Existence and Self-Understanding in Being and Time

Early in Being and Time' Heidegger announces that the primary concept by means of which he aims to understand Dasein (us humans) isthe concept to which he gives the name 'existence.' But what is existence? is, roughly, that feature of Dasein that its self-understanding is constitutive of its being what or who it is. In an important sense, this concept embodies Heidegger's existentialism. At the center of existentialism lies the claim that humans are given their content neither by an ahistorical, transcultural essence, nor by nature. Rather, Dasein itself determines this content in its act of self-understanding. Kierkegaard expressed this in his famous (if murky) formulation that The self is that which relates itself to itself; Ortega in his catchy phrase, Man has no nature; and Sartre in his notorious proposition, Existence comes before essence.2 All of these dicta articulate the same idea. But how are we to understand this claim, and what must we presuppose to render it plausible? I shall argue for two hypotheses. First, we cannot render this existentialist idea plausible in its Heideggerian context without paying special attention to how it is linked in Being and Time to the concept of an ability. Heidegger interprets Dasein's characteristics primarily as ability-characteristics, that is, characteristics that are not states, but rather capacities. Second, the existentialist claim is subject to immediate and fatal counter-examples, unless we accept that Heidegger is operating with a subterranean form of dualism. It is not a Cartesian dualism of consciousness and matter; it is, rather, a dualism of natural and self-interpretive characteristics. We shall