23
These two sentences could be equivalent, actually. Hopefully not.
24 Again,
that spatiality, where I am in this room, at the geographical coordinates 16.7666° N, 3.0026° W, is founded upon my Being-in-the-world, which I currently am by being involved in the activity of writing this paper (BT 171); see footnote 3. Disclosedness = the character of having been unveiled, unhidden (BT 105). The term is used for Dasein or Being (whereas “uncover” is used for non-human entities) (Georgetown website). Dasein is its disclosedness because Dasein’s Being is made manifest in disclosedness: “‘Dasein is its disclosedness,’ means at the same time that the Being which is an issue for this entity in its very Being is to be its ‘there’” (BT 171). Also, a fun fact: ‘disclosure’ or ‘disclosedness’ is also the translation for the Greek word Aletheia, the name of the journal in which you’re (presumably) reading this paper. 25
In other places in Being and Time, Heidegger also includes discourse or talk as the fourth existential structure that constitutes the “there” (Elpidorou and Freeman, § 2); in § 34, he includes only states-of-mind and understanding (BT 171-172). 26
27 As
Elpidorou and Freeman rightly note in their paper, these structures of existence cannot be separated except in analysis (Elpidorou and Freeman, § 2). So while this paper analyzes state-of-mind or attunement in isolation from the other structures, it acknowledges that the structures are, in fact, “equiprimordial” (BT 172). Explaining understanding and falling, however, will keep me here the entire night.
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am in the world by way of being engaged in an activity, and being in a situation (Heidegger, BT 80-82). It is this situation that Heidegger calls the “there;” I am always Being-there (the German term Da-sein translates literally to “Being there,” ‘Da’ meaning ‘here’ or ‘there,’ and ‘sein’ meaning Being; BT 27). Hubert L. Dreyfus provides a helpful way of thinking about this term, as in the expression “There I was, in trouble again” (Dreyfus 164). Or “Here I am, writing my final paper at the last minute again.”23 Once again, as with Being-in, the ‘here’ or ‘there’ is used not in the spatial sense, but in the existential one – I am not here24, sitting in this room, at the geographical coordinates 16.7666° N, 3.0026° W; rather, I am here, engaged in the activity of grumpily trying to finish my paper. And because Dasein exists as Being-in – that is to say, it is what it does, it is the activity in which it is engaged – it is its “there” (BT 171). It is the “there” in which Being-in-the-world as a whole is disclosed to Dasein; when we say that Dasein is its disclosedness25, we are saying that Dasein is its “there” (BT 171). In other words, in the “there,” Dasein’s existence in the world is disclosed to it. Ontologically, the “there” is constituted by three structures26 of existence: state-of-mind or attunement, understanding, and falling (BT 400). This paper will focus on the first of these.27 As established, we are always in the world in the sense that the world matters to us. And the way in which it matters to us is determined, in each case, by the mood in which we find ourselves; this mattering-of-the-world-through-a-mood is what is described ontologically as “attunement” (BT 172). The word Heidegger employs is Befindlichkeit, which he constructs from the German greeting “Wie befinden Sie sich?,” which in turn translates literally to “How do you find yourself ?” (Greaves 65) Although the translators of Being and Time, Macquarrie and Robinson, use the term “state-of-mind” for Befindlichkeit, Heidegger specifically states that it is far from anything like a mental state: “… a state-of-mind [Befindlichkeit] is very remote from
