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Chapter 3Heidegger’s Aristotelian Ethics

J. Jeremy Wisnewski

Heidegger and the Question of Ethics

Two central objections to any attempt to offer a Heideggerian account of ethics can be summed up as follows: First, Heidegger explicitly claims in several places in Being and Time that he is not interested in providing an evaluative analysis of the modes of Dasein’s existence. His interest, rather, is in fundamen-tal ontology—in providing an account of the structural features of Dasein’s exis-tence. Second, if Heidegger were interested in providing such an evaluative ac-count (or if he in fact is providing one given the evaluative terminology he uses), the results would be ethically disastrous. As one familiar line of interpre-tation has it, Heidegger’s account of Dasein privileges the “authentic” life over the inauthentic life. At the conclusion of Being and Time, one is left with the distinct impression that an authentic life—one in which Dasein is transparent to itself, and has separated itself from the public world of average everydayness—is to be preferred over the manner of existence characterized by “fallenness.”1

The problem with this, the criticism runs, is that Heidegger has committed him-self to an individualism that is anathema to recognizing our legitimate moral obligations to those other human beings we come across in our attempts to be authentic.

My aim in this paper is to challenge both of these criticisms. While I think we can take Heidegger at his word that the analysis of Dasein is non-evaluative, and hence that Heidegger is not trying to provide a normative ethics, it is never-theless the case that Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein provides a rich phenomeno-logical foundation for understanding the moral life. In fact, Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein stems from a close reading of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Like Aristotle, Heidegger is not interested in offering moral rules for living a moral life. Rather, starting from the point of view of everyday Dasein, both Heidegger and Aristotle are committed to showing that a particular kind of moral percep-

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58 J. Jeremy Wisnewski

tion is essential to the moral life. This manner of moral perception is essential to correctly understanding both the moral demands made on us as well as the proper role of moral philosophy.

I will also argue that the view that any Heideggerian ethics (or any Heideg-gerian foundation for ethics) commits us to an untenable individualism is simply mistaken. In fact, as I will suggest, Heidegger’s conception of authentic being-with also owes much to Aristotle, and in particular to Aristotle’s conception of friendship.

An Aristotelian Phenomenology of Ethical Life

Heidegger, by his own admission, is as deeply indebted to Aristotle as he is to any other philosophical ancestor.2 He is perhaps most deeply indebted to Book 6 of the Nicomachean Ethics—a part of the Aristotelian organon where Heidegger sees one of the earliest examples of originary ontological thinking.3 In dis-cussing the limits of reason in attaining the moral life, we find Aristotle at his most nuanced and profound. It is also here, I contend, that Aristotle shows us the deep relevance of phenomenology to the attempt to think through the moral dimension of human existence—a dimension that marks our most fundamental manner of Being-in-the-world.

In Book Z of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle distinguishes five modes “in virtue of which the soul possesses truth”: phronesis, techne, sophia, episteme, and nous (418; 1139b15). As Aristotle explains, these modes in which the world is disclosed pertain to different sorts of activities: sophia and episteme, for ex-ample, are concerned only with those things that cannot be otherwise; techne and phronesis, on the other hand, are always concerned with things that can be otherwise (techne is concerned with poesis, while phronesis is concerned with praxis). In this respect, these modes of disclosure can be distinguished according to the objects they make transparent. Sophia and episteme make Being transpar-ent in its pure actuality—they are concerned with those eternal truths that cannot be otherwise (sophia is episteme with nous—comprehension (1141a18)). We are able to cognize such things, when we do, with the part of our rational soul that Aristotle calls the epistemonikon. Techne and sophia, on the other hand, disclose the realm of becoming—they disclose potentiality, as that which can be other-wise. For this kind of cognition, we do not employ epistemonikon, but rather lo-gistikon, a distinct part of the rational soul characteristic of the zoon logon echon.

As Heidegger rightly points out in his 1924-25 lectures on Plato’s Sophist, Aristotle’s distinction of these five modes of disclosure

is an entirely original one. Therefore, it is wrong to say that there are two re-gions of Being, two fields, as it were, which are set beside one another in theo-

Heidegger’s Aristotelian Ethics 59

retical knowledge. Rather, this distinction articulates the world. It is the first general ontological distinction. (20)This can be seen, for instance, when we take Aristotle’s claim seriously that

“practical wisdom cannot be knowledge or art; not knowledge because that which can be done is capable of being otherwise, not art because action and making are different kinds of things” (420; 1140b1-3). This entails that the way we encounter the world in episteme—a disclosure of things through theorein—cannot adequately capture the way we encounter things in phronesis—a disclo-sure of things through praxis. Episteme, unlike phronesis, involves the capacity to demonstrate (syllogismos). The morally appropriate actions to be carried out, however, do not admit of such demonstration, but of deliberation (euboulia). While the objects of knowledge (purely actual Being) can be set out and demon-strated (once we perceive the first principles through nous, at any rate), actions cannot be so easily put into propositions. There are several reasons for this.

First, actions are unique to particular contexts. What the phronimos will do in a particular case will depend crucially on the circumstances. This is why the phronimos must rely on euboulia (deliberation)—as well as a consistent open-ness to the novelty of each new circumstance that discloses what is to be done (namely, eupraxis). Such a shift in circumstances, however, can have no effect on episteme, as episteme deals exclusively with the necessary and eternal. Sec-ond, and related, is the fact that phronesis always concerns the ultimate particu-lar: an action in a concrete context. Episteme, by contrast, is concerned with the universal.

These distinctions, we can see, are meant to articulate something about the way that the Greek language captures our understanding of modes of knowing. As Aristotle makes clear in numerous places, he is not attempting to impose a view of the modes of knowledge onto the practices of human beings. Rather, he is trying to make these practices—these modes of disclosure—more transparent. The very project of the Categories—to display the connection between logos and ontos—is also the project of the Ethics. This is one reason Aristotle thinks that we should pay attention to folk wisdom, despite the fact that it is undemon-strated: truth lies there, even if it isn’t the kind of truth we expect in episteme (1143b10).

Aristotle does not aim to invent concepts. This is why he so consistently grounds his work in “what is said,” and consistently reminds us that the most ba-sic principles are not subject to proof. Our competence as rational animals makes certain things apparent to us—and this includes the distinction between the manner of truth appropriate to episteme and the manner of truth appropriate to phronesis.

Heidegger takes Aristotle’s method here to be at least proto-phenomenolog-ical. Aristotle seeks “to grasp and to grasp ever more sharply what [these modes of disclosure] ordinarily mean” (21). The “most primitive ontological distinction does not arise primarily in a philosophical consideration but is a distinction of


natural Dasein itself; it is not invented but lies in the horizon in which the aletheuein of natural Dasein moves” (20). As Heidegger claims, “Aristotle demonstrates that his interpretation of Sophia and theorein is nothing else than Dasein’s own interpretation, made clear and raised in self-understanding” (46). Aristotle’s task is to “take up and select the opinions we—koinonia—already possess, i.e., the interpretations of the sophos in natural everyday Dasein, and to make this preliminary conception of Sophia more explicit and so make the inter-pretation found in natural Dasein more transparent” (65).

Taking the point of departure of natural Dasein, then, allows us to see one mode of disclosure that is often overlooked in our merely theoretical specula-tions. Heidegger calls phronesis “the gravest of all knowledge, since it is con-cerned with human existence itself” (93). “Phronesis dwells in praxis still more than in logos. What is decisive in phronesis is praxis. In phronesis, the praxis is arche and telos. In foresight toward determinate action, phronesis is carried out, and in the action itself it comes to its end” (96).

Aristotle makes explicit throughout Book Z of the Nicomachean Ethics that phronesis cannot be reduced to episteme: practical wisdom is not knowledge (construed scientifically).

That practical wisdom is not knowledge is evident; for it is, as has been said, concerned with the ultimate particular fact, since the thing to be done is of this nature. It is opposed, then, to comprehension (nous); for comprehension is of the definitions, for which no reason can be given, while practical wisdom is concerned with the ultimate particular, which is the object not of knowledge (episteme) but of perception (aesthesis)—not the perception of qualities pecu-liar to one sense but a perception akin to that by which we perceive that the par-ticular figure before us is a triangle . . . (424; 1142a23-29).

The explanation for the distinction between episteme and phronesis lies in the fact that these two modes of disclosure reveal different kinds of beings in the world (much as techne reveals something different from phronesis and epis-teme). This passage should not be read to indicate, however, that phronesis and nous (comprehension) are unrelated. The point here is that comprehension, un-derstood as a whole, has an object that phronesis does not have (namely, the def-initions). But nous is involved in phronesis, despite the fact that it is not only in-volved in phronesis.4

What is involved in this alternative, non-propositional and non-theoretical ethics? Put bluntly, phronesis, properly understood, involves perception—and perception of what is to be done. This should not be understood as simply as-senting to a proposition that maintains “x should be carried out.” Understood in this way, phronesis would be essentially assimilated to techne: there is a telos and an arche that is fundamentally distinct from acting Dasein. In techne, we be-gin with an object to be made, and our work results in said object. The telos (the object to be produced) is fundamentally distinct from the process that produces


it. The same cannot be said of phronesis, where “the telos of the action is noth-ing else than the action itself . . . This entire connection from the arche up to the telos is nothing else than the full Being of the action itself” (101-102).

Phronesis does not have an object (action) that is external to it and at which it aims. If this were the case, one could engage in moral action after the moment of clarity within phronesis passed. In other words, phronesis could subside prior to action. This is something that Aristotle rules out explicitly. The virtuous ac-tion is one done in the right way, at the right time, to the right person, and with the right kind of knowledge. Phronesis is thus not something that can be other-wise once it is obtained. The phronimos operates from a firm and unchanging character5 (presumably unlike those who do not possess phronesis). For an ac-tion to be properly moral, it is not enough that a phronimos decided to do it; it must also be the case that the phronimos carries it out.

Phronesis discloses the “entire context of acting Dasein, in its full situation” (101). But “phronesis . . . is not at all like spectating the situation and the action. . . it is not a study of the situation in which I find myself” (101). Rather, “in ev-ery step of the action, phronesis is co-constitutive. That means therefore that phronesis must make the action transparent from its arche up to its telos . . . phronesis is co-present, such that it co-constitutes the praxis itself” (101). Hei-degger explains:

If we now follow the structure of phronesis from its first beginning, this is the connection: the action, as that in favor of which I have resolved, is indeed an-ticipated; but in the anticipation, in the arche, the circumstances are characteris-tically not given, nor is that which belongs to the carrying out of the action. Rather, precisely out of the constant regard toward that which I have resolved, the situation should become transparent. (102)

Phronesis thus discloses the situation to the phronimos by presenting to the phronimos that which the phronimos has resolved to take seriously—namely, eupraxia, or good action. Phronesis thus also involves euboulia, or correct delib-eration and discernment. “Boule is the decision, the resolution . . . The elabora-tion of the concrete situation aims at making available the correct resoluteness as the transparency of the action” (103). The result of deliberation, however, is not propositional knowledge—“it is not some sort of proposition or cognition but is the bursting forth of the acting person as such” (103), “euboulia . . . is nothing else than the concrete mode of carrying out phronesis” (107). Thus, the inspection of phronesis, Heidegger contends, is “not a mere inspection but a cir-cumspection” (112).

Phronesis also enables the theoretical life—the bios theoretikos. Although Aristotle defends the view that contemplation (theoria) is that which we ought, above all else, to pursue, it is not something that anyone can pursue at any time they like. The life of true eudaimonia cannot exist without mastering the moral virtues. “The soul of the student must first have been cultivated by means of


habits for noble joy and noble hatred, like earth which is to nourish the seed” (474; 1179b24-26).

The moral virtues are thus essential for making the bios theoretikos possi-ble. The mistake one might make—but which Aristotle emphatically does not make—is to think that the moral virtues can be perfected (and that the bios theo-retikos can thus be made possible) through the intellect alone. Although we are essentially animals with logos—and with a rational part of the soul capable of guiding action—we are not only this. Dasein is of a compound nature, on Aristo-tle’s view. We are animals with both reason and passion, and our moods are as important to how we act and how we understand the world as is our capacity for reason (a point that Heidegger himself insists on). If our moods were less essen-tial to our being, it should be possible, through argument, to direct Dasein through logos alone. As Aristotle insists, however, this is simply not so. “It is hard, if not impossible, to remove by arguments the traits that have long since been incorporated in the character” (474; 1179b16-17).

It is at this point that we see the stumbling block of both rationalistic and normative ethics. A proposition exhorting a particular action—even one that is suitably justified by argument—is very often (perhaps usually) insufficient for action. The problem with a strictly rationalist and prescriptivist approach is that it presumes the source of failure to engage in moral action is in a failure of ratio-nality itself. By correcting this failure—either by informing someone of un-known facts that will inform the reasoning process, or by correcting some shoddy inferences—the prescriptivist thinks she will be able to correct moral failure generally.6

What is ignored in the prescriptivist view is the significant background world against which any argument will be made and understood. In hearing even the most convincing argument, one may well refrain from acting on that argu-ment—perhaps because they fail to see its implications, but more likely because one can simply assume that the argument in question will have some (as yet un-seen) fatal flaw. There is nothing unreasonable about this. After all, most argu-ments wind up leaving out some crucial information, ignoring some relevant ob-jection, or being otherwise incomplete. It is thus not enough to simply have in one’s possession a wonderful argument. One must also accept that the argument is authoritative. Doing so, I am contending (in the spirit of both Aristotle and Heidegger), is not itself a matter of rationality.

Aristotle, of course, recognizes this as a feature of inquiry in general, and not simply as a feature of practical moral action. At the most fundamental level—at the level of first principles—what one accepts simply cannot be demon-strated. In fact, as Aristotle remarks, seeking a demonstration of first principles is the mark of an uneducated man.7 Apprehending first principles, then, is not a matter of rationality at all. As Aristotle remarks in a striking passage, cognition of first principles is a matter of perception—of sight.8


This same insight is carried over into the ethics. It is simply not enough to be told what the mean is (for example). To be moral involves seeing what a par-ticular circumstance requires, and responding to these requirements in a particu-lar way. No rule book—no rational prescription, and not rational procedure—will ever bring one from moral blindness to moral sight. The explanation of this is, in fact, rather straightforward: a failure of sight is not a failure of reason. What will correct a failure of sight will thus not be correcting whatever reason-ing accompanies it.

The phronimos, in Aristotle, sees things correctly, and hence responds to them correctly. This is true not only in terms of what the phronimos does. It is also true in terms of how the phronimos is in particular contexts. In seeing what is required, and in responding appropriately, the phenomenological world of the phronimos is simply not the same as the phenomenological world of the hoi pol-loi. To have phronesis is to have the world presented to one in a particular way. Phronesis is a way of seeing—one which is intimately connected to the moods in which the phronimos has her being.9

Heidegger, Aristotle, and Being-with

Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein centers around some central concepts that seem to be fundamentally concerned with questions of value, despite his seeming protestations to the contrary. Among the most central, of course, is Heidegger’s account of Being-with. As Heidegger argues,“the world is always the one I share with Others. The world of Dasein is a with-world. Being-in is Being-with Oth-ers” (155). Importantly, this is not to be understood as the trivial claim that hu-man beings are around other human beings. Rather, Heidegger intends to cap-ture something he sees Aristotle as having captured: Dasein is a zoon politikon—an animal that has its being in a polis, in a koinonia, a community. To try to understand Dasein apart from its social existence is to fail to understand Dasein. Heidegger sees precisely this analysis in Aristotle. As Heidegger claims, Aristo-tle “wants to show that the polis, a characteristic way of being-together, is not brought to humans by chance, but rather that the polis is the being-possibility, phusei, that itself lies enclosed and traced out in advance in the human being’s genuine being” (35).10

As Heidegger puts it, “being-with and the facticity of Being with one an-other are not based on the occurrence together of several subject” (157). Our pri-mary relation to others is fundamentally unlike our relation to objects that we encounter. Heidegger characterizes the concern we have for others as Fürsorge, sometimes translated as “solicitude.” The more literal “caring for” captures the concern of Dasein at some expense, as it suggests (to many, at any rate) a kind of emotional attachment to other Dasein. Heidegger’s point is more fundamental


than that: we encounter other Dasein as the kinds of beings that can make de-mands on us; that we cannot simply ignore.11

This comes out in Heidegger’s choice of a term that can also translate “wel-fare work.” Fürsorge (welfare work)

as a factical social arrangement, is grounded in Dasein’s state of Being as Be-ing-with. Its factical urgency gets its motivation in that Dasein maintains itself proximally and for the most part in the deficient modes of solicitude. Being for, against, or without one another, passing one another by, not ‘mattering’ to one another—these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is precisely these last-named deficient and indifferent modes that characterize everyday, average Be-ing-with-one-another. (158)

Emphasizing the ontological nature of this assertion is crucial to under-standing it. Heidegger is not saying that we should exist among other Dasein in non-deficient solicitude. His aim is to articulate our being, not to pass normative judgment on it. This is entirely compatible, however, with an ethics of solici-tude. The crucial point to note here is that Heidegger has not yet (and, as it turns out, never will) move from the ontological to the normative. In passages such as the one above, he is characterizing our own moral phenomenology, not trying to invent it. Thus, like Aristotle, Heidegger begins with what we all already take for granted: there are different modes of Being-with, some of which we regard as deficient, and others of which we do not.

This descriptive approach to normativity, however, should not be read as an opposition to ethical action. As we’ve seen in Heidegger’s analysis of phronesis, demanding of someone to behave in a particular manner often misunderstands the nature of moral phenomenology. For those who do not have phronesis, no propositional set of commands will ever bring them to the point where they see other Dasein appropriately. What is required, rather, is a change in one’s moral perception—a change that, at least according to Aristotle, can be achieved only through action. Likewise, we should not dismiss Heidegger’s analysis as irrele-vant to ethics. Just the opposite is the case. Heidegger’s analysis of authenticity is meant to present an account of the structural features one form of solicitude might take. This form, moreover, lines up with Heidegger’s account of Aristo-tle’s phronesis.

To make this case plausibly, we need to further develop some of the central features of Being-with, and see how these line up with Heidegger’s explication of Aristotelian ethics.

As Being-with, Dasein “is essentially for the sake of Others” (160). More-over, “Knowing oneself is grounded in Being-with, which understands primor-dially” (161). “So far as Dasein is at all, it has Being-with-one-another as its kind of Being” (163).

Inauthenticity “disburdens Dasein of its Being” (165)—and this includes disburdening us of non-deficient modes of solicitude. This disburdening, a cen-


tral feature of inauthenticity, is the same kind of disburdening that occurs in our average everyday moral action. We appeal to rules, acting as though these indi-vidual sentences are sufficiently capable of appropriately determining courses of action. Of course, as part of average, everyday understanding, rules cannot do mere than gesture at moral action. They are good, as Aristotle points out, for the moral novice; they are useless for the phronimos. This stems from the way in which rules level down the complexities of a situation, forcing it into the extant categories implicit in the moral rules we’re familiar with. Heidegger sees pre-cisely this tendency in the “they.”

The common sense of the “they” knows only the satisfying of manipulable rules and public norms and the failure to satisfy them. It reckons up infractions of them and tries to balance them off. It has slunk away from its ownmost Be-ing-guilty so as to be able to speak more loudly making “mistakes” (334).

Recognizing one’s primordial guilt is a recognition of the infinite nature of our obligations to others. We are Being-with. To be obligated to ourselves is still to be obligated to those around us. Authenticity—and Heidegger is incredibly clear on this point—does not involve rejecting the inauthentic. This is impossi-ble. Rather, authenticity involves an appropriation of the inauthentic.12

Heidegger offers no clues as to the content of an authentic life—and this is deliberate. What he does offer, however, is an account of what structural fea-tures authenticity will involve. Unlike inauthentic, average, everyday comport-ment, the authentic life is one where in which Dasein recognizes the kind of be-ing it is, and does so without illusion.

Once again, the parallels with Aristotle are striking: the phronimos is one who understands the ergon and arête of human beings, and seeing this clearly (rather than relying on, say, moral rules that the hoi polloi regard as universal) allows the phronimos to live with excellence in the polis—to have the kind of being appropriate to human Dasein.

Of course, it might be objected that Heidegger’s analysis of authenticity seems to entail a kind of separation from the “they.” This, it seems to me, is a disastrous misreading. Aside from simply ignoring the several places where Hei-degger specifically points out that the inauthentic is a part of us essentially, and hence cannot be set aside or “overcome,” this view also simply ignores that the existentiale of Dasein have alternative modes that co-vary with one’s capacity to see oneself clearly. Thus, much as there is an inauthentic mode of Being-with, there is also an authentic mode of Being-with. It is here, I think, that we see some core Aristotelian elements relevant to any moral philosophy.

Because the moral life involves a kind of perception, we should not under-stand the phronimos as knowing in advance what to do in every action. Rather, the phronimos has made a resolution to seek the good in every situation, and to deliberate about how best to achieve this. In the 1924-25 lectures on Plato’s Sophist, Heidegger identifies phronesis with conscience. Based on this, it is a


short step to understanding Heidegger’s account of wanting-to-have-a-con-science as at least analogous to the resolution of the phronimos to find arête in all action—to be resolved to find arête despite not knowing, in advance, what situations will emerge and how precisely to deal with these situations.

Wanting-to-have-a-conscience “brings one without Illusions into the reso-luteness of ‘taking action’” (358). This is precisely how Heidegger describes the moral phenomenology of the phronimos: the phronimos has resolved to repeat the decision to act with arête, despite the obscurity of the future. In this respect, the phronimos’ comportment to the world is one of anticipatory resoluteness (as described in Division II of Being and Time). This does not entail that there is no moral content in the actions of the phronimos. The desire for such content mis-understands the very nature of phronetic action—it is non-articulate, and con-cerned fundamentally with the concrete particulars of an action.

We miss a “positive” content in that which is called, because we expect to be told something currently useful about assured possibilities of ‘taking action’ which are available and calculable. This expectation has its basis within the horizon of that way of interpreting which belongs to common sense concern—a way of interpreting that forces Dasein’s existence to be subsumed under the idea of a business procedure that can be regulated (340).

1 This is the kind of criticism leveled against Heidegger by Martin Buber, Karl Lowith, and Emmanuel Levinas, to name just a few.

2 See “My way to phenomenology”3 See Plato’s Sophist, p. 20.4 Aristotle writes: “both the primary definitions and the ultimates are ob-

jects of comprehension and not of argument, and in demonstrations compre-hension grasps the unchangeable and primary definitions, while in practical reasoning it grasps the last and contingent fact, i.e. the second proposition [in a practical syllogism]” (427; 1143a35-1143b2). The translation is from A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J.L. Ackrill, Princeton, 1987.

5 Nicomachean Ethics, 380; 1105a36. 6 Typically understood, even weakness of will counts as a failure of rationality. 7 See Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 4, 267; 1006. 8 “[Phronesis] is of the ultimate particular, of which there is not scientific know-

ledge but perception—not sensory perception, but like the perception whereby we per-ceive that the triangle is the ultimate particular in geometry” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1142a27-29).

9 This, of course, is precisely the view that Heidegger articulates when discussing moods in Being and Time.

10 Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer.

11 It is this aspect of Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, I would contend, that Levinas fails to adequately capture in his critique of Heidegger.

12 See Being and Time, 168, 224, 265, 312, 345-6, 354, and 422, for example.


When we understand that Heidegger thought Aristotle had discovered con-science in the idea of phronesis, the view Heidegger takes of conscience be-comes much more transparent: to want to have a conscience, in Heidegger’s on-tology of Dasein, is to be open to the concrete context of action in its particular-ity.

Resoluteness gives itself the current factical Situation, and brings itself into that Situation. The Situation cannot be calculated in advance or presented like something present-at-hand which is waiting for someone to grasp it. It merely gets disclosed in a free resolving which has not been determined beforehand but is open to the possibility of such determination . . . it simply cannot become rigid as regards the situation, but must understand that the resolution, in accor-dance with its own meaning as a disclosure, must be held open and free for the content of the factical possibility (355).

The notion of Dasein’s guilt, in my view, should be read with this in mind: the moral life is not neatly articulable into a set of universal rules. Our “guilt” is more primordial than that, and this primordiality captures the basis of our lives as moral animals. “This essential Being-guilty is, equiprimordially, the existen-tial condition for the possibility of the ‘morally’ good and for that of the ‘morally’ evil—that is, for morality in general and for the possible forms that this might take factically” (332).

One sense of Being-guilty, Heidegger points out, involves being the basis of someone else’s lack. When I owe something to another Dasein, I am guilty. As Heidegger explicitly remarks, this kind of Being-guilty—being indebted to an-other Dasein on the basis of a “breach of a ‘moral requirement,’ is a kind of Be-ing which belongs to Dasein” (328). We are moral animals, and our existence simply involves our guilt before other Dasein. Being responsible is part of the being of Dasein. Thus, Heidegger contends, “if one takes ‘laden with moral guilt’ as a ‘quality’ of Dasein, one has said very little” (328). One has said very little because the nature of existential guilt has not been clarified, and this guilt is the basis for factical moral guilt. It also says very little, however, because one has simply asserted a well-known feature of Dasein’s being—namely, that Da-sein is the moral animal through and through. Heidegger sees our existential guilt as rooted in our Being-with. He also see the possibility of authentically be-ing-with other Dasein as constituting a different mode of Being-with.

But might it be the case that authenticity, given that it involves no concrete prescriptions, might actually prevent our engagement in the world of praxis? Perhaps surprisingly, Heidegger says just the opposite: It is our inauthentic mode of Being-with that prevents action. One need not act; or, if one does act, one simply acts in whatever way one is thought to be required to act. The prob-lem here, of course, is that what “they” say we should do fails to capture the


unique possibilities of our Being—and it fails to authentically recognize and de-liberate about the concrete situations that we must live through.

Recognizing our own frailty, Heidegger thinks, involves recognizing our fundamental immersion in the world of everyday Dasein. This, I think, is the core reason behind the close connection between authenticity and our Being-to-wards-death (see BT, 358, for example). No matter how much we might like to escape our predicament, authenticity requires facing it with “sober understand-ing” (358). Only in the discernment of the situation that reveals our being-with-others can we hope to become truly what we are—can we hope to achieve au-thentic Being-with.

Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle: A Partial Defense

Heidegger’s appropriation of phronesis, arête, techne, and eudaimonia, as we have seen, match up with some of the central concepts of Being and Time. Fran-sisco Gonzalez has argued, however, that “these concepts emerge from Heideg-ger’s transformations with the ghostly remnant of an ethical connotation. . . but one that is a complete inversion and perversion of their ethical meaning in Aristotle” (129).13 Specifically, “techne becomes the sole and guiding per-spective in Heidegger’s account of the agathon” (130). Heidegger excludes

from our relation to the good of any deliberate choice, desire, or decision. This should not surprise us since this is precisely what Heidegger must do in order to interpret the agathon ontologically as a way of being. Our relation to the good is to be located in our existing, not in our acting, desiring, deliberating, or choosing. Heidegger’s reading of the very first sentence of Aristotle’s Ethics has already succeeded in transforming ethics into ontology (131).

For Gonzalez, Heidegger’s analysis leads to “the collapse of any distinction between ethics and ontology” (133). Heidegger’s analysis is “evident distortion” (135). “We have here an absolutization of human existence that runs completely counter to Aristotle’s ethics” (135). Specifically, “in the case of ethics Aristotle would not make human existence its own end, despite the emphasis he gives to self-sufficiency.” (136). The evidence for this comes from Book 10, where Aris-totle reminds us that the complete life of happiness involves “what is divine in one,” and not merely one’s human characteristics (1177b9).

Aristotle, however, defends the claim that, in analyzing the good, we will not be able to determine any universal idea of the good. The most we can do, rather, is to specify the good for a particular being, given the kind of being it is. So, while it might be the case that Aristotle wouldn’t make human being its own end, he does think that there is an end appropriate to human existence, and that

13 “Beyond or Beneath Good and Evil?” in Heidegger and the Greeks


this is as precise an account of the good as we can hope to get. It might be the case, however, that Gonzalez is suggesting that Aristotle claims the end unique to human beings is to be more than human by actualizing what is divine in our nature. To make this claim plausible, however, ‘the divine’ that is characteristic of the bios theoretikos would have to be fundamentally distinct from human life as such. But the rigid separation between the divine and the human does not make sense in this context. After all, there is something divine about human be-ing. It isn’t that we must try to be non-human to attain eudaimonia. As Aristotle notes, the element that is our “natural ruler” is “the divine element in us,” not the divine as such. To attain eudaimonia involves the attempt

to live in accordance with the best thing in us; for even it be small in bulk, much more does it in power and worth surpass everything. This would seem ac-tually to be each man, since it is the authoritative and better part of him (471; 1177b34-36).

As creatures in the great chain of being, we share features with both divinity and animality—we possess nous and nutrition; logos and perception. A human can live a life of an animal (one devoted merely to pleasure), but one can also live a life according to those features of human beings that are shared with the divine. To live according to “what is divine in one” thus need not entail that hu-man existence is not its own end. In fact, to call anything other than the use of what separates us from lower animals “human existence” is to speak homony-mously. Our divine part, Aristotle says, “seems to be man, since it is the authori-tative and better part of him.” A properly human life will be a life where our ani-mal nature (our desires, moods, and so on) are lived in light of logos—and hence in light of what is divine in us. Hence, Gonzalez’s objection that human Dasein cannot be its own end because we must live ‘like the divine’ simply does not work: our end is to be what we are—which happens to involve a “divine part.” As Aristotle sums this up, “the life according to intellect is best and pleasantest, since intellect more than anything else is each man” (471; 1178a7-8).

Gonzalez raises a second objection as well:

while eudaimonia is certainly a way of being of human beings, it cannot be identified with human being (Dasein) as such. Eudaimonia is a specific way of being that has yet to be defined. This is why Aristotle believes that the ultimate human telos remains undefined even after it has been shown to be eudaimonia. . . if Aristotle were to agree that the ultimate human good and telos is Dasein, he would do so only with the qualification that the human bad is also Dasein (136).

Gonzalez, in my view, is not being as charitable as he might be to Heideg-ger here. After all, Aristotle does determine the good of human being by appeal to the proper and unique functions it has. “If happiness is activity in accordance


with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us” (469; 1177a11-13). Even in immoral Dasein, the logos is still present—and so is eudaimonia, at least as an ontological potentiality. This is precisely what Aristotle must say, given his account of change in Physics and elsewhere: it is possible for Dasein to become a Eudaimon because Dasein already is a eudaimon potentially. But this is a po-tentiality that most be brought to actuality through Dasein itself. There is thus never a time at which Dasein is not constituted by its ultimate functions, as well as the normative demands these functions have. Gonzalez is right to think of eu-daimonia as one way of being, but he is mistaken in thinking that this point is opposed to what Heidegger is arguing. As a possibility of being, and one that is Dasein’s own, eudaimonia is an ontological possibility rooted in our manner of being. In this respect, one should understand eudaimonia as having an ontologi-cal status analogous to authenticity in Being and Time.

This reading, I think, sufficiently answers Gonzalez’s worries. Gonzalez is of course correct that this leads Heidegger to think of arête as a kind of “serious-ness” about one’s utmost possibility for being, and that Heidegger suggests that “arête is nothing more than the genuine being-there of one’s possibility of be-ing” (137). Unlike Gonzalez, however, I see nothing objectionable in this per se. Eudaimonia is attained as human beings live out their potentiality for being-what-they-are—namely, animals with logos. Taking the role of this core poten-tiality seriously means living according to it—something, it seems to me, that Aristotle would be happy to include in the significance of arête.

Friendship and Authenticity: Combating Perceived Individualism

In explicating Aristotle, Heidegger claims that “phronesis is in each case new” (39). This is meant to distinguish it from techne. Heidegger thinks that, with phronesis, “there is no possibility of falling into forgetting” (39). This leads him to claim that Aristotle, in the idea of phronesis, “has here come across the phe-nomenon of conscience. phronesis is nothing other than conscience set into mo-tion, making an action transparent. Conscience cannot be forgotten” (39).

As we’ve seen, this corresponds to Heidegger’s analysis of the call of con-science in Division II of Being and Time. Here, Heidegger argues that answering the call of conscience is always a possibility for Dasein—indeed, it is part of Dasein’s ontological make-up to be capable of hearing the call. We cover-up the call, however, so we should not regard our inability to “forget” the call as on par with always hearing it, or hearing it rightly. This is surely not the case. We fall into average everydayness—and hence away from the uniqueness of phronesis, and away from the call of individual conscience to act in particular ways—but we do not forget the call in a way that would make it inaccessible.


hearing constitutes the primary and authentic way in which Dasein is open to its ownmost potentiality for being—as in hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it . . . (Being and Time, 206).

There are at least two plausible readings of this passage. First, Heidegger might be appealing to our closest instances of Being-with—friends that enable us to see ourselves more transparently in certain cases (and there is an obvious connection to Aristotle here). The alternative reading of this passage would be that “the” friend carried around by every Dasein is one’s conscience. Support for this latter reading is to be found in Heidegger’s discussion of the call of con-science in Section 57, where it is “hearing the call” that enables one to have a moment of vision.

Of course, there are serious difficulties in understanding the status of this “call” and the hearing that accompanies it. In fact, it is all too easy to read this section as the re-insertion of a kind of dualism within the Being of Dasein—a reading that makes Dasein essentially two things—what-it-is and its ownmost possibility. Reading the call of conscience in this manner, of course, is disas-trous for Heidegger, as “Dasein is its possibilities.” Moreover, Dasein’s ‘that-it-is’ is always to be understood in terms of Dasein’s thrown Being-in-the-world.

The “that it is and has to be” which is disclosed in Dasein’s state-of-mind [Befindlichkeit] is not the same “that-it-is” which expresses ontologico-catego-rially the factuality belonging to presence-at-hand. . . The “that-it-is” with is disclosed in Dasein’s state-of-mind must rather be conceived as an existential attribute of the entity which has Being-in-the-world as its way of Being (174).

To conceive of Dasein as disjointed—as both the call of conscience towards one’s ownmost potentiality for Being and as a “that-it-is” separated from this call—comes dangerously close to regarding Dasein as non-unified, and hence as two parts standing in a particular relation. This way of characterizing Dasein, however, cannot be correct, as it seems to reduce Dasein to the merely present-at-hand.

One way of solving the problem of the call of conscience, then, is to read this remark in light of the above quotation regarding “the friend” of Dasein. On this view, the call of conscience is the call of the friend—a call toward and from authentic Being-with. Hence, the conscience is not another “part” of Dasein. It is, in essence, Dasein’s very essence as Being-with. This view, in turn, makes sense of some of Heidegger’s earlier remarks about Being-with. Consider, for example, Heidegger’s claim that

There is also the possibility of a kind of solicitude which does not so much leap in for the Other as leap ahead of him [ihm vorausspringt] in his existentiell po-tentiality-for-being, not in order to take away his “care” but rather to give it back to him authentically as such for the first time. This kind of solicitude per-


tains essentially to authentic care—that is, to the existence of the Other, not to a ‘what’ with which he is concerned; it helps the other to become transparent to himself in his care and to become free for it (159).

This suggests that Being-with is the ground for authenticity in two distinct senses. First, it is an existential condition for the possibility of authenticity, as one must inhabit a public realm prior to being able to appropriate this world au-thentically. More interestingly, though, this passage suggests that a particular Being-with grounds authenticity (or might so ground it) in the existentiell sense. One way a Dasein can “care for” another Dasein is to make that Dasein see itself for what it is—namely, thrown being-towards-death.

There is additional support for the view that the “conscience” of Dasein is in fact another Dasein, rather than Dasein itself, calling to itself. (Recall that, as Mitsein, we are constituted by our relations with others, so we should not think of another Dasein calling to us as conscience as an attempt of another indepen-dent “subject” attempting to break into our subjectivity. As Heidegger insists, this ontic conception of Dasein misses its ontological character completely). Heidegger explicitly claims that “when Dasein is resolute, it can become the ‘conscience’ of Others” (344). This suggests that the first reading of the above passage is correct. In speaking of “hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it,” Heidegger does not mean “conscience” construed in the normal sense. He means, rather, the existentiell relations that Dasein has—rela-tions which, in principle, make authenticity possible.

Admittedly, the definite article here is perplexing. Why doesn’t Heidegger speak of “a friend” rather than “the friend” that Dasein carries with it? The Ger-man, however, does not suggest “the” in the same strong sense that the English does. The phrase “hearing the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it” is a translation of “als Hören der Stimme des Freundes, den jedes Da-sein bei sich trägt” (163). The use of “the” here, admittedly, can still be read as picking out a single friend that all Dasein “bei sich trägt.” It is much more plau-sible, however, to read “the,” here in the genitive, as functioning primarily as a possessive and only secondarily as a definite article. Hence, this passage might just as easily be understood as asserting that Dasein carries with it a particular friend whose voice calls to that Dasein.

My suggestion is that this passage provides, in outline, Heidegger’s ac-knowledgment of the importance of friendship in the authentic life. Aristotle ex-plicitly defends the view that friendship is crucial for the moral life. Aristotle also remarks explicitly that “The friend is another self.” If my reading of Hei-degger’s account of authentic Being-with is on track, Heidegger agrees. It is only through authentic Being-with that we will see the genuine needs of the Oth-ers who make demands on us.14 The moral life cannot articulate these demands adequately, as morality is always grounded in the concrete situation, and in-

14 See 208, Being and Time, for example.


volves an appropriate kind of perception of these demands. While Heidegger has not provided a prescriptive ethics, we should understand this as a return to the moral phenomenology of Aristotle rather than as a rejection of the task of moral philosophy altogether.

Conclusion: Lessons for the Moral Philosopher

The idea of the solitary thinker, conjuring up moral norms and then acting on them, has been a wrong turn in the history of ethics. The extent to which this model of ethical reflection can be attributed to figures in the history of philoso-phy, of course, is an open one.15 Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein, however, pro-vides us with resources for understanding the moral life as a communal one, and as one in which phenomenology will play a crucial role—the role it is to play, I contend, is precisely the role that phronesis plays in Aristotle’s moral thinking.

But let me concede that it isn’t clear to me that Heidegger was dialogic enough. It is difficult to read Being and Time without hearing the individualist ethos of existentialism. But there is good reason, as I have hopefully shown, to think that there is at least as much room for ethics in Being and Time as there is in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. This is not the sort of ethics that would ap-peal to those seeking universal rules, but satisfaction is not the measure of ade-quacy for any grounding for ethics. What should matter, as both Heidegger and Aristotle see, is that we adequately account for the phenomenon in question. By recognizing that a kind of perception is required for moral action—and that this kind of perception allows us to see the proper actions available to us given the kind of beings that we are—Heidegger and Aristotle, I contend, present a viable alternative to our current, dominant, prescriptivist obsessions in moral philoso-phy.

Notes

1. This is the kind of criticism leveled against Heidegger by Martin Buber, Karl Lowith, and Emmanuel Levinas, to name just a few.

2. See “My way to phenomenology.”3. See Plato’s Sophist, p. 20.4. Aristotle writes: “both the primary definitions and the ultimates are objects of

comprehension and not of argument, and in demonstrations comprehension grasps the un-changeable and primary definitions, while in practical reasoning it grasps the last and contingent fact, i.e., the second proposition [in a practical syllogism]” (427; 1143a35-1143b2). The translation is from A New Aristotle Reader, ed. J.L. Ackrill, Princeton, 1987.

5. Nicomachean Ethics, 380; 1105a36. 6. Typically understood, even weakness of will counts as a failure of rationality.


7. See Metaphysics, Book IV, Chapter 4, 267; 1006. 8. “[Phronesis] is of the ultimate particular, of which there is not scientific know-

ledge but perception—not sensory perception, but like the perception whereby we per-ceive that the triangle is the ultimate particular in geometry” (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics 1142a27-29).

9. This, of course, is precisely the view that Heidegger articulates when discussing moods in Being and Time.

10. Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy, trans. Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B. Tanzer.

11. It is this aspect of Heidegger’s analytic of Dasein, I would contend, that Levinas fails to adequately capture in his critique of Heidegger.

15 A more nuanced reading of Kant, I would argue, does not saddle him with this view. Seeing this, however, requires abandoning some of the orthodoxy that surrounds the interpretation of Kant’s texts. I have tried to do this in some respects in my Wittgen-stein and Ethical Inquiry.


12. See Being and Time, 168, 224, 265, 312, 345-6, 354, and 422, for example.13. “Beyond or Beneath Good and Evil?” in Heidegger and the Greeks.14. See 208, Being and Time, for example.15. A more nuanced reading of Kant, I would argue, does not saddle him with this

view. Seeing this, however, requires abandoning some of the orthodoxy that surrounds the interpretation of Kant’s texts. I have tried to do this in some respects in my Wittgen-stein and Ethical Inquiry.


Notes

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