- ‘Structure’ in the singular may be an expression denoting an overall account of Dasein's existence (SZ, p. 41; 44), with structural ‘moments’ under it; it may also stand for an existential (so that there are structures in the plural SZ, p. 44), or for still more specific characteristics (something like the moment of an existential or a sub-existential).
- Incidentally, a transcendental theory of categories could be accommodated to such parlance: e.g., reference to categories as ontological explicata at the occasion of data makes data interpretable; the Kantian solution.
- Cf. footnote 6 below.
- What may call for further comment is the relationship between Being, manner of Being, and ‘existentials’ or structures. ‘Manner’ sounds more contracted in meaning, closer to Being as a deictic point, like a ‘sense’ of Being; ‘structure’ sounds more discrete and thus, while still on the side of Being, close to the side of beings. In fact, there is a scale here, with manner of Being, existential, and structure bridging the gap of the ontological difference between Being and beings. But we will not be far wrong if we co-ordinate Being, manner of Being, existentials, and structures as distinctions on the side of Being as over against beings.
- From a semantic angle, we find a certain lack of precision in Heidegger's conception of ‘manner of Being’. In one sense, the term suggests, as we said, a totality of ontological features of Being of a kind. E.g., when he speaks of man as a being in the manner of Dasein (SZ, pp. 7 f., 11, 118), ‘manner of Being’ would be the same as ‘constitution of Being’ (Seinsverfassung SZ, p. 221), so that structures belong to, or are part of, Dasein's total constitution of Being, while in another sense, Heidegger speaks of ‘a’ manner of Being (within a unitary constitution of Being, such as when truth (Wahrheit SZ, p. 227) is regarded as ‘a’ manner of Being of Dasein qua disclosing. But we also find ‘a’ constitution of Being (e.g., in the of care- for others, Fürsorge, SZ, p. 122), so that ‘manner of Being’ in its two senses and ‘constitution of Being’ in its two senses correlate.
- We may note other related terms for ‘manner of Being’, such as Seinsweise (which we noted before in the plural), or simply Weise (which latter may also mean ‘mode’, Modus, SZ, p. 127 f.; of this later), or ‘characters of Being’ (Seinscharaktere SZ, p. 128) in the sense of ‘manners of Being’, or also in that of ‘modes’, etc. But ‘characters’ has also a more pointed meaning, comporting Dasein's ‘existentiality’ and its variants (SZ, p. 191). Finally, we find a conflation of the terms ‘characters of Being’, ‘manner of Being’, ‘constitution of Being’ and ‘mode’, as SZ, p. 230.
- For a brief historical orientation on the notion of ‘mode’, we refer the reader to H. J. Paton's Kant's Metaphysic of Experience, vol. II, p. 163 f). For our purposes, the following attempts at justifying the term ‘mode’ in Heidegger may suffice. ‘Mode’ suggests a characteristic which does not belong, or is not essential, to the essence or essential trait of something. Thus the rationality of man does not involve learnedness, and yet, this mode is a way how rationality takes concrete form. Therefore, we can view a mode as dependent on an essence or essential trait (or on a structure impinging on a thing although not of its essence, like time, as in the case of a thing's temporal modes). Now ‘mode’ may have recommended itself to Heidegger precisely because he rejects essence as a suitable conceptualization of man. If there are no essential traits, but only existentials, all we are left with to differentiate these with a view to concreteness is ‘modes’. Indeed Heidegger can live up to the definition that modes do not belong to the essence or essential trait of something. If one does not claim essence, there is all the more justification to speak of modes; they make up the only correlate of the principles (existentials) invoked instead. In view of the dependence of modes on what they are modes of, we can therefore call them principiata, there being no intermediate essence or essential trait which, serving as principiatum, would leave modes free to be less than a principiata. In Heidegger, modes carry the implications of what otherwise would be essentialia: thus ‘-alia’ of principles, ‘-alia’ of existentials. thus existenziell features.
- It is here that a dialectical trace in Heidegger is visible: a relation of otherness is rephrased as one of negation. The aim is to show that otherness can be accommodated, can be included in the oneness of the principle. However, while in Hegel, this leads to a new enriched concept, in Heidegger we have an unrelieved opposition of factual deviation from the principle, regarded as negation, and conformal principiation.
- We note in passing O. Becker's attempt to supply a rivalling principle, called Dawesen. See his Dasein und Dawesen. Gesammelte Aufsätze 1963. We may also note Sartre's conception of mauvaise foi where man appears principled either by being-in-itself or by being-for-itself.
- Incidentally, in a sense different from that of Sartre's négatités in L'être et le néant, p. 57.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology
Volume 5, 1974 - Issue 2