7
ZOLLIKON SEMINARS, 1959 - 1969
which we ourselves are. What kind of being [Sein] do we see in advance? According to Freud, in what respect must phenomena take a back seat to [scientific] suppositions? With respect to what we consider to be real and actual: acccording to Freud, only that which can be explained in terms of psychological, unbroken, causal connections between forces is actual and genuinely actual. As the world renowned, contemporary physicist Max Planck said a few years ago: "Only that which can be measured is real." In contrast to this, it can be argued: Why can't there be something real which is not susceptible to exact measurement? Why not sorrow, for example?
Even this kind of supposition, that is, that "real" presupposes unbro- p. 8 ken, causal connections, is founded upon an acceptio. It is accepted as self-evident that being is a precalculable, causal relationship. With this supposition, the human being is also posited as an object which can be explained causally.
Two kinds of evidence must be always kept in view.
1. We "see** the existing table. This is ontic evidence
2. We also "see" [phenomenologically] that existence is not a quality of the table as a table; nevertheless, existence is predicated of the table when we say it is. This is ontological evidence
We affirm the table's existence, and we simultaneously deny that existence is one of its qualities. Insofar as this occurs, we obviously have existence in view. We "see" it. We "see" it, but not like we "see" the table. Yet, we are also unable to immediately say what "existence" means here. "Seeing" has a double meaning: optical, sensory sight, and "seeing" in the sense of "insight" [Einsehen].*
Therefore, we will call on Kant for help. He says: Being is not a real predicate, yet it is still a predicate. What kind [of predicate] ? It is "simply the pure positedness of a thing"—therefore, the positedness [existence] of something which is given (Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [Critique of Pure Reason], A.598, B.626). We posit; we put it. For instance, the table can be procured, encountered; a cabinetmaker produces it.
Positedness: I posit. With the "I," therefore, the human being comes into play here. Whereby? In perceiving; in seeing the table which exists.
* Here Heidegger refers not to a vague or arbitrary "intuition" in the subjectivepsychological sense but to the primordial, immediate grasping (understanding) and apprehending of being, of what is. This "in-sight" is the ontological supposition for any other categorical or sensory intuition. See Being and Time, secs. 7, 31; M. Heidegger, The Basic Problems of Phenomenology, trans. A. Hofstadter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), pp. 1-29.—TRANSLATORS