Attestation and Facticity: On Heidegger's Conception of Attestation in Being and Time

References

• The present article results from my post-doctoral research project The Truth of Conviction: Attestation, Testimony, and Declaration, financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). It is part of a larger project, Overcoming the Faith—Reason Opposition: Pauline Pistis in Contemporary Philosophy, carried out at the Radboud University Nijmegen and at the University of Groningen. I thank especially Ben Vedder, Gert-Jan van der Heiden and Ezra Delahaye for their comments on a first draft. I thank Paul Carls for checking my English.
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• Derrida J., “Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of ‘Religion’ at the Limits of Reason Alone“ (hereafter: FK), in: Derrida J., Acts of Religion, ed. and with an introduction by G. Anidjar, New York—London: Routledge, 2002, 96.
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• See Heidegger M., Phänomenologische Interpretationen ausgewählter Abhandlungen des Aristoteles zur Ontologie und Logik, Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 2005, 363.
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• In Heidegger's early writings one can basically differentiate two meanings of “facticity” (Faktizität), even if they are strongly interconnected. In Being and Time “facticity” is in principle a synonym of “thrownness” (Geworfenheit) and means the specific factuality of human existence (see Heidegger M., Being and Time, transl. by J. Stambaugh, revised and with a foreword by D. J. Schmidt, Albany (NY): SUNY Press, 2010 [hereafter: BT], 56). The second meaning, which is to be found especially in the Natorp-Bericht and in Ontology. The Hermeneutics of Facticity, refers to human existence in general, so that “hermeneutics of facticity” and “hermeneutics of existence” are equivalent: see Heidegger M., Ontology. The Hermeneutics of Facticity, translated by J. van Buren, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999, 5. My terminological formulation “pre-philosophical facticity” basically refers to the second meaning and intends to underline that human existence as such and its peculiar pre-understanding of being are a primordial fact, which is independent from philosophy. In principle, the addition of “pre-philosophical” is redundant, since facticity as such is prior to philosophy or science, that is to say to every methodical thematisation or reflection. However, I prefer to add “pre-philosophical” in order to underline, in the context of the present contribution, such an irreducible primordiality of facticity belonging to human existence. Obviously, the relevant priority here is not a temporal one, but an ontological or structural one.
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• See the following important specification: «Not religion, to be sure, nor theology, but that which in faith acquiesces before or beyond all questioning, in the already common experience of a language and of a “we.” […] And what renders possible, for this “we,” the positing and elaboration of the question of being, the unfolding and determining of its “formal structure” […], prior to all questioning—is it not what Heidegger then calls a Faktum, that is, the vague and ordinary pre-comprehension of the meaning of being, and first of all of the words “is” or “be” in language or in a language […]? This Faktum is not an empirical fact. Each time Heidegger employs this word, we are necessarily led back to a zone where acquiescence is de rigueur» (FK 96).
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• On attestation in Heidegger see van der Heiden, G.-J., “Announcement, Attestation, and Equivocity: Ricoeur's Hermeneutic Ontology between Heidegger and Derrida”, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 85/3 (2011), 415–432.
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• In the present contribution I use the concept of “givenness” in a very formal sense, without Husserlian connotations.
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• This tension between ontological (or phenomenological) generality and ontic individuality represents the very challenge of Heidegger's hermeneutic-phenomenological method: for a more precise and detailed interpretation of this seminal point see Cimino A., “Begriff und Vollzug. Performativität und Indexikalität als Grundbestimmungen der formal anzeigenden Begriffsbildung bei Heidegger”, Internationales Jahrbuch für Hermeneutik, 10 (2011), 215–239.
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• Assuming that phenomenology can be characterized, in very general terms, as a philosophical investigation of the lived experiences carried out from the first-person point of view, then, if we follow Heidegger's criticism of Husserlian phenomenology, we could differentiate between a performative phenomenology, that is an enactment-based phenomenology, and an observation- or reflection-based phenomenology: see again Cimino, “Begriff und Vollzug”.
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• As regards the presence of conscience in Heidegger, the following research is recommended: Fehér I. M., “Eigentlichkeit, Gewissen und Schuld in Heideggers Sein und Zeit”, Man and World, 23 (1990), 35 62; Greisch J., L'appel de la conscience, in: Ontologie et temporalité. Esquisse d'une interprétation intégrale de Sein und Zeit, Paris: PUF, 1994, 284–304.
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• This second aspect of performativity concerning attestation has been emphasized by Jean Greisch: see Greisch, L'appel de la conscience, 287.
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• See again Cimino, “Begriff und Vollzug”.
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• This turning point can be described as a radical interruption or breach: see BT 261.
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• See e.g. the following paradigmatic characterization, in which understanding, attunement and discourse are mentioned: «The call attuned by anxiety first makes possible for Dasein its project upon its ownmost potentiality—of—being» (BT 266f).
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• In this regard see, for an overview, the following contributions: Herms E., “Handeln aus Gewißheit. Zu Martin Heideggers Phänomenologie des Gewissens”, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 41/2 (1999), 132 157; Welz C., “Das Gewissen als Instanz der Selbsterschließung: Luther, Kierkegaard und Heidegger”, Neue Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie, 53/3 (2011), 265–284.
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• On Heidegger's interpretation of Paul see Vedder B., Heidegger's Philosophy of Religion, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007, especially 51–59.
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• Heidegger M., The Phenomenology of Religious Life, transl. by M. Fritsch and J. A. Gosetti-Ferencei, Bloomington-Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004 (hereafter: PhRL), 72.
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