Interpreters of Heidegger commonly divide his works into two incommensurable periods. This "turning, or Kehre" of Heidegger's thought, is traditionally conceived toencompass what follows Being and Time. There is a consensus in the philosophicalcommunity to regard the early period of Heidegger's thought as unrepresentative of his essential philosophy. Frederick Olafson rejects this claim by asserting that certainfundamental concepts continually underlie the supposed discontinuity. He is not, however,denying the possibility of some sort of reorientation on Heidegger's part. Olafson propounds that the "discontinuity that this reorientation involves can be understood only against the background of an even deeper continuity that runs through all the periods of Heidegger's thought"(98). It is only through consideration of MH's thought as unified,that the true nature of his reorientation appears.
An understanding of Olafson's project is facilitated when one is familiar with the totality of Heidegger's work. Olafson presupposes knowledge of texts which our class isnot directly dealing with. However, within the broad scope of the essay we can extract specifics relevant to the Problems text.
First relevant mention is of Dasien. In the Problems text Heidegger fails to provide a clear definition of this concept. Olafson comes to the rescue. The set of human beings is Dasein. This is an extensional definition; Dasein is human beings. There is an important distinction between Dasein as an entity and all other entities. Dasein has a world while other entities are merely within Dasein's world. The 'special character' of Dasien 'uncovers' entities and in that sense they gain their existence in the world. Existence of entities is dependent upon their appearing to Dasein. This notion of presence, or things present to Dasein is the way in which entities gain their being. Olafson writes "existence as the mode of being of Dasein is the ground of presence as the mode of being of the world and of entities understood as forming part of the world in Heidegger's sense of that term"(101).
Existence of entities is inexorably tied to the entity to which things appear or presence themselves, namely Dasein. This conjunction of being with Dasein is problematic for Heidegger. According to Olafson, this is where Heidegger reorients/realigns crucial concepts in an effort to avert difficulty. "But if there is no gap between being as such and Dasein, how can it any longer be maintained that being is not an entity as Dasein is?"(108) is the crucial question which must be answered. If being is given the status of an entity then the ontological difference is no longer. If being were a being then everything would be ontical and the ontic/ontological distinction would fade away. Succinctly, being would be a being. Through a realignment of being to distance it from entities Heidegger hopes to avoid the aforementioned difficulties. He wants to stabilize the independence of being independent of entities.
The change that in fact occurs is that Heidegger from the mid-thirties on tries to conceive being as presence in such a way as to keep it clear of just those features of entities- that is, of Dasein- that would endanger its unity and singularity and commoness. This is a momentous shift, one that is compatible with and in fact ensures the kind of continuity in his thought that I have in mind in speaking of the unity of Heidegger's thought.(110) This reorientation of being, points to the issue concerning being's connection with the entity-Human being. It might prove useful to read Olafson's elucidation of central Heideggerian concepts.
Mike
David