What is Dasein?

Dasein: existence, being there. And the heart of one of the most problematic works of philosophy.

In the 19th century, there were concerns that philosophy was becoming a bloodless subject, suggesting most of human existence is spent devising Newtonian theorems. To Martin Heidegger, there was a swathe of human life being left out: the social dimension, emotion and death. The last especially helps us work out whether someone is being authentic and facing up to who they really are. Dasein is an attempt to articulate what is different about people, especially in respect to these three concepts.

But who or what is “dasein”? Could it be pretty much anything, or is it a more specific concept, only concerning individual humans? How do philosophy and history go together, and can you give a general philosophical view of history? Or do we need to talk about individual periods of history in their own context? And are animals dasein?

It is these questions which make the concept problematic. Dasein attempts to explain our being but in doing so it potentially severs us from the context of the world within which we need to be understood.

Dr. Golob is the Subject Editor for 19th Century Philosophy for the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at King’s College London. He is also the Associate Editor of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

[loveyoursoul]

this is the only philosophy video that has ever made sense because it is explained in such an appropriately structured way without compromising the fluidity of philosophy.

[barrymarshall]

Very clear and pithy explanation of Dasein. Regarding Heidegger's point about what distinguishes us from other animals, it is his contention that we are the beings that question Being. Why is there anything at all and not nothing? Perhaps my pet cat or dog thinks the same thing, but they don't seem to have articulated it! Thank you.

[sahifasultana]

Thank you for such a good explanation.
Finally got to know what Dasien really means.
with lots of Love from India!!

[chunkEcheez]

Some weird zooming but nice and clear explanation.

[apostalote]

I think the range of Dasein’s construal is determined by ‘mood’. Anything that can be characterized by a mood is a Dasein, so this means individual people, groups, masses and even historical cultures can be dasein. Dasein for Heidegger is essential differentiated and characterized by disclosure and since mood is originary disclosure of the world, it is mood which defines the bounds of Dasein’s being

[freddytackos]

thank you. this might be the best video on the subject.

[Archimedes]

I’m either a lesbian, a carpenter, both, or neither.

[trashygit]

Three points to highlight before going deeper into the concept:
1- Combined to "Dasein" noun by Heidegger, the ordinary German expression of "da sein" can be translated as "there be". Does it make sense? Obviously no. Some interpreters attempted to translate it to "being there" which was an unfortunate attempt. Anyhow, the dictionary translation of "sein" is "be" or more correctly "to be". One way of using the "to be" verb in everyday English is in the form of "there is" or "there are". So German "da" is equivalent to "there" in English, and "be" is transformed into "is" or "are" depending upon the situation. This is why the literal translation of "da sein" should be "there be" and the meaningful translation should be "there is". This is not the only use of "to be": Just like "sein" can be used as "ich bin" or "du bist" in German language, English "to be" can also be used as "I am" or "you are". Therefore, returning to the combined version (dasein), Heidegger almost refers to something like "thereis" or "thereare" or "Iam" or "youare" in English. I say "almost", because as we can observe it is difficult, in fact impossible to find an exact English equivalent of "da sein", yet because English is a Germanic language, we can find the conceptual equivalent of "sein" as "be".


2- German language has two types of existences while English and many other languages have only one type of existence. This is the key element to understand why non-German speaking world suffer to comprehend what Dasein is. German language uses "da sein" or "there is" structure in order to describe what is in front of the speaker, what is factually right there, what is observable or actually experienced. If a German speaker says "da ist ein Buch", the translation will be "there is a book". And if anybody asks "where is the book?", one can confidently show and says "da" (there) or "hier" (here) . But things dramatically change after this point. For the hypothetical existences, or for the things that are not right in front of us, German speakers use "es gibt" format. If we apply it to our example: "Es gibt ein Buch"; meaning that the book exists, but not physically in front of us, it is not here or there, it is somewhere else, it is known to us, etc. The literal translation of "es gibt" is "it gives". English speakers use "it gives" format in their language, but not to describe the existence. This is why "es gibt ein Buch" is not translated as "it gives a book".Guess how we normally translate "es gibt ein Buch" into English: "There is a book". This is extremely important, because Heidegger definitely does not talk about "es gibt" existence but talks about "da ist" existence. Thus we have a second pillar: It is next to impossible to translate "da sein" into English without understanding the different existence categories in German.


3- Heidegger wanted to introduce a new way of thinking in philosophy, and turned the expression of "da sein" into a noun and started to write it with capital letter "Dasein", just like any other noun in German. If we wanted to do the same thing in English, we should have used something like "thereis" since we do not start ordinary nouns with capital (this is another unfortunate mistake made by some interpreters and tried to differentiate Dasein from ordinary beings by using capital Being); but "thereis" would still not correspond "Dasein" due to the reasons we explained at step 2 above. The noun "Dasein" became a special philosophical term which is assigned to what we conventionally know as "human being". By doing this, Heidegger wanted to separate his philosophy from the known concepts or categories about humans, and aimed to highlight the worldly or phenomenological existence of human being rather than hypothetical or conceptual definitions of self which have been the day job of traditional philosophy. Heidegger wanted to discover the essence of human existence without relying upon the transcendental concepts, linguistic descriptions or any other "logos". But Heidegger soon realised that his project was practically impossible: Human existence, philosophical explorations and/or all other human related activities are fundamentally embedded into language and human phenomenological experience is under the control of a sort of linguistic filter. This is why within the five years of the publication of "Being and Time" he gave up this project and his remaining career was dedicated to understand the language and its role. In a way, Heidegger realised that "da ist" has no real importance for us as humans, since the "es gibt" dominates the mental platform of our understanding.

[rattangujadhur]

Thank you so much to explain this in clear terms.

[kiwi]

i think you guys mean the handbag company Dasein👍 very good products

[LeethLee]

Fantastic thank you. I think it's not an all encompassing theory but something that almost needs a seat at the table, or always attached to our utility belt of philosophy and science so that we don't lose ourselves. Bless

[navis]

The irony is that Heideggerian existentialism is an evasion from reality...

[mensabs]

The work is not problematic--people who don't understand Heidegger are, like this chap.

[dsdjjjnnvvetth]

how can he attempt to explain what Dasein is without mentioning da Sein and das Seiende? smh

[msrhuby]

Me thinks philosophers think too much!

[LethalBubbles]

he denies the existence of collective dasein at 0:44 so this explaination is worthless

[egondeur]

No matter what he means by Dasein, Nazis are not profound and obviously Heidegger was always on board with Nazi Germany.

[orloification]

In the first 3 minutes or so, this guy has already shown that he is biased in favour of our time's strange confusion about sexuality, and has ripped off a Freudian slogan..