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What's Formal about FormalIndication? Heidegger's

Method in Sein und ZeitR. Matthew Shockey

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aIndiana University South Bend , USA

Published online: 06 Nov 2010.

To cite this article:R. Matthew Shockey (2010) What's Formal about FormalIndication? Heidegger's Method in Sein und Zeit , Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal

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Inquiry,

Vol. 53, No. 6, 525539, December 2010

0020-174X Print/1502-3923 Online/10/06052515 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/0020174X.2010.526318

SINQ0020-174X1502-3923Inquiry, Vol. 53, No. 6, Sep 2010: pp. 00Inquiry

Whats Formal about FormalIndication? Heideggers Method inSein und Zeit1

Whats Formal about Formal Indication?R. Matthew Shockey

R. MATTHEW SHOCKEY

Indiana University South Bend, USA

(Received 4 June 2009)

ABSTRACT Against the background of a recent exchange between Cristina Lafontand Hubert Dreyfus, I argue that Heideggers method of formal indication is at theheart of his attempt in Sein und Zeitto answer the ontological question of the being of

the sum (SZ, p. 46). This method works reflexively, by picking out certain essentialfeatures of ones first-person singular being at the outset of its investigation that areimplicit in the question what is it to be the entity I am? On the basis of these features,various further a priori, ontological structures (care and temporality) that constituteone as a first-person singular entity then become accessible. Formal indication is thus

formal in two senses: it officially designates or signals certain first-person singularphenomena as the topic of investigation, and it picks out features which define the onto-logical form of the entity in question. It is thereby the method by which a legitimatelytranscendental account of our being may be begun to be generated by each of us fromout of our factical, immanent existence.

I.

What is it to be a first-person singular entity, anI as such rather than just

the particular one I happen to be? In Sein und Zeit, Heidegger calls this, in a

short passage about Descartes, the ontological question of the being of the

sum,2and he implies that answering it is the chief aim of his analysis of

Daseinhis name for the kind of entity I am and you are, the entity who

says sum. In order to pursue this analysis, Heidegger offers what he calls

formal indications [formale Anzeigen] of those fundamental aspects ofDasein that we must begin by examining, on the basis of which its deeper

Correspondence Address: Department of Philosophy, Indiana University South Bend, DW

3281, 1700 Mishawaka Ave. South Bend, IN 46634, USA. Email: [email protected]

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526 R. Matthew Shockey

constitutive structures (care [Sorge] and temporality [Zeitlichkeit]) become

accessible. Despite its crucial role in SZ, however, Heidegger does almost

nothing there to articulate how formal indication is supposed to work, or his

reasons for calling it formal.3

I here make a case for what he should havesaid about formal indication, given what we can see him doing with it in the

book. Specifically, I argue that the function of formal indication is to call

attention to fundamental aspects of my being that are revealed in the specific

act of questioning it; and I argue that it is formal in two senses: (a) it offi-

cially designates or signals certain of these aspects of me, the philosophical

inquirer as the initial topic of investigation; and (b) what it indicates are

those aspects of me that make up what we may regard as my ontological

form (that which makes me the kindof entity I am) as opposed to my ontical

or factical matter (what makes me thisme and not another). As such, formalindication is the method by which, out of my individual, factical existence, I

am able to reflexively generate a transcendental account of my being, i.e., an

account of that which constitutes me as a first-person singular entity as such,

rather than just the particular one I happen to be.4

II.

While of great importance to an understanding of Heidegger, getting clear

on his method of formal indication promises to shed light on a number ofimportant issues about the first person, the demands it places on philosophi-

cal method, and the nature and possibility of transcendental philosophy. In

order to give some sense of this, and to frame certain possibilities for treating

the notion of formal indication, I begin with a look at part of a recent

exchange between Hubert Dreyfus and Cristina Lafont.5

At the heart of Heideggers early work is a distinction between entities

(Seienden) and that which determines entities asentities, being (Sein) that

on the basis of which [woraufhin] entities are understood as what, how,

and whether they are.6As do many, Lafont reads Heidegger as claiming that

all understanding depends on those conceptual schemes made up of the con-

tingent concepts of whatever natural, historically varying languages we

speak. In her particular version of this reading, she sees him as equating

being with linguistic conceptual schemes, so that on the basis of which

entities are understood is just whatever such scheme we happen to possess.7

And this equation entails, she argues, that there is no room in Heideggers

account of language and understanding for what has come to be called direct

reference, i.e., ostensive or demonstrative reference that picks out that which

is referred to directly, without being mediated or determined by whatever

linguistic concepts may happen to figure in any attendant or subsequent

descriptions of the referent. Heidegger is thus directly led into a linguistic

idealism that has no way of accounting for how the world provides

constraints on our beliefs about it. Lafont also argues that this picture of

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Whats Formal about Formal Indication? 527

linguistically mediated understanding reduces to nonsense Heideggers

attempt to articulate a concept of the understanding of being that is akin to

Kants necessary and universal synthetic, a priori knowledge, for no conceptual

scheme made up of contingent linguistic concepts could possibly have theneeded necessary, universal, a priori character.

Dreyfus has no real interest in vindicating the stronger Kantian elements

in Heideggers thought, but he does think Heidegger can and ought to be

defended against the charge of linguistic idealism. His focus is thus on the

possibility of access to entities that is not wholly determined by linguistic

conceptual schemes, and he claims, against Lafont, that Heideggers method

of formal indication involves precisely the sort of direct reference that she

claims he has no room for. Citing a lecture course from several years before SZ,8

Dreyfus describes formal indication as a kind of non-committal reference,which starts by referring to some object or class of objects provisionally,

using contingent features, and arrives at the referents essential features only

after an investigation.9He thus sees it as mirroring Putnams account of

direct reference and Kripkes account of rigid designation. These show how

we are able to demonstratively (and so non-conceptually) single out an

object, thereby fixing reference to whatever makes it (and anything identical

to it in the relevant ways) the thing it is, which further investigation may

then uncover.10Though Dreyfus himself does not make the connection, we

may see his understanding of formal indication as fitting within his broaderinterpretive framework, which asserts that, for Heidegger, linguistic under-

standing always takes place against a background of extra-linguistic social

practices that involve intra-worldly entities.11 Formal indication should

presumably be seen as piggy-backing on this and bringing to linguistic

expression the extra-linguistic connection to entities we always already have.

Dreyfuss understanding of formal indication would, if right, go a long way

towards getting Heidegger off the descriptivist hook that Lafont has hung him

on. But, as she correctly observes in her response, Heidegger only invokes

formal indication in the case of the investigation of Dasein. It is not, for

Heidegger, a general method that also figures in the investigation of other enti-

ties in the world. And because Daseinis the entity that we who do the investi-

gating ourselves are, its investigation is reflexive in a way that the investigation

of other entities is not. Partly for this reason, Heidegger believes that the

proper philosophical approach to Dasein is at odds with the objectivizing

stance of the empirical sciences, in which rigid designation and direct reference

as canonically understood have their natural place.12The reflexivity of formal

indication is thus, as Lafont claims, decisive against Dreyfus and has serious

implications for how he understands Heideggers larger project.

As I will demonstrate in what follows, however, a proper understanding

of the formal nature of Heideggers method and the project it initiates in SZ

shows that it undermines Lafonts interpretation as well. For, to work

reflexively, formal indication presupposes that what is indicated are fixed,

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necessary or constitutive aspects of the one who does the indicating, which

aspects must be understood as standing apart from whatever particular

language she happens to speak.13Since it is these necessary aspects of the

one who is reflexively indicated that, when explicated, are what Heideggerequates with her being, this means he does not equate being with linguistic

conceptual scheme. Rather, beingthe being of the one doing the indicatingis

brought tolanguage without being initially determined by it. Formal indica-

tion, properly understood, is thus a method that presupposes the possibility of

the very sort of non-linguistic transcendentalism that Lafont says is incom-

patible with Heideggers hermeneutic phenomenology.

III.

The idea of formal indication was one Heidegger had been developing in his

lecture courses for several years before SZ. The contexts in which it comes

up vary, but most concern questions about how to offer a phenomenology of

life or lived experience or some aspect of it without ossifying or distorting

the phenomena in questionstilling the stream in Natorps famous

phrase. SZ, however, opens with an apparently different question: what is

the sense or meaning (Sinn) of being (Sein)? Because being is always the

being of that which is, entities, this is the question: what is it for an entity

any entityto be? The concern here is not obviously the same as the concernwith lived experience, but the connection may be readily shown. In lived

experience, entities are experienced and understood asbeing by the one who

is alive, and there are different ways she has of so understanding them. Some

are alive (in the way she is, or in other ways); some are merely physical;

many are useful; a few appear to be eternal; etc.14To fully account for the

character of lived experience thus requires an account of the unity of the

ways of being of those entities that are experienced. What is perhaps distinctive

about SZrelative to the earlier lecture courses is its reversal of the priority of

questions: the question of being becomes primary, the examination of the

entity who encounters entities as being only a means to answering it. But it is

the means: to seek the meaning of beingis to seek the unity of the understanding

of being, hence the unity of the being of the entity who understands.15

Heideggers name for the entity that experiences entities as being and

whose self-analysis must be the focus of the inquiry into being is, as noted,

Dasein, but the impersonality of the term (and the pronouns that go with it)

can induce us to forget that it is we, as individuals, who ask the question of

the meaning of being, and whose analysis promises to provide the answer.

The investigation of Daseinis, in other words, always an investigation of me

by me, one in which Iinquire into my being, i.e., what it is to be the kind of

entity Iam. Heideggers focus is, of course, on how to understand am

rather than I, for he sees focus on I as having typically led to it being

treated as an object present to the investigator in the manner of the objects

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of natural sciences, thus obscuring the fact of the identity between investigator

and investigated, and the practical (or, better, enactive) form this reflexive

self-relation must take. But this is not to say, as many do, that Heidegger is

trying to displace the I or subjectivity from the center of philosophy. He isonly concerned to guard against a particular ontological interpretation of

what it is to bea subject. And so his own investigations remain first-person

singular in form, for that is the form of the verb am. The question about

its sense or meaning can only properly be taken up by one who employs it.

IV.

But what exactly is it for me to take up this question of my being, of what I

mean when I say I am? If I ask myself (or someone asks me) what or who Iam, the most natural answer is that I am (among other things) a philosophy

professor, an amateur cook and gardener, a recent parent, and an American.

I might also note that I am sometimes sad, sometimes happy; that I am par-

tially color blind and less than six feet tall; that I am planning to write a

book on Heidegger, go to the lake, and eat breakfast, though not in that

order or all at the same time; and, that as I set these words down, I am writing

a paper on formal indication. For me I am functions normally in all of

these assertions of who I am and what I am doing, feeling, planning etc. And

so, it would seem, I am constantly engaged with my being, in a quitestraightforward sense. Nevertheless, we dont yet have in view what

Heidegger is after when he refers to our being, for what I have so far

expressed is my understanding of and engagement with my being me, the

particular individual I am.

To take a step towards my being in the sense Heidegger is concerned with,

note that one of the things I may say of myself is that I am able to reflexively

refer to myself and assert the things about myself that I just have. Call assertions

of what I am, am doing, etc., as offered in the previous paragraph first-order

assertions of my being. The assertion that I have an ability to make first-

order assertions is itself an assertion of a different sort than those first-order

assertions themselves, a second-order assertion that points to a common

capacity that I use each time I make a first-order one. This second-order

assertion that I have this capacity to assert is true no matter which particular

first-order assertions I make. Moreover, anyone who can make first-order

assertions can, if her attention were called to it, say she is able to make such

assertions about herself, even though they will be for the most part different

from mine and those of anyone else with the same capacity. In this sense, the

second-order assertion that I am able to make first-order assertions about

my being is a peculiar sort of claim about what constitutes me not just as me

but as ame. Unlike the first-order assertions that express what I under-

stand of myself as the particular self I am, the assertion that I have a capacity

for making such assertions expresses (part of) an understanding of myself as

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a certain general kindof entity, one with a general capacity for expressing its

self-understanding. Given the ontological aims of SZ, specifically the ana-

lytic of Daseins goal of saying what it is, in general, to be Dasein, it is obvi-

ously the understanding I have of myself in terms of such second-order,general, constitutive features or capacities that are of interest. For, as noted

earlier, being is that on the basis of which entities are understood asentities,

and what the analytic of Daseinaims at (on its way to answering the Seins-

frage) is the basis of my own understanding of myself asthe entity I am qua

understander, i.e., qua Dasein.

V.

The chief methodological question is now,16how do we begin to get our con-stitutive, ontological structuressuch as our capacity for making first-order

assertions about ourselvesin view in such a way that we may thematize

[thematisieren] them?17Or, how do we come to see ourselves in such a way

that we may render ourselves transparent [durchsichtig] in our being, as

Heidegger puts it, appropriating and recasting the modern periods domi-

nant visual metaphor of self-knowledge?18Clearly we need a method that

will not only allow us to bring our being-constitution (Seinsverfassung) into

view and distinguish it from our merely ontical or factical, individual fea-

tures, but also that will make sure that it is not distorted by importedassumptions about what we are. This latter will be particularly difficult for

the trained philosopher who finds herself asking, what am I?, for a

number of precise, if incompatible answers will be readily available to her: I

am a mind, a thinking thing; I am a body and my I ultimately only a com-

plex material phenomenon; I am a rational animal; etc. And everyone, non-

philosophers and philosophers alike, will have versions of these or other

answers provided to them by their culture (religious, political, scientific,

etc.). Moreover, if Heidegger is right that we have a tendency to try to assim-

ilate our being to that of other entities because of the very character of our

ontological constitution (the fact that we have our being in a world with

other entities amidst which we find ourselves dispersed), anyone in this situ-

ation of philosophical self-questioning will likely be pulled more or less

strongly to think that the question of what she is, is like any similar-sounding

what is X? question about other kinds of entities. She will fail to see that

there is not a univocal sense of what that goes with both am and is.

So, how does one proceed? How do Iproceed? How do I make sure that I

ask the question about my being in the right way, where that means not simply

assuming that my way of being is like that of other things (though allowing

that it may turn out to be)? Heideggers crucial methodological insight is the

recognition that there is one thing which cant be gotten around: anyanswer

to the question what am I? or what does it mean to say I am? must

include the fact that I am the kind of entity who can ask this question.This

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then provides a fundamental condition of adequacy on any answer to it: any

answer that fails to account for the fact that the question can be asked will

be false, for it will entail a pragmatic contradiction in which I am asked to

affirm a theory of what I am that denies the very perspective of questioningout of which the theory is generated. This may sound trivial, but (though it is

impossible to argue it here) there is no shortage of philosophical theories

that fail to meet this condition, as do, for instance, most (perhaps all) forms

of substance monism, eliminative materialism, and thoroughgoing social

constructivism.19Heideggers ontology of Daseinis, if nothing else, designed

to avoid the pragmatic contradiction involved in such theories.

More important for present purposes than this condition of adequacy is

that the question what am I? itself implies a way of beginning to come up

with an answer to it. For without knowing anything else about what I ambeyond my ability to ask the question of my being, I can still look at the

question itselfto see what it shows about me as the one asking it and let that

give a direction to any further analysis of what I am. So what exactly does

the question what am I? show about me ontologically? Three things (at

least): first, the question shows that to be the kind of entity I am is to be an

entity who has questioningas one of its possibilities; second, it shows that I

have among my possibilities a question about my being, which shows up in

the question as something that, even as I am unsure of it, I am able to ask

about and that I find myself concerned with; and third, it shows that I canidentify the question of my being as myquestion.

With this, it is, I hope, obvious where we have gotten to. Looking at the

form of the question what am I? (understood as what is it to say I am?)

leads to precisely those fundamental aspects of Daseinthat Heidegger begins

the analytic of Dasein by formally indicating: mineness (Jemeinigkeit) and

existence (Existenz).20For to recognize that I have a question about my being

shows that I am oriented towards my being, which orientation is the key

dimension of existence: Dasein is an entity which, in its being, comports itself

understandingly towards that being. With this, the formal concept of existence

is indicated (SZ, pp. 5253). And to recognize the question of my being as

mine, and to see the question as reflecting my concern about my being, is to

recognize the essential mineness of what I am: that being which is at issuefor

[Dasein] in its very being is in each case mine [je meines] (SZ, p. 42).21And let

me emphasize: by virtue of the fact that these features are implicit in the question

what am I? they are thereby features of anyentity who can find itself in a

position of asking that question. For that reason, mineness and existence must

be seen as constitutive, ontological features of any self-questioning entity.22

VI.

Formal indication has thus emerged as the technique for addressing those

aspects of what I am that are implicit in the act of raising the question of

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what I am.23And with that we are now in a position to ask, in what sense is

the initial signaling or indicating of these basic, ontological aspects of me

qua Dasein formal? Prior to SZ, Heidegger is occasionally critical of the

unreflective use of, or appeal to, various kinds of formality on the part ofphilosophers, and of the role often given to formal logic in metaphysics and

ontology. The choice to identify a key component of his own methodology

as formal may thus seem somewhat surprising. Unfortunately, his occa-

sional explanations of formal indication in his lecture courses mostly do

little to help the matter, for (with one exception I will touch on in a moment)

they are typically frustratingly vague and unsatisfying and do little to moti-

vate that particular choice of terminology.24In interpreting SZ, this lack of

any truly clear explanation of what makes formal indication formal means

that we can only look to see what Heidegger actually doesin that book if wewant to understand what is formal about it and about the indications of

Daseins ontological features that begin its existential analytic.

Based on what I have shown above, there are two ways to hear formal

that are relevant. One is that what is indicated is indicated formally in the

sense that it is recognized explicitlyand officially. This is the sense of for-

mality in the idea of a formal statement of intent or formal offer of a posi-

tion. Heard with this in mind, formally indicated features of Dasein are

those that are officially being picked out for further analysis, as mineness

and existence clearly are. But it is also the case that Heidegger is holdingon to a sense of formality he associates with those he sometimes criticizes,

namely, the idea of generality and abstraction that is at work when we talk

about formal logic or distinguish form from matter or content. For, as we

have seen, mineness and existence, while aspects of me, the philosophical

inquirer, are ones that pick me out in terms of aspects that will be equally

definitive of anyinquirer. They show me not as this or that particular indi-

vidual but as an individual or self engaged in the act of questioning

himself.25What I formally indicate is thus something reasonably called my

ontological form.

This thought gets even stronger legs when we consider the detailed

analysis of Daseinthat follows upon the initial formal indications of mine-

ness and existence. This analysis brings to light the basic, constitutive

structures of Dasein, principal among which are, as Heidegger works them

out, being-in-the-world (In-der-Welt-Sein), care (Sorge; the being of

Dasein), and temporality (Zeitlichkeit; the meaning [Sinn] of the being of

Dasein). These each have articulated moments, and each is structurally

related to the others (though not entirely consistently in the text): they rep-

resent a progressively deeper exhibition of the phenomenon of Daseins

being and, in the case of temporality, that which ultimately gives it its

unity and shows its connection to being as such.26All of this amounts to an

account of what it is for any entity who is Daseinto be Dasein, an account,

in other words, of what we may regard as the form of Daseins being, that

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which is the same for all of us even as we instantiate it in our differing

respective ways.

Finally, reflect on the question of the wholeness of Daseinthat appears in

Division I, Chapter 5 and then opens Division II. Heidegger observes that, ifI understand wholeness to mean my entirety as this particular individual, I

cannot grasp it, for I am always both no longer and not yet what I am. I can,

nevertheless, elucidate the entirety of my ontological constitution (care) and

the principle of its unity (temporality). The wholeness I have in virtue of

being the ontological kind of entity I am (Dasein) is thus formally accessible,

even if my material or factical wholeness is inaccessible because always

ongoing and incomplete.

Given all of this, one would be hard-pressed to deny the formal character

of the analysis of Dasein, its being an account of something reasonablycalled the form of Dasein, and I doubt any serious reader of Heidegger

would try. But what is crucial, and what I think is not sufficiently recognized

(or at least stressed), is that this formal analysis is a formal analysis that can

only be given by me as I take up the question of my own being and seek to

elucidate the constitution I have as the kind of entity I am. In one of the

more helpful passages on formal indication in his lecture courses, Heidegger

makes essentially this point. He describes what he sees as Descartes attempt

to move from the proposition I exist so long as I am thinking to one that

purges it of its indexicality in order to make it a ground for the deduction ofvarious other non-indexical, formal truths that treat the concept of thought

as defining a kind of substance. While Heidegger criticizes Descartes

formal-logical move here, he at the same time suggests that if, by con-

trast, one takes Descartes proposition in the sense of aformal indication, in

such a way that it is not taken directly (where it says nothing), but is related

to the respective [jeweilige], concrete instance of what it precisely means

i.e., the one uttering itthen it has its legitimacy.27So the problem isnt

with the formality per se, i.e., with the fact that Descartes offers a principle

that is necessary or universal (insofar as it holds of any thinker); the problem

is rather with the attempt to eliminate the propositions token-reflexivity

(and so the intrinsic self-relatedness of thought). Taking the proposition as a

formal indication thus preserves its formality but also holds on to its inelim-

inable first-personal character. If we take this as instructive for how to read

the many propositions about Daseinin SZ, we can see that what is import-

ant is precisely that we recognize all of these as universally assertable of

Dasein, but as meaningful only when asserted by, and so also derived by,

individual Daseinin reference to themselves.

VII.

The propositions that make up the analytic of Daseinin SZmay thus be seen

as forming an account of the constitutive ontological or transcendental form

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of first-person singular being, developed from within the first-person

perspective. This returns us to the dispute between Dreyfus and Lafont with

which I began. While Lafont recognizes the reflexivity of formal indication,

she doesnt follow out the consequences of this method and see that itimplies that, in attending to the form of the question what am I? or what

is it to say I am?, we may each begin to find those constitutive, a priori,

formal structures of our being that constitute us as the kind of entity we are,

whatever particular way we have of instantiating them.28 This means she

misses the fact that the reflexivity of formal indication both drives the trans-

cendental dimension of Heideggers project and frees it from many of the

problems that often are found in transcendental philosophy, particularly (as

in Kant) the splitting of the I into two egos, one empirical and one trans-

cendental. Heidegger avoids this doubling by carefully distinguishing thebeing of Dasein(its ontological constitution, that which determines individual

Daseinas the kind of entities they are) from the entities themselves who have

Daseinas their way of being, e.g., you and me.

Perhaps in this narrow sense of denying that the transcendental ego is

itself an entity we may see Heidegger as aiming to de-transcendentalize

Kant, as Lafont says.29But he doesnt do this, as she claims, by assuming

that our understanding of being is wholly determined by language and so

not an understanding of anything necessary a priori. In fact, his method

shows that it is possible to bring our being to light without this explicationbeing wholly determined by whatever linguistic conceptualization of it we

may have begun with. The philosophical inquiry I have described is, in prin-

ciple at least, independent of the particularities of the language, and much of

the factical situation, of the philosophical inquirer. It is not, perhaps, pos-

sible for all individuals, or individuals at every point in history, to engage in

it. It may be that only after a certain set of philosophical possibilities has

worked itself out (e.g., PlatoHegel) does this particular philosophical

account of what we are become available.30Perhaps it is even the case that

users of some languages will have an easier time pursuing this inquiry than

others, because of contingent features of their languages. But all that is still

compatible with what has become available being understood as truly con-

stitutive of any Dasein, regardless of its factical situation.

The account of formal indication I have offered implies equally that the

constitutive structures of being that define us cannot in any way be identi-

fied with extra-linguistic social practices. Dreyfus is right that our under-

standing of being is not identical with or exhausted by any linguistic

conceptual scheme. But social practices are no more necessary than the

conceptual frameworks of natural languages. What it is to be a social

practice or a language is, however, invariant in the way that no particular

practice or language is. And it is such being that Heidegger sees ontological

investigation as explicating, beginning with the being of the investigator

herself.

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Notes

1. A version of this paper was presented at the meeting of the Pacific Division of the American

Philosophical Association in Vancouver on April 11, 2009. I would like to thank my

commentator, Cecily Gonzalez, and the audience at the session there for helpful com-ments. I would also like to thank Clark Remington, Clinton Tolley, Nate Zuckerman,

and two referees for this journal for their suggestions and criticisms, and Indiana University

South Bend for a Faculty Research Grant that facilitated its initial composition.

2. Heidegger (1993 [1927]), hereafter SZ, p. 46. Translations are based on Macquarrie and

Robinsons but modified as needed.

3. So unexplicit is the importance of formal indication in SZthat Macquarrie and Robinson

basically missed the fact that it was a technical concept for Heidegger. Only after the earlier

lecture courses came to light did it become clear that this was an idea Heidegger had been

developing for some time. The role of formal indication in these has received a considerable

amount of scholarly attention in recent years; see in particular Kisiels landmark work (Kisiel

[1993]), in which may be found extensive references to Heideggers early discussions of formal

indication. These early passages tend to be more suggestive than illuminating, however, thus

my own examination here deals little with the pre-SZtreatments of formal indication, focus-

ing instead on its functional role in SZ. In developing my understanding of formal indication,

I have found Dahlstrom (1994) and Streeter (1997) to be particularly helpful. Dahlstrom,

focusing on work prior to SZ, rightly calls attention to the reflexive and transformative

aspects of Heideggerian phenomenology and links these to the method of formal indication.

Streeter, in part building on Dahlstrom, explores formal indication in SZin relation to Hus-

serls notion of indication and in connection with the general question of how Heidegger

understands truth and assertion. What I offer here may be seen, I believe, as buttressing his

(and Dahlstroms) reading. It goes beyond it in, among other ways, trying to offer motivationfor, and clarification of, Heideggers method without getting quite so caught up in

Heideggers own terminology and the larger issue of truth. I should also mention here the

general influence of Steven Crowells work on shaping my views about the place and import-

ance of subjectivity in Heideggers thought. The present paper is part of my alternative ver-

sion of how to locate the first-person in SZ, as the title of Crowell (2001) puts it.

4. Heidegger writes that the transcendence of Daseins being is distinctive in that in it lies

the possibility and the necessity of the most radical individuation[Individuation] (SZ, p. 38).

The method of formal indication as I present it here makes sense of this claim as follows:

it shows how I can understand my ontological constitution as both transcendental, so

constitutive of any entity of the same kind as me, and also how explicating my under-

standing of this constitution requires me to take up my own being, and so see myself asthe individual I am. To fully develop Heideggers understanding of individuation, how-

ever, would also require looking at his discussion of death, which I do not do here.

5. I am building here on Shockey (2008). Relevant works of Dreyfus and Lafont are

Dreyfus (1990), hereafter BITW; Dreyfus (2002), hereafter CCL; Lafont (2000), hereaf-

ter HLW; and Lafont (2002), hereafter R.

6. SZ, p. 6. This distinction between entities and the being of entities he came to call the

ontological difference (Heidegger (1975 [1927]), and it is the centerpiece of his early

thought.

7. HLW, passim.

8. Heidegger (1978 [1921/22]), p. 33. This texts description of formal indication doesnt

square with how the method is ultimately deployed in SZ. In the latter, what are for-

mally indicated are essential or constitutive features of Daseinin a suitable understand-

ing of essentialrather than the contingent features Dreyfus describes. The 1921/22

passage, by contrast, describes formal indication as only aiming at, rather than starting

with, the essential, and as requiring an appreciat[ion] of the non-essential along the

way. The difficulty with the idea of essentiality here is, I believe, largely verbal, but it

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remains the case that there is no way of understanding what happens in SZ as fitting

Dreyfuss account of beginning with the contingent to work towards the essential.

9. CCL, p. 192.

10. It is debatable whether such reference is as unmediated by linguistic concepts as Lafont

and Dreyfus both assume, but for the sake of argument Ill concede that it is, and so forthat reason represents a serious challenge to conceptualist or descriptivist accounts of

reference.

11. As spelled out in BITW.

12. See R, pp. 23132.

13. This suggests that there is, after all, a deep connection between Heideggers formal indi-

cation and direct reference la Putnam and Kripke. Given that the latter has its proper

role in explaining what it is to take entities as objects in empirical, scientific contexts, this

connection might be taken as evidence that my reading of Heidegger must be off, given

that, as I have noted, he is quite emphatic that there is a fundamental distinction

between the way we relate to ourselves (even in philosophical theorizing) and the way we

relate to objects when studying them in empirical science. I cant offer an adequate

response to this worry here, but I think one can be given along the following lines: what-

ever differences there are between how we understand the relation between determinate

entity and ontological constitution in the case of us Daseinand that of any other entity,

it remains the case that Heidegger thinks all entities, including us, have ontological con-

stitutions. The distinction between entity and its constitution is just how he understands

the ontological difference between entity and being at this stage of his thought. But

that means that his question of the meaning (Sinn) of being is a question about just what

our univocal understanding of ontological constitution is. To even be able to raise and

pursue this question, however, presupposes that we can, in a single unitary act of under-

standing, grasp all the different ways of being (ontological constitutions) of entities. Theconnection between formal indication and direct reference is grounded precisely in this

unity of understanding; it reflects the fact that, even as we understand the ways of being

of Daseinand objects of nature differently, we also understand that they are unified pre-

cisely in being entities with ontological constitutions.

14. This is far from an exhaustive list, nor are these meant to be exclusive of one another

(though they may be). Ultimately Heidegger thinks there are a few basic regions of

being (in his use of Husserls term), i.e., ways we have of understanding entities, but part

of the work of ontology is showing what these are.

15. Heideggers strategy is thus a recognizable descendant of earlier views that seek the

structure of what is in the structure of the understanding of what is. This at least partly

explains his focus in this period of his thought on figures in the rationalist and transcen-

dental traditions, where this approach finds its most obvious proponents, though it is

worth noting that it is also the approach of Locke and Hume, for whom limning the

understanding is as much the focus as for Descartes, Leibniz and Kant.

16. I here ignore what I am increasingly coming to think is a crucial but often neglected

aspect of Heideggers methodology, namely the place of mood (Stimmung) in it. At vari-

ous places he indicates that we can only have our ontological structures disclosed to us if

we are in a mood in which our concern with intra-worldly entities fades into the back-

ground. The chief example of such a mood that he offers in SZis anxiety. So how do we

get into such a mood? And what does it take to cultivate it in a way that will allow us to

do ontology? I touch on these questions in relation to Heideggers comments about Des-cartes method of doubt in 4 of Shockey (forthcoming), and I address them at greater

length in Shockey (under review-a).

17. Heidegger fairly consistently reserves the concepts of theme (Thema) and thematization

for that specifically philosophical form of linguistic expression in which the being of enti-

ties (or, at least, Dasein) is explicated. He also uses capital-I Interpretation to refer to

the results of philosophical thematization, distinguishing it from Auslegung, which

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designates any form of taking-as, even that of non-verbal behavior such as the using of

an object asa hammer to pound a nail. Hence the title of the First Part of SZ begins

The Interpretation [Interpretation] of Dasein..., and the first section of this, 9, is The

Theme [Thema] of the Analytic of Dasein.

18. SZ, p. 7. Note that there is a parallel between modes of care (Sorge) and those of sight(Sicht): sight of the world is Umsicht, sight of others is Rcksicht and Nachsicht, and

sight of the self is Durchsichtigkeit. Once on the lookout for these terms, they can be seen

to pop up all over the place. As is clear from the present discussion, Durchsichtigkeitis

particularly important: almost from the outset of SZHeidegger characterizes the task of

philosophy as rendering Dasein durchsichtigto itself. See Raffoul (1998), 18792, for fur-

ther discussion of this.

19. Its perhaps worth pointing out that the condition of adequacy I point to here does not

rule out the possibility of explanations of how self-referential entities came into a world

which didnt once have them, as anyone committed to a naturalistic, Darwinian view of

life must think has happened. Nor does it deny that self-referential entities are shaped

by, or even brought into being by, cultural or linguistic forces. But the understanding of

what it is to bea singular, self-referential, self-questioning entity is a separate and prior

question from that of how such entities came into being out of a world in which they

didnt always exist, or how I came into being as the individual I am in a world of imper-

sonal social forces.

20. See SZ 9, p. 12 for the fullest discussion of these terms and their status as formally

indicated. Note also that Heideggers sense of existence is to be distinguished from the

traditional sense of the term, which simply picks out whetheran entity is. Here it refers to

the way of being specific to Dasein as distinct from other entities. Heidegger further

twists the traditional ontological terminology, going on to say that Daseins essence

lies...in the fact that in each case it has its own being to be as its own [ da es je sein Seinals seiniges zu sein hat] (SZ, p. 12), a claim that is echoed and spelled out further at the

beginning of 9, where he famously says that [t]he essence of Dasein lies in [liegt in] its

existence (p. 42). For further discussion of this see my Shockey (under review-b).

21. SZ,p.12: Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it

is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its being an entity, that being is at issuefor it

[Das Dasein ist ein Seiendes, das nicht nur unter anderem Seienden vorkommt. Es ist

vielmehr dadurch ontisch ausgezeichnet, da es diesem Seienden in seinem Sein um dieses

Sein selbst geht]. (Cf. e.g., pp. 42, 133, 143.)

22. It may be that only humans are such entities; but it may turn out not to be. It may not

even be the case that allhumans are such entities. Heidegger doesnt and neednt care,

for which entities turn out to be of this kind is irrelevant for the question, what is it to be

this kind of entity? Thatis Heideggers question. It is the question of the being of Dasein,

for that term designates any and all entities who can ask after their own being, thus who

have that being at issue (existence) as their own (mineness).

23. Keep in mind that words like what and aspect must themselves come to be under-

stood in relation to the form of being we disclose ourselves as having in the investigation

that follows these initial formal indications. That is, we cannot assume that when we talk

about what Daseinis, or what aspects or features it has, that these concepts function the

same way as when we talk about, say, what physical things or living things are, and what

sort of aspects or features they have.

24. E.g., Heidegger (1978 [1928]), p. 64.25. Cf. Heidegger (1978 [1928]), p. 242: If we say Dasein is in each case essentially mine,

and if our task is to define this characteristic of Dasein ontologically, this does not mean

we should investigate the essence of my self, as this factical individual, or of some other

given individual. The object of the inquiry is not the individual essence of my self, but it

is the essence of mineness and selfhood as such.

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26. See my Shockey (in progress) for a detailed exploration of these structures and their

interconnections. John Haugeland, the primary influence on my work, has perhaps done

the most to explore them in all their complex interrelations, but his detailed interpretations

are as yet unpublished. See Boedeker (2001) for one of the few interpretations of

Heidegger that offers a detailed presentation of the various formal structures of the workand their interrelations. I have quibbles with his specifics, but I am very much sympathetic

to his general effort to show the systematicity hidden within Heideggers terminological

thicket.

27. Heidegger (1994 [1923/24]), p. 250. See Shockey (forthcoming) 3c and 4a for more

detailed discussion of this passage.

28. In Shockey (under review-b) I offer an account of how this instantiation works.

29. HLWpassim.

30. Compare: it was in the nineteenth century when non-Euclidean geometry suddenly

emerged as a topic with a number of major mathematicians tackling it. The kinds of ques-

tions that led to it were, presumably, available at that point in a way they werent before.

But the mathematical entities that the new geometries referred to neednt be understood as

historically variant just because they only became accessible at a certain point in history.

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