OUT OF THE WORLD

Finally, in the Heideggerian sense, the sentence “I am there” signifies the ontological primal scene of waking finite life. It witnesses a thought that is coextensive with an event. It is the sentence that opens and bears witness to a destiny. “I am there” marks a catastrophe report from Being, in which the report and the catastrophe are one. In every present “there” [Da] ticks quietly and uncannily the time bomb of the question of being. Spoken without addenda, the Da tears open the scene into which I know I am absolutely exposed, “set out.” Through this absolute “out” I am thrown into the world, among the things, [280] and condemned to freedom. On this deepest level of primal-scenic consciousness, I befall myself as a trace of exposure to a “world.” The situation corresponds to the context-free question: where am I? Against this question the everyday understanding with its vulgar conception of space can only bang its head—for it may be prepared for anything, but not the problem of absolute localization. It doesn’t want to know that being-inthe-world means something radically other than residing in a large container. If I am “there” in a whole, it is because I have fallen [zugefallen] to myself in consequence of a birth. But if I am an absolute accident [Zufall] to myself, then the space in which I encounter myself is an outside, an uncontainer, an openness, an extrauterine scene. Consequently, being in the world first of all means only as much as being—with things, with people—outside and under the pressure of facticity. Amid the inventory of facts, human Dasein experiences itself as not a thing, as a pure absurdity [Unding]. It falls to it to have to be an existing self that cannot grasp itself in the mirror of external things. In “authentic” Dasein, it would completely become the resolute “fall”—an animated groundlessness, willing to endure in the uncomfortable ecstasy. This is what is defended against by the primary tendency toward being-away

or being-gone, in which Dasein dwells “proximally and for the most part.” Heidegger’s saying, “Man is the away”—the away!—means that subjects can initially be nothing other than compulsive deserters into external business. Now it is a matter of gauging the distance between the simple existential assertion and the subject’s commentary on it. If the assertion [281] is simply “I am there”—at most “I find myself there,” or “Dasein is”—then the subject’s comment would have to be, in the most favorable case, “I approve of my being there,” and in a less favorable but still felicitous variant, “I take responsibility for everything that follows from my being there”—or even, in a lyrical or religious turn, “I am grateful for myself.” No doubt there are certain mentalities—which in passing one could dub “world-infantile”—for which it is out of the question to let a significant difference arise between the basic assertion and the commentary. Consciousness of Dasein and affirmation of Dasein lie so close together that the problems discussed in the following must seem unreal. It is the wickedness of lucky people never to know what the less lucky ones are talking about. In the ideal case of happy positivism, the subject experiences itself as the best of all possible egos in the best of all possible worlds. Such contentment seems, if not to sublate the difference between world and self, to prevent it from becoming conspicuous. The human has remained a good animal or a blessed idiot spared from the force of the negative.

No effort is needed in order to defend the thesis that the majority of people feel less happy in historical times. The silent majorities of all ages live in the consensus of average unhappiness. Their life-feelings and selfconsciousness are colored by the knowledge that the transition from the “I am there” to the affirmation thereof will not come without a cost. Perhaps the high religions of the past millennia were basically just collective fortifications of the endangered affirmational capacity of those who belong to chronically hard times. Such individuals certainly form the psychosocial bulk of modern societies, and I don’t think I am exaggerating when I claim that they make up the clientele of psychological and philosophical services in the present-day therapeutic and counseling establishment. From a philosophical perspective, one could call this eternal majority, in homage to Heidegger, the Sorgen-Kinder (“problem children”); from a psychological perspective, as just said, the clients; and from a sociological perspective, most likely: the stressed class.

OUT OF THE WORLD

 Peter Sloterdijk

Stanford University Press Stanford, California English translation © 2024 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.