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The Three “Fundamental Deceptions” of Being and Time: Heidegger’s Phenomenology Revisited

David C. Abergel

Research in Phenomenology July 3, 2023 DOI: 10.1163/15691640-12341524 (opens in new tab)

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AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Key points Argues that Heidegger's 1936 critique of Being and Time as containing "fundamental deceptions" about Dasein's givenness does not signal an abandonment of phenomenology, because phenomenology for the young Heidegger was never a descriptive enterprise oriented toward givenness but always a way of participating in the creative unfolding of the site of Being's happening.

Abstract

In his private notes written in 1936 (now published as GA82), Heidegger enumerates three “fundamental deceptions” at play in Being and Time (1927). The thrust of these deceptions is twofold: that Dasein is something given and that the task of phenomenology is to describe Dasein in its givenness. These are deceptions, Heidegger claims in 1936, because Dasein is not something given, but can only be reached in a leap, and because the task of phenomenology is not to describe Dasein in its givenness, but to bring about Dasein and the “there,” the site of Being’s happening, through a creative leap-in. Scholars might be inclined to read these deceptions as further evidence for the view that Heidegger in the 1930s abandons phenomenology understood as a descriptive enterprise oriented toward givenness. This paper argues, to the contrary, that phenomenology for the young Heidegger was never a descriptive enterprise oriented toward givenness, but always, however obliquely presented throughout the 1920s, a way of participating in the creative unfolding of the site of Being’s happening.

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