Professor Jeffrey Librett
COLT 470
10 November 2013
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger the concept of “Resoluteness”
Martin Heidegger was a German Philosopher who examined the concept of phenomenological ontology. All of his writings, such as: Being and Time, What is Metaphysics?, Identity and Difference, and What is Called Thinking? have influenced the progression and development of ideas on existentialism and temporal being (Scott). Specifically, in one of his works, Being and Time, as Heidegger analyzes the “Dasein,” or the existence of an individual in terms of “being,” he introduces the concept of “resoluteness.” Heidegger argues that the term resoluteness is used in a way to define the silent, and the outmost authentic realization of one’s temporal self, which ultimately leads to the guilty and/or anxious awareness of acknowledging the existence of an “end” to the individual’s “being” in the temporal world.
One of the first ideas that Heidegger argues within the concept of the resoluteness is the notion of “the call.” Heidegger explains that the call is when the individual acknowledges that they have a conscience, and the Dasein of their existence has to “call upon” this conscience to acknowledge the temporal existence within the concept of being in time. In section 60, Heidegger quotes, “Conscience attests not by making something known in an undifferentiated manner, but by calling forth and summoning us to Being-guilty. That which is so attested becomes ‘grasped’ in the hearing which understands the call undisguisedly in the sense it has itself intended” (Heidegger 295). Heidegger is maintaining that the first step to developing resoluteness within the existence of being is to have the conscience and state of mind, which untimely means that the Dasein has the unavoidable potential to become “disclosed.”
Heidegger argues that the concept of disclosing the Dasein is the individual wanting to have conscience in order to understand
Cited: Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. New York: Harper, 1962. Print. Scott, Alex. "Heidegger 's Being and Time." N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.