The Essence of Da-Sein and its Implications

I'd like to spend my post taking a second look at the first proposition under "The Theme of the Analytic of Da-Sein." We discussed it in class already, but if I remember correctly we moved onto the next topic without having a clear picture of what Heidegger expresses here. Dr. Johnson said though that this claim of his is actually quite revolutionary, so I thought it deserved some more analytic attention.

As far as we know, only human beings fall under the category of Da-Sein, that is, the being which has its own Being as an issue. Although we have this criterion, it does not explicate what is essential to Da-Sein. In Heidegger's words, "The 'essence' of this being [Da-Sein] lies in its to be" (119), which of course is a difficult phrase to comprehend. I think Patrick got us on the right track when he said that this relates to the "existence precedes essence" mantra of the existentialists. We contrasted the essence of Da-Sein with the essence of any other ordinary object, e.g., a table. (For the sake of simplicity, we will leave animals out of consideration for now.) The table cannot be said to have its essence within its being. Rather, a table is so because it is constructed by people who have the form, or the essence, of the table in mind, meaning that the essence is prior to the table's existence. To put it another way, and the way that Dr. Johnson once characterized it, the table's being does not depend on its constant actualization of being a table. It simply is so because it is. The same, however, cannot be said for human beings. We do constantly actualize our being. Whatever, or more appropriately whoever, we are does depend on our making it so. But since our making it so presupposes that we are there to make it, it must be said that our existence is prior to our essence. (Sartre explains this idea in a similar manner in Existentialism is a Humanism.)

Let's take a second to evaluate the claim that's being made here and see what kind of conditions are necessary for this claim to be true. Earlier philosophers like Aquinas and Aristotle probably did not see humans as having essences fulfilled through one's existence. Rather, humans fell under the category of "rational animal" which inhered somehow in the cosmos. This usually implies a sort of theological or teleological worldview, where humans fulfill their pre-existing essences through their own existence. This does not seem to be the case for the existentialists. Heidegger's thought seems to extend from Nietzsche's nihilist stance that the world is really just a chaotic place and that the perceived orderly universe is just an illusion. Indeed, such world conditions seem necessary if we are to make the claim that Da-Sein has its essence in its being. Should we then abandon all teleological viewpoints?


(Footnotes:
I credit Patrick Shade for being a partial source for some ideas expressed in the third paragraph.
If I am misrepresenting existentialist thought or am getting too ahead of myself, please comment and let me know. I've read existentialist literature and writing about existentialism before, but I do admit I have a confused picture of it.)