An Analysis of the Problem of the Being of the External World in Heidegger
Emrah AkdenizHeidegger believed that the history of philosophy was centered around the question of being. Despite superficial differences, almost all great philosophers were engrossed with this ontological question. However, a break is observed in the tradition of original thought, particularly with Plato. The question of being gradually shifted away from inquiring about the authenticity of existence. Over time, it transformed into an epistemological query that mutually positioned the subject and the object for their construal. Descartes represented the apex of this lineage, marking the beginning of modern philosophy. This epistemological approach attempts predominantly to determine the limits of the subject’s knowledge by determining the conditions that govern knowledge in the subject-object relationship. The object is transcendent to the subject in this approach: the subject can know the object only by starting from the self because the subject has direct and immanent knowledge of the self. Therefore, this approach is grounded in the assumption of a dual world in which the subject and the object are positioned as mutually exclusive. The object is subordinated to the subject by this assumption, which elicits the characteristic problem of knowing or proving the existence of the external world. This article will attempt to reveal Heidegger’s resolution of this problem in the context of the question of being/existence.
Heidegger’de Dış Dünyanın Varlığı Sorununun Çözümlemesi
Emrah AkdenizFelsefe tarihi, Heidegger’e göre, varlık sorusu etrafında inşa edilmiştir. Büyük filozofların neredeyse tamamı yüzeydeki tüm farklılıklara rağmen esasında bu ontolojik soruyla ilgilenmişlerdir. Bununla birlikte özellikle özgün düşünce geleneğinde bir kırılmanın yaşandığı Platon’la birlikte “varlık sorusu”, gitgide sahihliğinden uzaklaşmış ve Descartes’ın modern felsefenin de başlangıcı olmak bakımından tepe noktasını oluşturduğu bir çizgide, özne ile nesnenin karşılıklı konumlandırılarak yorumlandığı bir epistemolojik soru haline dönüşmüştür. Epistemolojik yaklaşımın öne çıkan özelliği, özne-nesne ilişkisinde bilginin koşullarını belirleyerek öznenin bilme sınırlarını saptamaya çalışmaktır. Bu yaklaşımda nesne özneye aşkındır; dolayısıyla öznenin nesneyi bilmesi ancak kendinden yola çıkmasıyla olanaklıdır; çünkü öznenin kendisine ilişkin bilgisi doğrudan gerçekleşen, içkin bir bilgidir. Dolayısıyla bu yaklaşımdaki temel varsayım, özne ile nesnenin birbirini dışladığı, nesnenin özneye tâbi kılındığı ikili bir dünya varsayımıdır ve bu varsayımda ortaya çıkan karakteristik sorun, dış dünyanın varlığının kanıtlanması/bilinmesi sorunudur. Sonuç olarak bu makalede Heidegger’in bu problemi “varlık sorusu” bağlamında nasıl bir çözüme kavuşturduğu gösterilmeye çalışılacaktır.
Heidegger viewed the history of philosophy as an account of a “natural” course of cognizing about being. Throughout the history of thought, philosophy has primarily been tasked with determining how being reveals its meaning. However, discrete periods of thought have overlooked the idea that the fundamental question of philosophy is to ask what being means; rather, philosophers have often questioned what being is. The latter form of the question represents a reduction that identifies being with singular entities: the most typical feature of such a reduction is the problem of substance. During the process of what Heidegger called the history of metaphysics, the problem of substance began to be inferred in the context of the conception of a dual world. This concept can be observed particularly in Plato’s thought but attained predominance with Descartes, the most important thinker of modern philosophy. In other words, the problem of being transformed into the mere problem of knowing and philosophy became a theoretical inquiry into the subject-object relationship. Consequently, how the subject relates to the external world and more importantly, how the being/existence of the external world can be proven become fundamental questions evoked from the epistemological subject-object relationship. According to Heidegger, such questioning indicates a departure from the original question, what is authentic in thought. Therefore, philosophy must decipher this approach that separates the subject and the object to re-establish a relationship with the authentic form of the question and reveal the meaning of existence. According to Heidegger, the true thought process begins with the asking of the real question, which reveals the unity of the subject and the object by deconstructing the subjectivity of the subject. The terms subject and object also become obsolete/null in such a context because they derive from the epistemological approach that enables the polar perspective. Da-sein, the focal concept of the Heideggerian approach, annulled the subject and the object. Da-sein marks human existence, indicating its essential feature as being-in-the-world, which indicates a unity that opens horizons of meaning by intertwining human being and beings. The concept of Da-sein has been used since Heidegger’s Being and Time and is positioned as the center of comprehending how being means by subjecting to the expansion of signification along the line of Heidegger’s thought. In this conception, to be human is to relate to existing phenomena in the context of certain interests: a fundamental concern related to one’s existence is evoked on the basis of such relations. Human beings bring objects into existence for themselves and accord them with meaning in the contexts of their most basic interests. However, Heidegger labels anxiety as the bedrock underlying all human interest. Concerns about the origins of their interests evoke in people the emotional state of fear about a definite object. Conversely, anxiety about their very existence places human beings in an emotional state induced by an uncertain object. In anxiety, a person encounters the nothingness of the individual’s existence; in other words, the person confronts mortality. Human beings are creatures without a place, originless, oscillating in nothingness because they are mortal. Therefore all human actions are designed to escape from the state of nothingness. Human beings are caught or lost while being-in-the-world. Therefore, instead of being omnipotent and capable subjects, human beings tend to be ejected from their own centers against their will. Heidegger accords particular importance to pre-Socratic thinkers in this context because these semipoet-thinkers could interpret the destructive human relationship with being by perceiving this overlooked feature of human existence. This approach reveals an individual as a tragic being vis-à-vis the person’s existence because human beings are not determiners in their relationship to being; rather, this association is characterized by unpredictability, which precisely manifests being-in-the-world. Humanity’s relation to things is not a relationship of knowing, and every relation constructed to reveal the truth of human connections with things concerns a relationship that shifts human beings from their positions and transcends knowability. Therefore, one’s orientation to objects should not be conceived as a relationship between mutually exclusive constituent elements. Human beings extend toward their individual deaths as they exist in-between birth and death; they realize their being during this period of extension between birth and death as they attempt to escape from their ultimate end. Put differently, human beings make the world what it is. The history of metaphysics viewed the human being as an animal rationale. In so doing, it missed this critical point and did not ask the essential question about the meaning of man’s being-in-the-world.
