Anguish and fear of existence
17
Jun
The constitutive feature of Dasein, in Heidegger, goes beyond
the psychological and ontic phenomenon, not being something that refers only to a being or something given, it refers to the totality of being as a being-in-the-world, that is, its true dimension ontological, in it the anguish of Being is explained.
The category emerged with Kierkegaard but for him anguish reveals our finite being, the nothingness of our existence in the face of God’s infinity, due to its eternal character, while Heidegger does not think only as an ontological category, making it just a phenomenon of finitude human.
Stuck with human finitude, Heidegger finds the difference between anguish and fear (furcht), but in the work Being and time, fear is also a fundamental existence through which man finds himself in the world (Heidegger, 1989) and this makes the anguish a mild stage.
Fear, on the other hand, constitutes a strong anima disposition for the author [Befindlichkeit] it is it that reminds us of something we fear and with this the whole of the world manifests, in its strangeness and amazement, it is what happens before we can perform an act knowledge of the world.
There is in it a force to reveal the world, even if at first it is just an escape, in it, for example, joy or happiness, explains the author are very transitory and less striking, this being-there is cast [geworfen] in the middle to states of mind, able to support the weight of existence, and in it “Humour makes manifest ‘how we feel’. In this ‘how we feel’, being willing brings the Being in its being-there” (HEIDEGGER, 1986, p. 134).
More precisely, or more in line with Heidegger’s thought, fear is a central disposition in our existence because it manifests the world in the actor of being-there from itself, even though man is the theme The aim of Heidegger and Kierkegaard, the ultimate address of both is fear not as an object outside himself, but rather itself: man only fears for something determined because he is ultimately affected and interested.
I digress because being “outside” to the contemporary world, Byung Chull Han and Hanna Arendt have taken up in a different way the “being inside” in the “contemplative vitta”, in Heidegger fear turns to the one who fears and not to the one who fears , in Kierkegaard the fear is God, but already in the period of idealism projected onto the world, not as a Being “outside”
What is important in Heidegger’s discourse is that it manages to establish three forms of fear: the one that [wofür] we fear something, that which threatens us (the difficulties of co-presence), the very fear [fürchten] as such, which opens up to us the world (Sloterdijk’s spheres help this reflection), and, and the reason [worum] we fear, which is our own being-there.
Finally, fear can have variations: it can be what’s frightening; it can be horror and also disappointment” (Heidegger, 1986, p.142), but the difference between fear and fear would help to better separate Heidegger’s category from Kierkegaard, that fear is of something “greater”.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1989) Ser e Tempo Traduçăo de Márcia de Sá Cavalcanti. Petrópolis: Vozes.
