Heidegger’s positive descriptions of Dasein mask hidden negations

Evidence

Now the characteristic of Heidegger’s philosophy is to describe Dasein by using positive terms which hide the implicit negations. Dasein is “outside of itself, in the world”; it is “a being of distances”; it is care; it is “its own possibilities,” etc. All this amounts to saying that Dasein “is not” in itself, that it “is not” in immediate proximity to itself, and that it “surpasses” the world inasmuch as it posits itself as not being in itself and as not being the world. In this sense Hegel is right rather than Heidegger when he states that Mind is the negative. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 216

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sartre’s reading strategy: reduce Heidegger’s positive characterizations of Dasein to their implicit negative structure.
• XREF: This is the systematic backdrop Sartre gives Beauvoir; also echoes the ‘negative’ in Hegel’s Phenomenology. — connects to: Both Hegel and Heidegger fail to ground negation in a negative being — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 216; Heidegger’s term Dasein deliberately prevents direct self-recognition in his descriptions — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 202; Sartre’s for-itself is an active nothingness, unlike Heidegger’s Dasein — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 497 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Heidegger’s term Dasein deliberately prevents direct self-recognition in his descriptions #expands (0.90) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 202
• Heidegger coined Dasein to avoid the assumptions carried by words like mind and consciousness. #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 201
• Sartre’s for-itself is an active nothingness, unlike Heidegger’s Dasein #expands (0.82) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 497