The Notion of “Openness” in the Analytic System of Martin Heidegger’s Dasein: on the Question of Interpretation

Abstract

A competent acquaintance with Martin Heidegger’s major works, such as “Being and Time”, is impossible without understanding the primeval methodological foundations of this German thinker, – or, in other words, without comprehending the principal connection between his existen­tial analysis and the destruction of the European metaphysical knowledge. The inevitable connec­tion of ontic and ontological levels of philosophical research reveals a hardly definable concept of Dasein, while the notion of “openness”, we are interested in, serves as a meaningful specification of Dasein. In this paper, the notion of “openness” is analyzed in two aspects: from the point of a new understanding of the traditional metaphysical problems (the problems of being and entity, in particular) and from the point of a completely new substantiation of these problems (which eventually determines the Heidegger’s existential analysis as a fundamentally-ontological). Thus, the notion of “openness” is understood in the context of the problem of Being (not only Dasein). The phenomenon of openness itself is analyzed as a primordial phenomenon. The existential, “un­derstanding”, is ontologically examined in relation with the phenomenon of openness. Observing Heideggerian existential-ontological analysis of this phenomenon (primarily, in the aspect of “tran­scendence” and “truth”) this paper defines Dasein as a way of existence of Being as such.