Heidegger’s term Dasein deliberately prevents direct self-recognition in his descriptions

Evidence

The effect is at once disconcerting and intriguing. Reading Heidegger, and feeling (as one often does) that you recognise an experience he is describing, you want to say, ‘Yes, that’s me!’ But the word itself deflects you from this interpretation; it forces you to keep questioning. Just getting into the habit of saying Dasein takes you halfway into Heidegger’s world. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 202

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why Dasein is deliberately left untranslated and what reading it does to the reader.
• XREF: connects to: Heidegger’s positive descriptions of Dasein mask hidden negations — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 216; Heidegger coined Dasein to avoid the assumptions carried by words like mind and consciousness. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 201