In 1926: living at the edge of time - Monoskop

460 FRAMES
the philosophy of history. [see Present = Past (Eternity), Present vs. Past]
Heidegger's lecture of July 25, 1924, to the Marburg Theologians' Society
(a lecture that Gadamer has called the earliest version of Sein und
Zeit) seems to have focused mainly on the importance of time for individual
existence. In contrast, the "semipopularizing series of ten lectures
at Kassel, given in pairs over five evenings," between April 16 and April
21, 1925, treated issues in relation to the philosophy of history, as
indicated by their title: "Wilhelm Dilthey's Research Work and the Present
Struggle for a Historical Worldview. "78 Despite this thematic emphasis,
it was in the Kassel lectures, before an audience of nonspecialists,
that Heidegger first brought together the individual and collective levels
of the time phenomenon, as well as the question, now identified as
ontological, of the meaning of Dasein. According to Heidegger, the key
challenge that made it necessary to discuss Dasein in relation to time as
an ontological problem lay in the most recent epistemological "crises"
and "revolutions" in the sciences.
However plausible this coupling of an ontology of Dasein with the
topic of time may have appeared within the cultural environment of
1926, Heidegger could not avoid identifying and elaborating a concept
that could serve as a common denominator for the two parts of his book.
This structurally important place in Sein und Zeit is occupied by the
notion of Sorge ("care"). By asking, "What makes possible the totality
of the articulated structural whole of Sorge, in the unity of its articulation
as we have developed it?"79 Heidegger gains the opportunity to
present this central component of his "fundamental analysis of Dasein"
as intrinsically constituted by the dimensions of time. If, as we have
already seen, the concept of Sorge evokes particularly intense discussion
of action and time among contemporary philosophers and sociologists,
the contribution that Sein und Zeit makes to this discussion is certainly
not the most convincing or elegant part of the book. Associating three
different concepts from the analysis of Dasein with the classic three
divisions of time,80 Heidegger obviously wishes to portray as homogeneous
what is perhaps the most arbitrary-or most daring-element of his
book. The future is paired with "understanding," the present with "fallenness,"
and the past with "state of mind" or "mood" (Befindlichkeit,
Stimmung). Heidegger devotes little effort to explaining these links. But
the passage on moods presents a distinction between "fear" and "anxiety"
(Furcht and Angst),81 which is crucial to the book's second part.