The Omnibus Homo Sacer
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and almost summarizes the first division of the work and where what is in
question is an analogous—and equally aporetic—primacy of care over use.
Here care is not understood simply as preoccupation ( Besorgnis, as opposed to
carelessness, Sorglosigkeit; Heidegger 1, p. 192/237) but in an ontological sense
as the fundamental structure of Dasein, as “the originary totality of Dasein’s
structural whole” ( die ursprüngliche Ganzheit des Strukturganzen des Daseins;
ibid., p. 180/225). The “primacy” ( Vorrang) that belongs to care as “originary
totality” implies that it comes before “every factical ‘attitude’ [ Verhaltung] and
‘situation’ [ Lage] of Dasein” (p. 193/238) and that it is “ontologically ‘earlier’
[ früher]” than phenomena like “willing and wishing or urge and addiction”
(p. 194/238).
However, if we seek to understand how this ontological priority of care is
articulated, we realize that it is neither chronological nor genetic but on the
contrary has the striking form of a finding oneself always already in something
else. The phrase that we just cited in an incomplete form reads in its entirety:
“Care, as a primordial structural totality, lies ‘before’ every factical ‘attitude’ and
‘situation’ of Dasein, and it does so existentially a priori [ existential-apriorisch]”
(p. 193/238). The existential a priori of care, like every a priori, always already inheres in something other than care itself. This character of “being-in” is, however, implied in the definition of the structure of care that immediately precedes
it: “the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as
Being-alongside” ( Sich-vorweg-schon-Sein-in (der Welt) als Sein-bei; p. 192/236).
Dasein, which has the structure of care, finds itself always already factically
thrown into the world and inserted into that series of references and relations
that according to Heidegger define the “worldhood of the world.” And im-
mediately afterward, he specifies what the “where” of this being-alongside is:
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“Ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-a-world essentially includes one’s falling and
one’s Being-alongside those things ready-to-hand within-the-world with which
one concerns oneself” ( besorgten innerweltlichen Zuhanden; p. 192/237).
Heidegger dedicates paragraphs 15 and 22 of Being and Time in particular
to the definition of “handiness,” being-ready-to-hand ( Zuhandenheit); but the
entire analysis of being-in, starting from paragraph 12 up to the end of the third
chapter of the book, attempts to define the “familiarity that uses and handles”
( der gebrauchende-hantierende Umgang) that constitutes the originary relation of
Dasein to its world.
4.2. In his book entitled Umgang mit Göttlichem, Kerényi dwelled on the
untranslatability of the German term Umgang, with which he expresses the
originary relationship of the human being with the divine. The English word
“intercourse” seems to him to be insufficient, because “it is limited to the total
exchangeability of subject and object, to a running back and forth of the event”
between the two terms of the relationship; in French and Italian one would have
to choose between commerce and commercio, on the one hand, and familiarité and dimestichezza, on the other, while the German term unites both meanings in
itself. The peculiarity of the term Umgang is that it entails both exchangeability between subject and object (“the object of familiarity must be able to change
itself at any moment into the subject of that same familiarity; and we, who cul-
tivate familiarity with it, must be able to become its object”; Kerényi, p. 5) and
immediacy (“the relationship between subject and object that stands at the basis
of familiarity excludes every mediation on the part of a third”; p. 8).
It is in this semantic perspective that one must situate the “familiarity that
uses and handles” in Being and Time. Like Kerényi’s Umgang, it is immediate, because nothing separates it from the world, and at the same time it is a place
of indetermination between subject and object, because Dasein, which is al-
ways ahead of itself, finds itself always already in the power of the things of
which it takes care. Analogous considerations could be made for the other two
terms by means of which Heidegger characterizes the immediate and originary
relation of being-in between Dasein and the world: “handiness” and relevance
( das Bewandtnis, the being satisfactory or sufficient of something with respect to something else). In every case, it is a matter of something so immediate and constitutive for Dasein that this latter cannot at all be conceived as a subject “which
sometimes has the inclination to take up a ‘relation’ with the world” (Heideg-
ger 1, p. 57/84); familiarity, handiness, and relevance name the very structure of
Dasein in its originary relation to the world.
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4.3. That this relation has to do with the sphere of use, that what is in ques-
tion in it is something like a “use of the world” is implied in the fact that the par-
adigm of handiness is equipment ( das Zeug, something like Aristotle’s organon or ktema), exemplified par excellence in the hammer:
Straightforward familiarity with equipment can genuinely show itself only in
dealings cut to its own measure (hammering with a hammer, for example); but
in such dealings an entity of this kind is not grasped thematically as an occur-
ring thing, nor is the equipment-structure known as such even in the using
[ das Gebrauchen]. The hammering does not simply have knowledge about the
hammer’s character as equipment, but it has appropriated this equipment in
a way that could not possibly be more suitable. In this familiarity that makes
use [ gebrauchenden Umgang], our concern [ das Besorgen] subordinates itself to the end-oriented characteristic [ Um-zu, “in-order-to”] which is constitutive
for the equipment we are employing at the time; the less we just stare at the
hammer-thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it [ gebraucht], the more
originary does our relationship to it become, and the more unveiledly is it en-
countered as that which it is—as equipment. The hammering itself uncovers
the specific “manipulability” [ Handlichkeit] of the hammer. The mode of Being
which equipment possesses—in which it manifests itself in its own right—we
call “handiness” [ Zuhandenheit]. (Heidegger 1, p. 69/98)
This originary and immediate relation with the world—which Heidegger, to
emphasize its inescapable character, also calls “facticity” ( Faktizität)—is so in-
volved and absolute that, to express it, it is necessary to make recourse to the
same term that, in juridical language, designates the state of arrest: “the concept
of ‘facticity’ implies that an entity ‘within-the-world’ has Being-in-the-world in
such a way that it can understand itself as captured [ verhaftet] in its ‘destiny’ with the Being of those entities which it encounters within its own world” (p. 56/82).
And it is due to this unheard-of involvement of Dasein that Heidegger can speak
of an originary “intimacy” ( Vertrautheit, “confident familiarity”) between Dasein
<
br /> and the world: “Any concern [ das Besorgen] is always already as it is, because of
some intimacy with the world. In this intimacy Dasein can lose itself in what it
encounters in the world and be fascinated [ benommen] by it” (p. 76/107).
In familiarity with the world we again find the plurality of senses and forms,
of “ways of being-in” ( Weisen des In-Seins), that we had seen to define the poly-
semy of the Greek chresis: “having to do with something [ zutunhaben mit etwas], producing [ herstellen] something, attending to something and looking after it,
making use of [ verwenden] something, giving something up and letting it go,
undertaking, accomplishing, evincing, interrogating, considering, discussing,
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determining . . .” (p. 56/83). And all these modalities of being-in are included
in that “familiarity with the world and with entities within-the-world” that
Heidegger expressly defines as “those entities which we encounter first of all”
( nächstebegegnenden Seienden; p. 66/95). These first and immediate entities are
pre-thematic, because they “are not objects for knowing the world theoretically,
they are rather what gets used [ das Gebrauchte], what gets produced, and so forth.
As entities so encountered, they become the preliminary theme for the purview
of a ‘knowing’ which, as phenomenological, looks primarily toward Being, and
which, in thus taking Being as its theme, takes these entities as its accompanying
theme” (p. 67/95). And Dasein has no need to transpose itself ( sich versetzen) into this familiarity: it “is always already in this mode of Being: when I open the door, for instance, I use the latch” (p. 67/96). The use of the world is, once again, the
first and immediate relationship ( die nächste Art des Umganges; ibid.) of Dasein.
א The relation between use and care can be compared with that between use value
and exchange value, which Marx deduces from the economists. The privilege that Marx
seems to grant to use value is founded on the fact that, for him, the process of production is in itself oriented to use value and not to exchange value, and only the surplus of use
values over demand allows them to be transformed into means of exchange and com-
modities. However, Marx did not clearly show what one is to understand by a surplus
of use values and seems, on the other hand, to conceive use value only as utilizability of an object. Now it is obvious that at the moment when an object is brought to market to
sell it one cannot use it, which implies that use value in some way constitutively exceeds effective utilization. Exchange value is founded on a possibility or surplus contained in
use value itself, which can be suspended and maintained in the potential state, just as,
according to Heidegger, the suspension of handiness allows care to appear. From the
perspective that interests us, it will be a question of thinking a surplus—or an alterity—of use with respect to utilizability that is intrinsic to use itself, independently of its surplus with respect to demand.
4.4. It is over this “familiarity that uses and handles” that care must affirm its
primacy. It is a matter, on the one hand, even before confronting it thematically
in the analysis of paragraphs 39–43, of presupposing and inscribing care into the
very structure of being-in that defines the originary relation of Dasein with its
world. In paragraph 12, at a point where he is characterizing the essential spatial-
ity of Dasein and the ways of its being-in-the-world, Heidegger anticipates with
these words the theme of care:
All these ways of Being-in have concern [ Besorgen] as their mode of Being—a
mode of Being which we have yet to characterize in detail. . . . This term has
been chosen not because Dasein happens to be proximally and to a large extent
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“practical” and economic, but because the Being of Dasein itself must [ soll] be
made visible as care. This term must be understood [ istzu fassen] as an ontological structural concept. (p. 57/83–84)
Even though neither handiness nor relevance nor any of the other characteristics
that define familiarity with the world seem to imply anything like a “taking care”
(indeed, in their immediacy and their “nearness” they would seem to presuppose
the contrary; cf. §22), here care is inserted as a necessity that does not need to be
argued for and whose explanation is postponed to a later time.
It is another apparatus, however, that proves to be decisive in the strategy di-
rected toward establishing the primacy of care. I am speaking of anxiety. Already
in paragraph 16, familiarity had displayed points of fracture: a tool can be dam-
aged and unusable and, precisely for this reason, can surprise us; it can be miss-
ing and, precisely for this reason, become intrusive; finally, it can be out of place
or in the way, almost as though it was rebelling against every possibility of use.
In all these cases, familiarity gives way to a simple availability ( Vorhandenheit) but does not for this reason disappear. Since it appears to be a matter of accessory or subsequent phenomena, which do not call into question the primary
characteristic of handiness, Heidegger can write that “handiness does not vanish
simply, but takes its farewell, as it were, in the conspicuousness of the unusable.
Handiness still shows itself, and it is precisely here that the worldly character of
the handy shows itself too” (p. 74/104).
In anxiety, by contrast, the first and immediate relationship with the world
proper to familiarity is called radically into question. “Here the totality of relevance
of the handy and the available discovered within-the-world, is, as such, of no con-
sequence; it collapses into itself; the world has the character of completely lacking
significance” (p. 186/231). It is not simply a matter, as in the preceding cases, of an
occasional unutilizability. The specific power of anxiety is rather that of annihilat-
ing handiness, of producing a “nothing of handiness” ( Nichts von Zuhandenheit;
p. 187/232). In annihilating handiness, anxiety does not withdraw from the world
but unveils a relation with the world more originary than any familiarity:
That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is nothing handy within-the-
world. . . . The “nothing” of handiness is grounded in the most primordial
“something”—in the world. . . . Being-in-the-world itself is that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. Being-anxious discloses, originarily and directly, the world as world. (p. 187/231–232)
It is with this neutralization of handiness that, with a radical subversion of
the rank (up until then primary) of the “familiarity that uses and handles,” he
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can propose the striking thesis according to which intimacy with the world
“is a mode of Dasein’s uncanniness [ Unheimlichkeit], not the reverse. From an
existential-ontological point of view, the ‘not-at-home’ [ das Un-zu-hause ] must be conceived as the more primordial phenomenon” (p. 189/234).
And it is only after the apparent primacy of familiarity has been swept aside
thanks to anxiety that care can appear, in the paragraph immediately following,
as the original structure of Dasein. That is to say, the primacy of care has been
rendered possible only by means of an operatio
n of annulling and neutralizing
familiarity. The originary place of care is situated in the non-place of handiness,
its primacy in making the primacy of use disappear.
א To the primacy of care over use there corresponds, in the second division of the
book, the primacy of temporality over spatiality. In paragraphs 22–24 of Being and Time, the sphere of the “familiarity that uses and handles” defined the “spatiality” of Dasein, its constitutive character as “being-in.” The concepts Heidegger uses here are all of a spatial order: “de-removal” ( die Ent-fernung), “proximity” ( dis Nähe), “region” ( die Gegend ),
“making room” ( Einräumen). And spatiality is not something in which Dasein finds
itself or that at a certain point happens to it: “Dasein is originarily spatial,” and “in every encounter with the handy” of which it takes care “the encounter with space as region” is
already inherent (p. 111/145).
Starting from paragraph 65, by contrast, not only is it temporality and not spatiality
that constitutes the ontological meaning of care, but the very structure of this latter
(being-already-ahead-of-oneself in a world as being-alongside the beings that one en-
counters in the world) acquires its proper sense from the three “ecstasies” of temporality: future, past, and present. It is not an accident that while “being-already” and “being-ahead-of-oneself” refer immediately to the past and the future, Heidegger observes that
“we lack such an indication” (p. 328/376) proper to that third constitutive moment of
care—the being-alongside that defines the sphere of handiness. The attempt to return
being-alongside as well to temporality in the form of a “making-present” ( Gegenwärtigen, p. 328/376) appears necessarily forced since in paragraphs 22–23, being-alongside defines
Dasein’s spatiality, a spatial nearness ( Nähe) and not a temporal present. It is for this reason that in paragraphs 69 and 70, Heidegger persistently seeks to lead spatiality back
to temporality (“Only on the basis of its ecstatico-horizonal temporality is it possible
for Dasein to break into space”; p. 369/421). But it is significant that many years later, in the seminar on Time and Being, we read the laconic admission that “the attempt in Being and Time, §70, to derive human spatiality from temporality is untenable” (Heidegger 2, p. 24/23).