Talk:Being and Time/Archive 1

"Intentionality" references

I fear that statements like " Intentionality was an activity termed by Heidegger as "Sorge" (care) and reflected a positive aspect of Angst" are based more on anglo appropriations of Heidegger, like Dreyfus's, than the text of Sein und Zeit itself. I've been studying this text and secondary sources relating to it for some time, and I have yet to find the word "intentionality" used by Heidegger as care/sorge. This is obviously an interpretive move.

Another obviously POV reading of Heidegger (and I would argue a bad reading) is to be found in the following sentence: "Sorge, or caring, as the fundamental concept of the intentional being, presupposed an ontological significance that distinguishes ontological being from mere ontic being (thinghood)." This doesn't make any clear sense in relation to Heidegger's analysis of "Care" in Div 1 Ch 5 of B&T. I am assuming "the intentional being" refers to Dasein, who's existential unity Heidegger characterizes as care/sorge. But the distinction the sentence draws between "ontological significance," as presupposed by Dasein as care, and "mere ontic being" is unclear. Heidegger repeatedly makes reference to Dasein's ontic facticity as precisely the thrown asepct of Dasein's Being (characterized as care or being-in-the-world). The "ontological significance" allegedly presupposed by Dasein's Being as care is also ambiguous in relation to Heidegger's language. Does it refer to the "burden" of Dasein's possibility for being itself authentically which is also precisely the source of angst (in which care is phenomenally disclosed) or does it refer to the ontological priority of Dasein as the condition of possibility for ontology itself (elucidated by Heidegger in his introduction)?

I think this whole article needs to be rewritten much more closely to Heidegger's own language (without reinterpreting him using concepts foreign to him, e.g "intentionality").--Agnaramasi 17:30, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

This edit was a part of the original article on Heidegger and moved here. "Care" is dealt with extensively in chapter 6, not 5. Sorge is also translated as "concern", which according to Jitendra Nath Mohanty (Concept of Intentionality, 1972) is the first transformation of intentionality (In-der-Welt-Sein of the Dasein as Being-to-World or Being-in-the-World, depending on whose translation you use), and the subsequent transformation to Offenheit. In-der-Welt-Sein is clearly an intentional concept even if Heidegger used his own terms and not the German Intentionalität. Heidegger also deals specifically with intentionality in his 1904-5 lectures on the phenomenology of the inner time consciousness, stating it as a central problem in need of clarification. While Heidegger's views changed several times over time, intentionality as a concept was a major concern of his throughout. This is just a small taste of what is written. As for "bad reading", I see this as an individual's perception. If you feel it needs a rewrite, go for it, but I would have to ask why an entire rewrite based on the this perception, and I would suggest a little more homework on your part before you do. This is not solely an Anglo interpretation.Amerindianarts 02:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

RE:"I fear that statements like " Intentionality was an activity termed by Heidegger as "Sorge" (care) and reflected a positive aspect of Angst" are based more on anglo appropriations of Heidegger, like Dreyfus's, than the text of Sein und Zeit itself." I direct you to Heidegger's statement in paragraph 40 of Div. I, Chap. 6, "That in the face of which one has anxiety (das Wovor der Angst) is Being-in-the-World (In-der-Welt-Sein)as such". Paragraph 41 is also revealing to a common, not-entirely-Anglo-interpretation of care as the intentional concept. Amerindianarts 04:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I really don't understand how Heidegger's claim that anxiety is Dasein fleeing in the face of itself as Being-in-the-world demonstrates that the concept of intentionality is adequate to care. You assume this is somehow obvious. Can you explain? Also how exactly is care, defined as Dasein's Being as "ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world" (H192), the SAME as the concept you call intentionality? Why would we use this concept of intentionality, which was not used by Heidegger himself, to name concepts that Heidegger develops already and independently in his own language? I understand Heidegger but I don't understand "intentionality".--Agnaramasi 14:07, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

First, for a philosopher like Heidegger who created their own inventory of terms, how can you be transliteral and describe his terminology to the general reading public? Are you going to define his terms in terms of his other created terms? This doesn't make any sense. How does Macquarrie arrive at "anxiety" from Heidegger's the "face of Angst" (Wovor der Angst)? How does Mohanty and other philosophers arrive at the concept of intentionality from In-der-Welt-Sein. Heidegger was notorious for this type of terminology intended to avoid the use of "names" in a specific sense (Being and Nothing are the prime examples). The concept of intentionality is a concept of philosophy (ontology) and one which Heidegger inherited from Husserl's phenomenology, and changed to his own liking, and his own liking changed over time. The concept has underwent many transformations since Brentano first used it. Descriptive psychology has attempted to explain the concept away, or reduce it to a material rubble, but it remains in philosophy. It is not a moral concept as "intention" is, and should not be confused with "intension" (connotation), a term of comparison and contrast used by some philosophers. Rather than depend on me to give an understandable version it would be better if you read Mohanty, and his sources. If you have a good understanding of Heidegger, then the pieces will fall into place. The entry in this article is a paraphrasing intended to circumvent these problems and not spend a lot of time and space in explanation, and is indicative of the problem of using Wiki as a forum for philosophy articles and the thin boundary between journalistic or encyclopedic objectivity and Wiki's policy toward what some might consider original work. The concept of intentionality in Heidegger is deserving of its own Wiki article. I am not going to discourage you from editing the article, but you should familiarize yourself with intentionality rather than depend on me. Heidegger rejected Cartesian dualism and depicted both primordial (pre-ontological) and ontological moments of In-der-Welt-Sein. Dasein is in the world already but does not exist in itself. It exists as a state of self-transcendence. Consciousness is not purely inner, but is a perpetual self-transcendence. Disclosure of the facticity of Dasein as Being thrown into the world is a mode of ontological disclosure. The intentional character of Dasein is its temporality, and openness to being. Dasein's concern is overcoming the fallenness of facticity and thrownness and achieve the authentic state, or the unity disclosed in an openness to Being (see Conversation on a Country Path), and this is its intentional character. I go no further and think you can do better with your research, that is, if you really care. Amerindianarts 15:25, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

So you are saying that Heidegger's account of intentionality is captured in the strucuture of care by which he characterizes the Being of Dasein. So in a sense, Heidegger's theories contributed to the philosophical debate surrounding intentionality by collapsing the Cartesian subject/object dichotomy through the prior Being of the there as understanding and state-of-mind (upon which the present-at-hand subect and object are founded). But if Heidegger's contribution to intentionality, his revolution in intentionality, is located in his theory of care-structure, shouldn't the care-structure be elucidated prior to the discussion of its significance for the problematic of intentionality?

Also, I don't think its necessarily a lost cause clarifying Heidegger's terminology in terms of itself. This is not meant to be accessible to any "general reader". If a reader is seeking out a specialized article on Being and Time they are likely already acquainted with the text, or have some investment in the text.

I think someone who is more of a specialist in B&T than myself, and who has a better grasp of the original German, ought to give more satisforctory exegesis of the text as written by Heidegger. While I have read the entire text several times in translation, I am still only a student and don't feel qualified to pontificate encylopedically on it.--Agnaramasi 16:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, I think you would find it very worthwhile to research secondary works on Heidegger and intentionality. Amerindianarts 16:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree to a certain extent with User:Agnaramasi, intentionality is better used once in the article just to show where the idea of being-in-the-world came from in phenomenology. Since this article is on "Being and Time" not Heidegger's earliar work. I also don't like the use of the German word "Angst" since it is used in English already as in "teenage angst" and as a term for guilt or remorse or even anger. The translated term in my book is "anxiety". I also think it not so relevant to associate it here directly with intentionality. It comes into usage more in relation to the forgetfulness of being, fleeing from anxiety back to the "they-self" and with being-toward-death.Lucaas

Doesn't matter what you like, personal preferences are not a part of doing business here. Heidegger's term is "sich ängsten", which can be translated as anxiety or angst. The term angst is used quite often by authors in their summaries of Heidegger in regard to Death. Heidegger handles its relation to death and intentionality at H. 263-264 specifically, in reference to Dasein as authentically itself to the extent that it is concernful of Being-with and Being-alongside in its projection of its potentiality and the possibility of taking over its own inmost Being. "Death is Dasein's ownmost possibility" (H.263), and Being toward this possibility discloses to Dasein its ownmost possibility-for-Being (transcendence, intentionality). Confrontation with one's death is not anxiety, it is angst, specifically because of the task of taking over one's ownmost being. Heidegger uses "anticipation' as the possibility, but this is not the same as the task of capturing one's authentic state and ownmost possibility. Death is certain and we anticipate it, but in relation to authenticity it is angst. It may make us anxious, anticipating death, but angst is the task of our ownmost posiibility and the realization that there is nothing that can be done about our own death. Amerindianarts 15:41, 6 September 2006 (UTC)