“Das Man” and Inauthenticity
According to Carel (2006), Heidegger uses das Man to refer to “an internal agency made up of social norms and conventions that eclipses the authentic self”. She continues, claiming that “[it] is important to emphasize that Heidegger defines das Man as an existentiale, part of Daseins ontological structure” (p. 66). The German term das Man refers to an unspecified individual and is used in the same way as the English “one”. To this extent, it is used to express views or actions without attributing them to any particular individual. Examples of such impersonal attributions are, “One would think that the president ought to resign”, or “they say it is going to rain”. As such, as Carel elaborates:
[The] hegemony of das Man results in conformism and effacement of Dasein’s self. The power of this control over a particular Dasein stems from its internalisation and acceptance by Dasein, and therefore from the inability to sense it as an external influence. As an internalised agency, das Man has complete power over any individual Dasein, and moreover compels Dasein to resist any opportunity to be released from its hold. Das Man is marked by mediocrity fear of difference and flattening of possibilities.
(Card, 2006, p. 66)
Moreover, as Heidegger writes:
The “they” even hides the manner in which it has tacitly relived us of the burden of choosing our possibilities. It remains indefinite who has “really” done the choosing. So Dasein makes no choices, gets carried along by nobodv, and thus ensnares itself in inauthenticity.
(§54, p. 312)
But Dasein has a choice. As Heidegger continues: “[Tjhis process can be reversed if Dasein brings himself from the ‘they’ ... so that it becomes authentic Being-one’s self” (p. 312). How is authenticity' achieved? It begins with an understanding. According to King (2001, p. 29), Heidegger’s argument that “the ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence” is the hardest to understand in Being and Time'.
The term exist can only mean the unique way in which man is: he is so that he understands himself in his being. To be in this way, that is, to exist, is according to Heidegger the essence of man.
(King, 2001, p. 30)
Moreover, this understanding does not belong to Dasein in general but belongs to each Dasein singularly and uniquely. It is only in his own facticity—his existence—that a man can understand: “I myself am this man; this being is mine.” According to Heidegger, “Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence—in terms of a possibility of itself” (§4, 13). In other words, Dasein understands himself not through what he currently is, but through what he can be, through its potentiality-for-Being.! In this respect, Dasein does not have properties like an object but it neither does it have possibilities. Instead, Dasein is its possibilities. These possibilities do not exist apart from Dasein as something yet to be realized. To the contrary, he must be able to understand himself not only in that “I am”, but in the possibility that “I can be”. Thus, the fundamental characteristics of man’s being are not properties and qualities, but possibilities of being. Moreover, since Dasein is in each case essentially its own possibility, it can, in its very Being, “choose” itself and win itself; it can also lose itself and never win itself; or only “seem” to do so (§9, p. 68). Dasein may choose to ignore the fact that he has possibilities: it may choose to ignore the fact that it is a “being-towards-death”, for example, and hide in the safety of the tranquilization of the “They”.1 But these are only ways of relating to its possibilities by way of ignoring or disavowal. In clarification, Heidegger gives the example of hopelessness. On this point, as King elucidates it, even when Dasein “is sunk into hopelessness and expects nothing from life, he is still not cut off from his possibilities—he can change. His ability to become what he is not yet belongs essentially to his being (King, 2001, p. 145).
Thus, as Heidegger explains, hopelessness “does not tear Dasein away from its possibilities, but is only one of its own modes of Being towards these possibilities” (§46, p. 280).
BOX 3 IN SUMMARY
One of Dasein s modes of being is Das Man (the They). In Dasein 's everyday reality as “the They”, Dasein flees from its individuality, it flees from the fact that it has possibilities which are its own:” We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as THEY take pleasure; we read, see, and judge about literature and art as THEY see and judge; likewise we shrink back from the “great mass” as THEY shrink back; we find “shocking” what THEY find shocking” (§54, p. 312). . According to Heidegger, in justifying our decisions by appealing to what THEY do, to what One does, we deprive ourselves of responsibility, of answerability, since “It remains indefinite who has really done the choosing.. . . Dasein makes no [independent] choices, gets carried along by the nobody, and thus ensnares itself in inauthenticity. This process can be reversed only if Dasein specifically brings itself back to itself from its lostness in the “they”. (312)
The Meaning of Authenticity
IT%a/ About Authenticity?
In §42 Heidegger writes:
Dasein is essentially something that can be authentic [eigentliches], that is, something of its own [£««£««].
The concept of authenticity (Eigentlichkeit} lies at the center of Heidegger’s thought. But it is significant, as McManus (2014) notes, that “in choosing to use ‘Eigentlichkeit’, Heidegger passes over ‘Authentizität’”, the latter which is the German term for what philosophers have traditionally meant by the English term. This ‘passing over’ is not accidental. Indeed, when choosing to use ‘‘Eigentlichkeit” Heidegger intentionally selects a term containing the word eigen, namely, “own”. That is, “Eigentlichkeit” incorporates a term encompassing both what is real, actual, or genuine (as the word ‘eigentlich’ means in ordinary, non-Heideggerian German), with the adjective ‘eigen, meaning ‘own’, i.e., “having a room or a mind of one’s own” (p. 5).5 Authenticity refers to what Heidegger characterizes as “mineness” ijemeinigkeit], that which is our own, namely, our Being.11
Authenticity is the disclosure of one’s irreplaceability. While I may be substituted or represented by other Dasein in my everyday life, for example, my partner can represent me in signing certain documents and my colleagues can substitute for me in a class I cannot attend, no one can substitute for me in what is mine, in other words, in my existence. Thus, as Heidegger explains, “[R] epresentability is not only quite possible but is even constitutive for our being with one another. Here, one Dasein (das eine Dasein) can and must, within certain limits, “be” another Dasein (das andere “sein”)” (§46, p. 285). Nevertheless, “this possibility of representing breaks down completely if the issue is one of representing that possibility-of-Being which makes up Daseins coming to an end” (§46, p. 285). The possibility of substitution completely breaks down if the issue is one of representing me in my ownmost [eigenste] possibility, in my being, or, in this case, in my dying. In other words, while the other can represent or substitute me in my “ontic possibilities”, such as teaching a class, the other cannot represent or substitute me in the possibilities that are given me by the sheer fact that 1 am, such as the possibility of my death. No one can take death away from me because no one has given me death, the possibility of death is mine by virtue of my existence. So the possibility of substitution breaks down if at issue is a question of representing me existentially. This is simply impossible. In The Gift of Death, Derrida reflects on this issue:
Once it has been established that I cannot die for another (in his place) although I can die for him (by sacrificing myself for him), my own death becomes this irreplaceability that I must assume. But this irreplaceability is the irreplaceability of my existence, my being. It is in this place that I am called to responsibility towards my being.
(Derrida, 1995, p. 43)
Death, Heidegger argues, lays claim to an individual Dasein (§53, p. 308). If we think of death in terms of a possibility, we see that claiming this possibility as mine is at the same time realizing my irreplaceability. The key to understanding authenticity is understanding, not cognitively but existentially, that what is given to Dasein owing to the fact that he is, is something that no one can stand in for him. It is in these rare moments that we come to realize that our existence is utterly ours, irreplaceable and unexchangeable.
BOX 4 IN SUMMARY
Whereas Das Man aims at tranquilization, Dasein must disentangle itself from this very tranquilization, which encourages a “constant fleeing in the face of death” and a constant fleeing from itself, in order for it to face death authentically and by way of that, to face its own existence authentically. What does Being-toward-death mean? It doesn’t mean thinking about death; this leads nowhere. Rather it means claiming my being as mine. Death individualizes Dasein, it is Dasein s existential possibility which reveals to it that its existence excludes any possible substitution. When it comes to my existence, I am irreparable. It is here that we pass from the generality of the THEY to the particularity of the individual.
