Emptied Worlds: Heidegger and the Animal

Emptied Worlds:

- Heidegger and the Animal -
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Heidegger’s lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics (1931) is a transitionary work, situated between the so-called phenomenological period of the 1920’, and the Kehre (turn) of the 1930’s in which he would expound his ‘history of being’. It also marks the point of passage between Heidegger’s initial systematic project for a fundamental ontology, beginning in the existential analytic of Dasein in Being and Time (where the continuity between science and philosophy was unquestioned through the elucidation of the meaning of being) and the so-called ‘poetic turn’, where the hermeneutic task becomes rather to penetrate into the manifold epochal manifestations of the truth of being. Finally, it represents one of Heidegger’s last attempts to undertake a properly phenomenological analysis, after coming to the conclusion that ontology leads to an abyss in Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics (1928), and symptomatically attempts to elucidate the relation between human and non-human  entities, once the phenomenon of worldhood appears restricted to the disclosure of beings for temporal Dasein.

The link between being in general and Human-being had been in fact already shown to be the principal problem for the original project delineated in Being and Time, and which found its critical point in the lecture course from 1927 Basic Problems of Phenomenology. There Heidegger attempts to locate the disclosure of Being from Time (Zeit) by showing how temporality in general (Temporalitat des Seins) became the enabling condition for human temporality (Zeitlichkeit). But in attempting to draw the ontological grounds for this problematic distinction, Heidegger finally succumbed to denying the autonomy of Time itself, reducing it to our human temporality. This way the relation of human being to being through time ultimately finds itself irresolvable in the duality between human temporality or ekstatic transcendence (ekstasis) and unified but unobjectifiable Time in general (ekstema), as Heidegger hopes to avoid collapsing the latter into the former. And this insufficiency finally entails the incapacity to clarify Sein from the existential analytic of Dasein; a task which was to be propadeutic for the full-blown development of philosophical ontology proper. As Ray Brassier notes, in trying to avoid the collapse of Being into Human-being, Heidegger’s entire criticism of subjectivist philosophy becomes suddenly threatened, as is the local radicalization of the Husserlian dyad of intentional transcendence (noesis-noema), which he scolded for having been still encapsulated by the substantialist cog of representation. I quote:

“What is ironic about Heidegger’s critique of metaphysical subjectivism is that it is precisely his refusal to hypostatize the world as present-at-hand object of representation that precipitates him towards the arch-idealist conclusion according to which ‘If no Dasein exists, no world is “there” either’” (NU: Pg. 162)

And this is of course the locus for Heidegger’s development of the central concept of FCM: worldhood, and more properly, for the restriction of worldhood to the human sphere. Heidegger begins his course by emphasizing the propriety of philosophy against science, art, religion, worldview and history. Philosophy is philosophizing, he claims, and can only be carried out performatively as it wrests thought from its ‘inauthentic’ slumber amidst beings. This means that metaphysics does not concern itself with a particular a being (God, the animal, the human…), a particular domain of beings like science does (biological, physical), or even all the different beings or domains of beings. Categorical divides and typologies are delegated to the secondary and debased ontic enterprise of the sciences, while philosophy is in turn set to unearth their ‘ground’ or enabling conditions. Philosophy is said then to elucidate the phenomenon of worldhood, the understanding of being-as-a-whole, i.e. as the unified horizon from which beings are disclosed and made manifest. Since the manifestness or disclosure of beings is properly the 'human essence' as defined by Dasein’s ekstatic transcendence, it follows that philosophy as the awakening of an understanding of the disclosure, remains man’s most 'proper' activity, its ‘home’. As fundamental, metaphysics/philosophy becomes the enabling ground for the rest of the sciences or merely ontic enquiries: “there are only sciences insofar as there is philosophy”, not the other way around."

This way we can approach Heidegger’s avowal of Novalis’ ascription of philosophy as homesickness. It is the manifestation of beings to Dasein that makes being intelligible, and the world is nothing but the dwelling place where being-as-a-whole becomes disclosed. Therefore, enquiring into the structure of the world is just to enquire into man’s being-in-the-world as his very essence: Dasein is in the world amidst beings (in-der-welt-sein). As such, it is constrained by finite transcendence, insofar as he is subject to the encounter of beings which are not himself and whose way of being are different than his own. So Dasein’s proper way of being in the world is not that of an substance (whatness, Was-sein), that of an intra-temporal being or entity; nor even that of the Husserlian subject of intentional consciousness or of eidetic representation, etc. Rather, as its proper way of being, Dasein is always under way towards its completion, in the process of becoming, grounded in the threefold temporal ekstases of past, present and future. Dasein is thereby only individuated insofar as it is constrained by his finitude, projected in the resolute anticipation of being’s disclosure, and towards the end of the temporal horizon as the limit of such projection. That is of course death as the 'ownmost' (im)possibility of the closure of the world in which beings are encountered.

Heidegger speaks of metaphysical comprehensive concepts as opposed to the merely scientific categories; the latter are delegated to the ambit of technical present-at-hand manipulation (Vorhandenheit). Comprehensive concepts require that philosophizing bring one closer to ‘awaken’ certain forms of attunement or dispositions (Verhalten), which reveal the fundamental features of worldhood itself. This includes the passive receptivity of being’s unconcealment (Unveborgenheit), to the active world-forming wresting of beings from concealment. The world is thus correlative to our own capability for attunement within questioning, and never just in-itself or independent our our disclosure: "The substantive content and kind of being of a being prescribe possible manifestness (truth)...if scientific knowledge is to be gained then in accordance with its intention and its possibilities is must satisfy the essential connection between being and truth".

In doing so, Heidegger inflects Being (Sein) into the disclosure for human beings (Dasein), and thus cements their indissociability. Whereas man qua man (rational animal) is but one animal amidst the ontic distribution of species/genera, the ontological ground of his essence as horizonal ekstatic transcendence is the condition for the disclosure of all beings, from rocks to spiders, from nations to black holes. As something extreme and primary, philosophy is already comprehensive of everything, so that any application of it comes too late and is a misunderstanding. But in attempting to release worldhood from the shackles of scientific reason or mere ‘idle-talk’ (Garede), it appears that Heidegger's co-appropriation of being and thought performs rather a violent anthropomorphizing of the world as such, so that it becomes strictly impossible to speak of other beings 'in themselves' without already being delivered to the ‘emptiness’ to which he reduces scientific reason: proof, determinative concepts, beings as particulars or species, chronological time, etc. All are of no peculiar ontological interest, save as derivative abstractions, progressively becoming emptier as one withdraws from the waking richness of fundamental attunements, into the blind machinic dealings with entities presence-at-hand (this is why mathematics must remain the most removed and empty form of thought for Heidegger).

It becomes thus impossible for Heidegger to think of the phenomenon of worldhood in animals from the categories or explanations given to us by the sciences, since the latter can only describe entities derivatively as belonging to some class or other, as something present-at-hand. But however much the possibility of stepping-beyond human disclosure severely limits Heidegger's capacity to provide a description of animals in-themselves, Heidegger ventures to attempt to disclose the peculiarity of animal being apart from their relation to our dealings. Apart from the abstraction of presence-at-hand categorization, animals ‘themselves’, are said properly lack the capacity to encounter beings as beings, what Heidegger calls the ‘as-structure’, required for manifestness and worldhood: “When we say the lizard is laying on the rock we ought to cross out the word rock in order to indicate that whatever the lizard is lying on is certainly given in some way for the lizard, and yet is not known to the lizard as a rock…If we cross out the word we do not merely imply something else is in question here, whatever it is it is not accessible as a being” (Pg 198). This is the poverty of all reality outside the cohort of human manifestation: animals remain closed to their ‘encircling rings’, as beings ‘without worlds’, at the most partaking as projections deprived of their own temporalization, transfixed like automata by reflex and drive. The result is clear, being, the unconcealment of beings, is relative to the structure of worldhood and thus to man, while animals must remain strictly speaking, worldless.

But because the wealth of Nature, including animals, is not just the domain of the sciences, but the offering of non-produced beings given to Dasein, Heidegger also indicates animals and Nature (phusis) are never something merely present at hand for us, but that they concern the seizure of being-as-a-whole. Dasein is split between the passive reception of the phusei onta and his co-originary disclosing attunements, which are the ground for his world-forming capabilities. In any case, the phusei onta are still disclosed by and through Dasein; while Episteme phusika is correspondingly an enquiry into first principles, whose essence is given through the Greek ousia. But as we surmised above, for Heidegger an enquiry into such essence does not concern the determination of an Aristotelian categorical genus, or the elucidation of their regional divisions and specifications. The latter now properly becomes the task of science, but it falls to philosophy to elucidate the dispositional ways in which the ontic is opened and seized. It is our task to ‘awaken’ the fundamental attunements to access the disclosure of being; not merely to make oneself conscious-of some-thing, but to prepare an disposition in Dasein taken from his everyday slumber or ‘being away’.


To review: Heidegger develops the distinctions above along three axes:

- Being at hand / not being at hand - proper to intra temporal entities, ontic domain, the stone – relative to our encounter or dealings.

- Being awake / not being awake (being away) - proper to Dasein’s own way of being

- Being there / not being there – relative to disclosure for Dasein and thus to (1).

Crucially, the stone cannot be away since it does not have a world; it does not encounter being, it has no temporalizing structure; it could only away for us, that is to say, 'not at hand' (either zuhanden/vorhanden…). More problematically, however, this would seem to apply to animals as well as stones, since the result from Heidegger’s analysis is that the animal as such remains in-itself, encircled, without direct openness to the realm of beings. This means that as long as being is not disclosed or given as being at hand, as part of Dasein’s comportments to being, particular animals or species (any way of approaching animals from the purview of the sciences or through practical dealings) simply are not there. Animals as such are worldless, while animals qua Nature as a whole are simply anonymous phantoms we find in our immersion prior to the machinic dissection of scientific reason or presence-at-hand:

"Being at hand or not being at hand decide concerning being and non being...the stone, in its being away [in its not being at hand], is precisely not there. Man, however, must be there in order to be able to be away, and only so long as he is there does he in general have the possibility of an away." (64)

Worldhood is thus neither internal (like a concept of reflection) nor external (like an objective property). It is no-where, it does not pertain to a given space or spatial determination, but is always subject to temporalizing in Dasein’s manifold attunements. In Heidegger's own words, 'attunements never emerge in the empty space of the soul and then disappear, Dasein is always already attuned in its very way' (Pg. 68)


This priority of temporality as the horizon for the disclosure of worldhood leads Heidegger’s enquiry into the examination of boredom, and goes from the properly ontic ‘boringness’ to profound ontological boredom where the seizure of beings-as-a-whole becomes palpable. This complicity between attunements and the temporality of Dasein is made already graspable from the etymological surface of the German words: Being bored - langeweile, means long while. The temporalizing structure of boredom thus renders transparent its link to Dasein’s co-appropriation of beings in the world. Heidegger clarifies on general terms this correlation between attunements, temporalization and Dasein, and writes: "Boredom and ultimately every attunement, is a hybrid, partly objective, partly subjective" - it plays with the thing and transfers it to it. We are seized by boredom, and delivered to an impatient dealing with beings and the temporal modifications.

There are three forms of boredom we here summarize schematically:

The first form is Being bored by - ‘ boringness’ – specifically addressed to an entity or entities. It keeps us in limbo, while time passes too slow. We try to make time pass in boredom. It is still provisionally anchored in specific knowing, on an specific entity. Dasein is said to be ‘held in limbo’.

The second form is Being bored with - 'obstructive casualness' (unconscious lingering) - unknowing ontic generality, abandoning us to ourselves, time whiles and endures, it does not release us while it leaves us empty, it is the stretching of an enduring present, or an stretched now, where we are cut off from our having-been and our future, the horizon of the earlier (the past) is closed off. (120-124)

The third form is profound boredom - whereby the world finds itself homogeneously leveled, with no specific address or duration, and where no entity or particularity seizes us, but the general wholeness of being’s offering becomes latent in time’s opening in the form of a wholesale refusal of beings. Typically, it is at the moment of greatest remove from beings that Dasein grasps more authentically the call of being as such. Not at all dissimilarly from the analysis of anxiety, such as it was approached in B&T, profound boredom becomes the sharpest index of beings-as-a-whole. Attuning oneself all the way to profound boredom represents the height of the attitude of releasement (Gelassenheit) as opposed to ekstatic concentration or objectification (making-present: Augenblink). This means that Dasein disappropriates its immediate inauthentic conceptual identifications, dealings and presuppositions, and withdraws into the passive receptacle of being’s unconcealment. It thereby lays the passive ground for what Heidegger calls the ‘world producing’ or active faculties of Dasein.

This then paves the way for Heidegger's description of the phenomenon of worldhood itself, in which the comportments towards beings is elucidated, elliptically extending on the very distinctions made in B&T. Dasein is world producing, it encounters beings, and doing so it must encounter them as something. This structure of the ‘as’ is prerequisite for the determination of beings as beings, and their subsequent explication of the pre-logical logos in the spoken word (legein). We wrest beings from their removal or concealmente precisely through the logos and its disclosing capabilities. This does not yet presuppose the apophantic disclosure of propositional discursivity (logos apophantikos), but it already determines a ‘pre-ontological’ understanding in givenness, which is co-constituted by Dasein and his apprehending (Vernehmen). More fundamentally, Dasein finds the horizonal disclosure of worldhood seized in the threefold temporal ekstases:

Being-with - respect - present

Being already - retrospect -having being (past)

Being towards - project - future

The play of these temporal dimensions of Dasein in attunements allows us to understand how the categorical abstraction undertaken by the sciences constitute a reduction of temporality into mere endurance, or being-present. This is already the derivation of what Heidegger calls presence-at-hand, in which the individual categorical divides of entities occur, already derived from the primary engaged practice with the world of equipment (Zeug) or readiness-to-hand (275)

"And yet here the beings that surround us are uniformly manifest as simply something present at hand in the broadest sense- the presence of land and sea, the mountains and forests, and within this the presence of animals and plants and the presence of human beings and the products of human work, and amongst all this the presence of ourselves as well" (275)

But because presence at hand is merely an 'uprooted', technical grasp on beings, it is debased into the mere object for human calculation, void of ontological value. At a loss for any further ontological insight into animals, Heidegger finds the barren lands of metaphysics projecting an image of an equally barren non-human world: ‘animals are not merely present at hand’, he strives to say in a sophistic move to grant them independence, but find themselves encapsulated without exit (transcendence) in the 'encircling struggle of encircling rings'. This is not a mere fixation on enduring presence, for presence is only ever a derivative comportment relative to the pre-logical logos and thus already pressuposing the temporalizing horizon of Dasein. Rather, the animal is fixed by reiterative behavior, with no capacity to alter his drive or 'attune' his dispositions. This is also why Heidegger conveniently excludes from his analysis mammals and other animals which would intuitively exhibit more dynamic capacities to deal with things, and constricts himself to insects. Animality becomes thus reduced to the descriptive poverty of the phenomenological exile, that is, the leftovers of human existential richness. Behavior and environment do not show a comportments or worldhood respectively; the animal essence is only to remain within the encircling ring of captivation. So Heidegger rejects the thesis that:

"Beings as such are given to all animals'…the concept of world we have indicated... means the accessibility of beings as such rather than beings in themselves. according to this, beings do indeed also belong to world, but only insofar as they are accessible, insofar as beings themselves allow and enable something.”

And this subordination of beings to conditions of access should be read analogously to the subordination of ontic time to ontological time, or human temporality, Sein to Dasein, which fatally seals the fate of fundamental ontology into the explication of human temporality itself. As Heidegger makes clear in his Introduction to Metaphysics (1935):

”[S]trictly speaking we cannot say: there was a time when there were no human beings. At every time, there were and are and will be human beings, because time temporalizes itself only as long as there are human beings. There is no time in which there were no human beings, not because there are human beings from all eternity, but because time is not eternity, and time always temporalizes itself only at one time, as human, historical Dasein”

But if so it is clear that Heidegger’s attempt to draw crucial distinction among beings which are non Dasein, such as stones and animals, faces a fundamental irresolvable difficulty. Heidegger tries to assuage the explanatory poverty induced by his ontological commitments by saying that while stones are worldless animals are ‘poor in the world’. But this is a copout, since it is made abundantly clear that only within the temporalizing structure of Dasein’s transcendence beings as such become manifest, and that worldhood indeed admits of no degrees. To this end, Brassier concludes:

“Heidegger’s attempt to wriggle out of this dichotomy by claiming that the distinction at issue is not between having or not having a world but rather between entities that are ‘rich in world’ (i.e. human beings) and those that are ‘poor in world’ (such as animals) is a desperate sophism since he makes it perfectly clear that there can be no common measure for degrees of ‘richness’ or ‘poverty’ in world and hence no possible transition from one to the other.”

But if there is no standard to measure intra-temporal beings except from the worldly disclosure for human being, then how can Heidegger's correlationism explain the scientific fact of the fossil record: that there existed life and a world prior to the possibility of conditions of manifestation? Heidegger subjects ontic or metric time (of boringness) to ontological time, which is relative to the manifestation to Dasein. But if ontic time is only ever understandable as presupposing the time for manifestation, how can Heidegger explain that there was a time prior to even the possibility of manifestation? For if what science tells us is correct, then human time emerges within ontic time, at one point; it is relative to ontic time. But if there is no time except for Dasein, then how does the idea of a time or a reality independent of ourselves, and which will endure after we are gone become intelligible? This is precisely the problem Quentin Meillassoux raises against correlationism through the challenge of the ‘arche-fossil’. And this is perhaps the crucial question for phenomenological accounts which begin from the primacy of experience or to access the world, i.e. what Graham Harman has called ‘philosophies of access’. Correlationism results in the impossibility of thinking a world independently of ourselves and forces the denial of the independent being of all intra-temporal beings. As Heidegger puts it, ‘an eye taken independently is not an eye at all’. It thus firmly establishes the grounds for a prolonged noocentrism, which clogs philosophical thought in drawing its entire stock from the straightjacket of the post-Kantian aftermath and its obsession with finitude.