3.3.1.3The Hegelian dialectic of the concept, primal splitting and closing together

The last part of the preceding section is a provisional, initial attempt at an existential interpretation of the structure of identity and otherness proceeding not only from the passage in Plato’s Parmenides, but from a passage in Hegel’s Logik that deals entirely abstractly with the identity of the Satz or proposition, albeit that in Hegel’s grand attempt at ontologization, all the traditional logical categories now become speculative, i.e. ontological. The proposition has long since been the locus for logic and the λόγος, as well a truth itself, starting with Aristotle, but the German word for proposition, ‘Satz’, offers also another, surprising rendering when attention is paid to the ambiguity, or indeed polyvalent signification of the word, a semantic polyvalence exploited also by Heidegger in his 1951 lectures, Der Satz vom Grund. ‘Satz’, namely, can mean not only ‘sentence’ or ‘proposition’, but also ‘jump’ or ‘leap’.

When viewed from this perspective, the speculative Satz can be seen to demand a leap to the other, thus breaking with the tautological jumping on the spot of merely abstract identity, A = A, which says nothing apart from a bending back on itself. For the proposition to say something rather than nothing, it must leap to bring its subject into identity with its other, the predicate, i.e. with what is predicated of the subject or with what the subject is ‘accused’ (καταγορεύειν) of being as a being. That the proposition is in truth a leap cannot be seen within the strictures of formal logic to which all analytic philosophy is bound, precisely because of its analyticity that excludes syntheticity, for formal logic is finite understanding at work, endeavouring to keep distinctions clearly distinct and separate rather than seeing the infiniteness and dialectical movement of the proposition understood ontologically as a leap from subject to predicate that constitutes synthetically an identity between different termini.

Let us pursue this line of thought further on the abstract level of logic understood in the Hegelian way as ontological structure by delving into the dialectic of the poles constituting identity. By doing so, we will be practising dialectics in the sense of “contemplat[ing] the pure thoughts in and for themselves” (W19:67) and also continuing to follow up on Hegel’s insight that “[t]he ancient philosophers knew very well that such abstract thoughts were invaluable for the concrete” (W19:85), an insight today clouded by analytic glaucoma. We need to infiltrate the text to live and breathe through its pores in order to shake off the impression propagated by Hegel’s many detractors in our profoundly unphilosophical age that he is performing merely capricious dialectical acrobatics that can be written off as ‘mystical’ or ‘speculative’ nonsense. The pure thoughts of dialectical thinking are the abstract, ontological elements from which the world in its worldliness is built.

The identity and difference of subject and predicate is dealt with in the Logik as the theory of the judgement (das Urteil) which is itself the second chapter of the first section of three sections in the Doctrine of the Concept, which in turn forms the concluding third part of the Logik as a whole. The first section of this culminating part of the Logik bears the heading “Subjectivity” (Die Subjektivität), which is itself misleading because the three chapters it comprises, The Concept (Der Begriff), The Judgement (Das Urteil) and The Conclusion (Der Schluß), are by no means to be taken as merely aspects of the (subjective) thinking mind, but equally as ontological structures of reality itself. The concept itself “contains the three moments: universality, particularity and singularity” (enthält die drei Momente: Allgemeinheit, Besonderheit und Einzelheit, LII W6:273) that are held in unity by the concept that, as free “being-in-and-for-itself” (Anundfürsichsein, W6:273), posits each of its moments, each of which being “just as much the whole concept as determinate concept and as a determination by the concept” (sosehr ganzer Begriff als bestimmter Begriff und als eine Bestimmung des Begriffs, W6:273). The emphasis here is at first on the concept’s unity that holds together and mediates its three moments, but, as “absolute negativity” (absolute Negativität, W6:272) and initially as “immediate” (unmittelbare, W6:272) concept, it “dirempts itself” (dirimiert [...] sich, W6:272) so that “the moments become indifferent to each other and each for itself” (die Momente gleichgültig gegeneinander und jedes für sich wird, W6:272) and “its unity in this division [as judgement] is only a merely extrinsic relation” (seine Einheit ist in dieser Teilung nur noch äußere Beziehung, W6:272) of “moments posited as independent and indifferent” (als selbständig und gleichgültig gesetzte(n) Momente, W6:272).

The “unity of the concept lost in its independent moments” (Einheit des in seine selbständigen Momente verlorenen Begriffs, W6:272) therefore has to be regained through the “dialectical movement of the judgement” (dialektische Bewegung des Urteils, W6:272) which culminates in the “conclusion” (Schluß, W6:272) in which “not only the moments [of the concept] as independent extremes are posited, but also their mediating unity” (ebensowohl die Momente desselben als selbständige Extreme wie auch deren vermittelnde Einheit gesetzt ist, W6:272). The task is thus set at the opening of the Doctrine of the Concept in its free “subjectivity” of going through the dialectical movement (a thinking-through) in which the concept at first loses and then regains the unity of its three moments, universality, particularity and singularity.

Hegel understands the judgement (Urteil) or, more naturally in English, the proposition not as a subjective act but, proceeding from the etymology of the German word that cannot be imitated in English, as “the original division of what is originally one” (die ursprüngliche Teilung des ursprünglich Einen, W6:304) which was previously referred to as the concept “dirempting itself” (dirimiert [...] sich, W6:272). The “original division” of the concept is here rendered as the primal split (or schism) of an original unity in the concept or Begriff, which likewise can be understood from its etymology as a ‘grasping together’ or ‘com-prehending’. The dialectical task of the third chapter of the first part of the theory of the concept therefore has to be seen in overcoming the primal split of the judgement in the movement to the conclusion (Schluß) which, in turn, again has to be understood in its deeper ontological sense as a ‘closing together’ of precisely this primal split which is located, in the first place, in the “abstract proposition [...] ‘the singular is the universal’” (abstrakte Urteil [...] ‘das Einzelne ist das Allgemeine’, EnzI §166 Note). Hegel does not make an explicit point of the etymology of the German word ‘Schluß’ (although he does say that in the conclusion the subject “is closed together with an other determination” (mit einer anderen Bestimmtheit zusammengeschlossen, EnzI §182) ), presumably because its signification as ‘closing’ is already apparent in German from the word itself, whereas in English, the sensitivity to the etymology of ‘conclusion’ has been lost.

To underscore that judgement/proposition and conclusion are not merely formal logical categories employed by ‘subjective reasoning’ in investigating the possibilities of linking propositions through a mediation in syllogisms (a togetherness of λόγοι), but rather are ontological structures of phenomena themselves, Hegel says in the corresponding part of the Enzyklopädie that “All things are a judgement/proposition” (alle Dinge sind ein Urteil, EnzI §167) and “Everything is a conclusion” (Alles ist ein Schluß, EnzI §181 Note). By the former statement he means that “they are singularities which in themselves are a universality or an inner nature, or a universal that is singularized/individualized” (sie sind Einzelne, welche eine Allgemeinheit oder innere Natur in sich sind, oder ein Allgemeines, das vereinzelt ist, EnzI §167). The primal split thus refers in the first place to that between the individual, singular being in its reality and its universal essence, its “inner nature”, its beingness as a being. By the latter statement concerning the conclusion he means that “everything is a concept, and its determinate existence is the difference of the concept’s moments so that its universal nature gives itself outward reality through particularity and thereby, and as negative reflection-into-itself, makes itself into an individual/singularity” (Alles ist Begriff, und sein Dasein ist der Unterschied der Momente desselben, so daß seine allgemeine Natur durch die Besonderheit sich äußerliche Realität gibt und hierdurch und als negative Reflexion-in-sich sich zum Einzelnen macht, EnzI §181 Note). “The conclusion is therefore the essential ground of everything true” (Der Schluß ist deswegen der wesentliche Grund alles Wahren, EnzI §181 Note), “what is reasonable and everything reasonable” (das Vernünftige und alles Vernünftige, EnzI §181), where reason for Hegel is a synonym for the idea (EnzI §214) and truth for him means the correspondence (as opposed to the “contradiction”; cf. EnzI §24 Add.2) between reality and the concept (EnzI §213 Add.) for absolutely, self-certain knowing. A singular being is true by virtue of corresponding to its concept of its essence, i.e. its whatness.

What is dirempted in the primal split between singularity and universality is to be ‘closed together’ again and unified via mediation in the conclusion, and this is achieved in the first place by the “apodictic judgement/proposition” (apodiktisches Urteil, EnzI §181 Add.) whose schema is given as “this — the immediate singularity — house — genus —, of such and such a quality — particularity —, is good or bad” (dieses — die unmittelbare Einzelheit — Haus — Gattung —, so und so beschaffen — Besonderheit —, ist gut oder schlecht, EnzI §179), where, for Hegel, “good or bad” (for a certain purpose) is synonymous with ‘true or untrue’.41 Hegel paraphrases this schema of the apodictic judgement as “All things are a genus (their determination and purpose) in a singular reality and of a particular quality, and their finiteness is that the particularity of the singular reality can conform with the universal or not” (Alle Dinge sind eine Gattung (ihre Bestimmung und Zweck) in einer einzelnen Wirklichkeit von einer besonderen Beschaffenheit; und ihre Endlichkeit ist, daß das Besondere derselben dem Allgemeinen gemäß sein kann oder auch nicht. EnzI §179). The particular is the hinge that in the “immediate conclusion” (unmittelbare Schluß, EnzI §182) is supposed to mediate, closing the individual thing in its singular reality together with the universal of its “determination and purpose”. Because most things are finite, the mediation with their essential “nature” through their particular qualities goes awry, so that they are “untrue” and therefore must “perish” (zugrunde gehen, EnzI §24 Zus.2). This would mean that, for Hegel, the world as we humans experience it is for the most part untrue, diverging from its true concept that speculative thinking can bring to light as a complex, dialectically unfolding, total onto-logical structure. The world is not as it should or ought to be, but this Ought is no longer impotent as it is in the moralism of subjective idealism and all kinds of subjective ethics, but rather, the non-correspondence with its concept compels a thing to go under, showing that the ontological concept, that is accessible through dialectical-speculative thinking, is stronger than empirically given reality.

Let us leave aside for the moment the question of the closing together of the primal split in the conclusion and return to a consideration of the primal split or judgement/proposition itself. This accords with Plato’s determination of language as λέγειν τὶ κατὰ τινός, i.e. saying something about something, addressing it as such-and-such. One of Hegel’s standard examples for a judgement is the simple statement of sensuous perception, “This rose is red” (diese Rose ist rot, EnzI §166 Add.) which brings a singular thing, “this rose”, into identity with what it is not, namely, the universal, “red”. An even simpler example is ‘This is a rose’ or ‘This is a glass’ in which ‘this’ points to a singular, real thing, proclaiming that it is what it is not, namely, the universal, ‘rose’ or ‘glass’, thus lifting the unique, singular thing through the λόγος (without frictional loss?) to being in its universality. The even more abstract, simple example, ‘This is something’, also identifies a singular, real thing with what it is not, namely, the universal, ‘something’, where ‘something’ for Hegel is a category of immediate being, viz. the reality of determinate being or Dasein. The primal split therefore is truly primal, affecting every being in its being by putting each singular being into a contradictory identity with what it is not simply by virtue of its being what it is. The primal split is prior to whether a being is true or untrue, i.e. whether, in its singular reality as an individual being, it corresponds with its universal concept or not, thus splitting both true and untrue beings alike.

The simple, not to say trivial, judgement, ‘This is a glass’, would normally not be spoken, but nevertheless understood on seeing a glass, and there can be no doubt that we continually practise this judgement in everyday living in identifying practically the things around us as what they are and distinguishing practically one thing from another, which, in turn, is an aspect of each finite being, that it has a demarcating border-line that marks it off negatively from what it is not. Moreover, not only do we practise this identifying, but the things around us also present themselves to us as what they are, marking themselves off from what they are not through their self-presentation as such-and-such (the hermenetic AS that need not be put into a statement addressing the being as such-and-such: the apophantic AS). Hence, Hegel says that each determinate being is a negation, defined as what it is only through its delimitation from what it is not. Our everyday understanding of the world in its very quotidian banality is already beset by the contradiction of the primal split that every singular being can only be what it is in an identity of identity and difference. ‘This is a glass’ (i.e. ‘This shows itself as a glass.’) expresses in the so-called copula unequivocally the identity of ‘this’ and ‘glass’, whereas ‘This is a glass’ expresses a difference between ‘this’ and ‘glass’. Here already resides the mystery of being insofar as it is beingness.

Although ‘This is a glass’ would normally not be spoken, a similarly simple judgement such as ‘This is a wine glass’ could be spoken in the context of distinguishing, perhaps for someone else’s sake, a stemmed wine glass from a similarly stemmed, but smaller, water glass. For a waiter serving in a restaurant, for instance, making such a distinction among all the restaurant-things is important. Such a judgement introduces a further determining negation, namely, ‘wine’ as distinct from ‘water’, allowing a finer limit to be defined among things, but such finer distinctions obscure the primal split inherent already in every single being as a being, leading to its being missed in a phenomenological ontological investigation. By viewing the judgement in its simplest phenomenal form, it can be seen most unobstructedly that everything is a contradiction.

The trivial judgement or proposition, ‘This is a glass’, contains the so-called demonstrative pronoun, ‘this’ which demonstrates in the sense of ‘pointing out’ a singular being. Hegel says of a being, “but it is only this insofar as it is monstrated/pointed out. Monstration/pointing-out is the reflecting movement which collects itself into itself and posits immediacy, but as something external to it” (es ist aber nur Dieses, insofern es monstriert wird. Das Monstrieren ist die reflektierende Bewegung, welche sich in sich zusammennimmt und die Unmittelbarkeit setzt, aber als ein sich Äußerliches. W6:300). The singular thing, however, is more than this pointed-out, immediate thing because it is a moment of the concept and as such has a relation to its other moment, universality or the essence of the thing, its “inner nature” (EnzI §167) or whatness which, “climbs down” (heruntersteigt, W6:296) into singularity, so that “by resolving to become a judgement/by opening itself up to the primal split in singularity, it posits itself as something real” (indem er sich in der Einzelheit zum Urteil entschließt,42 sich als Reales [...] setzt, W6:403), the moments of the concept being as they are initially “still enclosed within the concept” (noch in den Begriff eingeschlossen, W6:403). The moments of the concept have thus become “independent determinations” (selbständigen Bestimmungen, W6:301) and the concept has “lost itself” (sich verloren, W6:301) in the “original division” (ursprünglichen Teilung, W6:301) of the judgement or primal split. In this primal split, to see anything is to “see double, once in its singular reality, and once in its essential identity or in its concept: the singular being raised into its universality or, what is the same, the universal singularized/individualized into its reality” (doppelt sehen, das eine Mal in seiner einzelnen Wirklichkeit, das andere Mal in seiner wesentlichen Identität oder in seinem Begriffe: das Einzelne in seine Allgemeinheit erhoben oder, was dasselbe ist, das Allgemeine in seine Wirklichkeit vereinzelt. W6:311).

3.3.1.4Heideggerian selfhood as a “shining-back” from being-in-the-world

What does this dialectic of the concept, the primal split and closing together have to do with the question concerning the dialectic of self and other and the ontological constitution of the self in its selfhood? Before hazarding an interpretation of the dialectic of the concept with a view to selfhood, we will prepare the ground by first considering Heidegger’s rejection of Hegel’s dialectic in the Logik, thus implicitly refusing Hegel’s insight that the movement of “abstract thoughts [is] invaluable for the concrete” (W19:85). In his lectures in Summer Semester 1927,43 Heidegger devotes a long chapter to the problem of logic, namely, that logic has become a “special discipline within philosophy” (gesonderte[] Disziplin innerhalb der Philosophie, GA24:252) emptied of any ontological content and therefore divorced from “the central problems of philosophy” (den zentralen Problemen der Philosophie, GA24:252). The chapter in question therefore takes up “the question concerning the connection of the ‘is’ as copula to fundamental ontological problems” (die Frage nach dem Zusammenhang des ‘ist’ als Kopula mit den ontologischen Grundproblemen, GA24:254 italics in the original).

Heidegger notes that this problem “will not budge until logic itself is taken back into ontology again, i.e. until Hegel is comprehended who, conversely, dissolved ontology into logic” (kommt solange nicht von der Stelle, als die Logik selbst nicht wieder in die Ontologie zurückgenommen wird, d.h. solange Hegel, der umgekehrt die Ontologie in Logik auflöste, begriffen ist, GA24:254). Heidegger therefore praises Hegel for breathing philosophical life back into the formal, abstract discipline of logic whilst at the same time finding fault with him for turning ontology into logic which, in Hegel’s understanding, however, is the pure movement of dialectical thinking itself speculating on the ontological structure of the world.44 The later Heidegger, for instance, in the 1957 Freiburg lectures cited above, no longer so rudely accuses Hegel of dissolving “ontology into logic” but claims instead, and once again questionably,45 that “the [dialectical-speculative ME] system as ‘the thought’ is being itself that dissolves all beings within itself and thus outlines the preliminary form of that which comes to appearance as the essence of the technical world.” (Das [dialektischspekulative ME] System ist als ‘der Gedanke’ das Sein selbst, das alles Seiende in sich auflöst und so die Vorform dessen abzeichnet, was jetzt als das Wesen der technischen Welt zum Vorschein kommt. GA79:140).

Significantly and surprisingly, although calling for the “overcoming of Hegel [as] the inner, necessary step for developing Western philosophy” (Überwindung Hegels [als] der innerlich notwendige Schritt in der Entwicklung der abendländischen Philosophie, GA24:254), Heidegger does not attempt a critical engagement with Hegel’s dialectical-speculative logic in these lectures, but instead discusses Aristotle as the father of logic and then the later non-dialectical logicians, Hobbes, J.S. Mill as well as the post-Hegelian, Lotze. Following this discussion, Heidegger attempts, in the chapter in question, to retranslate the copula that couples subject and predicate in a logical proposition back into a way of being-in-the-world by showing that the simple proposition is embedded within the prior “uncoveredness” (Enthülltheit, GA24:311) of the world for Dasein, an attempt not dissimiliar to Hegel’s phenomenological interpretations of logical categories speculatively, i.e. ontologically, in his system. This problem of the copula does not concern us here. Rather, what interests us is how, in the same lectures, Heidegger interprets selfhood as a way of being-in-the-world, for this may shed light on how Hegel’s dialectical logic can be translated into a phenomenology of constitution of the self.

Heidegger in fact approaches the phenomenon of the constitution of the self through a concept that he explicitly borrows from Hegel, namely, the concept of “reflection”. “Reflect means here to refract on something, to radiate back from there, i.e. to show oneself in the reflection/shining-back from something. In Hegel, this optical meaning of the term ‘reflection’ resonates at one point... (Reflektieren heißt hier: sich an etwas brechen, von da zurückstrahlen, d.h. von etwas her im Widerschein sich zeigen. Bei Hegel [...] klingt einmal diese optische Bedeutung des Terminus ‘Reflexion’ an..., GA24:226). Heidegger, translating the Latin-derived ‘Reflektieren’ into the German-rooted ‘Widerschein’ or ‘shining-back’, goes on to make a great deal phenomenologically out of this “show[ing] oneself in the reflection/shining-back from something”.46 This “optical” etymology of reflection serves Heidegger as an alternative to the well-known etymology of ‘bending-back’ as in the bending back of consciousness upon itself to become aware of itself as a self in self-reflective self-consciousness.

Instead, Heidegger thinks the self as reflected back from the world, and he is able to do so because human being is no longer thought as inner, self-reflective subjectivity vis-à-vis the external world in its objectivity, but rather as Dasein, as being always already involved with beings in the world. Dasein is therefore always already embedded in and exposed to the world. Strictly speaking, therefore, there is no such thing as introspection, for Dasein is willy-nilly always looking ‘outward’. (And in truth, there is no inside and outside for Dasein, for the Da of its Dasein is itself the pre-spatial, all-encompassing 3D-temporal clearing for presencing and absencing within which world takes place.47) “[I]n immediate passionate surrender to the world, Dasein’s own self shines [back ME] out of things themselves” ([I]n unmittelbarem leidenschaftlichen Ausgegebensein an die Welt selbst scheint das eigene Selbst des Daseins aus den Dingen selbst [zurück ME], GA24:227). Heidegger says it is remarkable “that at first and, in everyday life, for the most part, we encounter ourselves from things and are opened up to ourselves in our self in this way. [...] To be sure, the cobbler is not the shoe and yet he understands himself from his things, himself, his self” (daß wir uns zunächst und alltäglich zumeist aus den Dingen her begegnen und uns selbst in dieser Weise in unserem Selbst erschlossen sind. [...] Gewiß, der Schuster ist nicht der Schuh, und dennoch versteht er sich aus seinen Dingen, sich, sein Selbst, GA24:227, emphasis in the original). One could say that this is a truly speculative insight into the nature of selfhood on Heidegger’s part: the cobbler can only see his self in a “mirroring-back” (Widerspiegelung, GA24:248) from the world. The cobbler’s things, his workshop surroundings hang together in an interconnection of practical things (Zeugzusammenhang, GA24:231) that refer to each other and which is understood by the cobbler, constituting the ontological worldliness of his workshop-world.

“The self radiating back from things” (Das von den Dingen her widerscheinende Selbst, GA24:229) in Dasein’s everyday involvement with them is “inauthentic” (uneigentlich, GA24:228) because “we have lost ourselves to things and people in the everydayness of existing” (wir uns selbst in der Alltäglichkeit des Existierens an die Dinge und Menschen verloren haben, GA24:228 italics ME), being unable to “understand ourselves [...] continually out of the ownmost/propermost and most extreme possibilities of our own existence” (verstehen uns [...] ständig aus den eigensten und äußersten Möglichkeiten unserer eigenen Existenz, GA24:228). This implies that, for Heidegger, the cobbler who understands his self as being-a-cobbler is casting his self only inauthentically and not from his “most extreme” possibilities of existing, for this is impossible on a daily basis. But why should the cobbler’s “ownmost” possibility of existing not consist precisely in practising the vocation of cobbler? This would mean only that the most extreme possibility of casting one’s self would coincide, or at least conform, with the casting of self resulting from the radiating back of the self out of the things constituting an individual Dasein’s everyday world. It would seem that Heidegger denies that the choice of vocation can be an authentic choice from utmost existential possibilities, potentials and opportunities for a singular individual that sets the course for this individual’s existence.

Furthermore, if Dasein does not cast its self out of a shining-back from the world, whence otherwise could it cast itself? Surely not out of the ego-point resulting from Dasein re-flecting or bending-back upon itself as self-consciousness, but always from the possibilities of existing radiating back from the world in which Dasein factically and practically exists.

Heidegger is at pains to comprehend “this enigmatic shining-back of the self out of things philosophically” (diesen rätselhaften Widerschein des Selbst aus den Dingen her philosophisch, GA24:229) by grounding it in a more originary, ontological “transcendence” (Transzendenz, GA24:230) to the world which he conceives as Dasein’s a priori being-in-the-world with “practical things” (Zeug, GA24:232). “[T]his enigma, the world” ([D]ieses Rätselhafte, die Welt, GA24:236) is therefore conceived philosophically by Heidegger as a “totality of interrelated usefulness” (Bewandtnisganzheit, GA24:235) of things rather than people. Although Heidegger points out that this world structured by a totality of interrelated, useful things that is understood by everyday Dasein is a “shared world” (gemeinsamen Welt, GA24:234), this does not suffice to make the ontological structure of the world, i.e. its worldliness, comprehensible as a world inhabited by both things and people in ontological-existential interrelation. Moreover, this focus on the ontological worldliness of the world leaves out of account that both Being and Time and the contemporaneous lectures in GA24 are concerned to deepen the analysis of Dasein by showing how the ontological structure of the world is embedded ultimately in originary, three-dimensional temporality (Zeitlichkeit) itself. This has the consequence that the discussion of the self’s constitution through a shining-back from the world is tacitly assumed to be a shining-back in the present, for the other two temporal dimensions go without mention.

This means firstly that Heidegger does not take up, but rather skips over the philosophical problem of how “we have lost ourselves to [...] people in the everydayness of existing” (wir uns selbst in der Alltäglichkeit des Existierens an die [...] Menschen verloren haben, GA24:228 italics ME). He touches on the problem without taking it up and explicating it, presumably because it is one more difficult than the worldliness constituted by the interconnections among things. If Dasein’s self is constituted, at least “at first and for the most part”, through a shining-back from things in the everyday world, why should it not be co-constituted ‘equally primordially’ by a shining-back from people, i.e. from other Dasein in the everyday world? Secondly, what does this shining-back look like when all three temporal dimensions are taken into view? What does it mean to say that “we have lost ourselves to [...] people” and how does this loss of self relate to the shining-back from the world through which the self is constituted ontologico-existentially? It does not suffice, as many scholars are wont to do, to refer merely to Heidegger’s concepts of Mitsein and Mitdasein, Wersein and Mansein in Sein und Zeit and other of his writings, to ‘prove’ that Heidegger has not ‘forgotten’ the other, for a study of these writings shows precisely that the problem of the constitution of self remains, to put it mildly, underdetermined. This underdetermination results from Heidegger’s primary focus, in Sein und Zeit and elsewhere, on the being of things in the world and the merely secondary or even derivative status of Mitdasein understood via things.

Let us consider Heidegger’s own example of the cobbler to see what Heidegger leaves out of phenomenological account. Not only the shoe and all it hangs together with in the cobbler’s workshop-world “shines back” at the cobbler in constituting his everyday self, but also and especially the cobbler’s customers who encounter the cobbler as a cobbler not merely by knowing that there’s a cobbler’s shop in such-and-such a street, but above all by recognizing and estimating his work as cobbler, thus reflecting back the cobbler’s self in calling on and paying for his service of repairing shoes competently. A cobbler who does not come to enjoy this validating shining-back from his customers as the cobbler-self he is, is no longer a cobbler. (In Hegelian language: He is a bad cobbler who does not correspond to the concept of cobbler.) Such shining-back of the cobbler’s self resides in the cobbler’s customers’ comportment toward him, namely, in their estimating and valuing his services by paying for them. The cobbler-self is therefore a reflection from the others, a mirror-reflection in which the cobbler can see that he is a cobbler, i.e. that he can understand his self as a cobbler-self.

Who he is is not a result of tautologous self-re-flection, i.e. of his being bent back upon himself in an awareness of himself in a self-definition, but of a shining-back from the others in their estimating him as a cobbler. His whoness is at least equally a validating mirror-reflection from the others, not just a shining-back from things. The others estimate him to be a cobbler because he has the ability to mend shoes, and this estimation by the others assumes the palpable form of their paying for the actual exercise of his powers to repair shoes, thus confirming and valuing these powers and also enabling the cobbler to continue his existence as a cobbler who understands his self as ‘cobbler’.

The self is a reflection, a shining-back from the world of things and others, and the worldliness of the world is not exhausted in the interrelations among useful, practical things, but encompasses also the interplay among people who mutually reflect who each other is by estimating ‘at first and for the most part’ each other’s abilities, competencies. The so-called division of labour in society is itself structured as a mutual mirroring of who each other is by estimating and valuing each other’s powers and abilities. The worldliness of the world therefore has a mirror-complexity that goes beyond that elaborated by Heidegger as the Bewandtnisganzheit of practically useful things whose ontological whatness resides in what they are practically good for.

In addition, we now have the others, who are also good for something or other through exercising their abilities, including deficient modes of being ‘good for nothing’. Who they are is defined not only by what they are good at, i.e. by their possessing certain abilities, but by these abilities also being shone back by a world shared with others in an ongoing estimating play of mirrorreflection of who each other is. From this it can be seen that the whatness or quidditas of what something is has to be clearly distinguished from, and complemented with, the whoness or quissity of who somebody is, and this insisting on a distinction only furthers, and by no means repudiates or diminishes, Heidegger’s grand effort to phenomenologically work out the peculiar ontological character of human being itself as Dasein, i.e. as being-in-the-world, thus breaking with the Cartesian tradition of an all-too-simple and inadequate distinction between res extensa and res cogitans.

In extending Heidegger’s analyses and twisting them toward the others,48 the question of the selfhood of Dasein becomes a matter of Dasein’s understanding its self as radiating back from things and the others. For Heidegger, this conception of selfhood would still be inauthentic selfhood, indeed more so, because Dasein allows itself to be defined as who it is from the estimations shining back from the others, das Man. Thus, Dasein is more than ever “lost” to the others, a mere plaything of their mirror-reflections of how they estimate it to be as somewho.49 But the shining-back does not have to operate so smoothly, without resistance and fractures. Is there not also the possibility that Dasein, as a free origin of its very own self-casting, is able to differentiate and to discover in this mirror-reflection from the others, and also nurture, its ownmost potential for being (Seinkönnen) in the world, finally exercising this potential as developed abilities? Could not, and must not, a critical, i.e. differentiating, Dasein choose its self at the extreme in choosing its ownmost potential and devoting itself to nurturing precisely this potential? Or is the potential factually nurtured only ever merely a reflection from the others (in the first place, one’s parents reflecting a self from the temporal dimension of the past) who predefine who Dasein is to be?

To be sure, without the reflection from others, Dasein as being-in-the-world-with-others would be unable to choose itself at all, but this does not exclude that the self that Dasein, ultimately as an origin of free nothingness, does choose and fashion from the range of mirror-reflections could be its ownmost, authentic self. Nor does the mirror-character of selfhood mean that authentic selfhood could not and must not reside in critically developing and realizing one’s ownmost potential discovered in the shining-back from the world, albeit that this potential could only be realized in a world shared with others in a definite historical time with its own temporal atmosphere, which implies essentially also that the others must in some way or other also estimate these abilities.

It is also important to emphasize that the shining-back of self from the world in its worldliness is a temporally triple reflection. First of all, I cast myself as a self by casting myself into the future guided by how I envisage myself in future possibilities of existing. This self-casting into the future is informed by who I have been and how others have reflected back to me my possibilities by estimating (right through to thoroughly downplaying and disparaging) my individual potentials.

Does this discussion of Heidegger’s phenomenology of Dasein that has led to a more refined and phenomenally concrete understanding of selfhood as an aspect of whoness than Heidegger himself presents mean that a consideration of Hegel’s dialectic is now superfluous? What does Hegel have to offer that Heidegger’s groundbreaking phenomenology itself does not already provide? To decide this question, we must return to the discussion of the dialectic of the concept, primal splitting and closing together of the preceding section.

3.3.1.5Interpreting the dialectic of primal splitting and closing together with regard to selfhood

At first sight it would seem that Hegel’s Logik is of no use for the question of selfhood because the phenomenon of whoness does not appear explicitly on the horizon of Hegel’s thinking. The example proposition we have discussed, ‘This is a glass’, is on a par with an example such as ‘Socrates is mortal’ about the singular human being, Socrates, formulated in the third person singular, the preferred grammatical person and number for metaphysical thinking as a whole, emanating from the simplest of statements ‘S is P’ taken already by Plato and Aristotle as the model for a λόγος. Already Aristotle observes that the simple proposition is a σύνθεσις νοημάτων (De anima 430a28), a synthesis of what is thought, and at the same time a διαίρεσις (De anima 430b3), a taking-apart or splitting, dividing. In Hegel’s thinking, this unity of opposites is sharpened to a contradiction: a singular being is what it is not, namely, a universal, and this is the primal split of the ontological judgement.

Taking up Heidegger’s example of the cobbler once again, the proposition, ‘John Brown is a cobbler’, is also a primal split between the singular, proper-named human being, John Brown, and the universal, ‘cobbler’ (which in turn is a particular, relative to the universal of human vocation defined by a specific difference, i.e. a difference in the ‘look’ of cobble vis-à-vis other occupations). As has been shown in the previous section, to be a cobbler, in turn, is to constitute one’s self through a shining-back from the world of things and others in casting one’s own existence. Thus, John Brown is his self only through, i.e. not without, the mirror-reflection from the things with which he is engaged daily and from the others who estimate and validate him as a cobbler. His identity is the mirror-reflection from what and who he is not by being in the world in a certain vocational way. The negation and contradictoriness in the constitution of self through a radiating back from the world is inadvertently expressed already by Heidegger when he writes, as already cited, “Reflect means here to refract/ break on something (sich an etwas brechen), to radiate back from there” (GA24:226). The individual has to “break on something”, namely, the world, especially the world of the others, to be a self, in a radiating-back from this refraction as a universal. Singularity has to be broken in (like a brumby or mustang) to take on the mask of universality in a primal split.

Other things are not constituted as selves through a shining-back from the world; selfhood is a prerogative of human being as being freely exposed to the clearing of three-dimensional time, within which the world itself is embedded, that permits a maximum of degrees of freedom for casting one’s self. In a reflection back to himself, John Brown, understands himself as a cobbler and is absorbed by the world in being a cobbler by exercising his cobbler vocation, his cobbler business. This means that he adopts for himself the judgement of the primal split, ‘I am a cobbler’. This is now a proposition in the first person, rather than the third person proposition, similarly a primal split, ‘John Brown is a cobbler’. This third-person judgement is made from the standpoint of the others, for it is they who talk about John Brown, determining him as a cobbler, and conducting themselves toward him accordingly. For John Brown to be a cobbler, is it sufficient for the others to understand John Brown as a cobbler, in line with the third-person judgement expressing the phenomenon, ‘John Brown is a cobbler’? Is there a discrepancy between the third-person proposition and the first-person proposition, ‘I am a cobbler’? Can the others foist the identity of cobbler onto John Brown? To take the moment of self-reflection in the constitution of self: I am a cobbler not merely by being defined as such by the shining back from the others, but only if, in addition, I myself, on self-reflection, adopt the mask of cobbler as my own identity. There can be a discrepancy between the two, a painful contradiction, say, if I am forced by pecuniary circumstances to continue in an occupation that no longer interests me, for I would rather cast my self in an entirely different direction.

Or, to take another example, is there a discrepancy between the third-person proposition, ‘Charles is heir to the throne’, and the first-person proposition, ‘I am heir to the throne’? This latter example makes the discrepancy abundantly apparent, because, to be heir to the throne, it matters little what I think about it and who I understand myself to be, because being heir to the throne is first and foremost a shining-back from the others who understand the heir to the throne as a socio-political role in accord with the practised traditions (if any) of monarchical lineage in the land. I may renounce my heirship to the throne by abdicating, thus breaking with the determination of my self by the others and making the discrepancy apparent, but I cannot cast my self out of my self as heir to the throne, for that would be only to make myself a laughing stock, again making the discrepancy between self-casting of the self and casting of one’s self through the reflections from others apparent. Or, in case of doubt about succession to the throne, there could be a contest, a power play, between different pretenders to the throne that has first to be fought out until others come to recognize one pretending successor as successor. This example shows also that it is not self-evident that ‘I am I’ purely and simply, as a matter of formal logic, because presenting myself of myself as myself may not be possible in a world in which who I am is cast primarily by others. My self is always a self-identification with difference.

To cast my self as such-and-such an identity is to adopt a certain comportment toward, and thus an habituated stance in the world of things and others through which I show myself off (ἀποφαίνεσθαι) to myself (the self-reflective first person) and the others (third person) as who I am — the ‘apophantic AS’, now in the first person tacitly interpreted by others in an ‘hermeneutic AS’. To cast my self as a cobbler means exercising my acquired abilities in a regular, habitual way, and in this sense it means putting on a certain mask of identity by identifying with what I am not, namely, the complex of practices constituting the vocation of cobbler. My self-casting is therefore an identity of identity and difference, because the practices constituting the vocation of cobbler are a universal in the sense of belonging to a given historical world, i.e. a cast of being in a given time. The moment of difference in this self-casting becomes apparent if I decide to cast myself in an alternative way, putting aside the mask of the vocation of cobbler, and adopting the mask of another vocation or perhaps another kind of mask altogether. The mask, conceived ontologically, is an existential possibility of identity through casting one’s self as a way of comporting oneself habitually in the world, and is possible only because there is a difference in the constitution of self-identity. This implies already that it is delusory for me to opine that I have to set out on an existential search to discover my ‘really true’, unique identity ‘inside’ me or prefigured ‘inside’ my very body. The usual ontic understanding of mask in play-acting is derivative of this deeper ontological-existential concept of self-identity and is something interposed between an individual and the world in the difference between self and world that allows someone to show himself off as who he is.

My ontological-existential mask of self-identity as cobbler also has to be reflected back from the world in order for me to be a cobbler. It is not sufficient for me to simply say to myself, ‘I am a cobbler’, or to adopt the comportment of a cobbler by busying myself in a cobbler’s workshop. In addition, the others have to validate this comportment by giving me cobbler’s work to do. For the most part in everyday life, the validation of vocational identity takes place through being paid for the exercise of abilities, money being the universal, reified medium for valuing and thus recognizing and validating individual powers. So there must be some sort of congruity between the first-person judgement, ‘I am a cobbler’, and the third-person judgement, ‘He is a cobbler’, for me to have my self cast and defined as cobbler in the world into which I have always already been cast. The others with their third-person judgements therefore have a power over my own determination of self and I am partly dependent in my cobbler-being on having this identity as self reflected by the others.

The discrepancy between my own casting of self and how the others judge me to be from their third-person viewpoint is a constant feature of existing in the everyday world, since there is a fundamental difference ontologically between the first-person and the third-person perspective, each of which represents a fold in the manifold of being, i.e. modes of presencing. This fundamental difference arises from the nature of selfhood as being a constitution of self through a shining-back from the world, including especially the world of others. The discrepancy between first-person and third-person casting of an individual self may be experienced in the first person merely as the pain on hearing discrepant third-person opinions about oneself, or it can sharpen into an opposition and outright contradiction when the individual refuses or is unable to see its self in the identity reflected back from the world. The others can reflect back to me a self with which I cannot identify, a mirror of self-identification in which I, as this singular individual, cannot recognize myself.

My identity is then truly broken and refracted in the mirror of the others. I am then alienated from the world, finding in the reflections from the others only the otherness of the self-casting I have defined for myself. The struggle and pain to become one’s own, self-cast self arise both out of the difference between self and world that is necessary for identity to be shone back (thus constituting a more or less tenuous identity of singularity and universality), and also out of the discrepancy between one’s own self-understanding (constituted as just such an identity of singularity and universality) and the reflections received back from the others estimating me. The individual’s singularity must in any case break on the world in assuming an identity by adopting a universal reflected back from the world, and this breaking on the world in a primal split is ontologically prior to and therefore deeper than the issue regarding a possible discrepancy or divergence between my own self-casting and a casting of self foisted upon me by the others.

This struggle and pain can be the process of finding one’s own refracted reflection in the world in the sense of finding the mask of self-comportment that truly fits one’s ownmost potentiality for being-in-the-world in a given sociohistorical time, i.e. one’s own authentic self. I as the abstract identity of ‘I am I’ is an emptiness and nothingness, an “abstract negativity” demarcating me in my abstract, indeterminate freedom from the world, that can only be escaped by casting my self in the broken dialectic between my singularity and the universality of what the world shines back. Moreover, the struggle and pain can be in addition the process of striving to have one’s self-chosen identity also reflected by the others, thus bringing one’s first person exposure to the world into congruity with the third-person judgement and estimation of the world in its opinions that hold me to be who I am. The more singularly I cast my self as a way of self-comportment in the world, adopting my ownmost universal, the more likely it is that this singular self-casting will fail to find a reflection from the others. The greater degree of singularity results in a more brittle and broken mediation by singularity and an adopted universal offering itself in a given historical world in a given historical situation and time, and results also in a divergence between a self-chosen way of self-comportment and the standard set of masks of self-comportment offered by the world of the others, including those offered by the cultural traditions cultivated.

In one way or other, the individual is always confronted with having to find its self in a mediation between its singularity and the universal options it is surrounded by in the world, for singularity is always and essentially caught in the primal split of having to break and be other than it is, namely, a universal. The self is both the same as and different from the world that radiates back, thus echoing Plato’s dialectical result, discussed in a previous section, that the one is both the same as and different from the other and the others.

The individual finding its self in the world in the first person requires a mediation, albeit broken and more or less brittle, between its unique singularity and universality considered here as the modes of comportment available in the world in which that individual exists. This mediation is a closing together of the primal split between singularity and universality in freely finding an identity as self in a “self-determination [...] to close itself together only with itself” (Selbstbestimmung [...], sich nur mit sich selbst zusammenzuschließen, RPh. § 7). Although any given way of comportment such as being a cobbler adopted by the singular individual as its self is a universal, any given way of comportment, when viewed from the perspective of the world, is only a particular way of existing in the world within the totality of ways of existing held open by an historical age. The particular way of existing in the world chosen by a singular individual in constituting its self-identity is to serve as the mediation that bridges the primal split between singularity and universality, allowing the individual to be part of its world. Nevertheless, despite this mediation, individual singularity can only be its self by being its other, namely, a (particular) way of existing in the world that shines back a universal as its identity. This is a ‘closing together’ of the individual with the world termed formally the “conclusion of determinate being” (Schluß des Daseins) in Hegel’s Logik. This conclusion or ‘closing together’ has “an indeterminate set of mediating termini [...] so that it lies in50 an extrinsic arbitrariness or an external circumstance and contingent determination with what kind of universal the subject of the conclusion is to be closed together” (eine unbestimmbare Menge von Mediis Terminis, [...] so daß es ganz in einer äußerlichen Willkür oder überhaupt in einem äußerlichen Umstande und zufälligen Bestimmung liegt, mit was für einen Allgemeinen das Subjekt des Schlusses zusammengeschlossen werden soll. LII W6:364). Even this formal description of the “conclusion of determinate being” has an existential-ontological interpretation when read in the present context of how the individual is to find its self in the world, since the individual is cast into the world, confronted with “external circumstance[s]” on which it is refracted and from which it chooses, sometimes in an arbitrary and capricious manner, thus allowing its identity to be dictated ‘inauthentically’ by these “external circumstance[s]”.

The totality of possible ways of being in the world open to an individual comprises all the particular ways of existing from which the individual has to choose among its options into which it is thrown in its individual situation, and this choice ‘breaks in’ the individual’s singularity, mediating it with a particular, factually chosen way of existing (such as its particular vocation) that shines back as its identity. This is a kind of ‘disjunctive closing together’ in which individual singularity is now mediated with a particular identity through the universal of the totality of possible ways of existing in an historical time. The individual must choose among the totality of its possibilities; its self is a necessary closing together with the world in one identity or other, no matter how impoverished, tenuous or brittle this identity may be. In the disjunctive conclusion, the culminating “conclusion of necessity” (Schluß der Notwendigkeit, W6:391) in Hegel’s Logik, the mediating link is the “universal sphere which contains its total particularization” (allgemeine Sphäre, die ihre totale Besonderung enthält, W6:398), and it is this “universal sphere” as totality that confronts the singular individual as the world on which it is broken and from which it must choose its self.

But is there not yet another kind of mediation between the singular individual and the universal of the others through a particular other that could close together the primal split between the individual self and the world? So far we have considered the others in general or as a whole, who reflect the individual’s self and its self-standing by esteeming and validating it in positive, neutral or negative modes. But, of these others, there is always also the particular other whom the individual encounters face to face. This particular other is a definite, particular other, a “bestimmte[s] Bestimmte” (W6:296), i.e. another singular real individual with whom the face-to-face encounter takes place in its own dimension, namely, the dimension in-between of the first-and-second person, as distinct from the usual first-and-third person relations with the world both of things and others. Hegel says that the singular is “determinacy relating to itself” (sich auf sich selbst beziehende Bestimmtheit, W6:288) through which the concept “steps into actuality” (tritt in Wirklichkeit, W6:299). In the present context this means that the singular individual encounters its self in breaking on and shining back from the other, actual individual whom it encounters face to face.

‘At first and for the most part’, however, such an encounter does not take place in everyday life, even when people meet in person, because the personal dealings with one another are mediated overwhelmingly by the matter at hand, such as giving the cobbler one’s shoes to heel, paying the cashier at the supermarket check-out or arranging a bank loan with the bank employee. In such dealings, the person-to-person interchange is reduced to a ritualistic, conventional politeness that serves only to lubricate the exchange, and the recognition of each other is only the formal, schematic recognition as persons in general. The other in such dealings is only one among many, i.e. a particular specimen of a general class (a universal) such as ‘customer’ or ‘patient’. In such general dealings with one another, the face of the other itself remains only a general schema particularized in this particular person, and does not attain the unique singularity of a definite, singular, individual other. For the most part, social intercourse is an interchange among particular persons, not singular individuals. Even social gatherings usually remain on the level of general, albeit particularized, exchanges in which one inquires about the other in the conventional manner in which one politely inquires about others in such social situations, for instance, a dinner party. The other’s singularity remains for the most part hidden behind the mask of the particular persona.