1. Introductions
This essay explores Heidegger’s concept of anxiety in Being and Time and aims to seek clarification for its root cause while answering the question: Why has Being become manifest as a burden? (Heidegger, 1962, p. 173). Section 2 outlines the project of Being and Time, which provides the context for our exploration and makes plain the significance of anxiety in light of this broader objective. Subsequently, section 3 delves into Heidegger’s concept of mood (Stimmung) and how it differs from emotion, highlighting anxiety as an example of the former. In section 4, we will examine how the mood of anxiety makes salient Dasein’s possibilities, revealing at the same time the one definite possibility: Dasein’s possibility not-to-be. This, Heidegger suggests, is the reason for Dasein’s ‘uncanniness’ (Unheimlichkeit, literally, ‘not-at-home-ness’) and how it relates to the concept of ‘nothingness’ (or ‘nullity’). Furthermore, in section 5, we will discuss how anxiety and nothingness expose Dasein’s guilt and stumble upon Critchley’s (2011) notion of ‘impotentialization’ in regard to Dasein. In section 6, I will argue that although Heidegger has provided an intricate account of Dasein’s being-in-the-world in Being and Time, it is inadequate to address our inquiry. To support my argument, I will briefly discuss the limits of Heidegger’s understanding of Dasein’s guilt from the perspective of Early Buddhist philosophy. I will critique his ideas by examining Buddhist concepts such as ‘conceit’ (asmimāna, the sense ‘I am’) and the ‘assumption of self’ (attavāda). This will help us understand the root cause of guilt and anxiety, and Dasein’s burdensome character (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 173, 174), according to Early Buddhist philosophy. Finally, section 7 concludes the essay with a very brief statement on the Early Buddhist philosophical perspective regarding a pitfall in Heidegger’s notion of Dasein and its relation to the experience of guilt and anxiety.
2. Anxiety and The Project of Being and Time
Heidegger’s (1962) Being and Time aims to ‘work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely’ (p. 19). However, instead of providing an account of the meaning of being in general, the book centres on a specific entity: Dasein, which refers to the kind of entity that we humans are. Thus, Being and Time provides a comprehensive ‘preparatory analysis’ of human being-in-the-world (in Division I), and later argues that the meaning of our kind of being is rooted in temporality (in Division II) (Wrathall & Murphey, 2013, p. 1). In his work, Heidegger contends that Dasein’s essential nature is being-in-the-world and he delves into its different aspects in chapters 3 through 5. In chapter 6, he aims to make plain the phenomenon of Dasein as a unitary whole and demonstrate how its unity with the world provides the foundation for disposedness, understanding, and discourse (p. 18).
In brief, this ‘primordially unitary phenomenon’ (i.e. Dasein) is care (Sorge) (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 226-27), which has both an ‘affective and a projective dimension’ (Wrathall & Murphey, 2013, p. 18). The affective dimension is expressed through phrases such as ‘care about’, indicating what matters to us and what we take an interest in. On the other hand, the projective dimension is expressed through phrases such as ‘taking care of’, indicating our responsibility towards something and our commitment to some project involving it (p. 19). These ordinary meanings of care reveal our existential structures of disposedness and understanding. For Heidegger, the phenomenon of care involves both dimensions, as we care about the world and our place in it and undertake projects with respect to it, experiencing ourselves as responsible for it (p. 19). Therefore, ‘Dasein’s being reveals itself as care’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 227).
Crucially, Heidegger (1962) argues that we recognise ‘care’ as the being of Dasein in the experience of anxiety (Angst) (p. 227). According to Heidegger, when we experience anxiety, we sense a feeling of threat coming from an ‘indeterminate source’ (Wrathall & Murphey, 2013, p. 19). Put differently, anxiety is not caused by encountering a specific thing or situation in the world, and it is difficult to pinpoint what exactly makes us feel threatened. In anxiety, ‘environmentally ready-to-hand [entities within-the-world] sink away’, preventing us from being absorbed in everyday activities as they become ‘completely lacking [in personal] significance’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 231, p. 232): ‘Nothing, not even another Dasein, is “in a position to offer us anything” anymore’ (Wrathall & Murphey, 2013, p. 19). Importantly, for Heidegger, anxiety is not an ‘occurrent emotion’ but a mood (Stimmung).
3. How Mood Differs From Emotion
According to Heidegger, the answer to the question of Being presupposes the phenomenon of mood (Stimmung). While our moods may change, we are always in one kind of mood or another, even when we are not aware of them. This is because, for Heidegger, mood is a fundamental existentiale of Dasein (Ratcliffe, 2013, p. 157). Furthermore, it is intricately linked to what Heidegger calls Befindlichkeit, which Macquarrie and Robinson translate as ‘state-of-mind’ and is better translated as ‘attunement’ (Ratcliffe, 2013, pp. 157-58)—we will hereafter adopt this latter translation. Befindlichkeit can be understood as the pre-conceptual grasp of finding oneself in the world through a mood (Ciocan, 2010, p. 65; Freeman & Elpidorou, 2020, p. 393; Ratcliffe, 2012, p. 32; 2013, p. 157) and plays a crucial role in determining how things matter to us, which in turn influences the types of intentional states that arise from it (Heidegger, 1962, p. 176). For instance, if a person’s sense of belonging to the world does not include the possibility of threat, they would not be able to experience the intentional state of fear (Ratcliffe, 2012, p. 32):
[N]othing like an affect would come about, and the resistance itself would remain essentially undiscovered, if Being-in-the-world, with its state-of-mind [Befindlichkeit], had not already submitted itself [sich schon angewiesen] to having entities within-the-world “matter” to it in a way which its moods have outlined in advance. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 177)
In this sense, the terms Befindlichkeit and Stimmung refer to the same phenomenon, but viewed from different perspectives. Befindlichkeit is an ontological structure of Dasein’s being-in-the-world, which is a basic mode of existence and openness to the world. On the other hand, Stimmung is the ontic counterpart of Befindlichkeit, which refers to the various and particular manifestations of Dasein’s disclosedness in relation to the world (Freeman & Elpidorou, 2020, p. 393). For Heidegger: ‘The mood has already disclosed, in every case, Being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes it possible first of all to direct oneself towards something.’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 176). Crucially, according to Heidegger, moods disclose three key features of Dasein’s existence (Freeman & Elpidorou, 2020, pp. 393-94): (1) its thrownness (Geworfenheit), (2) being-in-the-world as a whole, and (3) what matters to it. The term ‘thrownness’ denotes the contingency of existence, or as Heidegger (1962) puts it, the ‘facticity of [Dasein’s] being delivered over [(to the world)]’ (p. 174)
In addition to making possible one’s sense of ‘being-there’ (Da-sein), mood also plays a vital role in pursuing the possibilities that the world offers. The significance of things, according to Heidegger, is only intelligible in the context of our current or future projects because it is these possibilities that provide them their meaning (Ratcliffe, 2013, p. 161). Although Heidegger does not make a clear distinction between ‘mood’ and ‘emotion’, he asserts that the emotional states we experience within a pre-given world are determined by ‘mood-constituted ways of mattering’ (p. 163). An emotion, therefore, is a determination of (some) specific moods (p. 163). Heidegger emphasises this notion by discussing ‘fear’, which he regards as an ‘occurrent emotion’ rather than a mood (p. 162).
In Heidegger’s view, there are three complementary ways in which the experience of fear can be described: (1) with regard to an entity within-the-world which we are afraid of: that which poses a threat to us; (2) ‘fearing’ as an attitude; and (3) the thing that we are truly afraid of, which Heidegger (1962) concludes to be ourselves (pp. 179-80). Consequently, Heidegger suggests that fear is, in principle, an act of self-concealment. In fear, Dasein turns away from itself to flee itself (p. 229-30). Thus, in fear, Dasein conceals its thrownness from itself, preventing it from facing its own existence (p. 229-30). In contrast, the mood of anxiety is that which discloses Dasein’s thrownness ‘in the manner of an evasive turning-away’ (p. 175). Therefore, the emotion of fear is only possible and is dependent upon the basic attunement that is anxiety, where Dasein recognises its own contingency of existence as thrown being-in-the-world (O’Brien, 2019, p. 22).
[T]he turning-away of falling is not a fleeing that is founded upon a fear of entities within-the-world. Fleeing that is so grounded is still less a character of this turning-away, when what this turning-away does is precisely to turn thither towards entities within-the-world by absorbing itself in them. The turning-away of falling is grounded rather in anxiety, which in turn is what first makes fear possible. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 230)
Anxiety, therefore, is a ‘basic state of Dasien’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 230). It is a ‘ground mood’ (Grundstimmung) or ‘ground attunement’ (Grundbefindlichkeit) (p. 227) that serves as a ‘way of disclosure in which Dasein brings itself before itself’ (p. 226) and thus reveals Dasein’s ontological structure of being-in-the-world. A crucial difference between fear and anxiety is that while fear always has its object, anxiety has Dasein itself as its ‘object’ (pp. 230-31).
4. How Anxiety Relates to Possibility and Nothingness
According to Heidegger (1962), in anxiety, the world of our everyday concern loses all significance (p. 231). Furthermore, he remarks that the world’s ‘utter insignificance’ (p. 231) is brought about purely by the fact that ‘the world in its worldhood is all that…obtrudes itself’ (p. 231). Putting these two together, it implies that the world as such remains disclosive of possibilities—which is necessarily so as ‘disclosedness’ is essential to Dasein’s Being-in-the-world (p. 317)—, only that it speaks of ‘nothing’ to one (p. 393). Crucially, Heidegger (1962) identifies that this ‘utter insignificance’ presents itself with the character of oppressiveness:
What oppresses us is not this or that, nor is it the summation of everything present-at-hand; it is rather the possibility of the ready-to-hand in general; that is to say, it is the world itself….That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is nothing ready-to-hand within-the-world. But this “nothing ready-to-hand”, which only our everyday circumspective discourse understands, is not totally nothing. The “nothing” of readiness-to-hand is grounded in the most primordial ‘something’—in the world. Ontologically, however, the world belongs essentially to Dasein’s Being as Being-in-the-world. So if the “nothing”—that is, the world as such exhibits itself as that in the face of which one has anxiety, this means that Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. (pp. 231-32)
In other words, the ‘insignificance’ of the world as we apprehend it in anxiety indicates to us the very ‘nature’ of Dasein’s Being—or in Heideggerian terminology, Dasein’s ‘potentiality-for-Being’—, which Heidegger identifies as ‘uncaniness’ (Unheimlichkeit) (p. 333). When a person is overcome by anxiety, he does not feel at home and is ‘thrown into a profound and uncanny crisis of meaning’ (Freeman & Elpidorou, 2020, pp. 394-95), such that it prevents him from being absorbed in his everyday activities or routines, taking away his ability to understand himself ‘in terms of the ‘world’ and the way things have been publicly interpreted’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 232). In this light, we can now understand the emotion of fear more clearly and its dependency upon anxiety as Dasein’s effort to flee from anxiety so as to distract itself away from recognising its own uncanniness (pp. 233-34).
Moreover, insofar as Dasein is, there is one definite possibility among others that at the same time determines the possibility of the other possibilities: its possibility not-to-be (O’Brien, 2019, p. 19). In fact, it is this very possibility of ‘nullity’ that Dasein is anxious about and which it seeks to evade through being absorbed in the world of its everyday concern. Nonetheless, these possibilities only attest to Dasein’s nature as ultimately temporal, historical and finite (pp. 19-20). Therefore, anxiety discloses Dasein’s Being-in-the-world as a unitary whole because it allows one to recognise one’s world and longing to belong to it (Wrathall & Murphey, 2013, p. 19). However, one shall sooner or later discern the irreciprocity between this very longing and actually belonging to any world, upon the facilitation of one’s mood and understanding that one’s Being-in-the-world transcends any pure sense of one’s involvement with things (p. 19). Anxiety, therefore, exposes one’s uncanniness and reveals that one cares about being-in-the-world, making plain that Dasein exists as ‘being-possible’, i.e. being free for possibilities and is able to choose for oneself (pp. 19-20).
Additionally, in Division II of Being and Time, Heidegger discusses the phenomenon of the fear of death in great detail. Heidegger (1962) insists that in fear, one has a distorted understanding of death, given that what one is concerned with is an entity within-the-world that is actual (p. 305) rather than Dasein’s own(most) possibility qua possibility (pp. 306-07). Consequently, Heidegger asserts that a true understanding of death, i.e. ‘the possibility of the impossibility of any existence at all’ (p. 307), is recognisable only in the mood of anxiety (p. 310).
All understanding is accompanied by a[n] [attunement]. Dasein’s mood brings it face to face with the thrownness of its ‘that it is there’. But the [attunement] which can hold open the utter and constant threat to itself arising from Dasein’s ownmost individualized Being, is anxiety. In this [attunement], Dasein finds itself face to face with the “nothing” of the possible impossibility of its existence. Anxiety is anxious about the potentiality-for-Being of the entity so destined [des so bestimmten Seienden], and in this way it discloses the uttermost possibility. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 310; replaced the term ‘state-of-mind’ with ‘attunement’)
Furthermore, Heidegger (1962) also emphasises that anxiety is the ‘surmounting of fear’ (p. 311). This is because anxiety removes the worldly concerns that constitute fear and, in turn, eliminates the possibility of misinterpreting the phenomenon of death through its lens. Therefore, it is not possible for one to experience fear and anxiety at the same time, because the former presupposes the possibilities disclosed by anxiety to remain hidden (Ratcliffe, 2013, p. 168).
Being-towards-death is essentially anxiety. This is attested unmistakably, though ‘only’ indirectly, by Being-towards-death as we have described it, when it perverts anxiety into cowardly fear and, in surmounting this fear, only makes known its own cowardliness in the face of anxiety. (Heidegger, 1962, pp. 310-11)
As such, anxiety brings Dasein ‘before itself’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 226): ‘a thrown, fallen, finite being who is ever projecting its future possibilities and whose existence is oriented toward and also individuated by, its own death’ (Freeman & Elpidorou, 2020, p. 395). Moreover, it is important to note that for Heidegger, anxiety is not an occurrent phenomenon but something latent. Ratcliffe (2013) remarks:
In addition to claiming that fear rests upon a “turning away” from anxiety and that it thus depends upon anxiety, [Heidegger] later indicates that anxiety is never absent but is instead “covered up” [(Heidegger, 1962, p. 322)], as though it were something lying dormant, with the threat of its awakening quietly permeating all our experiences. (p. 168)
In other words, anxiety makes manifest certain possibilities that were always there but were not attended to before (Ratcliffe, 2013, p. 168). Ratcliffe (2013) underlines the distinction between an inescapable disposition towards anxiety and an actual instance of anxiety, which may not occur frequently (p. 168). The phenomenon of fear, as Ratcliffe understands Heidegger, is dependent on the former (p. 168). Importantly, O’Brien (2019) notes that the very notion of possibility is pervaded by nullity and nothingness (p. 20), which Heidegger (1962) describes as Dasein’s burdensome character (pp. 173, 174).
5. How Anxiety and Nothingness Expose Dasein’s Guilt
For Heidegger, anxiety is a basic attunement where Dasein recognises its own facticity as thrown being-in-the-world, along with the understanding that Dasein itself is more than mere being, or of having the character of perpetually beyond the immediate or actual (O’Brien, 2019, p. 22). Furthermore, according to O’Brien (2019), what Dasein is truly anxious about is the implication of its thrownness, i.e. its finitude (p. 22). Consequently, entities within-the-world that are ‘ready-to-hand’ (i.e. of Dasein’s concern) become discernible in their ‘timely character’, indicating ‘the possibility of the nothing, of no longer being’ (p. 23), which is part and parcel of what it means for them (and us) to be. Thus, according to Heidegger:
We are assailed by the nothing each and every moment when we consider our sheer throwness [sic] and the role that our possibilities as being-in-the-world play. Anxiety then is like a primordial sense that the nothing haunts each waking moment, even in diversion, since it is the constant feeling of the not-yet that pulls us out of any sense of one moment to the next. To be-in-the-world is to be thrown such that one is towards one’s possibilities and, part of what it means to be at any given moment, means to have been (which is no longer here) and to be towards (which is not yet here) and to be ultimately towards the main possibility of our being as human beings, to no longer be.…The abyss of nothingness yawns all about us and, our being-in-the-world, even in its fallen evasion, is still structured according to the necessity of our being-towards-death. (O’Brien, 2019, p. 23)
Therefore, according to Heidegger, when faced with anxiety and the recognition of its own finitude, Dasein can choose to ignore this facticity by immersing itself in its everyday existence and concerns—‘falling’ into inauthenticity—, preventing itself from truly understanding its own death (Critchley, 2011, p. 73)—its ‘uttermost’ possibility. It is conscience’s call that ‘summons’ Dasein out of its falling to recognise ‘what is peculiar in death’s certainty—that it is possible at any moment’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 302).
Along with the certainty of death goes the indefiniteness of its “when”. Everyday Being-towards-death evades this indefiniteness by conferring definiteness upon it. But such a procedure cannot signify calculating when the demise is due to arrive. In the face of definiteness such as this, Dasein would sooner flee. Everyday concern makes definite for itself the indefiniteness of certain death by interposing before it those urgencies and possibilities which can be taken in at a glance, and which belong to the everyday matters that are closest to us.
But when this indefiniteness has been covered up, the certainty has been covered up too. Thus death’s ownmost character as a possibility gets veiled—a possibility which is certain and at the same time indefinite—that is to say, possible at any moment. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 302)
Crucially, Heidegger (1962) asserts that conscience’s call ‘has its ontological possibility in the fact that Dasein, in the very basis of its Being, is care.’ (p. 322-33). Therefore, the call of conscience is ‘entirely intelligible in terms of the care structure, that is, thrown projection, of falling factical existence’, without requiring external justifications (Critchley, 2011, p. 73). And what does it give one to understand? Heidegger (1962) pronounces that conscience’s call can be summed up in one word: ‘Guilty!’ (p. 325). But what does Dasein as ‘Being-guilty’ really mean? Critchley (2011) summarises it as follows:
[‘Being-guilty’] means that because Dasein’s being is thrown projection, it always has its being to be. That is, Dasein’s being is a lack, it is something due to Dasein, a debt that it strives to make up or repay. This is the ontological meaning of guilt as Schuld, which means guilt, wrong, or even sin, but can also mean debt. To be schuldig is to be guilty or blameworthy, but it also means to give someone their due, to be owing, to be in someone’s debt. (p. 73)
In other words, Dasein is a ‘thrown basis’, as it is that which ‘projects itself upon possibilities into which it has been thrown’ (Heidegger, 1962, p. 330), which also means that Dasein is a ‘null’ basis (Critchley, 2011, p. 74).
In being a basis—that is, in existing as thrown—Dasein constantly lags behind its possibilities. It is never existent before its basis, but only from it and as this basis. Thus “Being-a-basis” means never to have power over one’s ownmost Being from the ground up. This “not” belongs to the existential meaning of “thrownness”. It itself, being a basis, is a nullity of itself. “Nullity” does not signify anything like not-Being-present-at-hand or not-subsisting; what one has in view here is rather a “not” which is constitutive for this Being of Dasein—its thrownness. The character of this “not” as a “not” may be defined existentially: in being its Self, Dasein is, as a Self, the entity that has been thrown. It has been released from its basis, not through itself but to itself, so as to be as this basis. Dasein is not itself the basis of its Being, inasmuch as this basis first arises from its own projection; rather, as Being-its-Self, it is the Being of its basis. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 330)
On Critchley’s (2011) reading, Heidegger is essentially claiming that Dasein is a nullity of itself, which means that Dasein, as ‘being a basis’, is inherently powerless over itself (p. 74): ‘The potentiality for being-a-whole which defines Dasein’s power of projection is revealed to be an impotentialization, a limit against which it runs and over which it has no power.’ (p. 74-75). Therefore, in summary, the phenomenon of guilt reveals the Being of Dasein as a ‘lack, as something wanting’ (p. 75).
In the next section, I will argue that although Heidegger (1962) is correct in identifying that Dasein, as care, is ‘being the basis’ of a nullity that is itself null (p. 331), ‘being-in-the-world’ itself, in purely factical sense—whose achievability I will also argue for—, is not a sufficient condition for guilt and anxiety. Therefore, I will argue that Heidegger’s account of Dasein in Being and Time is inadequate to explain Dasein’s burdensome character.
6. The Limits of Heidegger’s Understanding of Dasein’s Guilt and the Cause of Anxiety from the Perspective of Early Buddhist Philosophy
Our discussion of Dasein in relation to the concept of nullity thus far can be summarised as follows: ‘Dasein is a being suspended between two nothings, two nullities: the nullity of thrownness and the nullity of projection.’ (Critchley, 2011, p. 75).
Not only is the projection, as one that has been thrown, determined by the nullity of Being-a-basis; as projection it is itself essentially null. This does not mean that it has the ontical property of ‘inconsequentiality’ or ‘worthlessness’; what we have here is rather something existentially constitutive for the structure of the Being of projection. The nullity we have in mind belongs to Dasein’s Being-free for its existentiell possibilities. Freedom, however, is only in the choice of one possibility—that is, in tolerating one’s not having chosen the others and one’s not being able to choose them.
In the structure of thrownness, as in that of projection, there lies essentially a nullity. This nullity is the basis for the possibility of inauthentic Dasein in its falling; and as falling, every inauthentic Dasein factically is. Care itself, in its very essence, is permeated with nullity through and through. Thus “care”—Dasein’s Being—means, as thrown projection, Being-the-basis of a nullity (and this Being-the-basis is itself null). This means that Dasein as such is guilty, if our formally existential definition of “guilt” as “Being-the-basis of a nullity” is indeed correct. (Heidegger, 1962, p. 331)
In Heidegger’s view, Dasein’s guilt is intricately linked to the notion of freedom, which is ‘the choice of the one possibility of being: in choosing oneself and not the others’ (Critchley, 2011, p. 76). This, however, according to Critchley (2011) presupposes Dasein assuming its ontological guilt and the double nullity that it is (p. 76). Furthermore, Dasein does not ‘load guilt onto itself’ (p. 77) as it is already guilty in its very being, and its choice to be authentic allows it to listen to and heed the call of conscience, which will lead it to understand itself as Being-guilty (p. 77). Therefore, according to Critchley’s (2011) interpretation of Heidegger, freedom is not an escape from guilt but rather the choice to accept it (p. 75).
[O]n my view, the self’s fundamental self-relation is to an unmasterable thrownness, the burden of a facticity that weighs me down without my ever being able fully to pick it up. This is why I seek to evade myself. I project or throw off a thrownness that catches me in its throw and inverts the movement of possibility by shattering it against impotence. I am always too late to meet my fate. (Critchley, 2011, p. 75)
While I agree with Critchley (2011) that ‘[Dasein’s] primary self-relation is to an unmasterable thrownness’ (p. 75; replacing ‘self’ with ‘Dasein’), which he denotes as ‘impotentialization’, I find his attitude towards this concept most regrettable. In closing his article, Critchley (2011) writes: ‘Impotence—finally—is what makes us human. We should wear it as a badge of honor. It is the signal of our weakness, and nothing is more important or impotent than that.’ (p. 77; italicized my emphasis). In contrast, I contend that it is this very attitude that leaves the question of our inquiry unanswered: Why has Being become manifest as a burden? Cf. Heidegger (1962):
Being has become manifest as a burden. Why that should be, one does not know. (p. 173)
Rather, in my view, it is the reversal of Critchley’s attitude that leads us to solving this puzzle, which is essentially an unravelling of a self-concealment because, to borrow a well-known Buddhist phrase: ‘Ignorance is beginningless’ (i.e. it is recursive). Furthermore, I suggest that the key to solving it is to be found in Early Buddhist philosophy.
In an Early Buddhist Text (abbreviated as EBT) (the Alagaddūpama Sutta), a monk asks the Buddha, ‘Can there be anxiety, lord, about objective absence?’ (Ñāṇavīra Thera, 2022, p. 427). The Buddha confirms that it is indeed possible, and explains this with an example of a man grieving over the loss of his possessions. The monk then asks, ‘Can there be anxiety, lord, about subjective absence?’ (p. 427) To which the Buddha responds in the affirmative, citing the case of a sassatavādin who believes that both he (as a ‘self’) and the world are eternal (p. 427). In the latter case, if such an individual learns about the ‘extinction of Being’ (i.e. nibbāna or nirvana) from the Buddha, he would misapprehend it as the annihilation of his self (p. 427). These two possible experiences, namely, anxiety at the prospect of objective and subjective losses, are discussed in another EBT (the Uddesavibhaṅga Sutta) that Ñāṇavīra Thera (2022) translates from the Pāli as follows:
And how, friends, is there anxiety at not holding? Here, friends, an uninstructed [ordinary person]…regards matter (feeling, perception, determinations, consciousness) as self, or self as endowed with matter (…consciousness), or matter (…consciousness) as belonging to self, or self as in matter (…consciousness). That matter (…consciousness) of his changes and becomes otherwise; as that matter (…consciousness) changes and becomes otherwise, so his consciousness follows around (keeps track of) that change of matter (…consciousness); anxious ideas that arise born of following around that change of matter (…consciousness) seize upon his mind and become established; with that mental seizure, he is perturbed and disquieted and concerned, and from not holding he is anxious. Thus, friends, there is anxiety at not holding. (pp. 427-28)
Put in simpler terms, from the perspective of Early Buddhist philosophy, Heidegger’s account of Dasein’s guilt is ‘not enough unless Being is taken in the assertive sense of the conceit (māna) ‘I am’’ (Ñāṇavīra Thera, 2010, p. 507). Ñāṇavīra Thera (2010) further remarks:
Guilt is the undermining of this conceit by a nullity. This conceit is more than what H. [Heidegger] has in mind. (The evidence is, that with the arahat [fully enlightened] there are still these nullities, but no guilt, because no conceit or assertion.) (p. 507)
Additionally, let us respond to a question that Critchley (2011) poses: ‘What might potentiality for being mean when its condition of possibility and impossibility is a double impotentialization?’ (p. 78); which he further remarks by writing, ‘[t]o perhaps anticipate another paper, such a conception…might be called tragic, or better, tragi-comic.’ (p. 78). Indeed, according to Early Buddhist philosophy, the root cause of our tragi-comical human condition: sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair, is a consequence of misunderstanding the nature of self (Wijaya, 2023).
The experience of the ordinary person, the puthujjana, is invariably involved with holding [or better, ‘assumption’], the fundamental form of which is holding to a belief in self [or ‘assumption of self’ (attavāda)] (see MN 11/M I 66–7). However, this self that is believed in [i.e. assumed] has the nature of being inadequate. The ordinary person thinks “I am,” but he is then unable to avoid the puzzlement, “But what am I?” He will seek in one way or another to establish an identity: “I am this; such is my self.” If a belief in self was adequate…then this quest(ioning) would be unnecessary. …Because the ordinary person does find it necessary to repeatedly reconstruct this self identity we may say that…this self that is believed in lacks essence….
However, though it certainly lacks essence, it is not strictly correct to say that “self” lacks existence, or that “self does not exist.” (To make such an assertion is to go beyond what is found in the Suttas: a dangerous move.) For the ordinary person self does exist; but he fails to recognize that it exists as a belief. But this belief in self is essentially a notion of independence: a self that is in thrall to the world’s vicissitudes is no self at all. Therefore the ordinary person cannot escape the conviction that this self in which he believes is independent of his belief in it. His view is that the appropriated depends on appropriation (i.e. that things are “mine” because “I am”). Therefore he fails to see that it is appropriation which depends on the appropriated (i.e. that “belief in self” persists only for as long as things are regarded as “mine”). (Bodhesako, 2008, pp. 126-27)
Furthermore, according to Bodhesako (2008), it is only when the ordinary person gains the ‘right view’ that he understands: ‘other than as (dependent upon) a belief such a self is not to be found (and also, of course, that even as dependent upon belief such an independent self is still not to be found).’ (p. 127). It is only by understanding this that the implicit, inadvertent, incessant, and futile search for a self can be abandoned, together with the belief (pp. 127-28).
Attā, ‘self’, is fundamentally a notion of mastery over things…But this notion is entertained only if it is pleasurable, and it is only pleasurable provided the mastery is assumed to be permanent; for a mastery—which is essentially a kind of absolute timelessness, an unmoved moving of things—that is undermined by impermanence is no mastery at all, but a mockery. … [A] mastery over things that is seen to be undermined by impermanence is at once also seen to be no mastery at all, but a false security, for ever ending in betrayal. And this is dukkha [suffering]. (Ñāṇavīra Thera, 2022, p. 58, 38)
In other words, according to Early Buddhist philosophy, Dasein is guilty because notions of self (attavāda)—and this goes right back as far as the conceit ‘I am’ (asmimāna)—are unjustified. And this is why Dasein has become manifest as a burden and is defined by anxiety (Ñāṇavīra Thera, 2022, pp. 435-36).
7. Conclusion
In brief, from the perspective of Early Buddhist philosophy, Heidegger’s assumption of a subject—in which case, is the assumption of every ordinary person—(qua Dasein), i.e. an ‘experiencer’ (being) to whom the experience is for, is unjustified. Instead, Early Buddhist philosophy proposes us to understand our experience with even greater phenomenological radicality:
[A] stricter phenomenological description would say no more than “all experience involves an understanding of being” or “there can be no experience without an understanding of being” (Akiñcano, 2016).
Thus, insofar as this assumption of self (or ‘self-view’) remains unabandoned, the ordinary person ‘[will remain] imprisoned in something which is utterly beyond his control while unwittingly maintaining the assumption that he is in control.’ (Akiñcano, 2019, p. 125). As such, Dasein is guilty, is anxious and has become manifest as a burden. It is only through abandoning this self-view that one truly understands the root cause of anxiety and can subsequently strive for its abandonment, never for it to return—the arahat (fully enlightened) can be said to ‘“exist” as no-longer-Dasein’ while he is still breathing and well alive.
Primary Literature
Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time. Translated from the German by J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Secondary Literature
Akiñcano. (2016). Bhava – The Limits of Heidegger’s Study of Being. [Online]. Available from: https://pathpress.org/bhava-the-limits-of-heideggers-study-of-being/.
Akiñcano, B. (2019). With the Right Understanding: Phenomenological Explorations of the Pāli Suttas. The Netherlands: Path Press Publications.
Bodhesako, S. (2008). Change: An Examination of Impermanence in Experience. Beginnings: Collected Essays of S. Bodhesako. pp. 59-152. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society Inc. Available from: https://www.bps.lk/olib/bp/bp425s_Bodhesako_Beginnings.pdf.
Ciocan, C. (2010). Heidegger and the Problem of Boredom. [Online]. 41 (1). pp. 64–77. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2010.11006701.
Critchley, S. (2011). The null basis-being of a nullity, or between two nothings: Heidegger’s uncanniness. Interpreting Heidegger: Critical Essays. D. O. Dahlstrom (ed.). [Online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/8D5681C8A6D0617E4D117464DFFB8E44.
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Ñāṇavīra Thera. (2010). Seeking the Path: Early Writings (1954-1960) & Marginalia. The Netherlands: Path Press Publications.
Ñāṇavīra Thera. (2022). Clearing the Path: Writings of Ñāṇavīra Thera. 3rd edn. The Netherlands: Path Press Publications.
O’Brien, M. (2019). Being, Nothingness and Anxiety. Heidegger on Affect. C. Hadjioannou (ed.). [Online]. pp. 1-28. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24639-6.
Ratcliffe, M. (2012). The Phenomenology of Existential Feeling. Feelings of Being Alive. J. Fingerhut & S. Marienberg (eds.). [Online]. De Gruyter. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110246599.23.
Ratcliffe, M. (2013). Why Mood Matters. The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger’s Being and Time. M. A. Wrathall (ed.). [Online]. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/0B4BAFE092EF956DA1312DA617BE00D9.
Wijaya, D. C. (2023). Breath by Breath. [Online]. Available from: https://dicsonstable.blog/2023/02/25/breath-by-breath/.
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