Heidegger's Being and Time will be cited as BT with marginal pagination.
Disclosing the world is a precondition for any engagement or concern with the world, as it makes the ready-to-hand “accessible for circumspective concern” (BT 76). Something must light up the world, making its totality of references, assignments, and tools available to us. But how is the world lit up or disclosed? Through the inseparably connected components of the care-structure, including attunement, understanding, fallenness, and discourse. This essay focuses on attunement, perhaps the most fundamental part of the care-structure, as it is what makes things to matter to Dasein in the first place (BT 137). Section 1 reconstructs Heidegger’s account of attunement and moods in the context of his broader existential analytic. Section 2 addresses some major methodological concerns for his account. Ultimately, Heidegger’s analysis of attunement illuminates key ontological structures of our experience and remains relevant even in a modern scientific context.
1. Attunement and Mood
Heidegger distinguishes between two concepts: an attunement or state-of-mind (Befindlichkeit), and a mood (Stimmung).[1] Unfortunately, Heidegger does not explicitly delineate these terms, and often uses them interchangeably. One interpretation is that attunement is the ontological existentiale, while mood is the ontic manifestation of attunement. In less technical terms, attunement is the fundamental condition that allows us to experience the world as meaningful and ‘mooded.’ Mood is the term for more specific modes of attunement, like fear, anxiety, joy, anger, or focus. Moods are therefore derivative from attunement. Perhaps Heidegger does not need to distinguish between the two. After all, we never experience some abstract, free-floating, or content-free attunement. Instead, we are always experiencing a specific, concrete mood. Attunement is a concept for describing the character of moods in general, as they all share a common structure. What are the characteristics of this structure?
An intuitive view is that moods are occasional, transient emotional experiences that affect us temporarily. One can be more or less moody, or feel a particularly strong mood, but moods are not constant features of our experience. For Heidegger, moods are far more fundamental. We are always already in a mood, and “we are never free from moods” (BT 136). Dasein is Being-in-the-world: it is always absorbed in and engaged with a web of references and assignments that make a totality of equipment ready-to-hand (BT 76). Moods make things accessible to us as equipment, making them meaningful. For instance, a mood like “focus” reveals this laptop as a tool for-the-sake-of the project of writing this essay. I am able to encounter only what a mood has already disclosed to me. Moods thereby disclose the worldhood of the world.
Moods allow us to “encounter something that matters to us” (BT 138). In this sense, moods color the world. However, this metaphor is misleading, as it suggests attunement simply tinges or tints objects that are already revealed. As Schopenhauer writes, “subjective mood—the affection of the will—communicates its color to the purely viewed surroundings.”[2] For Heidegger, moods are not just tinted lenses that give already-revealed objects some emotional color. Attunement, the structure of mood, is more like an atmosphere than a tinted lens: moods are always present, even if not visible, and are necessary for any experience of the world whatsoever.[3] Attunement is how the world opens up to me – whether it is opened up as a burden, a fearful place, or a wonderland. For instance, fearfulness is the mood which allows me to discover threatening objects (BT 138). Furthermore, a mood is not from inside or outside the mind, “but arises out of Being-in-the-world” (BT 176). Heidegger again rejects the distinction between subject and object, as it “splits the phenomenon asunder” (BT 132). Moods are neither inner nor outer, within nor without, objective nor subjective. Rather, moods condition the way we encounter things within the unitary phenomena of Being-in-the-world.
Heidegger’s reasoning about attunement could fit into the pattern of a transcendental argument: (1) Being-in-the-world is the basic structure of experience as Dasein; (2) in Being-in-the-world, things are disclosed as meaningful and ready-to-hand; (3) there must be some way these things are disclosed and made meaningful; (4) attunement is a name for the way things are disclosed and made meaningful to Dasein.[4] Therefore, attunement is an ontological precondition for our experience of the world. As Heidegger puts it, “only because the ‘there’ has already been disclosed in a state of mind [attunement] can immanent reflection come across ‘experiences’ at all” (BT 136). Moods are not just a kind of experience or a way of being intentionally directed. Instead, moods are a condition that makes experience possible, making it “possible first of all to direct oneself toward something” (BT 137). This is why attunement is necessary for experience in general, and not just affective or emotional experience.
2. Methodological Problems for Heidegger’s Analysis
The first problem for Heidegger’s concept of attunement is a methodological one. If we are always already in a mood, it follows that even Heidegger’s existential analytic must be carried out in some mood. Therefore, we can ask what makes his mood, or any mood, existentially authoritative. Since moods condition experience in different ways, perhaps Dasein will reveal itself differently depending on the mood of the phenomenologist. Is there a ‘right’ mood for uncovering the real ontological structures of Dasein?
Initially, it is clear that Heidegger rejects the idea of a ‘pure’ phenomenology devoid of mood. For example, through the neutrality modification, Husserl aimed to “suspend everything connected to the will” to achieve a purer phenomenological method.[5] Heidegger argues that this is misguided. There is no pure, mood-free experience of objects, as mood is a precondition for being receptive to objects at all. Not “even the purest theory has left all moods behind it” (BT 138). We cannot get outside of moods and observe them from some external vantage point. Every investigation must have some mood that makes the objects of investigation accessible and meaningful.
Heidegger emphasizes that this does not mean we “surrender science ontically to ‘feeling’” (BT 138), but it does seem methodologically problematic for an existential analytic if ‘universal’ ontological structures are only visible in certain moods. One can understand why phenomenologists seek neutrality, to avoid this methodological subjectivity. A defender of Heidegger’s approach can make several responses. First, even if we only “see the ‘world’ unsteadily and fitfully in accordance with our moods” (BT 138), this may be the only way to analyze being as it truly manifests itself. If the investigation of being turns out to be mood-dependent and tumultuous, then so be it. We should not falsify our experience and create artificial uniformity, treating Dasein as always present-at-hand, just because this would make phenomenology seem more objective. Second, the existentiales Heidegger identifies are present regardless of mood: in “every state-of-mind…Being-in-the-world should be fully disclosed” (BT 191). Even if we are not explicitly aware of structures like understanding, Self, or the World, they still condition our experience. Indeed, Being will often be disguised and “covered up” to us (BT 35). Perhaps an in-depth analysis can reveal structures that are not visible in our average everydayness, but that are always present as ontological structures. Presumably, these structures will be recognizable in every mood, although in different ways and to different degrees.
Furthermore, not all moods are equal in their disclosure of Dasein. Information about Dasein is accessible to us through attunements, and more primordial attunements offer a greater possibility of accurately interpreting Dasein’s Being (BT 185). Heidegger argues that anxiety (angst) is the most primordial and disclosive attunement. Unlike fear in the face of some extant entity, we have anxiety in the face of Being-in-the-world as such, which is indefinite, unknown, and nowhere. Just as when our tools break, we become aware of them as present-at-hand objects, when our world breaks down, we become are aware of it as a world. Through anxiety, we see the networks of meaning we are normally absorbed in, realize our individuality and being-thrown, and recognize our freedom to live inauthentic or authentic possibilities. Anxiety also provokes feelings of uncanniness and homelessness in our once-familiar world. Thus, we usually flee from it, absorbing ourselves in projects and entities to “dim down” or tranquilize the anxiety (BT 189). Our ceaseless avoidance reveals the constant presence and primordiality of anxiety, showing that Dasein is anxious in the “very depths of its Being” (BT 190). Anxiety is therefore a primordial mood that can encourage authenticity and enable the analysis of Dasein.
However, Heidegger leaves serious methodological questions unanswered. Despite using the term “primordial” 371 times in B&T, he never offers a method for determining whether a phenomenon is more primordial than another. His evidence that anxiety is a primordial attunement rests on the claim that we are always fleeing from it. However, even if this is accepted as a phenomenologically apt description, it is not clear why this implies that anxiety is more primordial. Even more critically, Heidegger suggests that anxiety as a primordial mood is more disclosive – it offers us privileged epistemic access to Dasein and the worldhood of the world. Why does the fact that we flee from an attunement imply that it is primordial, and why does its primordiality imply that the attunement is more disclosive? In claiming that anxiety discloses primordial Being, Heidegger seems to be begging the question: he presupposes some significant knowledge of primordial Being. Without this preexisting knowledge, it is hard to see how Heidegger could claim that anxiety discloses more of the reality or primordiality of Being.[6] While perhaps we have an implicit awareness of Being that enables us to begin an investigation of Dasein (BT 7), Heidegger is assuming a much richer understanding of Being here.
Furthermore, it is not clear why a phenomenon like fallenness is not more primordial than anxiety. After all, it almost universally present, and being-fallen is the mode of being that we occupy proximally and for the most part. In contrast, “‘real’ anxiety is rare” (BT 190). We flee toward fallenness, and away from anxiety (BT 189). Why should the phenomena we flee away from be more primordial than the phenomena we flee toward? Often, it seems that Heidegger labels a phenomenon “primordial” to communicate normative preferences rather than descriptive claims about the reality of Being. This leaves serious concerns: how can we resolve epistemic disputes about the primordiality of phenomena? More generally, why should we accept Heidegger’s characterizations of Being? The primary method he employs is a description of phenomena in our experience, and logical analysis to make conclusions about Being based on these phenomena. At least to some degree, Heidegger relies on the aptness and explanatory power of his descriptions of our experience. Thus, the validity of his “fundamental ontology” is dependent on the resonance of his words in describing the human condition, and seems to be an aesthetic activity analogous to that of a novelist or fiction writer.
Finally, in Heidegger’s time, the “psychology of moods” was a new, undeveloped field which “still lies fallow” (BT 134). Today, it has grown into the far more mature field of affective science. However, Heidegger would likely criticize even a more advanced, scientific, and explanatorily successful psychology as having critical problematic assumptions and a deeply flawed starting point. The sciences treat Dasein as a present-at-hand object which can be understood in a detached theoretical attitude, and this approach inevitably falsifies the phenomena. Empirical science is a restricted mode of disclosing being, and it is not epistemologically prior. Indeed, the existentiales that Heidegger elucidates are “a priori conditions for the objects which biology takes for its theme,” and the structures examined by any science can only be understood if they are first seen as structures of Dasein (BT 58). For instance, attunements are the fundamental conditions that render the world intelligible to us, making possible logical or theoretical investigation. Ontological structures like attunement must be presupposed by the sciences and can never be fully explained by present-at-hand analysis.
As it happens, many of Heidegger’s explanations of Being have proved fruitful in the sciences, and his work influences entire research areas like embodied cognition. The existential analytic of Dasein has been ‘naturalized,’ tested, and applied as a model of the extant human brain. For example, Ratcliffe (2002) argues that Heidegger’s account is “actually required as an interpretive backdrop for neuropsychological cases,” and provides a powerful framework for modern affective science.[7] Recent findings show that moods determine how the world is opened up to us, enabling cognitive processing, decision-making, and successful reasoning. These findings show that Heidegger’s analysis has explanatory power in science as well as phenomenology. Additionally, as they reveal the inextricability of emotion from cognitive processes like logic, these findings challenge the ‘purity’ of many theoretical methods and undermine the epistemological assumptions of the sciences.
However, attempting to use science to add credibility to Heidegger’s views implicitly accepts that his claims are legitimately interpretable and even testable in a scientific context. This implies that empirical sciences can offer meaningful knowledge about Dasein, a claim Heidegger would likely reject. If the existential analytic truly has ontological priority, then it does not require empirical validation through the study of present-at-hand beings, and it cannot be treated as a merely ontic science. In the process of applying Heidegger’s ideas, the sciences therefore may violate some of his most essential philosophical principles. However, the problems discussed above raise questions for Heidegger’s own methods. These methods may not be able to fulfill his own desiderata, as they do not reveal the phenomena in a sufficiently originary way and are not clearly epistemologically prior. Instead, Heidegger’s approach, insofar as it aims for explanatory power in its description of consciousness and being, could be interpreted as continuous with the natural sciences. After all, a strict division between the study of Dasein and the present-at-hand would commit a cardinal Heideggerian sin by splitting up unitary phenomena. Just as the sciences are not a privileged conduit to reality, perhaps the existential analytic of Dasein is just one limited but insightful way of disclosing Being.
Bibliography
Elpidorou, Andreas, and Lauren Freeman. “Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and emotions in Being and Time.” Philosophy Compass 10, no. 10 (2015): 661-671.
Heidegger, Martin. The fundamental concepts of metaphysics: World, finitude, solitude. Indiana University Press, 1995.
Heidegger, Martin. Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Albert Hofstadter, trans. Indiana University Press, 1988.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson. Harper Reprint, 2008.
Husserl, Edmund. Ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy: First book: General introduction to pure phenomenology. Hackett Publishing, 2014.
Schopenhauer, Arthur. The World as Will and Idea – Vol. 2. Project Gutenberg, 2015.
Polt, Richard. Heidegger: an introduction. Routledge, 2013.
Ratcliffe, Matthew. “Heidegger’s attunement and the neuropsychology of emotion.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1, no. 3 (2002): 287-312.
- I will use “attunement” for Heidegger’s term Befindlichkeit, and “mood” for Stimmung. Many translators agree these English terms most accurately communicate Heidegger’s concepts. See Andreas Elpidorou and Lauren Freeman, “Affectivity in Heidegger I: Moods and emotions in Being and Time,” Philosophy Compass 10, no. 10 (2015): 661-671. ↑
- Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea-Vol. 2, Project Gutenberg, 2015. Pg. 400. ↑
- Heidegger, The fundamental concepts of metaphysics, pg. 45. ↑
- Of course, attunement is not the only way things are disclosed – it is part of the whole care-structure. ↑
- Husserl, Ideas I, §109, pg. 213. ↑
- Ratcliffe, Matthew. “Heidegger’s attunement and the neuropsychology of emotion.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 1, no. 3 (2002): 287-312. ↑