Christine asked:

What does Heidegger mean when he says, "What we call a 'feeling' is neither a transitory
epiphenomenon of our thinking and willing behavior nor simply an impulse that provokes such
behavior nor merely a present condition we have to put up with somehow or another"? what exactly is
feeling then, according to Heidegger?

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Heidegger refuses to think the person — and personal feelings included — in terms of ego
psychology. He is non-Cartesian. He distinguishes (in the language of Being and Time) between the
'ontical' depiction of entities (e.g. feelings) in the world and the 'ontological' Interpretation of their
Being. Heidegger does not deny that feelings exist ontically, but that is not what they are.What
feeling (Gefhl) is is a matter of the question of Being, which means, therefore, an existential question,
that can only be approached (but never captured) by what he calls fundamental ontology, which is
basically a radical restatement of phenomenology. For Heidegger, feeling quaBeing is a disclosure of
existence. It is disclosure of a particular kind, one that discloses mood (Stimmung). "Mood is a
primordial kind of being for Dasein" writes Heidegger (H.136 in the MacQuarrie Trans.). 'Moods' are
the precondition of feelings. "A mood assails us. It comes neither from 'outside' nor from 'inside' but
arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being." (ibid.). What that means is that 'mood' is a
'bare' way of being for man. Our 'mood' is constitutive of our selves and our world, it structures them.
Mood discloses 'state of mind' (Befindlichkeit) as the way we are as In-der-Welt-seins
(Being-in-the-world). These are the grounds of feeling. Heidegger basically has to rewrite the
language in an attempt to talk about human being in a way which questions Being rather than
presupposes it in these or those (Aristotelean) terms.

Matthew Del Nevo

www.sicetnon.com

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