One of the central sections of philosophy that studies the problem of being is called ontology, and the problem of being itself is one of the main ones in philosophy. The problem of being was the base around which the whole field of philosophy was originally formed. Ancient Indian, Chinese, and Greek philosophy, first of all, became interested in ontology, trying to explain the concept of being. Only then did philosophy expand its subject and include epistemology – the doctrine of knowledge, logic, and other philosophical problems. Being is the broadest and most abstract concept; to be meant to be present, to exist. The main task of this paper is to consider the connection between Heidegger’s and Sartre’s understanding of being and compare their positions on this issue. I argue that, while bearing some resemblances, the stances of both philosophers on the matter of being are uncanny different in their essences.
Heidegger states that being always represented in itself the being of existence. However, when existence is explained and understood as being – as the ontological boundaries between them begin to blur – the so-called “oblivion of being” occurs, overcoming which is the main task of any ontological research. At the same time, he believes that people do not have “direct” access to being, it cannot become available to them by itself, but only through existence. It is also necessary to make a distinction in existence itself. The existence always has the meaning of “who”, the essential specificity of which is that it is existential; or “what”, which is characterized as essential in the traditional sense of the word.
Heidegger uses the special term ‘Dasein’ to refer to an existence that has the specific “who” characteristic and defines it as an “exemplary” existence. This existence, in its being, is able to have a special ontological relation to this same being, which, in fact, gives it the trait of exemplarity. Through it, the possibility of grasping the real connection that exists between existence and manifesting itself. At the same time, for Heidegger, ‘Dasein’ does not mean the way of being of a natural thing but a certain existence that has a specific way of being. McManus (2017) states that “if the experiences that phenomenology examines are Dasein’s, then they are by definition experiences in which being shows itself” (p. 523). Thus, Heidegger derives the concept of existence from the concept of being, claiming that existence cannot manifest without being.
Sartre fundamentally postulates existence as a phenomenon that represents its own self, not its being. According to Rizvi (2018), “Sartre uses Heidegger’s fundamental existential category Being-in-the-world to characterize our human existence” (p. 81). From there, Sartre proposed the idea that the being of existence cannot present itself prior to consciousness since being in existence is everywhere and nowhere. That means that being always presupposes the existence of a certain way of being.
Sartre’s thesis is that being is the always present basis of existence. It gives rise to the illusory idea of similarity with Heidegger, should it be understood not ontologically but logically, in the sense that being is “just a condition of any disclosure: it is being-for-detection”. Thus, for Sartre, only existence can truly, fully be real, which presupposes being as its immanent structure, as they are absolutely indistinguishable. Being itself is not revealed, it cannot be discovered in Heidegger’s sense as an ontological structure that stands “behind” existence. The discovery of the being of existence in this aspect can take place only as a rise of consciousness over the existing, which refers not entirely to the being itself but to its meaning of it.
Sartre applies this approach to consider existence since he believes that the being of existence – the being of phenomena – cannot affect consciousness since it is cut off from consciousness. This contrasts with how Heidegger understands this – for whom the being of phenomena shows the existence in its occurrence. Heidegger here claims that one should distinguish the “being of the phenomenon” from the “phenomenon of being” and, of course, not reduce the former to the latter in order to discover it. For the disclosure of the phenomenon of being, a “transphenomenal” foundation is required – in other words, the being of a cognizing subject – and does not feel the need for any other being. Thus, the existence of phenomena does not imply the presence of consciousness, it is not phenomenal. Contrariwise, the phenomenon of being presupposes consciousness. Thus, in this sense, the being of existence as the being of phenomena is absolutely inaccessible to people, as Sartre states.
Thus, Heidegger’s movement of existence towards being occurred as a recognition of being that has manifested in the phenomenon. In Sartre, on the other hand, it manifests in another way: consciousness transcends from the ontic to the ontological – existence gives way to the phenomenon of being as “the meaning of being of existence”. The sphere of being in Sartre’s definition acts as a dimension of meaning, given by consciousness, and not substantively, as it happens in relation to ontological structures in Heidegger’s concept.
References
McManus, D. (2017). Beholdenness to entities and the concept of ‘dasein’: Phenomenology, ontology and idealism in the early Heidegger. European Journal of Philosophy, 25(2), 512–534. Web.
Rizvi, G. (2018). The concept of being is in Sartre’s philosophy. Journal of Arts, Culture, Philosophy, Religion, Language and Literature, 2(1), 81–84.