"Sense" in Being and Time

Heidegger's principal strategy for motivating the Seinsfrage – and motivating the Seinsfrage has become absolutely necessary in light of its forgottenness and obscurity  – is to point to the fact that we already live in and therefore have an understanding of being. In Being and Time, Heidegger addresses the objection that there is no need to raise the Seinsfrage, since being "is of all concepts the one that is self-evident," for "[whenever] one cognizes anything or makes an assertion, whenever one comports oneself towards entities, even towards oneself, some use is made of 'being' […]. [In] any way of comporting oneself to entities as entities – even in any being towards entities as entities – there lies a priori an enigma. The very fact that we already live in an understanding of being [Daß wir je schon in einem Seinsversändnis leben] and that the sense of being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle to raise this question again". From the fact that we live in or have an understanding of being (and, therefore, of beings in their totality), Heidegger infers that there must be a sense whose sovereignty over the many senses of being can be demonstrated. This sense remains "veiled in darkness". The thesis that the sense of being is veiled in darkness depends on the thesis (1) that there is such a sense, and (2) that the many senses of being somehow veil its focal sense. But has Heidegger actually demonstrated that the understanding of being depends on the prior givenness of the sense of being? Not at all. From the fact that Dasein lives in the understanding of being, it only follows that Dasein understands the many senses of being, not that these senses are organized around or refer back to a focal sense, which each of the many senses differentiates in its own way.

In Being and Time, Heidegger once more insists on the fact that Dasein's understanding of being indicates that the sense of being has already been disclosed to it, if only in a vague, average manner. He first insists that "we always conduct our activities in an understanding of being. Out of this understanding arise both the explicit question of the sense of being and the tendency that leads us towards its conception. We do not know what 'being' means. But even if we ask, 'What is 'Being'? we keep within an understanding of the 'is,' though we are unable to fix conceptually what that 'is' signifies. We do not even know the horizon in terms of which that meaning is to be grasped and fixed. But this vague average understanding of Being is still a Fact". Here, Heidegger claims that the question of the sense of being merely renders explicit the understanding of being itself. The Seinsfrage is simply what the understanding of being becomes when the latter turns towards itself and raises questions about its content and possibility in order to discover the sense of being that underlies and determines it. The sense of being – i.e., the Erfragte, the third and most important part of the formal structure of the question of being – unassumingly "falls out" of the understanding of being when the latter adopts the comportment (Verhalten) of ontological inquiry.

Later Heidegger once more insists on the givenness of the sense of being in the understanding of being: "Everything we talk about, everything we have in view, everything towards which we comport ourselves in any way, is being; what we are is being, and so is how we are. being lies in the fact that something is, and in its being as it is; in Reality; in presence-at-hand; in subsistence; in validity; in Dasein; in the 'es gibt". In this passage, Heidegger has effectively enumerated many of the senses of being he hopes to ground in the focal sense: being as reality (presence-at-hand), as existence (in the traditional sense, existentia); essence (also in the traditional sense, esssentia); Dasein (Existenz); truth. There is no contesting the fact that Dasein understands all of these senses of being. Nevertheless, once more, Heidegger has inferred from the fact that Dasein has an understanding of all of these senses of being that there is a focal sense each of these senses only declines or differentiates. All of his descriptions of Dasein's understanding of being presuppose that this understanding would not be possible without the prior givenness of the (conceptually obscure, but nevertheless effective) focal sense of being, which binds these senses to one another and so exercises ontological priority over them all.

From these considerations, I draw a preliminary conclusion: the introduction to Being and Time does not conclusively demonstrate that the Seinsfrage can only be formulated as a Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein, because the only possible basis for such a thesis is not itself demonstrated: viz., that the sense of being is given in, and so informs the understanding of being, such that the latter would not be possible without the former. The dependence of the understanding of being on the sense of being is presupposed, but not demonstrated. Heidegger's descriptions of the understanding of being phenomenologically yield only that Dasein understands the many senses of being, not that this understanding depends on the prior givenness of the focal sense of being. The only remaining way for Heidegger to demonstrate the thesis that the sense of being achieves givenness in, and so informs the understanding of being is to demonstrate it, not independently of the thesis that the sense of being is constituted by time (as it should have been demonstrated), but rather precisely by reference to this thesis alone, which is not demonstrated by the end of this unfinished treatise, not even by Heidegger's own admission. Henceforth, in order to show that being has a focal sense that determines its manifold senses, Heidegger must show that the focal sense is time, and he must show how time organizes and distributes the many senses of being. Heidegger must demonstrate in the conclusion what he could only presuppose in the introduction. This is not a circularity charge, which Heidegger adroitly disposes of early on in the introduction by oblique reference to Plato's Meno and Aristotle's Posterior Analytics. Clearly, in a very general sense, in every inquiry, the object of inquiry must in some way already be given. I am not criticizing Heidegger for claiming both that we already know what being means and claiming that we have yet to discover what being means. I am claiming that Heidegger does not demonstrate the prior givenness of the sense of being in the understanding of being. In other words, Heidegger does not satisfy the phenomenological criterion of evidence. On the contrary, he infers the prior givenness of the sense of being from what is truly and alone given: the many senses of being, of which Dasein does indeed have an understanding. This understanding is given, very clearly. Heidegger's thesis that the understanding of being depends on the prior givenness of the sense of being stems from traditional (Aristotelian) ontology, not phenomenology. That Heidegger must demonstrate, and cannot simply assume, that the Seinsfrage can only be posed by distinguishing between the focal sense of being and the many senses of beings is clear: his entire aim in the introduction to Being and Time is to pose the Seinsfrage and to remind his readers of what the question means, to reawaken the Seinsfrage in his readers precisely as a question of sense.