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A Matter of Life

fiction of Dostoevsky. But for the most part, it would seem that he is far away from the main concerns of classical philosophy. Take the following, so-called ‘epistemological’ question, for example, which is thought to run through the whole of modern philosophy, from Descartes to Kant and beyond: ‘How can I know that I know?’ This is not Heidegger’s question. Why? Because, as I’ve begun to show, the question of knowledge, and of the conditions under which it can be obtained, must be subordinated to a prior, more fundamental question, namely, that of the essentially worldly character of our being. The privileging of the question of knowledge stems from a certain interpretation of our essence (as thinking substance), which Heidegger rejects. Consider this other question, through which philosophy enters the domain of morality: ‘What must I do?’ This is not Heidegger’s question either. Why? Because who this ‘I’ is has not been clarified to his satisfaction. Based on what I have said so far, it would seem that his question is more something like: ‘Who exactly is this being that I am, this being whose being is called upon in each and every one of my experiences, in my dreams as well as in my everyday dealings, in my scientific endeavours as well as in my rêveries? Can we describe precisely and define rigorously what it means to be for this being?’

The way in which we need to go about answering such questions is by interrogating the manner in which the world is there for us, or the way in which it is disclosed to us. In this endeavour, limit-experiences, such as the one revealed in my dream, and our ability to analyse them, may prove invaluable. For is it not precisely at the moment when our familiar world, and so our very self, seems to dissolve into nothingness, leaving us in a state of utter perplexity, if not anxiety, that we may catch a glimpse of who we really are, and what we are really about? Furthermore, by revealing an aspect of our being (if not our being in its totality) hitherto unsuspected, do such experiences not have the power to set us on the way to philosophical thought? Do they not reveal the very purpose of thought, and ourselves as destined to thought, in revealing ourselves to ourselves? Throughout, Heidegger insisted on this intimate and necessary connection between who we are, between the being of the being human, and philosophical thought: not because thought is a capacity that we have and that can direct itself towards a number of objects, including ourselves, but because philosophy is born of this life itself, and expresses it. Heidegger wants to show how philosophy, when properly understood, stems from this life that we are. This is what he calls the metaphysical destination (and destiny) of the human being, which the limit-experiences I’ve been alluding to have the power to disclose. By ‘metaphysical destination’, he means the fact that our own being is an issue for us, at all times, but especially in those rare moments when we catch a glimpse of ourselves, or when we come face to face with our own being. Then, we are disclosed to ourselves, as the being for whom there is always more at issue than just things. We are revealed to ourselves as the being that is open to – and this means experiences and understands – this residue or this remainder I began by evoking. This residue is precisely the ‘there is’ in general, the fact and the event of pure presence that


Miguel de Beistegui - The New Heidegger