Heidegger Circle Proceedings

Heidegger’s ontology consists of three general categories of beings: present-at-hand, ready-to-hand, and Dasein. Beings in the latter category, namely human beings, are said to exist in either one of two modes; either authentically or inauthentically. In recent years, however, it has been suggested we distinguish a third mode. This third mode, ‘indifference’ as it has come to be known, is motivated by the need to mitigate the tendentious relationship between the two functions of inauthenticity. Inauthenticity serves in a positive capacity as the source of a shared context of significance, while also functioning in the more negative role as the fundamental barrier to authenticity. Introducing this third mode of indifference allows us to split the difference, as it were, between these two seemingly incompatible functions of inauthenticity. This paper argues for a different approach. I want to suggest these two roles of inauthenticity can be made sense of using Heidegger’s distinction between genuine and non-genuine ways of disclosure. This would allow Heidegger to maintain the integrity of inauthenticity without giving up on the formal value-neutral status of this ontological distinction.

Bill Richardson’s masterwork Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought was first published in 1963. What follows is fully informed by his guiding and enduring insight: the “turn” (die Kehre) in Heidegger’s thinking, which, Bill referred to—in his memorable heuristic expression—as “Heidegger I” and “Heidegger II.” From his book: “For the shift of focus from There-being to Being…was demanded…as soon as it became clear [to Heidegger] that the primacy of the Being-process belongs to Being itself” (HTPT, 624). Let us see how Bill’s basic reading is further borne out and underscored in the recently published Black Notebooks.