FREE ESSAY ON "THE QUESTION OF BEING": WHAT IT IS, WHY IT MATTERS.

"THE QUESTION OF BEING": WHAT IT IS, WHY IT MATTERS.

Martin Heidegger attempts to answer the "question of Being" by appealing to the
terminology and methodology of Dasein, most commonly defined as existence. Dasein is not
simply any kind of existence, however, but an existence that is unique from all other
existences in that it asks the question of existence while existing in the existence
itself. In other words, one must first understand Dasein in order to understand Being
because Dasein is a kind of being that is concerned about its very Being. Contrary to the
popular opinion that in order to truly and clearly comprehend any phenomenon, the subject
which interrogates must necessarily stand outside of the object of the interrogation,
Being cannot be understood from outside of Being. One may then argue that there is no
outside of Being, a point to which we shall return later in this paper; therefore, every
being is fit to address the "the question of Being." Although every being is within Being
itself, not every being asks the question of Being; hence Dasein alone can elucidate
Being because Dasein is Being for Heidegger. It is a "pure expression of Being" and thus
chosen to designate Being because "its essence lies rather in the fact that is has always
to be its Being as its own" (54). Logically speaking, if the object of which Dasein
interrogates is Being, and it accomplishes this task by interrogating itself, a being in
Being, then the object of interrogation, Being, is precisely the subject which performs
the act of interrogation, Dasein; it follows that Dasein is nothing but Being itself.
Dasein answers the "question of Being" by disclosing Being through the revealing or
unveiling of itself. In "Being and Time," Heidegger articulates the way Dasein unveils
itself by drawing a distinction between an existentiell and existential understanding of
Dasein. By claiming that "Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence, in
terms of its possibility to be itself or not to be itself" (54), an existentiell
understanding of Dasein is to denote the existence of Dasein as either realizing or
ignoring its possibilities for being or not-being; an existential understanding of Dasein
differs in that it neither realizes nor ignores its existences but inquires into its
existence, the being of Dasein, Being itself. It is an existential analysis of Dasein
that will reveal Dasein, and ultimately Being. 
An existential analysis of Dasein reveals that "Dasein tends to understand its own Being
in terms of that being to which it is essentially, continually, and most closely
related—the 'world'" (58). That is to say, Dasein is to be found in its "average
everdayness" because it is concealed in the same way that the meaning of Being is
concealed. Heidegger maintains that in using the common word "is," we no longer know what
we mean. The subject-object logic which we use every day conceals the true meaning of
what existence really is. Therefore, one must apply this reasoning to Dasein and find the
essence of Dasein in the "average everydayness" by stripping away all that is arbitrary
and accidental in the world. One unfolds the true form of "average everydayness" by
identifying the world of Dasein, which is the human world, or more precisely, the soul.
Heidegger characterizes Being as the totality of beings. He appeals to Aristotle and
Thomas Aquinas to assert the transcendental quality of Being, which requires Being to
"lie beyond every possible generic determination of a being in its material
content…that are necessary attributes of every 'something'" (56). This entails that
Being must allow for the coming together of all other beings. Heidegger finds this being
in the human soul, "the being whose nature it is to meet with all other beings" (56). To
further determine Dasein as a human-kind of being, one need only to ask the "who" which
asks the "question of Being." Man, or more accurately, the human soul is the essence of
average everydayness." 
In "What is Metaphysics," Heidegger locates the uncovering of Dasein in the attunement of
anxiety. Through his analysis of anxiety as a state-of-mind that provides the phenomenal
basis for explicitly grasping Dasein's primordial totality of beings, Being, Heidegger
reveals Being through the nothing. This is what is meant by "[h]uman existence [Dasein]
can relate to beings only if it hold itself out into the nothing" (109), and that is why
Heidegger defines Dasein to mean "being held into the nothing" (103). Anxiety is our
experience of the slipping away of beings as a whole, the bringing of the nothing into
the foreground, its uncovering. Anxiety is what makes fear possible. Yet, unlike fear, in
which that which threatens is other than Dasein, anxiety is characterized by the fact
that what threatens is nowhere and nothing. In anxiety, first and foremost, the world as
world is disclosed as that which one cannot slip into, as the totality of beings slip
away. As the totality of beings slip away from man, anxiety "discloses these beings in
their full but heretofore concealed strangeness as what is radically other" (103). 
The importance of nothing is thus manifest. Nothing and Being is shown to be the same. It
is the nothing that brings forth Being. This accounts for why Heidegger describes the
concealment as characterized by strangeness as opposed to fear or horror. Although Being
has been concealed, it is still and has always been present. One finds it strange, but
not terrifying, because one has felt its presence all along without being conscious of
it. Man feels anxiety as " a kind of bewildered calm" because the slipping away of beings
brings man back the original, concealed Being. In its tranquility, the attunement of
anxiety allows Dasein to compare itself with everything only to realize that there is
nothing, and that is Being. Anxiety becomes a way for Dasein to understand itself in an
authentic disclosure of itself. Anxiety reveals to Dasein that in the absence of the
whole of beings, Dasein slips away from itself only to find its Being. Heidegger's belief
in the critical role of anxiety in the revelation of Being is evident in "anxiety robs us
of speech. Because beings as a whole slip away, so that just the nothing crowds round, in
the face of anxiety all utterance of the "is" falls silence" (101). This is harking back
to Heidegger's original idea that the way we normally and commonly use the word "is" is
what deprives oneself of the understanding of Being. Due to one's own negligence, one
finds himself only being able to comprehend Being in the absence of "is".
By demonstrating how Being is the same as Nothing, Heidegger discloses the importance of
the "question of Being." An underlying assumption about Being is that there is something
rather than nothing. What happens if the something turns out to be the same as the
nothing? This new approach forces us to rethink why the "question of Being" matters at
all. Ultimately, one must turn to the human-kind of being, Dasein, for who else would
bother to ask the question in the first place? To even ask the question, Heidegger says
that one must already have some idea of what the answer might be. Yet, the answer is not
at the level of awareness; the answer lies in our very existence at a pre-reflective
level of understanding. When one asks "the question of Being," it brings oneself face to
face with one's existence, as a human being, in the world. And, more importantly, it
brings us to the question of what matters. This mattering constitutes the framework of
meaning from which our world emerges, in space and time, as that which matters to us.
Thus, the world is inherently meaningful in that it opens before us in its unconcealment,
its uncovering. Coming before the "question of Being," one cannot help but confront the
awesome mystery of existence.