heidegger's 10924 clearing of the affects using aristotle ... · heidegger’s 1924 clearing...

HEIDEGGER’S 1924 CLEARING OF THE AFFECTSUSING ARISTOTLE’S RHETORIC, BOOK II

Lou Agosta

In Being and Time, Heidegger famouslynotes that the analysis of the affects (pathe\) hastaken barely one step forward since book II ofAristotle’s Rhetoric (H139).1

The occasion for this reengagement withthe possibility of a “step forward” is the avail-ability of Heidegger’s lecture course at theUniversity of Marburg in 1924 on the BasicConcepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. Thiscourse, which includes a detailed analysis ofbook II of the Rhetoric, has been published asvolume 18 of Heidegger’s Gesamtausgabe(2002) and just translated (2009).2 HereHeidegger’s penetrating but sparse remarks inBeing and Time on Befindl ichkei t[“affectivity”] are deepened and implementedin his reading of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

The relevance of this reengagement is di-rect. The dominant view of the affects in con-temporary philosophy is arguably the positionthat affects are an unclearly expressed proposi-tion, including the cognitively articulatedpropositional attitude. The position of this es-say is that the modern propositional account ofthe affects is cleared away by and does not sur-vive a reading of Heidegger’s volume 18 onbook II of Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

Lest someone think this is a trivial matter,the long and distinguished tradition goingback to the Stoics, in which affects are indis-tinct cognitions that require clarification, iswell articulated in modern times by AnthonyKenny and then in Martha Nussbaum’s monu-mental Upheavals of Thought: The Intelli-gence of Emotions.3

Nussbaum’s position, in particular, ishighly nuanced, and it is an oversimplificationto say that she is merely a cognitivist about theaffects (emotions), pure and simple. One canget to a cognitivist account in at least twoways: first, bottom up, by saying that affectsare unclear cognitions (“thoughts”); alterna-tively, one can redefine the boundary betweenaffectivity and cognition top down such thatthinking becomes infused with affection—pardon the expression, more “touchy-feely”—

that is, affects feedback into thought and en-able the eruptions of thought of the kind thatproduce paradigm shifts in science, creativityin art, and personality transformation in ther-apy. These eruptions are a function of theaffectivity of thinking. The boundary is trans-gressed not only from affectivity to cognition,but in the reverse direction as well, yielding aquality of thought that is densely suffused withan emotional tonality such as that exemplifiedin musicality. Nevertheless, I shall includeNussbaum’s contribution as belonging to thecognitivist approach because, ultimately, evenif she is able to translate partially between thetwo, she fights continuously against theincommensurability of thoughts and affects. Infact, Heidegger explicitly warns against thesecond, top down account—any cognitive de-termining of Befindlichkeit is confused withsurrendering science ontically to feeling(H138).

Rhetoric is the art of doing things withwords, even in a performative sense of speak-ing a world of commitments into existence inthe community (polis), and Heidegger givesmatters a strikingly innovative twist. The hori-zon of this speaking turns out to be acoustics—hearing. The work of rhetoric is speaking andlistening to one another about what matters:“rhetoric is nothing other than the discipline inwhich the self-interpretation of being-there[existence] is explicitly fulfilled. Rhetoric isnothing other than the interpretation of con-crete being-there [existence], the hermeneuticof being-there itself” (1924: 76). Aristotle’sRhetoric is for those speakers and listeners—like Heidegger and his audience—whose exis-tence is an issue for them. The three major dis-tinctions or pisteis (views) of the Rhetoric areengaged: character (e\thos), affect (pathos),and speech (logos). While the pathe\ in whichthe world is disclosed as mattering to humanbeing ultimately cannot be completely articu-lated and exhausted by e\thos or logos (ornous), diverse domains of relatedness areavailable where our being-with-one-another

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shows up in the speaking and acting in thepolis, where “polis” is used in the broad senseof engaging with one another as members ofthe same human community (1924: 72) ofagents and doers.4

The distinction “Befindlichkeit”—how onefinds oneself situated affectively—does notoccur in volume 18 as an explicit distinction,but is in the background. But reading the textsfrom this volume as modern readers, we can-not help but bring distinctions such asBefindlichkeit, Verstehen, Auslegung, andRede from the existential analytic of Dasein toour reading. It requires an effort of the imagi-nation to momentarily quarantine such distinc-tions, which would only first formally occurexplicitly in Being and Time, to appreciate theoriginality, power, and perhaps even shock ofHeidegger’s interpretation as it must havesounded in 1924 to those hearing his lecturesin the class for the first time. Consider:

These pathe, “affects,” are not states pertainingto ensouled things, but are concerned with a dis-position of living things in their world, in themode of being positioned towards something,allowing a matter to matter to it. The affectsplay a fundamental role in the determination ofbeing-in-the-world, of being-with-and-to-wards-others. (1924: 83)

Affects determine being-in-the-world andbeing-with-and-towards-others. Affects showup as “making a difference,” as “mattering.”This “making a difference” is what it meanswhen Heidegger says the Befindlichkeit—histerminology for the complex of moods, emo-tions, sensations, passions, and the felt aspectsof existence—is that out of which somethingin the world (already) matters to an individ-ual’s existence (Heidegger 1927: H137–38).5

Individual human existence is not merely orpurely spontaneous. Dasein is not only or al-ways the cause. Rather, Dasein is also at the ef-fect of circumstances—and, thus, affected.Dasein is at the effect of its affects, which dis-close the world, its situation and Dasein in it.Affects deliver Dasein over to such contin-gency—thrownness and the related facticity.The situation disclosed in affectivity is thesource of what makes the context engage theindividual in such a way that it matters to theindividual. The source of how and why the sit-

uation makes a difference gets disclosed toDasein initially in affectivity.

Befindlichkeit emerges from pathe\ in thebroad sense of the way that human existence isover-taken, seized, overcome, by the world.Heidegger makes good use of Aristotle’s lan-guage here:

Speaking precisely, I cannot say that the soulhopes, has fears, has pity; instead, I can only saythat the human being hopes, is brave. . . . “To saythat the soul gets angry is the same as wanting tosay that the soul builds a house. It would bebetter to say not that the soul has pity or learns orbelieves something, but that the human beingdoes te\ psyche\” [De Anima G 4, 408b11 sqq.]....Therefore, the pathe\ are not “psychic experi-ences,” are not “in consciousness,” but are a be-ing-taken of human beings in their full being-in-the-world. That is expressed by the fact thatthe whole, the full occurrence-context, which isfound in this happening, in being-taken, belongto the pathe. The so-called “bodily state” ofanxiety, joy, and so forth, are not symptoms, butalso belong to the characteristic being of beings,of human beings. (Heidegger 1924: 133)

The text does at least three things. First,Heidegger’s anti-psychologism in the modernrepresentational sense is in full evidence.More on this shortly. Second, the text showsHeidegger less neglectful of the physical (or-ganic) body than he is usually regarded. The“bodily state” in which anxiety (fear) or joy isexpressed in facial features or physical ges-tures are not symptoms of hidden, underlyingpathe\. They are the very being of the pathe\themselves—nothing is hidden, though, ofcourse, not displaying an affect is always aprivative and derivative option. The fear is im-mediately available and present in the wideeyes and grimace—the joy in the laughingeyes and smile. Third, the text provides the“being taken of human beings in their full be-ing in the world” as a precursor tothrownness—the “that it is and has to be.” “Be-ing taken” is a kind of inside out “thrownness.”This text yields the full sense of Befindlichkeitwhen combined with the above-cited text onhow our affectivity determines (even subordi-nates) our beliefs and cognitions to the matter-ing disclosed to Dasein.

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Just as a Befindlichkeit can be articulated ina diversity of possibilities, interpretations, andexpressions in speech, no one of which is in-trinsically superior to the other, likewise an af-fect can be articulated—one might say “trans-lated”—into a variety of different apophanticpropositions expressing declarative content.But the translation is incomplete and indeter-minate. Something escapes. That something isprecisely the way in which the Befindlichkeitand the affect as a derivative form thereofmake the world matter to us as individualDasein. It is the difference between a piece ofinformation “I am afraid of the snake” and theimmediate reaction, for example, in which acertain Charles Darwin, visiting the snakehouse at the zoo, literally jerked his head back-wards when the cobra, safely contained behindthe glass, struck directly at him. The pattern isthe same even with those reactions that are nothard-coded reflexes but rather a function of thesocial pretences and colonization of the notori-ous das Man—the inauthentic but seeminglyinescapable “the one” (the “they self”)—in ourcomportment, behavior, and relatedness(distractedness).

While it is an over-simplification, the threepisteis (views) of the Rhetoric into e\thos, pa-thos, and logos, correspond to the interrelateddistinctions of Verstehen, Befindlichkeit, andRede in the existential analysis of Being andTime. The first correlation (e\thos ~ Verstehen)is perhaps the most controversial associationand arguably the least relevant either toHeidegger’s thesis in volume 18 or to ours inthis essay. However, one can get a sense of howwell the correlation fits in that e\thos (charac-ter) is the source of phrone\sis and the “mostdecisive positive possibility” that the speakerhas at his disposal (1924: 112). Character is a“possibility engine” for the speaker, percolat-ing up significant and relevant insights, to per-suade and enroll others in a possibility and pro-ject of implementing the possibility by beingan example of integrity and openness for pos-sibility. The speaker wins over the audience toher (or his) belief, not only by logic and a pas-sionate delivery but, just as significantly, bywho she is as a possibility, exemplifying integ-rity and trustworthiness of character.

Turning to the pathe \, according toHeidegger, the analysis at the level of Aris-totle’s Rhetoric requires that the pathe\ have,

beyond the concrete being of human beings, acharacteristic way of being that could be gath-ered into the logos and articulated in speech(135). This is the crucial passage (and argu-ment) for the thesis of this essay that the cogni-tive (propositional attitude) approach to the af-fects is incomplete, that something essentialescapes. In the following passage, the nous is“more than human being can be” and escapesupward and the pathos is (so to speak) simulta-neously pulled downward by its hyle\ (mate-rial). Consider:

As such, nous is apathes [De an. G 4, 429a15],“that which nothing can touch.” . . . Thus nous,in relation to the being-opened-up of being-in,is more than the human being can be since theway that the human being takes up this possibil-ity, nous, is dianoeisthai. Insofar as nous consti-tutes the being-opened-up of the human being,it is a dia, insofar as living is determined by lupe\and hedone [pain and pleasure as the marks ofpathe], nous is the basic condition of the possi-bility of being-in-the-world, which as suchstands out behind the particular concrete beingof individual human beings. (1924: 135)

The nous is a-pathe\s. It is incommensura-ble with the pathe\tika—against thinking(dianoeisthai). Nous is untouchable — “thatwhich nothing can touch” —in a way that ordi-nary human existence is constantly touched byparticular affects and the totality of a worldthat matters affectively. In this context, nousmaps to understanding as the locus of possibil-ity and pathe\ to Befindlichkeit with its back-ground marks of pain and pleasure [lupe\ andhedone] in the openness where human exis-tence is situated. Heidegger and Aristotle drivenous back in the direction of pathe\:

Book 1, Chapter 1 of De Anima investigates theextent to which nous, as a basic determinationof the being of human beings, is a basic charac-teristic of this way of being; and the extent towhich the human being only constitutes a defi-nite possibility of the being of nous. . . . Thisuniversality of the possibility of grasping [innous] is something that is not to be equated withthe concrete being of the human being, which isalways at the moment. What grounds this possi-bility of grasping everything, which grows outbeyond the human being and its concrete being?

HEIDEGGER’S CLEARING OF THE AFFECTS


. . . Aristotle discusses the pathe\ as those phe-nomena in which it is shown that the concretebeing of human beings can only be understoodif one takes it in its fullness. . . . It is, above all,decisive that we lose our composure, as in thecase of fearing without encountering somethingin the environing world that could be the directoccasion of fear. (1924: 139–40)

In particular, the example in the last sen-tence points to the understanding of affects asdisclosive of a whole way of being-in-the-world, not just particular things. We are dis-comforted or de-composed in fear without aparticular fearful thing being encountered.This indicates a disclosure of Dasein’s being-in-the-world as a totality that is at stake. How-ever, Heidegger does not yet call out the para-digm of being-towards-death (as he will a fewyears later). Instead, following a close readingof Aristotle, Heidegger gives a short accountof an example in terms of the Aristotelian fourcauses. The physician sees anger as a boilingup of blood in the heart and of the bodily tem-perature – an early version of the hard-wiringof our biology to its expression in a somatic-fa-cial program; the rhetorician, going decisivelybeyond psychological representations, seesanger formally as seeking pay-back, an impla-cability towards others; the cause as final pur-pose (or “target”) is an individual, group, oridea that matters to human existence and atwhich one takes aim; and, finally, anger hascertain immediate causes, which act as trig-gers, such as insults, slights, disdain, theimagined or actual dishonoring of people andtheir cherished ambitions, goals, and ideals.

This analysis maps closely to that providedby Heidegger in §30 of Being and Time, “Fearas a Mode of Affectivity” (H 140–42). Closely,but not identically, since the material causedrops out of both the Rhetoric and §30, and isonly completed in the 1924 lectures by refer-ences to De Anima. Thus, that in the face ofwhich we fear, the fearsome,6 is encounteredwithin the world as a trigger that has danger(“dangerous objects”) as its context of involve-ments. The engaging thing is that, even as thefearsome comes at Dasein out of the world,like a charging lion or run-away Toyota,Dasein’s fear is fundamentally a function ofthe possibility that the danger will pass by andmiss Dasein, thus revealing the temporal as-

pect (ekstasis) of futurity even at the heart ofcontingency and thrownness based out of thepast. Next, the formal definition of fearfulness,fearing as such [Furchtsamkeit], is a possibil-ity that is already disclosed in the world assomething that is freed into the clearing thatDasein opens up and there comes to matter toDasein as threatening. Finally, that aboutwhich Dasein fears is Dasein itself. Allroads—and fears—lead to Dasein; and Daseinis inevitably the about which (woran) of fear.Even if a person is afraid of an expensive repairof the leaking roof of his house, the fear is thatDasein lacks proper shelter and will be ex-posed to the storm. Thus, section §30 and itsresonance with the 1924 lectures is a strong re-minder that Heidegger provides a robust ac-count of the emotions in all their everydaycomplexity and richness. The existentialistreading that focuses only on the mood of anxi-ety in the face of death misses the nearly seam-less continuity with the work of the earlyHeidegger as it is carried forward from the richand diverse details of Aristotle’s Rhetoric intoBeing and Time (granted that such materialwas not necessarily available to the initialexistentialist reading).

While the logos emerges from the pathe\ andthe two are inextricability required to completeone another, the relationship is not reductive,unidirectional, or even complete in the sensethat there is no conflict or struggle. Conflictand incompleteness are a part of the expressionof pathe\ by logos and the feedback of logosinto pathe\. At the level of the 1924 text, this es-tablishes the incommensurability of pathe\ andnous—in our interpretation—the incomplete-ness of articulating pathe\ as cognitions (prop-ositional attitudes). If further textual evidenceis required, the inexhaustibility of the pathe\ bythe logos extends beyond knowing in the fol-lowing:

We still have to come to an understanding inwhat follows as to how fear and the pathe\ standin connection with logos. . . . Insofar as thepathe\ are not merely an annex of psychical pro-cesses, but are rather the ground out of whichspeaking arises, and which what is expressedgrows back into, the pathe, for their part, are thebasic possibilities in which being-there itself isprimarily oriented toward itself, finds itself.The primary being-oriented, the illumination of

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its being-in-the-world is not a knowing, butrather a finding oneself that can be determineddifferently, according to the mode of being-there of a being. (1924: 176; italics deleted fromthe original for readability)

The being-oriented and being-in-the-worldof pathe\ are “not a knowing.” However, thepathe\ are a source of different possible under-standings and interpretations that can, in turn,be articulated in the logos. In a sense, this givesindirect, limited comfort to the cognitivist ap-proach to the affects, since it acknowledges thecontinuity and indispensability of logos andpathe\ (and nous); and yet it indicates theinexhaustibility of pathe\ as a source of furtherdistinctions for being-in-the-world.

If one wishes to rise above the level ofHeidegger’s textual interpretation of the Rhet-oric, no matter how innovative, and, usingHeidegger’s 1924 text as a springboard, mar-shal additional arguments against the cog-nitivist approach to the affects, one does notneed to look far. Phenomena such as emotionalambivalence and the cognitive impenetrabilityof affects provide counter-examples to thecognitivist paradigm.

The cognitivist (“propositional attitude”)approach to affects is shown to have a counter-example by Pat Greenspan (1980). 7 She fo-cuses on emotions as opposed to affects ormoods, but much of what she argues appliesgenerally. Her counter-example extends atleast to the assertion that the emotions are logi-cal in any ordinary interpretation of the princi-ple of contradiction. The example of ambiva-lence where an individual holds two contraryor even contradictory emotions about a singleevent, outcome, individual, or situation sug-gests that mixed emotions do not behave aspropositions in any ordinary way. Greenspansucceeds in establishing that it is really aboutone and the same individual that we simulta-neously and with respect to the same propertyexperience satisfaction and frustration, happi-ness and unhappiness, hope and fear—aswhen, speaking in the first person for empha-sis, a friend receives a promotion that I had my-self hoped to receive. For this penetrating anal-ysis, we are grateful (and without mixedfeelings). Emotional ambivalence is com-mon—love and hate, hope and fear, joy andsorrow. We have no trouble authentically en-

tertaining mixed emotions. Welcome to thereal world—it happens often. We are throwninto ambivalence, and these mixed feelingscome at us humans as a function of our contin-gency and thrownness. How this is reconcil-able with the rationality of the emotions re-quires further argument and modifies ourconception of rationality in interesting ways,according to Greenspan.8

The Aristotelian answer here is that ratio-nality is a task, a work-in-progress that re-quires our being-with-one-another in the en-gaged speaking and acting of the polis in orderto implement a community in which humansflourish, at least for those who Aristotle has de-fined as belonging to the “in group.” TheHeideggerian answer is that Befindlichkeitreadily encompasses ambivalence, and is notpropositionally analyzable “all the waydown.” For Heidegger, the possibilities of ourBefindlichkeit are inexhaustible, for wheneverone possibility is implemented on the thrownbasis of our nullity, other possibilities are nec-essarily passed over and fade back into thebackground of dispositions and latent abilities.

If further example is needed that the affectscannot be completely articulated in proposi-tional attitudes of belief and desire, then theevidence that affects are impervious to beliefsis useful. Zenon Pylyshyn is credited withcoining the term “cognitive impenetrability,”with specific reference to visual perception;but the applications extend beyond the compu-tational context of information processing inthe visual system to affectivity, belief, and de-sire at large.9 The evidence that the individualis not really dealing with a belief (a candidatefor cognitive verification) is that the individualstill feels there is something uncanny and un-comfortable about that snake, even though it isrubber. The complex “Fear—snake—danger”does indeed contain a belief component, and itis one that becomes accessible and visible asthe affective complex gets translated from theundifferentiated Befindlichkeit of being-in-the-world into the derivative, de-worlded, cor-responding cognitive system. Yet the rubbersnake still gives the individual an uncannyfeeling. What does not get translated is the is-sue why it should matter. The snake becomes areminder that Dasein is an individual beingwhose being is an issue for itself. Nothing islost in the translation—nothing except the af-



fect itself. In another example, I know that fly-ing on a commercial airplane is much saferthan getting behind the wheel of a car. Yet as Isit back in my airplane seat (let’s say) I am stillintermittently fearful, my palms get sweaty asthe plane is taxiing toward the runway, and Iexperience a dryness in my mouth (i.e., fear)that I never experience in getting behind thewheel of a car. And I know which is safer—fly-ing. Examples where true belief or knowledgedoes not make a difference to one’s affects arecommon. Darwin knew the cobra was safelylocked away behind the plate glass in the zoo.Yet he immediately jumped back when thesnake struck. Of course, this is a reflex-like re-action; and it would go too far to assert thataffects are mere reflexes. They are muchricher. Yet they share a reflex-like function inthat they are impervious to what the individualknows (believes).

It goes beyond the level of Heidegger’s (orAristotle’s text) to complete the analysis ofthese examples. Yet we can marshal distinc-tions from these thinkers to do so. In the case ofsome fears such as snakes and the affect of dis-gust, we may actually be dealing with a hard-coded response.10 Evolution and natural selec-tion hands down such responses to our contin-gent thrownness of a being-in-the-world of theancient environment of evolutionary adapta-tion on the savannah plains of east Africa. Weare embodied creatures and we have to bringforward our facticity and transform it as bestwe can. In the case of fear of flying, what is dis-closed in the coach section of an airplane(among other things) is a world in which thepassenger has limited personal space, nochoice, and no control. One need not be a psy-chiatric case to find that such an extreme lossof control is threatening to the integrity ofone’s existence or to discover a pattern ofthreat activation that is impervious to (many)rational beliefs and arguments. As notedabove, what does not get translated cognitivelyis the issue why it should matter. The fear offlying becomes a reminder that Dasein is an in-dividual being whose being is an issue for it-self. Once again, nothing is lost in thetranslation—nothing except the mattering, theaffect itself.

The proponent of the cognitive, proposi-tional attitude cannot escape by saying this is aspecial case. The incommensurability of logos

(and nous) to pathe\ applies across all the ma-jor distinctions of pathe \—hard-coded,affective responses (“gut reactions”), socialpretences, eruptive emotions, moods—whether inauthentic or authentic, and includ-ing cognitive impenetrability. This is a richarea for additional research. Let us engage insome as inspired by Heidegger’s lecture andrelated distinctions.

(1) Pathe\ are candidate instances of “socialpretences” built around roles in human rela-tions at the level of the inauthentic das Man(the “they self”). In social pretences such as ro-mantic love, the rebel without a cause, or awoman scorned, Dasein takes over its affectfrom its everyday way of being with other indi-viduals in superficial community under thecolonization of das Man.11 Heidegger’s1924 lectures undertake what can best be de-scribed as a tour de force interpretation of Ar-istotle, enumerating nine different ways inwhich a human being encounters others asfrightening (1924: 172; Rhetoric 1382b). Isuggest that every one of them, without excep-tion, is inauthentic. In each case, the other isimplicated as the source of fear, and withoutthe other, the pathe\ would not be; yet the fear isdue to something lacking in integrity, under-handed, or deceptive.

In each case, a social pretence takes centerstage (Rhetoric [1924: 172; Rhetoric 1382]).(i) Those who are literally partners in crime areafraid of one another. Those who commit acrime together expect to be compromised bythe other’s lack of trust. The supposed pretenceof honor among thieves gives way to simpledistrust and direct betrayal. (ii) When a power-ful individual is unjust, this is a source of fear,since he has the power to inflict pain on one.The tyrant often pretends to catch someone in alie or inconsistency before the individual vic-tim “disappears” or is publicly crushed in ashow trial. (iii) Those that have been injuredare expected to lash out in return at those be-lieved to have caused them injury. The pre-tence is that two wrongs make a right. (iv)Those who know they have injured another (asin the previous item (iii)) and are anticipating areprisal are made even more dangerous in afearful spiral of tit-for-tat. Again, two wrongsdo not make a right, but spawn an entire seriesof fear-inducing wrongs. (v) Individuals com-peting for the same stakes in a situation of scar-

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city—in what we would today call a “zero sumgame”—are afraid of one another. The pre-tence is that there really is not enough to goaround, even if the scarcity has been artifi-cially manufactured, thereby generating evenmore fear. (vi) Those that have nothing to loseand so lose all fear themselves are in an power-ful position to inspire fear in others preciselysince they have no hope of escaping distress,but are able to inflict it. (vii) Those that, thanksto superior position or power, have alreadycaused an injury to an inferior are feared as be-ing able to do so again. The pretence on thepart of the inferior individual is that one is im-portant or significant enough to be worth thefurther injury or, on the part of the superiorone, that he cares enough to do so. (viii) Theweak are to be feared in so far as, if they are outto ruin an individual, and hiding their intentionstealthily, then they may prepare a surprise at-tack that they will one day launch. The pre-tence is that the weak are interested in startinga fight with the stronger. (ix) Enemies whowear their heart on their sleeves are not befeared, since they are open; but those who aresly, deceptive, or reserved and pretend to beone’s friend are to be feared. The pretence isthat of a “smiling face that pretends to be yourfriend.”

Other modern examples of pathe\ as socialpretences include forms of infatuation and ro-mantic love. The idealization of one anotherby star-crossed young lovers such as Romeoand Juliet is not based on a healthy process ofgetting to know one another, albeit deeplymoving as a narrative in spite of that. Neither isJuliet as wonderful as Romeo imagined, norRomeo as magnificent as Juliet idealized himto be. If their tragic story had not taken the dra-matic turn it did in Shakespeare, Juliet wouldsoon be tired of picking up Romeo’s dirtysocks upon his return from a hard day at court;and Romeo would be tired of Juliet’s naggingabout her in-laws. In another example, in thepre-ontological folktale, nothing is more cer-tain than that after the injunction “you mayopen every door in the castle, but do not openthat one” the hero or heroine will immediatelydo so; likewise, with Romeo and Juliet taking aromantic interest in one another. An irresist-ible attraction immediately followed upon theprohibition of contact and communication.

The social pretences of Twelve Angry Menand Rebel without a Cause—in the movies ofthe same titles—are taken over from our con-ventional understandings of possibilities as re-ferred to by das Man. Here the translation frompathe\ to logos fails, not because the meaningis so deep and significant, but rather because itis so superficial and ambiguous. The rebelwithout a cause is the owner of a free floatingnarcissistic rage in search of a target on whichto lock in order to bring to expression (andcompletion) a personal indignation that hadnothing to do with the target either necessarilyor even contingently. Other examples of socialpretences include the shame of a womanscorned, wearing Hester Prynne’s scarlet let-ter, in Hawthorne’s novel of the same.12

Let consider one example in detail. Thetwelve angry men—actually it was elevensince one of them kept his wits about him—were angry about rising urban crime in thecontext of the 1950s in the USA, based on astereotype of switch-blade wielding Hispanicstreet gangs; and, thus biased, were about toconvict an innocent defendant of murder. Allbut one of them “knew” that the accused wasguilty. The accused fit the stereotype. He fit thesocial role. He fit the profile of the pretenceprovided by conventional wisdom of das Man,though Heidegger’s distinction obviously doesnot occur in the film. Thus eleven of the twelvejurors themselves fit their own profile of menangry about urban decay and the misbehaviorof the anonymous stereotype. The circumstan-tial evidence was compelling. Only one indi-vidual suspected (“knew”) that he did notknow. This opened up a possibility not envi-sioned in the social pretences governing theconversation in the court, in this case not onlywith the accused and with his fellow jurors, butwith gang members’ actual practices in usingswitch-blade knives. Based on the one, lone,holdout juror’s interpretation of the distinctionbetween stabbing upwards versus downwardswith the switch blade—he was able to articu-late authentically what was possible to his fel-low jurors, namely, that the accused wasfalsely accused and indeed innocent. Theanger vanishes in a puff of instrumentalpractice as the jurors acknowledge a near fatalmisinterpretation.

(2) Next, let us consider pathe\ as what are(in effect) hard-coded somatic patterns, for ex-



ample, to laugh when tickled, to cry whendeeply disappointed by loss, to take flightwhen outnumbered by hostile forces, or lashout indignantly when insulted. Even thoughwe humans are able to interrupt these immedi-ate reactions that overtake us, and, thus inter-vening with deliberation, are able to recaptureour freedom in at least some instances, stillsuch patterns point to Dasein’s contingentthrownness (embodiment) in Heideggerianterms and hyle\—material cause—in Aristote-lian terms. It is possible that Heidegger wouldbe dismissive of the results of the scientific dis-covery of mirror neurons and the social neuro-science opened up by fMRI research. Yet an al-ternative reading is that he leaves a place forthe results of scientific research, albeit as a de-rivative form of being-in-the-world, knowl-edge.13

The short version of such research is that thesame areas of the brain relevant to pain are acti-vated in observing an individual experiencepain as are activated by the individual’s di-rectly experiencing the painful stimulus. Thisis worth repeating – the one observing and theone experiencing pain show the same areas ofthe brain are activated, albeit with less inten-sity on the part of the observer. No one is say-ing that such neuronal activity provides a gen-eral law of causation between mind and body.It remains the case that correlation is not cau-sation. Rather an implementation mechanismsubserving a communicability of affect be-tween human beings in the world is suggested.Thus, those philosophers are stopped short,who, for example, propose a thought(Gedanken) experiment in which two individ-ual subjects are imaginatively linked at thelevel of their physiologies via a radio transmit-ter after having been artificially de-worlded.We no longer need to imagine such a thoughtexperiment. The mirror neuron system (MNS)and fMRI studies provide all the access re-quired to disclose the affective resonance oftwo individuals at the level of emotional conta-gion, vicarious experience, or synchronizedbehaviors such as contagious yawning. Ourco-Befindlichkeit extends further downwardsinto the somatic infrastructure, though obvi-ously without individual awareness of it, thanwas previously thought to be the case. Howsuch contingencies are further elaborated forpossibilities of human understanding is an

open question not addressed at the level ofthrownness or Aristotle’s material cause.

While fundamental ontology does not waitfor the scientific results of neurology to make acontribution, and while the results of empiricalscience remain empirically valid and subject torefinement, revision, or even refutation, weshould not be too surprised to learn that co-Befindlichkeit, Mitsein, and Mitdasein have animplementation mechanism that is identifiedat the level of neurology. What is surprising isthat the neuronal mechanism should be so rela-tively simple. Instead of a neural network ofamazing complexity and a causal thicket of se-mantic opacity, a granular one-to-one map-ping between the mirror neuron systems of twoindividuals is functioning to produce the re-sults. The Cartesian myth that humans are un-related cogitos was debunked by Heidegger aspart of his original contribution. The surpris-ing thing is that a neurological correlate tosuch debunking has surfaced. We are related,even at the physiological level. Whether suchan account will survive the onslaught of fur-ther properly skeptical scientific inquiry is avalid (and open) question. However, the rec-ommendation to Heidegger scholars, at leastfor the time being, is to enjoy a moment of sci-entific satisfaction.

(3) Finally, pathe\ provide the basis of au-thentic commitments. Of course, Heideggergives the classic, existential example of this asthe mood of anxiety in the individualizing con-frontation with death.14 Human existence usesthis confrontation with death as disclosed inanxiety to shatter the complacency and dis-traction of the domination of the everyday—das Man—and engages in an authentic choiceand commitment. In this example, human exis-tence is individualized down to its ownmostpotentiality and is alone—no one can dieDasein’s death for it. Dasein is authentic—andall alone. Yet there are examples of pathe\ thatdisclose Dasein in relation to other individualsand do so authentically.

We must guard against a misunderstandinghere. It is not that any given set of pathe\ are in-trinsically authentic or inauthentic. For exam-ple, it is not that fear is inauthentic and anxietyauthentic. It is true that Heidegger privilegesthe mood of anxiety in the face of death asdisclosive of Dasein as whole and as an indi-vidualized self subsequently capable of au-

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thentic projects and commitments. Yet it iseasy to think of examples of inauthentic anxi-ety. The caricature of existentialism in whichanxiety paralyzes the existential hero, who isunable to choose, is one example. Next, the vi-carious anxiety created in the theatre duringscenes of suspense, anticipation, or high ex-pectation, provides another instance. Finally,the free floating anxiety of classical neurosisthat emerges in phobias, paranoia, and obses-sive compulsive rituals (or, more exactly, theprohibition of such rituals) also come to mind.In every case, the anxiety is arguably in-authentic because the individual is engaged atat a level distinct from an anticipatory reso-luteness that makes a difference to Dasein’slife commitments or at a level in which Daseinengages in self-deception. We saw nine exam-ples of inauthentic fear. Yet authentic fear isthat which is experienced in choosing to goforward into danger in spite of feeling afraid.Of course, the warrior in battle who knows thathe is at risk and feels afraid yet advances any-way is a paradigm case here. But not only war-riors. The individual who stands at the end ofthe street where he lives and sees a tornadobearing down on him knows at that momentauthentic fear and is strongly motivated to runand take cover. Likewise, anyone who has tospeak truth to power—for example, Mandela,Gandhi, or King—and does so, not recklessly,but with deliberation and commitment to thecause (fairness, liberation, equality, and so on)experiences authentic fear. It does not deter-mine the action. It does not stop the speaker.But it is there, at least initially.

All of the pathe\ are capable of being re-cruited as inauthentic social pretences or, al-ternatively, as the authentic basis of commit-ments including commitments to others. Inparallel with and contrast to social pretences,there are certain pathe\ that are possible only inauthentic interrelation with another individ-ual, which loom large in Heidegger’s analysisof the Rhetoric. Arguably, Heidegger mighthave usefully brought forward one or more ex-amples of pathe\ that disclose an other Daseininstead of putting all his analytic eggs in thesingle basket of anticipatory resolutions to-wards death as disclosed in anxiety, resultingin a Dasein that is indeed authentic but seem-ingly always alone.15

While fear reveals threatening objects (in-cluding other individuals) and anxiety dis-closes the totality of Dasein, there are pathe\that disclose another Dasein—Dasein as theother individual. Almost without exception,Aristotle’s discussion of diverse pathe\ pro-vides examples of the disclosure of others.There are entire groups of affects, bothinauthentic and authentic, that Heidegger un-covers thanks to Aristotle’s work in book II ofthe Rhetoric which Dasein cannot experiencewithout the availability of the other individ-ual.16 Many affects such as righteous indigna-tion—at which we are about to look—or guilt,shame, jealousy, and so on—make a social ref-erence to the other who is essential for theemergence and functioning of the affect inquestion.

A wonderful example of the Befindlichkeitof righteous indignation, essentially a socialreference and response to the conduct of theother person (or group), is disclosed in the lab-oratory by R. H. Frank in the Ultimatum Game(UG).17 I hasten to add that Heidegger’s dis-tinctions are not ones used by Frank, but, as weshall see, bringing them to Frank’s work withthe passions is illuminating. In the UG, oneplayer is given a set amount of money—saytwenty dollars. He is then required to handover, at his own discretion, a portion of themoney to a second player. If the second playerdeclines the offer, then both players get zero;otherwise, they get to keep the cash accordingto the proposed offer. From a rational point ofview, where rationality is defined in terms ofnarrow self-interest, if player #1 offers one outof twenty dollars, then player #2 would still bebetter off taking it, since one dollar is morethan zero dollars, which is what #2 had at thestart. However, that is not what happens in thereal world. Such “low ball” offers by player#1 are overwhelmingly refused by player #2.The second player forfeits his own narrow self-interest. Of course, the questions are: Why?What does it mean?

The standard interpretation is that the offerindicated above is grossly unfair. The individ-ual is dishonored by the offer, even insulted bythe lack of respect displayed in such a pre-sumptuous proposal. This leads to righteousindignation (a particularly nuanced form ofanger) and the punishing (sanctioning) of oth-ers’ unfair behavior, a sanction that also has a



negative consequence for player #2, thoughnot as great a loss for #1 (who loses $19) while#2 only loses $1.

The less standard interpretation, thoughconsistent with the above-cited intuition on ba-sic fairness, is that this conclusion is the resultof a process of reasoning that is akin to Aris-totle’s phrone\sis, deliberation about what isgood for the human being in context, ratherthan a rationally mathematical optimization.To deploy the distinctions of the Rhetoric, thelogos is the mathematical calculation that ar-ticulates the explicit judgment that one dollaris more than nineteen. Duly noted. The pathosis the disclosure of righteous indignationbased on the possibility—conspicuous by itsabsence—of a division of the assets that treatseach participant with respect and gives each amutually satisfying share of the proceeds. Thee\thos is the intelligibility of the situation—in-tegrity in a broad sense of workability (notnecessarily one that blames or praises) that as-signs one individual the function of divisionand the other that of approval of the division.The proposed division of one part of twentydoes show a certain character—or more pre-cisely lack thereof—and one that, in mostcases, arouses the response of righteous indig-nation.

If one would like to discover a paradigmcontext disclosive of righteous indignation,this is what it looks like—being asked to agreeto get one dollar while the other gets nineteen.Both parties have some power—the one to pro-pose a distribution, the other to veto it. Nowbargain!

Keeping in mind our earlier discussion ofthe proposition approach to affects (pathe\), thesituation is rich in propositional content. Yetthe message is delivered as a decision, “Deal!”or “No deal!” based on the pathe\ that emergesfrom social reference to the other in interrela-tion. Yes, the pathe\ gets translated into somepropositional content, but the latter does notexhaust the nuances of the interrelational con-text and why it matters. The latter also moti-vates the decision, the commitment, and it isthe mattering that discloses how the situationengages the participants, not cognitively butaffectively as beings-in-the-world to whomthings matter. The individual who proposes alosing division of one dollar to nineteen notonly gets the propositional content “No

deal!”—the individual also gets no money.And it is this latter case where the rubber ofrighteous indignation meets the road of mutualrespect.

One thing is clearly demonstrated, based onexperience. Players in the underdog positionoverwhelming refuse such low offers. Whenasked why, they say the offers are “unfair,”“disrespectful,” even “dishonoring.” In abroader sense, of course, we start to get theidea that a broad sense of rational self-interestdoes extend to being treated fairly, not just inthe long run, but in individual instances.

What is clear is that when an individual ex-periences (whether expressed or not) righteousindignation at a dishonored agreement, brokenpromise, or unfair proposal, the affects are be-ing recruited to sustain the social reference andrelatedness of an authentic commitment totreat other individuals or groups with honorand respect. The eruptive affect of righteousindignation supports the commitment of a fairdistribution, and, in other scenarios, this af-fects supports people keeping their agree-ments—at the cost and impact of everyone get-ting less. An entire class of affects requiringsocial referencing to others, such as shame andguilt and including moral sentiments, contrib-utes to solving the problem of how creatures oflimited generosity and strong self-interest canreasonably adhere to commitments. In thiscase, the holder of the dollars does not want tobe the target of righteous indignation and isincented to make a division with reard to the$20 that captures at least a semblance ofequity, enabling both parties to feel they arebetter off.

Thus, pathe\ such as righteous indignation,guilt, shame, or jealousy do not seem liketransformations of simple anger or fear, on theone hand, or love, on the other. That is becausethey are not. The last two groupings—socialpretenses and irruptive reactions—includepathe\ that we cannot experience alone. We canonly experience them with the participationand involvement of other individuals. They areinterrelational as such. Other than that, there isnothing—no feature or function—that thesedivergent pathe\ have in common—not the af-fective content (feeling), not the behavior, or ifone looks “under the hood”, not the neurologyor endocrinology; not the source or target; northe object or cause. Note that these are real

PHILOSOPHY TODAY


pathe\. It is just that the category of pathe\ en-compasses complex and diverging phenom-ena.

If one begins to suspect that Aristotle’spathe\ are an ad hoc grouping, albeit based onAristotle’s customary comprehension andrigor, and assembled together for the benefit oftraining the speaker in rhetoric, one should bealso able to find examples of all of the distinc-tions that fall into each of the diverging catego-ries—hard-coded response, social pretense,irruptive reaction, and mood. That is indeedthe case. Completely varying examples of an-ger will display distinct aspects correspondingto each of the four distinct groups. For exam-ple, anger is a response to automobile driver Acutting off driver B in heavy rush hour trafficon the commute home. Anger is a social pre-tence as in the suburban person angered at therising crime rate in inner city neighborhoodswhere he does not live. Anger is righteous in-dignation as one reads that human rights activ-ist Aung San Suu Kyi is still under house arrestin Myanmar. Finally, anger shows up as a sim-mering and slow burn of a pervasive mood thatresults in a calculated payback, as a person ispassed over for a promotion that she feels shedeserves, secretly applies for and accepts a jobelsewhere, quitting her current position onshort notice. Sadness is a basic response to alost puppy. Sadness is a social pretense as inmourning for a significant other in one’s lifewith whom one has had little contact and a dif-ficult relationship. Sadness is an irruptive re-action as when a father is disappointed—andsaddened by—the behavior of his teenage son,who, for example, was caught drinking irre-sponsibly, watering down the vodka to replacethat which he had consumed. Sadness will be apervasive mood, as when contemplating theautumn of life and how short it is. In everycase, each of the pathe\ is valid in itself, butdoes not necessarily have a common feelingthat extends across the instances, nor a specificset of behaviors that are required. The hard-coded response and irruptive reaction are hardto fake, especially if one looks at micro expres-sions of facial muscles and considers the coststo both parties. Social pretence often lacksfeeling or constant feeling. The mood lackscorresponding behavior, though the feeling is

relatively deep and rich. How this maps toHeidegger’s distinction of Befindlichkeit is in-dicated at the level of the text above (§30 ofBeing and Time, “Fear as a Mode ofAffectivity” [H 140–42]) as the way the worldis disclosed to Dasein.

There is a final pathe\ in which the otherDasein is disclosed that also goes beyond thatarticulated in Heidegger’s work on Aristotle.For this, of course, Heidegger eventuallyturned to Kant. It proposes a paradigm ofaffectivity toward the other which Heideggerexplicitly refers to as “respect” [Achtung] inhis Kant book with regard to authentic being-as-self (1929: 165; also coincidently in §30).18

For Heidegger, human interrelations have anirreducible dimension of integrity as whole-ness, not in the narrow sense of judging andevaluating the other’s behavior in its minutemoral idiosyncrasies and ethical peculiarities,but in the sense of a practice that determinesthe experience of respect towards others thatleaves the other whole and in integrity, ab-stracting from all the contingent circum-stances, the conflicts of interest and self-inter-ests that shape and bias a person’s perceptions,inclinations, and judgments.

The idea that every experience of the otherhas at its kernel a nucleus of respect for theother leads to a (dis)interested openness towhat is occurring, leaving the other completeand whole in the other’s own experience ofpossibilities. The other is left with the aware-ness that he or she is not alone but free to createand express possibilities and make commit-ments no matter how limiting one’s facticity(thrownness) may seem to be in the moment.The mood of respect is a paradigm here, whichdoes not necessarily mean an awareness of themoral law (as it would in Kant or evenScheler); rather it means a clearing for theother to create possibilities. (Of course, an eth-ics of Mitdasein has subsequently been de-rived.19) It means a clearing for care, in thestrict Heideggerian sense, in which care in-cludes the other in a being-with that is recep-tive to the other as whole and existing in what’spossible for Dasein in the full sense of an au-thentic interrelation of committed speakersand listeners in community.20



ENDNOTES

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1. Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: MaxNiemeyer, 1927); Being and Time, trans. JoanStambaugh (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996); Being andTime, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson(New York: Harper and Row, 1962). ‘H’ cited inlinerefers to the Niemeyer edition pagination as usual.

2. Martin Heidegger, Basic Concepts of AristotelianPhilosophy, trans. Robert D. Metcalf and Mark B.Tanzer (Bloomington: Indian University Press,2009). The translation of Aristotle’s pathe\ as “af-fects” is a compromise but is guided by the examplesincluding the full range of emotions, feelings, andmoods engaged by Heidegger such as fear, anger,joy, hatred, and so on. Even in Being and Time,Heidegger considers a full range of human emotions:“And how about the temporality of such moods andaffects as hope, joy, enthusiasm, gaiety? Not onlyfear and anxiety, but other moods, are founded exi-stentially upon one’s having been; this becomesplain if we merely mention such phenomena as sati-ety, sadness, melancholy, and desperation” (H345).

3. Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will (London:Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963); Martha C.Nussbaum, Eruptions of Thought: The Intelligenceof Emotions (New York: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2001). To the best of my knowledge,Heidegger is not referenced by either of these au-thors.

4. All of these terms—polis, horizon, acoustics—takeon new resonances in Heidegger’s reading.

5. “In der Befindlichkeit liegt existenzial eineerschliessende angewiesenheit auf Welt, aus der herAngehendes begegnen kann” (H137–38). “Matters”is the Angehendes—that which “goes towards” theindividual from out of the disclosed world and mat-ters to the individual because it is coming at him.

6. “Das Wovor der Furcht, das Furchtbare . . .” (H 140).7. See especially the classic essay by P. Greenspan, “A

Case of Mixed Feelings: Ambivalence and the Logicof Emotion,” in Explaining Emotions, ed., A. O.Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press,1980), 223–51. The modification of rationality is en-gaged by R. H. Frank, Passions within Reason: TheStrategic Role of the Emotions (New York: W. W.Norton, 1988), a text that will be engaged shortly.

8. Pat Greenspan, “Practical Reasoning and Emotion,”in A. Mele and P. Rawlings, eds., Rationality (NewYork: Oxford University Press, 2002), 206–21.

9. Zenon Pylyshyn, “Is Vision Continuous with Cogni-tion? The Case for Cognitive Impenetrability of Vi-sual Perception,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences22 (January 1999): 341–423. Though Pylyshyn is

credited with coining the term, its application ex-tends beyond visual systems and the concept can befound in both Charles Darwin, The Expression of theEmotions in Man and Animals (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1965), and Sigmund Freud, “TheUnconscious,” in General Psychological Theory, ed.P. Rieff (New York: Collier, 1963); Standard Edition(S.E.) 14:166–215.

10. “Hard-coded” or “hard-wired” are relative terms,and the biological plasticity and ability of the ner-vous system to recover, even from severe failuressuch as cerebral stroke, is significant. However, thisplasticity occurs over weeks and months, not min-utes or hours.

11. This useful expression, “colonization,” is borrowedfrom John Riker of Colorado College.

12. See also “wild pig” behavior and ghost possession asexamples of social pretences in certain Polynesiancultures discussed by Ian Hacking in his The SocialConstruction of What? (Cambridge, MA: HarvardUniversity Press, 1999).

13. The functional magnetic resonance imaging appara-tus is abbreviated “fMRI.” See J. Decety and T.Chaminade, “When the Self represents the Other: ANew Cognitive Neuroscience View on Psychologi-cal identification,” Consciousness and Cognition12 (2003). J. Decety and P. L. Jackson, “The func-tional Architecture of Human Empathy,” Behavioraland Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews 3 (June 2004):71–100; J. Decety and C. Lamm, “Human Empathythrough the Lens of Social Neuroscience,” The Sci-entific World Journal 6 (2006): 1146–63. In all fair-ness, it should be noted that some such fMRI studiesare being challenged, but not those by Decety et al.cited here. See Edward Vul, Christine Harris, PiotrWinkielman, and Harold Pashler, “Puzzlingly HighCorrelations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personal-ity, and Social Cognition,” Perspectives On Psycho-logical Science 4, no. 3 (2009): 274–90. But see alsothe reply by Mbwmba Jabbi, Christian Keysers,Tania Singer, Klaas Enno Stephan, “Response toVoodoo Correlations in Social Neuroscience byVul,” pending publication: http://www.bcn-nic.nl/replyVul.pdf.

14. The example of mood (Stimme) is discussedexhaustively in Being and Time, and will not be en-gaged here as a stand-alone paradigm, except wherenecessary for the reading of the text.

15. Lou Agosta, Empathy in the Context of Philosophy(London: Macmillan, 2010), 28, figure 1.1.

16. As is well known, Heidegger also includes a pene-trating analysis of the Kantian affect of respect asdisclosive of the humanity of the other person as rep-

© 2010 DePaul University

Chicago, IL 60660


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resented by the moral law in Heidegger’s first Kantbook.

17. R. H. Frank, Passions within Reason. Naturally,Frank does not deploy the distinctions logos, ethos,pathe.

18. Martin Heidegger, Kant and the Problem of Meta-physics, trans. James S. Churchill (Bloomington: In-diana University Press, 1962); Heidegger’sGesamtausgabe Band 3: Kant und das Problem derMetaphysik (Frankfurt am Main: VittorioKlostermann, 1991).

19. See Frederick A. Olafson, Heidegger and the

Ground of Ethics: A Study of Mitsein (New York:Cambridge University Press, 1998); Lawrence J.Hatab, Ethics and Finitude: Heideggerian Contribu-

tions to Moral Philosophy (Lanham, MD: Rowmanand Littlefield, 2000); John H. Riker, Wh It Is Good

to Be Good (New York: Jason Aronson, Inc., 2010).20. I acknowledge the works of Larry Hatab and John

Riker for inspiring my engagement with these is-sues..

© 2010 DePaul University

heidegger's 10924 clearing of the affects using aristotle ... · heidegger’s 1924 clearing...

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