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ZOLLIKON SEMINARS, 1959-1969


The Dasein of the human being is spatial in itself in the sense of making room [in space] [Einräumen von Raum]* and in the sense of the spatialization of Da-sein in its bodily nature. Da-sein is not spatial because it is embodied. But its bodiliness is possible only because Da-sein is spatial in the sense of making room.†

We will now try to move somewhat closer to the phenomenon of the body. In doing so, we are not speaking of a solution to the problem of the body. Much has already been gained merely by starting to see this problem. Once again we refer to the text by Professor Hegglin. Among other things, it notes: "Sadness cannot be measured, but the tears formed by sadness due to psychosomatic relations can be investigated quantitatively in various directions." Yet you can never actually measure tears. If you try to measure them, you measure a fluid and its drops at the most, but not tears. Tears can only be seen directly. Where do tears belong? Are they something somatic or psychical? They are neither the one, nor the other. Take another phenomenon: Someone blushes with shame and embarrassment. Can the blushing be measured? Blushing with shame cannot be measured. Only the redness can be measured, for instance, by measuring the circulation of blood. Then is blushing something somatic or something psychical? It is neither one nor the other. Phenomenologically speaking, we can easily distinguish between a face blushing with shame and, for instance, a face flushed with fever or as a result of going inside of a warm hut after a cold mountain night outside. All three kinds of blushing appear on the face, but they are very different from each other and are immediately distinguished in our everyday being-with and being-for each other. We can "see" from the respective situations whether someone is embarrassed, for instance, or flushed for some other reason.

Take the phenomenon of pain and sadness. For instance, bodily pain and grief for the death of a relative both involve "pain." What about these "pains'? Are they both somatic or are they both psychical? Or is only one of them somatic and the other psychical, or is it neither one nor the other?


* See ibid., p. 146: "Da-sein can move things around or out of the way or 'make room* for them only because making room—understood as an existentiale—belongs to its Being-in-the-world."—TRANSLATORS

Raum-geben (giving space) and Einräumen (making room) are equivalent as constitutive elements of the human being's spatial "being-in-the-world" by which he orients himself in space. See Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 146 ff. See also Heidegger, Basic Writings, pp. 144-87, 320-39.—TRANSLATORS


Zollikon Seminars by Martin Heidegger