Heidegger on the Intelligibility of Resolute
Actions
In this paper I will attempt to answer the question of whether actions of resolute Dasein make sense to the one, or rather, how far one can go in trying to make sense of resolute action in terms of generalities. I will do so by analyzing in detail a simple phenomenon that I think Heidegger would deem a resolute action. We will imagine the following situation: John and Steve are friends. John is hiding in Steve's house, and Steve knows this. Jim comes over to kill John. The door bell rings and Steve answers. "Where is John?" Jim asks Steve. "I have no idea," says Steve, lying. Jim leaves, and John is left unharmed.
The questions we need to answer, in order, are as follows: first, in what sense is Steve's action intelligible to the one? Second, in what sense is Steve's action unintelligible to the one? Third, what makes Steve's action resolute? And finally, how does this differ from cases of simply doing what one does?
We must first answer the question about the obvious intelligibility of Steve's action in the broadest sense. We can do this by contrasting his action with an absurd, or utterly unintelligible one. In other words, we can ask in what way, for example, is Steve's answer different from a case in which, in reaction to Jim's question, he had simply stood on his head and barked like a dog? Heidegger says that "Proximally and for the most part Dasein is lost in its 'world'. Its understanding, as a projection upon possibilities of Being, has diverted itself thither. Its absorption in the 'one' signifies that it is dominated by the way things are publicly interpreted." This means that any action, resolute or irresolute, is made on the background of a shared public understanding. In other words, we live in a world in which questions are answered with words, not actions (e.g. standing on one's head and barking,) and these words make sense by way of our shared language, etc. Thus, in the broadest sense, Steve's action is intelligible because it "makes sense" in the most general way of making sense: it is a statement, made in English, which answers a question made in English, and just as the answer is intelligible to Jim, it is intelligible to anyone hearing the story who understands the words used and the practices involved (i.e. living in houses, ringing on doorbells, and the infinite number of other conventions implied in the story.)
Thanks in part to this shared background, which allows for a public intelligibility, the "one" can almost always make sense of actions, resolute or irresolute, in terms of general situations. It is in this sense that Steve's action is intelligible on another level, albeit in a misleading way, which will allow us to begin to draw a distinction between resolute and irresolute actions. Let me explain. Heidegger says that "for the "one", however, the Situation [i.e. the specific, concrete situation] is essentially something that has been closed off. The "one" knows only the 'general situation', loses itself in those 'opportunities' which are closest to it, and pays Dasein's way by a reckoning up of 'accidents' which it fails to recognize, deems its own achievement, and passes off as such." In saying this, Heidegger is suggesting that Steve's action can be forced into an intelligible interpretation by the "one". The "one" could tell the following version of our little story: "One ought to tell the truth. One also ought not to allow people to die. In fact, letting people die is worse than not telling the truth. Steve knew this when he made the decision to lie to Jim, and that is why he did so." This illustrates perfectly how the one can "fail to recognize" resolute behavior and deem it as "its own achievement," for such an interpretation takes a resolute action and explains it in terms of irresolute intelligibility. This type of intelligibility is not of the type discussed above, which provides a shared background, but is rather the intelligibility that comes from fleeing the groundlessness of all our activity. We will examine the significance of this later.
But first, we must point out that this impoverished interpretation of Steve's action fails because the fact is that in reality Steve made no such judgments, weighed no pros and cons, but simply made a decision based on the specific situation. "The Situation is the "there" which is disclosed in resoluteness--the "there" as which the existent entity is there. It is not a framework present-at-hand in which Dasein occurs, or into which it might even just bring itself. Far removed from any present-at-hand mixture of circumstances and accidents which we encounter, the Situation is only through resoluteness and in it." In other words, the concrete situation is not a bunch of objective facts to be thought about in terms of their generality, but, rather, it is what shows up for someone who is involved in the situation and responding to the particular demands of that situation.
How exactly then is Steve's behavior to be distinguished from one who did weigh out those general ethical rules that the one provides? In what sense does the one's explanation not get to the bottom of Steve's action? We have seen that the difference does not lie in Steve's detachment from the world of intelligibility, for "resoluteness...does not detach Dasein from the its world." Dreyfus suggests a difference in his commentary on Being and Time, when he says that "For Heidegger, the transformation to authenticity signals a transformation in the form of my everyday activity, leaving the content unchanged. I enact my authenticity in all my absorbed involved activity."
To understand this difference in form rather than content, let us look more closely at our phenomenon. We have seen that Steve's action is intelligible in the broad sense, simply because Steve is part of a shared world of intelligibility. We have also seen that his action can be forced into an intelligible interpretation by the one in terms of generalities, but that this interpretation misses something. So now we must ask what it misses. If we were to ask Steve why he lied, the best explanation he could give might me, "because John is my friend." This seemingly empty explanation actually gets at a deep truth about authentic behavior in that it shows that the only motivation behind resolute action is its fitting into one's chosen identity, in this case, Steve's identity as "friend of John's."
This identity provides Steve's actions with a sort of contentless form, insofar as what he does both can be explained by and further concretizes his friendship with John. In Heidegger's words, "In the light of the "for-the-sake-of-which" of one's self-chosen ability to be, resolute Dasein frees itself for its world."[p. 344] The important thing to notice is that there is no set of rules that goes along with being a friend. There is no finite list that one could make outlining what actions fall under the category of "things one does as a friend." Yet it is clear that Steve acted as a friend would by lying in order to save his life.
This lack of set rules, finally, is exactly what allows Dasein to be open to what the particular Situation calls for. "[Dasein] simply cannot become rigid as regards the Situation, but must understand that the resolution, in accordance with its own meaning as a disclosure [i.e. of Steve's identity,] must be held open and free for the current factical possibility." In other words, Dasein is constantly disclosing its identity by acting "for-the-sake-of" that identity, and it does so by constantly responding to particular situations. In order to do so, Dasein has to be open to those situations, and if he arrives at those situations with a predetermined set of rules, following procedures and standards, that openness is impossible.
Thus we have the main difference between resolute actions and simple cases of doing what one does. Whereas doing what one does is grounded in the rules provided by the one, resolute action is not grounded in anything except insofar as it reflects and furthers an identity which is itself ungrounded. It is this very groundlessness though, that makes an action resolute, for it frees Dasein to respond to the demands of the particular situation. "When Dasein is resolute," Heidegger explains, "it takes over authentically in its existence the fact that it is the null basis of its own nullity." This nullity is the essential ungroundedness of one's identity. It should be stated that it is possible to ground one's identity in the one, but as Dreyfus points out, if Dasein does so and becomes a "one's self", what is gained is only a pseudo-identity that uses the social for-the-sake-of-whiches provided by the one.
In conclusion, we have to take a stand on what it is to be a human being (i.e. assume a groundless identity) with the resources provided by our culture. This makes any activities we choose, or are open to, intelligible. At the same time, if we are to be authentic and act resolutely, we have to express that this intelligibility is ungrounded. We do this by responding to the demands of the specific situation and without falling back on some set of grounded general rules. In this sense, resolute activity is not intelligible, insofar that it cannot be explained in terms of generalities--it will never achieve the type of grounded intelligibility that can be translated into the sort of statement that declares, "any rational being would have acted in such a way." Instead, any explanation to resolute action is bound to have a rather vague explanation that only has the identity, with all it's accompanying for-the-sake-of-which's, of the person acting to fall back on.
© December 6, 1998, Tao Ruspoli