metaphysically
though not simply in a spatial relation.1 He postulated that the world ‘is’ and it is everywhere, at present and correct, faithful, as it were, to the way Being is. Philosophical language should possess the most basic signs of
here around us. We are, in other words, immersed in it. To speak of the Dasein, therefore, is to look at Being a metaphysically adequate language which would pick out such concepts in such a way that each sign would
not just as a being or object, but the subject “in-the-world”. Essentially, Heidegger identified that having a possess meaning independently of any other sign, since its meaning would simply be the concept for which it
sense of Being as presently occurring in the world means it relates to a notion of time. “Time must be brought stood. A name should always bring forth an idea regarding whatever it is named, before the mind almost
to light and genuinely grasped as the horizon of every understanding and interpretation of Being.”4 Thus, to instantaneously during the calling or utterance of said nomenclature. Since our access to reality is found in our
speak of Dasein as being-in and at once present in the world is to speak of its intrinsic temporality. This language, we designate meaning to it by placing some form on analogy or similarity to whatever it is that we
characteristic of temporality is derived from how it is ontologically structured. Being-in for Dasein is not to be previously understand, or creating a link between two “names”.
simply understood in relation to some spatial confinement or locus but more precisely its existence as a 7. In Heidegger on Being and Acting: From Principles to Anarchy, Schürmann points out that Heidegger was
temporal fact. One cannot simply place Being as part of the world, rather it is which identifies itself “in” it. trapped in the dimension of his ‘Being’ that it did not move towards praxis. Schürmann, nonetheless,
2. The problem for Heidegger is not the medium or form technology takes but rather how we orient ourselves to acknowledges that in Heidegger’s terms, there is a strong relationship between being and acting—found in his
it as essentially part of being-in-the-world. This concern for technology stems not merely out of curiosity but presencing. It is to the presencing of being that the human being is to ‘cor-respond’. Schürmann sees the event
from the realization that technology taints the authenticity of man’s sense of being. This is seen through of presencing as liberating man from the anthropocentric conceptions that burden modern philosophical
reflecting on the effects of modern technology has on the ordering of the world. This ordering somewhat thinking. He distinguishes being as the event of presencing and the epochal economies of presence, i.e.
distorts the cognizance we have on reality as technology is not something merely arbitrary to the way we cosmos, God, cogito, etc.24 The event of presencing (parousia)25 is sobering because it unfolds without why,
interact with the world but more of an integral union with being itself. Heidegger undertakes a questioning without any other goal than its simple presencing of beings. Ereignis grants us its unfolding as, in the later
regarding technology as a means to identify the reason to its interwoven influence to our existence in the Heidegger’s terminology, world and thing (in its difference from objects). These terms try to suggest “that the
world. To understand this influence we have to understand the essence of what creates the problem. What is world, or contextuality, announces itself in the ‘as’—the thing ‘as’ thing. This deals a blow to transcendence,
technology? It is both a human activity and a means to an end. This is both an anthropological and since the world is not elsewhere than the thing. . . . A phenomenon is taken as what it is only when we
instrumental definition of technology. All technology is made to be a means to some form of end. Whatever understand it as gathering its context, as ‘worlding’.
ends we desire from technology depends on our manipulation of it as a means. This becomes the turning point 8. Harman picks out Heidegger’s term readiness-to-hand [zuhandenheit] as a key feature in understanding the
where the urgency to take control leaves us to the danger of dependence and thus technology is no longer a latter’s philosophy. According to Harman, it [zuhandenheit] has everything to do with a mode of being of
silent tool but a distorting medium. An agent of ‘reason’ is essential that brings about a change alien to the entities. Harman pursued his theme by generalizing Heidegger’s tool-analysis, such that the reversal of
thing itself by itself to achieve an end which necessitates from the object placed by whatever end needs to be readiness-to-hand into presence-at-hand was not only a phenomenon proper to the intentionality of Dasein,
achieved. This manner of change and bringing forth the purpose or end a thing possess is for Heidegger a but was proper to any relation among any objects whatever. Harman argued that relation among objects
‘revealing’. It is revealing in such a way that without the manipulation or change input by the agent the telos encompass a particularization which differentially specifies individual entities as individual. A bottle need not
or end of the object in question is not put forth. be experienced as “a bottle” by an intentional consciousness in order to function in the world as a separate and
3. Heidegger departs away from the subjectivity of addressing the question of being thru the Dasein in Being and distinct object; it has its own specified qualities that discriminates from its content, the cap that covers it, the
Time by placing being in an event in “en-owning” If Dasein is the entity whose own being is an issue for it, hand that grasps it, the droplets of moisture down its side, and even the imprints of fingers that held it in a
we could speak of das Ereignis as the event in which our own being becomes an issue for us. Ereignis is not given moment. It is through such selective relations that objects are torn out of immersion within the
itself an entity, but it is not being as meaning either. It is the meaning-less or self-concealing giving of being contexture of the world: drawn into distinction, constituted as individual entities.
as meaning. Rather speak of the “what” or analysis of Being, Heidegger shifts toward be-ing involved in an
essential swaying of the event that moves from being as “owned” towards “en-owning”. This is the thinking
of being no longer from a metaphysical framework but towards being-historical thinking
4. Levinas sought to decentralize this through his ethical metaphysics of the ‘Other’. For Levinas, the essence of
a human being is manifest only through the presence of the ‘other’. The standard view is to see Heidegger as
concerned with the question of the meaning of being and thus as favoring Ontology as first philosophy,
whereas Levinas, on the other hand, is said to be concerned with the question of Otherness and explicitly
states that ethics is first philosophy. Levinas makes two explicit points that depart away from Heidegger’s idea
regarding one’s existence. One is that existence is not simply about being in a world where we are surrounded
by objects that are ready-at-hand as tools. The second is that the face is that of the ‘Other’ that is not within
the realm of one’s or “my” world and carefully seen as something impossible to absorb to it. It breaches out
through the limitations of one’s world for it is, in Levinas’ terms, infinity. The face shocks us but not in a way
that violently disrupts our own world, rather it places one into a question—question whether one can really be
at peace when in the presence of the Other.
5. In the mind of Levinas, there is no self-transcendence nor primary alterity. What only appears is the encounter
with the absolute other. Levinas rejects the notion of the ‘other’ as the alter-ego because it ultimately reduces
the other to the same. Derrida considers placing the ‘other’ as alter-ego not as a reduction of other to same but
a recognition of how separate the ‘other’ is from the ‘I’. For Derrida, the recognition by the ‘I’ on the ‘Other’
is not an assimilation because there is clearly a separation. The ‘Other’ is seen entirely as that creates the
finitude of the ‘I’ as by analogy, the former is that which the latter cannot reach.
6. Metaphor is seen not simply as an apparatus of language but as the very medium that metaphysics uses to
speak. What is called “metaphor” in Philosophy’s cognitive and semantic account of it is essentially a
protective shield against something that can also cause metaphor to miss the truth. “Metaphor” is the