In a nutshell
Arguing from the other side of the papers we have seen so far, Cerbone argues that embodiment cannot be a part of Dasein's essence, and that Heidegger is right to avoid discussing it within this context. He also defends Heidegger's belief that while man has world, animals are poor in world, and a stone is worldless.
Summary
Heidegger avoids discussion of the body, this much seems clear from the previous two papers. Cerbone begins by pointing out that any talk of the body will invite talk also of the mind as its opposite, and dualism may begin to creep in. This is a fair point, and it is a trap we ought to be very careful of falling into, however ignoring the body completely seems to me to be admitting defeat by assuming that this is not an issue which can be overcome.
Cerbone argues that Heidegger is doing a transcendental investigation of our being, and speaking of embodiment in this context is inappropriate - this will be the main point of the paper. Embodiment, he says, is not part of our essence, it is too contingent to be a part of the existential analytic. As evidence he points to Heidegger stating that the essence of Dasein does not consist in the properties of something present-at-hand. The author here is begging the question, assuming that the body is nothing more than its physical properties, despite the fact that he goes on shortly to argue against this idea.
Interestingly, he argues that Dasein’s embodiment cannot be part of its existential analytic because this would restrict dasein to only those creatures with human bodies. This struck me as a little strange - we do not necessarily want to link dasein to a specifically human embodiment, only with embodiment as such.
Following on from this is a very clever argument which does make an important point. He points out that to say embodiment is not part of Dasein’s essential structure is different to saying that Dasein is not necessarily embodied - the latter implies that Dasein is potentially disembodied, and this is not what Cerbone (or Heidegger) is intending.
He tells us two reasons why he would not describe the body as something present-at-hand. Firstly, the concept of the body as a mere thing which dasein occupies brings us straight back to Cartesian dualism - the fear of this seems to be the driving force of this paper. Secondly, it misses the significance of movements and gestures, if we offer nothing but a physical description.
Moving on to the concept of world and Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, we are told that man is world forming, animals are poor in world, and a stone is worldless. We have alluded to this analysis previously, and now we get to see some more detail behind it. The discussion begins with organs, and Heidegger states that “every living being can only ever see with its eyes” (220). Cerbone uses this to argue that ownership is the distinguishing feature - equipment can be used by anyone, but in contrast an organ can only be used by its owner. I read the same quote much differently, Heidegger doesn’t seem to me to be making any claim about ownership. The quote is the other way around: he states that every living being can only ever see with its own eyes, never from any other vantage point. The implication here seems more likely to be regarding situatedness. Any being always begins from its own viewpoint, unavoidably. This is a point that Heidegger is frequently driving home, through his earlier and later work, and given that it seems to fit the quote more accurately, I’m not sure why Cerbone would see another interpretation. However I’m not thoroughly familiar with this text, so perhaps I’ve missed something. Regardless, I require more convincing than is done here.
An organ is also distinguished from equipment in that it is not an in-order-to, but is rather a capacity to do something. This gives priority to the capacity - strictly speaking, it is the capacity that has the organ, the organ does not have a capacity to perform a function. Equipment is serviceable for something, where the organ is in the service of something. This is a fuller explanation of the quote from a previous post where he claims that we have eyes because we can see. It is also difficult, but important, to distinguish his discussion here from an anthropological one - Heidegger is always clear that he is talking ontologically.
Organisms, to move forward, are essentially whole, and more than the sum of their parts. They differ from machines because they require no outside force to trigger their activation - they require no maintenance and act on their own. This does sound like an inelegant solution - I’m quite sure Asimov would have a field day.
Man is world forming, as we said earlier. This is because man discloses entities in their being - we see this in Being and Time as well as Heidegger's later works, where it often becomes a discussion of unconcealment. Man unconceals things, revealing them in the sense of letting them be as they show themselves. This is the relationship to being which is unique to man, that animals do not possess. Man is as comportment, where the animal is as behaviour. To be as comportment means simply that man's relationships with entities are always ultimately relationships of care, through the structure of significance. This is the meaning of world in Being and Time as the worldhood of the world, rather than simply existing among other entities. The animal is as behaviour because, while it may be an organism, its world does not have the structure of significance or care. It simply acts on the basis of its surroundings, it does not disclose or unconceal.
Returning to the issue of the body, Cerbone argues that it needs to be looked at as more than just behaviour, it cannot be reduced to the animal portion of man. For this investigation to happen, it needs to be situated within a context or structure. This structure is the ontological world of Dasein, and so the latter needs to be investigated fully before the question of the body can be addressed. This, he says, is Heidegger's aim in Being and Time, and explains why he does not raise the question of the body. There is evidence for this in the oft-quoted comment from the book stating that “Dasein's bodily nature hides a whole problematic of its own not to be treated here”.
Final Thoughts
It's good to see a paper which isn't simply deriding Heidegger for his position toward the body or animals - the literature seems quite unbalanced in this respect. I also mostly agree with his assessment of the position of animals. It obviously does those involved a disservice to treat all animals as identical in this respect, but we may never be in a position to accurately report the experiences of animals and I stand by my comments in the last summary that there is little to be gained from the discussion anyway. But essentially, following Heidegger's work it is difficult to see how his notion of world would extend to include any animals. Whether we agree entirely with Heidegger is of course another matter.
The basic idea of this paper though is that embodiment, while it may be necessary, is not actually part of Dasein's essence. The reasons Cerbone offers for this generally seem to assume the point is already made, and his assumptions become manifest throughout the paper. He states that the body is too contingent to be a part of Dasein’s existential analytic, and that we would want to be able to grant Dasein to non-human intelligences. We can see an assumption here that the body can have no effect on the analytic, and that if we were to discover non-human intelligences that they would conform to the exact same ontological structure. Those that take embodiment seriously and would want to include discussion of it in the existential analytic would surely argue that this is not the case.
Another line of argument is that Dasein cannot be reduced to something present-at-hand, and so embodiment cannot be part of the analytic. Again, he assumes that the body is nothing more than a present-at-hand thing which Dasein occupies. Working on these assumptions it is no wonder that he worries about dualism sneaking in. Similarly, organs (and thus the body) are defined in the way that they differ from equipment, as he once again assumes that the body is a mere physical object. If the body were part of the existential analytic it would surely not need to be carefully distinguished from equipment, which is of a different kind.
So ultimately, while he says that Dasein can be said to be necessarily embodied, this statement is an empty one if the body is not part of its essence. Without agreeing to this vital point, the necessity becomes an ontic one, and as such the only reason that the body is necessary must be because we require physical inputs. I would argue that this does not fit with our experience, which suggests that the body is far more fundamentally necessary and affective.
Arguing from the other side of the papers we have seen so far, Cerbone argues that embodiment cannot be a part of Dasein's essence, and that Heidegger is right to avoid discussing it within this context. He also defends Heidegger's belief that while man has world, animals are poor in world, and a stone is worldless.
Summary
Heidegger avoids discussion of the body, this much seems clear from the previous two papers. Cerbone begins by pointing out that any talk of the body will invite talk also of the mind as its opposite, and dualism may begin to creep in. This is a fair point, and it is a trap we ought to be very careful of falling into, however ignoring the body completely seems to me to be admitting defeat by assuming that this is not an issue which can be overcome.
Cerbone argues that Heidegger is doing a transcendental investigation of our being, and speaking of embodiment in this context is inappropriate - this will be the main point of the paper. Embodiment, he says, is not part of our essence, it is too contingent to be a part of the existential analytic. As evidence he points to Heidegger stating that the essence of Dasein does not consist in the properties of something present-at-hand. The author here is begging the question, assuming that the body is nothing more than its physical properties, despite the fact that he goes on shortly to argue against this idea.
Interestingly, he argues that Dasein’s embodiment cannot be part of its existential analytic because this would restrict dasein to only those creatures with human bodies. This struck me as a little strange - we do not necessarily want to link dasein to a specifically human embodiment, only with embodiment as such.
Following on from this is a very clever argument which does make an important point. He points out that to say embodiment is not part of Dasein’s essential structure is different to saying that Dasein is not necessarily embodied - the latter implies that Dasein is potentially disembodied, and this is not what Cerbone (or Heidegger) is intending.
He tells us two reasons why he would not describe the body as something present-at-hand. Firstly, the concept of the body as a mere thing which dasein occupies brings us straight back to Cartesian dualism - the fear of this seems to be the driving force of this paper. Secondly, it misses the significance of movements and gestures, if we offer nothing but a physical description.
Moving on to the concept of world and Heidegger’s Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, we are told that man is world forming, animals are poor in world, and a stone is worldless. We have alluded to this analysis previously, and now we get to see some more detail behind it. The discussion begins with organs, and Heidegger states that “every living being can only ever see with its eyes” (220). Cerbone uses this to argue that ownership is the distinguishing feature - equipment can be used by anyone, but in contrast an organ can only be used by its owner. I read the same quote much differently, Heidegger doesn’t seem to me to be making any claim about ownership. The quote is the other way around: he states that every living being can only ever see with its own eyes, never from any other vantage point. The implication here seems more likely to be regarding situatedness. Any being always begins from its own viewpoint, unavoidably. This is a point that Heidegger is frequently driving home, through his earlier and later work, and given that it seems to fit the quote more accurately, I’m not sure why Cerbone would see another interpretation. However I’m not thoroughly familiar with this text, so perhaps I’ve missed something. Regardless, I require more convincing than is done here.
An organ is also distinguished from equipment in that it is not an in-order-to, but is rather a capacity to do something. This gives priority to the capacity - strictly speaking, it is the capacity that has the organ, the organ does not have a capacity to perform a function. Equipment is serviceable for something, where the organ is in the service of something. This is a fuller explanation of the quote from a previous post where he claims that we have eyes because we can see. It is also difficult, but important, to distinguish his discussion here from an anthropological one - Heidegger is always clear that he is talking ontologically.
Organisms, to move forward, are essentially whole, and more than the sum of their parts. They differ from machines because they require no outside force to trigger their activation - they require no maintenance and act on their own. This does sound like an inelegant solution - I’m quite sure Asimov would have a field day.
Man is world forming, as we said earlier. This is because man discloses entities in their being - we see this in Being and Time as well as Heidegger's later works, where it often becomes a discussion of unconcealment. Man unconceals things, revealing them in the sense of letting them be as they show themselves. This is the relationship to being which is unique to man, that animals do not possess. Man is as comportment, where the animal is as behaviour. To be as comportment means simply that man's relationships with entities are always ultimately relationships of care, through the structure of significance. This is the meaning of world in Being and Time as the worldhood of the world, rather than simply existing among other entities. The animal is as behaviour because, while it may be an organism, its world does not have the structure of significance or care. It simply acts on the basis of its surroundings, it does not disclose or unconceal.
Returning to the issue of the body, Cerbone argues that it needs to be looked at as more than just behaviour, it cannot be reduced to the animal portion of man. For this investigation to happen, it needs to be situated within a context or structure. This structure is the ontological world of Dasein, and so the latter needs to be investigated fully before the question of the body can be addressed. This, he says, is Heidegger's aim in Being and Time, and explains why he does not raise the question of the body. There is evidence for this in the oft-quoted comment from the book stating that “Dasein's bodily nature hides a whole problematic of its own not to be treated here”.
Final Thoughts
It's good to see a paper which isn't simply deriding Heidegger for his position toward the body or animals - the literature seems quite unbalanced in this respect. I also mostly agree with his assessment of the position of animals. It obviously does those involved a disservice to treat all animals as identical in this respect, but we may never be in a position to accurately report the experiences of animals and I stand by my comments in the last summary that there is little to be gained from the discussion anyway. But essentially, following Heidegger's work it is difficult to see how his notion of world would extend to include any animals. Whether we agree entirely with Heidegger is of course another matter.
The basic idea of this paper though is that embodiment, while it may be necessary, is not actually part of Dasein's essence. The reasons Cerbone offers for this generally seem to assume the point is already made, and his assumptions become manifest throughout the paper. He states that the body is too contingent to be a part of Dasein’s existential analytic, and that we would want to be able to grant Dasein to non-human intelligences. We can see an assumption here that the body can have no effect on the analytic, and that if we were to discover non-human intelligences that they would conform to the exact same ontological structure. Those that take embodiment seriously and would want to include discussion of it in the existential analytic would surely argue that this is not the case.
Another line of argument is that Dasein cannot be reduced to something present-at-hand, and so embodiment cannot be part of the analytic. Again, he assumes that the body is nothing more than a present-at-hand thing which Dasein occupies. Working on these assumptions it is no wonder that he worries about dualism sneaking in. Similarly, organs (and thus the body) are defined in the way that they differ from equipment, as he once again assumes that the body is a mere physical object. If the body were part of the existential analytic it would surely not need to be carefully distinguished from equipment, which is of a different kind.
So ultimately, while he says that Dasein can be said to be necessarily embodied, this statement is an empty one if the body is not part of its essence. Without agreeing to this vital point, the necessity becomes an ontic one, and as such the only reason that the body is necessary must be because we require physical inputs. I would argue that this does not fit with our experience, which suggests that the body is far more fundamentally necessary and affective.
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