Understanding is “thrown projection”? Thrown what?

In this essay, I will contextualize Heidegger’s concept of interpretation by explaining his position on understanding. Since it is difficult, and also necessary, to grasp the understanding as he understands it; I will spend the first half of this essay trying to explain it. Then his position on interpretation will be elucidated in relation to understanding. After explaining his position on interpretation I will take one aspect of his position and give my critical views on it. My focus will be on sections 31 to 33 of Being and Time (BT hereafter).

Understanding is not a cognitive phenomenon for Heidegger. It is a fundamental existential structure of Dasein’s Being:

“If we Interpret understanding as a fundamental existentiale, this indicates that this phenomenon is conceived as a basic mode of Dasein’s Being.” (BT, sec. 31)

Understanding is normally understood as a special cognitive act possessed by humans, but Heidegger has a very different concept of understanding. For Heidegger understanding is a part of what you are not something that you achieve consciously. In order to differentiate the existential aspect of understanding from the common usage he demarcates two main forms of understanding:

“’understanding’ in the sense of one possible kind of cognizing among others… must be, like explaining, Interpreted as an existential derivative of that primary understanding which is one of the constituents of the Being of the “there” in general.” (BT, sec. 31)

Even though the translation is here “primary” but he means primordial understanding here. As he immediately states after this “We have already come up against this primordial understanding in our previous investigation” (BT, sec. 31, my emphasis) Heidegger makes the task difficult to pin down these two forms by going back and forth without due care, because they are closely linked. But there are certainly these two forms in his tome. And they can be delineated clearly with close attention. First I will explain primordial understanding and then move on to basic understanding. Heidegger deals with interpretation at length in relation to basic understanding in the first half of Being and Time. Surprisingly enough he is silent about the relation of interpretation to primordial understanding apart from some remarks here and there.

The general definition of understanding given by Heidegger is:

“In the “for-the sake-of which”, existing Being-in-the-world is disclosed as such, and this disclosedness we have called “understanding”” (BT, sec. 31)

Primordial understanding can be taken to mean the ultimate “for-the-sake-of-which”. It means the stance that Dasein takes on its Being. It corresponds to the structural totality of existence, whereas the basic understanding corresponds to the structural totality of involvements. In section 39 Heidegger asks “With what is thus disclosed, the structural totality of the Being we seek must then come to light in an elemental way?” (BT, sec. 39) he replies thus:

“As one of Dasein’s possibilities of Being, anxiety -together with Dasein itself as disclosed in it- provides the phenomenal basis for explicitly grasping Dasein’s primordial totality of Being.” (BT, sec. 39, my emphasis)

Anxiety is the route to primordial understanding, neither reflection nor interpretation. This may explain why Heidegger does not have much to speak about interpretation in relation to primordial understanding. Having very briefly explained primordial understanding now we move on to basic understanding.

Understanding is thrown projection in the sense of our coping with daily life. The definition of understanding as “thrown projection” is actually a definition of basic understanding. In order to get a grip of this definition first we need to understand what Heidegger means by “projection”. He writes:

“As thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call “projecting”. Projecting has nothing to do with comporting oneself towards a plan that has been thought out, and in accordance with which Dasein arranges its Being. On the contrary, any Dasein has, as Dasein, already projected itself; and as long as it is, it is projecting. As long as it is, Dasein has always understood itself and always will understand itself in terms of possibilities.” (BT, sec. 31)

Heidegger is here again pushing the boundaries of language. For him projection does not necessarily have a telos, as usually the concept of projection has. One always projects oneself towards an end, but for Heidegger projection means the engagement of Dasein in the world of possibilities. Projection is not something Dasein consciously does, it occurs at the level below awareness. The element of future is also absent in projection here. Projection is not a reflective act, it is an engaged act. It is an immanent act, not secondary. Another important aspect of understanding is possibilities.

Dasein always understands itself in terms of possibilities. Heidegger means possibilities not in terms of mere future events amongst which we choose a few. Because he is concerned with the basic structure of Dasein he mentions possibilities as Dasein encounters them in coping daily. For Heidegger the as-structure is a part of the formal structure of the world itself (BT, sec. 33). Dasein encounters possibilities as possibilities in day to day life. Its existential framework already has skills in it to go about doing these daily tasks without being aware of them. For example: the door presents itself as possible to be opened which is why we turn the door knob to exit the room, we do not bump into the wall and try to turn a knob there because there is no possibility presented by the wall to be opened. We do not reflect upon the possibility of turning the knob and then turn the knob we do it unreflectively. This aspect of unaware assumptions and possibilities constitutes basic or pragmatic understanding. The thrownness is in the below conscious level of acting. The projection is Dasein’s acting itself. This is meant by thrown projection.

Interpretation relates to the as-structure of the basic understanding. It is important to note here that Heidegger’s position on interpretation is open ended, because he focuses on interpretation in relation with the basic understanding. He leaves the task of interpreting Interpretation completely on us. He writes:

“We shall pursue the phenomenon of interpretation in understanding the world- that is, in inauthentic understanding, and in the mode of its givenness.” (BT, sec. 32)

Inauthentic understanding does not mean false or non-genuine understanding for Heidegger. It is how we cope with the world. It comes close to the basic understanding. He explains it himself thus:

“The “in-” of “inauthentic” does not mean that Dasein cuts itself off from its self and understands “only” the world. The world belongs to being-one’s-self as being-in-the-world. Likewise, authentic understanding, no less than that which is inauthentic, can be either genuine or not.” (BT, sec. 31)

By inauthentic I take him to mean the understanding of the world i.e. the basic understanding. It is important to note this because whatever Heidegger will say about interpretation applies completely to the ready-to-hand aspect of Being. We can only extrapolate it to the primordial understanding; therefore it does not give the complete picture of Interpretation as such.

Now we turn our attention to Interpretation, and its relation to basic understanding. Blattner explains that:

“Interpretation is an act of understanding in which we make what we understand explicit by understanding it as something.” (Blattner; A Reader’s Guide to Being and Time ,(Blattner hereafter), p. 92)

The task of Interpretation is to work within the as-structure of reality. One can only interpret something as something. But this task is not independent of understanding. It does not add something new to understanding. It only works out the possibilities for Dasein, by which he means make the possibilities explicit (Blattner, p. 92. BT, sec. 32). The concept of understanding has a passive element in it. It contains the totality of possibilities lying dormant for Dasein. Possibilities become explicit, in the sense that they can actually be acted upon, through Interpretation. So Interpretation specifies the domain of Understanding by disclosing the possibilities as active through moods. For example: If I am typing this essay now peacefully and all of a sudden a spider appears in front of me the foreground changes. There is a new possibility now of the spider attacking me, which changes the foreground and makes me act accordingly. Now writing the essay becomes secondary and the fearful mood generated by the spider overtakes the peaceful mood, impelling me to change the place or freak out and stop working.

In the above example Interpretation is active in changing the foreground of my attention. So it is not that the fear is generated out of something new, it was always there in my understanding that I need to act in this way when I am confronted with fear. Interpretation makes this fear explicit as fear by attending to the possibilities of the situation at hand. Therefore Heidegger claims that Interpretation is a subset of understanding, it can only develop understanding, but can never become independent or a larger set than that of understanding. This is what he means when he says:

“In interpretation, understanding does not become something different. It becomes itself.” (BT, sec. 32)

Since we are always engaged with the world, we are thrown in it, we are always acting and working out possibilities on the very basic level. This means that we are interpreting all the time. Heidegger’s picture of interpretation is not close ended in the sense of working out possibilities. There are no limits to interpretation as far as its development and the development of understanding are concerned. In other words Interpretation does not have a fixed set of characteristics and content, which imprison us to a standardized view of reality. Because it is obviously not true that everyone interprets the world the same way. Heidegger expands on his position:

“The projection of the understanding has its own possibility, that of developing itself. This development of the understanding we call “interpretation”” (BT, sec. 32, my emphasis)

The element of development is crucial for Heidegger, otherwise his position will not include the crucial individual differences found in humans. Another task of Interpretation is to develop understanding. It is unclear whether the set of understanding is expanded with interpretation or the subset of interpretation expands keeping the set of understanding intact. Since understanding is the totality of involvements it does not seem to expand, it seems that interpretation develops understanding through enriching experiences. Since experience is inherently interpretive; it is only through the enhancement of experience that Dasein increases its own understanding. So the development of understanding basically means the expansion of the act of understanding (interpretation) through novel experiences. For example learning a new language, or living in a new culture.

I agree with Heidegger’s position on Interpretation, as it makes us realize the limits of our reflective acts. Any reflective act is interpretive, because it enters the domain of intelligibility, where meaning is to be found. Heidegger writes:

“Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself.” (BT, sec. 32)

Since meaning is a derivative of Interpretation (BT, sec. 32) and dependent on basic understanding, it is a very restricted phenomenon. It is crucial to realize this because of the pride philosophy and sciences takes when describing humans. They assume that they have described humans to the minutest detail and nothing is left to be explained anymore. Heidegger wants to challenge this assumption and put philosophy on the right course. He seems annoyed at this pompous claim and exclaims:

“If we are inquiring about the meaning of Being our investigation does not then become a “deep” one, nor does it puzzle out what stands behind Being. It asks about Being itself in so far as Being enters into the intelligibility of Dasein.” (BT, sec. 32, my emphasis)

I agree with him that our self-understanding is very limited. And there is a lot of work yet to be done in figuring out what it means to be a human. It makes philosophy more interesting. It challenges the assumptions of science that biology exhausts all understanding about humans. Biology is just one lens through which humans can be seen at, it is not the only one. And philosophy’s task is to make scientists realize the limits of their knowledge. Every biologist looks at humans as something. And this as-structure is just one amongst many others. Nothing gives it hegemony over others. This is the critical moment in philosophy according to me. It frees philosophy from the obsession of catching up with science. And opens up the space for philosophy to learn from aesthetics, which is much richer than science.

References

• Blattner, William. Heidegger’s Being and Time. A Reader’s Guide. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006.
• Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Harper & Row Publishers, 1962.