What is falling, and why is it so important?
I used to have a real passion for philosophy. Then I put it aside for a while out of practical necessity when my first daughter came along. I always planned to return; but it has been probably eight years since I've read a serious philosophy book, and I wonder whether I'll be able to return--whether I could ever rekindle the flame it once sparked in me.
I came across some of my old school papers while cleaning out the attic last weekend. For kicks, I read through my final exam for my course on Heidegger's "Being and Time" (spring term, 1997). It was one of my favorite courses, not because of my attraction to Heidegger's thought (which was certainly there, though I hardly remember why), but because of the whole atmosphere of it. It was a real philosopher's philosophy class. It attracted only the most hard-core devotees, the people who could barely imagine living without philosophy. You could see it even in their outward appearance. I used to say that I was the only one in the class without a long beard or a goatee--including the women! Of course, that wasn't technically true, but the image it evokes was true enough. Even though I looked more like the economics students, I always felt more at home with the philosophers.
Any hope that I'll ever feel that way again was crushed when I tried to read my final exam answers. I have absolutely no clue what I was saying. You probably won't either. Then again, you don't care. For me it's a real loss, accompanied by real pain (though I know I've gained more than I lost).
Continued in the "comments", should anyone care to read on.
I came across some of my old school papers while cleaning out the attic last weekend. For kicks, I read through my final exam for my course on Heidegger's "Being and Time" (spring term, 1997). It was one of my favorite courses, not because of my attraction to Heidegger's thought (which was certainly there, though I hardly remember why), but because of the whole atmosphere of it. It was a real philosopher's philosophy class. It attracted only the most hard-core devotees, the people who could barely imagine living without philosophy. You could see it even in their outward appearance. I used to say that I was the only one in the class without a long beard or a goatee--including the women! Of course, that wasn't technically true, but the image it evokes was true enough. Even though I looked more like the economics students, I always felt more at home with the philosophers.
Any hope that I'll ever feel that way again was crushed when I tried to read my final exam answers. I have absolutely no clue what I was saying. You probably won't either. Then again, you don't care. For me it's a real loss, accompanied by real pain (though I know I've gained more than I lost).
Q. "What is falling, and why is it so important?"
Falling, for Heidegger, comes up in the context of an attempt to recapture the "sight of dasein's everydayness", which can seem to have been lost in the analysis of sofindingness, understanding and telling (the existential structures of disclosedness). We must remember that in its everyday being-in-the-world, dasein is "absorbed in the anyone". This implies that the anyone must have its own sofindingness, understanding and telling. Falling, then, is dasein's adoption of the existential structures of disclosedness of the anyone. It is a falling into the sofindingness of the anyone, as well as the understanding of the anyone. And since the understanding is a projection of possibilities, it is an adoption of the possibilities recognized by the anyone.
Continued in the "comments", should anyone care to read on.
posted by BigKC at
5:12 PM
6 Comments:
My final exam, continued...
Heidegger writes that falling signifies that "dasein is proximally and for the most part amidst the 'world' of its concern. This 'absorption in ...' has mostly the caracter of being-lost in the publicness of the anyone. Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away from itself as an authentic ability to be itself, and has fallen into the 'world'". Several important caracteristics of falling come out in this passage. First, dasein's usual absorption in the world of its concern is normally characterized by "being-lost in the publicness of the anyone." I think this means that dasein, in its everyday dealings with the world, accepts the roles assigned to those things by the projective understanding of the anyone. In a sense, this must necessarily be the case, because it is only by being inculturated into an already existing way of life that a person can become dasein.
Second, dasein's falling is a falling "away from itself as an ability to be itself," and into the world. This means that dasein, in always being absorbed in the world of the anyone, never recognizes its own character as a being in-the-world, with a whole range of possibilities for understanding its own being. This does not mean, according to Heidegger, that dasein has somehow lost itself, because the world is an integral part of itself--it is one aspect of the unitary phenomenon of being-in-the-world. It does mean that dasein has misinterpreted itself. It has failed to recognize "itself as factical being-in-the-world."
Finally, Heidegger says that "in the first instance" dasein has fallen away from itself. This shows that as soon as dasein is, it is fallen. There is no original, ufallen state of dasein which somehow gets lost at some moment in time, though the language of "falling" and "losing" may seem to imply that. No, dasein is always already fallen. And this is a necessary fact about dasein--because a person could not become a dasein without becoming absorbed in the anyone.
This last statement shows up the importance of falling. Without falling, there could be no dasein. For there to be sofindingness, understanding and telling in a particular case, there must always already be a shared sofindingness, understanding and telling that the person can come to share. This is the disclosedness of the anyone. Dasein's sharing of this disclosedness--dasein's falling--is a condition for there being dasein.
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BigKC, at 11:18 AM
I stumbled across your blog when trying to find a more explicit understanding of Heidegger's concept of falling. Out of the many philosophers' interpretations ive read, from my class mates to my teachers, your essay has clarified many important notions of Heidegger's that I thought almost impossible to disclose in proper english. thank you for posting your paper, I hope it can be enjoyed by others and help them down their Heideggerian path.
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Anonymous, at 12:52 PM
I agree. I am working on a graduate level phenomenological psychology essay and was really struggling with Heidegger's concept of falling until I found this. Thank you!
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Anonymous, at 11:40 PM
For me 'Falling' also means, (as I read certain passages in Heidegger's Being and Time).
Falling through Time. That the passage of time is a state of 'falling'.
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lifestylegroup, at 2:22 PM
Hello
Could someone explain to me in basic terms what is falling in the inauthentic lifestyle, the book I use Existentialism by Soloman is extremely confusing to me... please and thank you! :)
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Anonymous, at 11:24 AM
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