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Heidegger on
Embodiment
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Sren Overgaard
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University of Copenhagen
Published online: 21 Oct 2014.

To cite this article: Sren Overgaard (2004) Heidegger on

Embodiment, Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 35:2,
116-131, DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2004.11007431
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Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 35. No.2, May 2004

HEIDEGGER ON EMBODIMENT
S0REN OVERGAARD

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Gerade das, was ein Autor verschweigt,

ist das, wobei man ansetzen muB,
urn das zu verstehen, was der Autor selbst als das Eigentliche bezeichnet. 1

I. Introduction
Many readers of Heidegger's magnum opus Sein und Zeit have been
struck by Heidegger' s explicit refusal to deal with the question of
embodiment. 2 Here we have a thinker who sets out to underscore precisely
that human beings are in-the-world, and that their way of dealing with their
surroundings is mainly practical, rather than contemplative - and then he
refuses to discuss the phenomenon of human corporeality. How should one
interpret this? Surely, it cannot be that Heidegger, perhaps in stressing the
'existentiale' of understanding a bit too much, himself falls into some kind of
mentalistic conception of subjectivity? As Heidegger scholars have assured
us, this is certainly not the case. 3 But then, we wonder, why is it that
Heidegger dodges the issue of embodiment?
Since the publication of Theodore Kisiel's The Genesis of Heidegger's
Being and Time, hopes have been high that when volume eighteen of the
Gesamtausgabe would be published, we would finally be wiser. According
to Kisiel, in this 1924 lecture course, entitled Grundbegriffe der
aristotelischen Philosophie, 'many themes that were given short shrift in BT
[Being and Time]. according to critical readers, are dealt with in great detail
[ ... ]: animality, corporeality, the life of pleasure'. 4 Presumably, then, these
lectures would finally fill the gap these critical readers have felt opening up
in the account of Sein und Zeit (GA 2), when Heidegger suddenly interrupts
a discussion of 'the spatiality of being-in-the-world' with the remark that
corporeality (Leiblichkeit) 'contains an entire problematic not to be dealt
with here' (GA 2, p.l45). Even better, they might also hold some kind of
answer to the question why Heidegger chose not to include corporeality in
his discussion of the spatiality of Dasein, not only in Sein und Zeit, but in the
subsequent Marburg lectures as well.
Heidegger' s 1924 lectures on the basic concepts of Aristotelian
philosophy were finally published in the summer of 2002. Do these lectures
live up to our expectations? Do they provide a satisfactory account of
embodiment- and do they give some hints as to why Heidegger continued
to dodge this problematic? First of all, there can be little doubt that the
volume in question contains more remarks on embodiment or corporeality
than any other of the early Heidegger's texts published so far. Heidegger

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takes up the discussion of Leiblichkeit on pages 197-203 of the volume, and

the term even appears a couple of times after that (Grundbegriffe der
aristotelischen Philosophie [GA 18], e.g., pp.206-8), before finally
disappearing from the pages of the work. What is more, Heidegger
explicitly stresses the importance of the phenomenon of embodiment - a
significant fact given the mainly critical use of the terms 'body' and
'embodiment' in Sein und Zeit. However, this also means that if we are
looking to volume eighteen to find an indication why Heidegger avoids the
problem of embodiment in Sein und Zeit, we shall be somewhat
disappointed. The newly published text gives little more information on this
point than what we find in the magnum opus itself. Still, with the new text
in hand, I believe that we are finally able to assess Heidegger' s complicated
relation to the phenomenon of the body.
Before I begin my account of Heidegger's thoughts on embodiment, let
me mention that an effort in more or less the same direction is found in
David Michael Levin's recent article 'The Ontological Dimension of
Embodiment: Heidegger's Thinking of Being' (although Levin could not
take the subsequently published GA 18 into account). Despite my sympathy
with the general argument of Levin's article, there are nevertheless problems
with it. First, any defense of Heidegger that mainly relies on texts of the later
Heidegger - and this is the case with Levin's article - risks falling to the
ground, since the critics can always point out that their critique pertained not
to the later Heidegger, but to the author of Sein und Zeit. Thus, if one is
really to prove the critics wrong, one should be able to make one's case
relying solely on texts from the mid- and late-twenties. 5 Second, I think in
general that the textual references Levin gives for his interpretations are too
few and often not quite to the point. For instance, his argument that
'Befindlichkeit is our always already hermeneutical embodiment' 6 is
supported by no references to Heidegger. Indeed, the conclusion follows
immediately upon a discussion wherein Levin observes that Heidegger in
Sein und Zeit restricted his use of the word Sinn ('sense') to 'the realm of the
cognitive, the realm of the "understanding'" ,7 thus neglecting its references
to 'bodily felt meaning and the realm of the sensuous' .8 In other words, one
gets the impression that Levin's emphasis on the bodily significance of
Befindlichkeit is opposed to Heidegger, not an elaboration of the latter's
position.
A similar example is Levin's quotation of Heidegger's statement that 'All
the work of the hand is rooted in thinking' .9 On the surface of things, this must
be about the opposite of what Levin attempts to show, and to his question, 'Is
there a way of understanding this rootedness so that we may also say that there
is a thinking of being, a maintenance of thought, which is rooted in the work of
the hands?', 10 one is almost forced, given the very thin references he
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immediately provides, to answer in the negative. Finally, Levin uses a lot of

space trying to show how Heidegger's references to such things as 'dwelling
on the earth', 'obedience to the earth', 'lending a hand', and 'paths' should not
simply be seen as metaphorical, but rather as references to embodiment. The
problematic thing about this kind of argument is that a critic such as Hubert
Dreyfus does not argue that what Heidegger says about Dasein's orientation,
directedness, etc. does not refer to the body. On the contrary, it clearly does
refer to the body- and that is precisely the reason why Heidegger's silence on
the body is unsatisfying, according to Dreyfus. All of these things refer so
unmistakably to the body that it appears to be simply a serious piece of neglect
on Heidegger's part that prevents him from developing that point. That is, in
showing how Heidegger's talk of 'dwelling', 'paths' etc. has everything to do
with embodiment, Levin fails to address the real issue, and only seems to
repeat the critics' point. A similar instance where Levin comes close to
proving the critics' point is when he tries to connect Heidegger's reflections on
Logos with embodiment. Here he admits that
Heidegger is mainly concerned to bring out the more 'formal' ontological character of the
mortal homolegein. He does not take time to specify it as an ontological question (a
Seinsfrage) referring us directly, i.e., phenomenologically, to our own experience as
gesturing beings, beings born with the potential for a unique grace in motility. What he has
not thought through defines our present task. 12

That Heidegger shows no interest in these things, that he has not 'thought
them through' is precisely what Heidegger's critics have argued. In
opposition to this view, the present article attempts to show that Heidegger
does think these things through, and as a consequence decides to avoid the
terminology of the body .n
In what follows, then, I shall attempt to do two things. First, I shall show
how Heidegger's phenomenology of Dasein crucially involves the notion of
'embodiment'. In this enterprise, I shall not only draw upon Grundbegriffe
der aristotelischen Philosophie, but also on other of Heidegger's early
writings. 14 Second, I shall explain why Heidegger is nevertheless wise to
avoid the topic in Sein und Zeit. It will emerge from this paper that,
paradoxically, it is precisely in order to be able to capture adequately our
bodily being-in-the-world that Heidegger feels compelled to avoid the theme
of the body in his magnum opus.
II. Heidegger's Positive Appropriation of the Notion of Embodiment
Let me begin by briefly reviewing some of the places where the early
Heidegger does have something to say on the body or on embodiment. In
fact, let me narrow down our initial thematic field even more, and only
consider places where Heidegger takes a positive stance toward the notions
of body and embodiment.
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As early as in a 1919 lecture course, Heidegger emphasizes that what he

then calls 'life' (and will later term Dasein) has an essential relation to
embodiment, and he stresses how 'that is of fundamental importance' (Zur
Bestimmung der Philosophie [GA 56/57], p.210). Scattered remarks to the
same effect are found in a number of Heidegger' s texts from the twenties. In
Sein und Zeit itself, for instance, in the very sentence that brushes the theme
aside, Heidegger is connecting embodiment with the directedness he has
discussed in the previous passages. Dasein, as Heidegger explains a few
pages earlier, is '"in" the world in the sense of concerned-familiar
involvement [Umgang] with intra-mundane entities' (GA 2, p.l40). These
intra-mundane entities, having the mode of being that Heidegger calls
readiness-to-hand, i.e., being 'equipment' or 'tools', are not simply placed at
this or that position in objective space. Rather, they have their proper
'place', related to our concerned involvement with them (GA 2, p.l37). For
instance, my books are either on the bookshelves, or if not, they are '"lying
around", which must be completely distinguished from a pure occurrence at
a particular spatial position' (ibid.). My books are 'lying around' in the sense
of 'making a mess' on my desk - something that clearly refers to my
working involvement with them. Obviously, this tells us something about the
human being (or Dasein), as involved with such things. The different tools
precisely have their proper and improper places in relation to the Dasein
using them: they are in the way, making it difficult for me to locate
something, or placed within easy reach ('a arm's length'), and so on and so
forth.
All of this refers to the working, grasping, and walking subject. Apart
from the more general reference to Dasein's concern and involvement
(without which nothing could be 'in the way'), the preceding reflections
highlight two specific points concerning the involved subject. First, as being
'too far away' or 'within easy reach', the tools refer to the concerned subject
as one for whom there is such a thing as distance. The subject must be
characterized by what Heidegger calls 'dis-stance' (Ent-fernung), 15 i.e., it
must be able to encounter distances as such, which means, among other
things, to judge them and traverse them. Second, as being 'up there' or 'to
the right', etc., that is, in being located in this or that direction, the tool refers
to Dasein's spatial orientation. Tools are not only at a certain distance from
me, they are obviously also located in a particular direction. It is in the
context of this last point that Heidegger utters his single sentence on the
problematic of the body: 'Dasein's spatialization in its "embodiment" which contains an entire problematic not to be discussed here - is also
characterized according to these directions' (GA 2, p.l45). The fact that our
environment is ordered into directions such as 'up-down', 'left-right', 'frontback', is thus somehow closely connected with our embodiment. Heidegger
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makes the same observation in the lecture course Prolegomena zur

Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA 20) from 1925. This time he introduces the
topic of embodiment without declaring at once that it will not be dealt with
any further (GA 20, pp.319f), but apart from a remark about bodily
movement- that it is always a case of 'I move' rather than 'it moves' -he
does not, in fact, elaborate on the theme. Nevertheless, Heidegger' s brief
remarks both in Sein und Zeit and in the Prolegomena clearly suggest that
embodiment has an important role to play in Dasein's using involvement
with its environing world.
Another place where Heidegger ever so briefly touches upon the notion of
embodiment is in his last Marburg lecture course, Metaphysische
Anfangsgrunde der Logik (GA 26). Here we read: 'Dasein is thrown,
factical, through its corporeality completely in the midst of nature' (GA 26,
p.212). This remark, for all its brevity, is extremely important. As we know,
Heidegger describes Dasein as 'being-in-the-world'. Often, however, he
does so in a way that would seem to suggest that what he has in mind is quite
different from what we would typically understand by an expression such as
'being-in-the-world'. Thus, he is very emphatic that this should not be
understood to signify our being contained in something (GA 2, pp.72f; GA
20, p.213). As is not unusual with Heidegger, he turns to etymological
considerations to indicate the more proper understanding of the 'in' in
'being-in-the-world':
Being-in is far from meaning a spatial within-each-other of present-at-hand [entities], just as,
originally, 'in' does not in any way signify a spatial relation of the type indicated. 'In' is
derived from innan, to reside, habitare, to dwell; 'an' means: I am accustomed, I am
familiar with, I take care of something [GA 2, p.73; cf. GA 20, p.213; GA 18, p.381) 16

One might be tempted to conclude that being-in-the-world means simply a

homely, familiar involvement in the world, alongside intra-mundane entities.
In other words, one could get the impression that Heidegger is simply saying
that Dasein is related to the world, as its well-known field of activity and
contemplation. This, however, would be a fateful mistake. In fact, in order to
underscore Dasein's quite literal (including spatial) situatedness in the
world, Heidegger, in the period following the publication of Sein und Zeit,
sometimes lets the phrase 'in the midst of what there is' (inmitten des
Seienden) replace or supplement the formulation 'in-the-world' .17
That Heidegger is indeed struggling to bring out Dasein's corporeal
situatedness in the world is clear from Heidegger' s introduction of the
expression 'in the midst of what there is' in his 1928/29 lectures Einleitung
in die Philosophie. In the sentence preceding the introduction of the new
phrase, Heidegger complains that his description so far of Dasein's 'beingalongside' intra-mundane entities is insufficient, because 'it still looks as if
Dasein were some subject hovering over the entities, as it were, even if it is
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given over [preisgegeben] to them' (GA 27, p.328). Even if we are ever so
emphatic that the subject cannot be understood without taking its
involvement with its surroundings into account, it is still as if we have the
subject on one side, and the environing world on the other. For example,
given his theory of intentionality, Husserl's transcendental subject can hardly
be understood without taking into account the world it is the subject for, yet
this clearly does not entail that it is itself literally placed in its experienced
world. 18 But the latter is precisely what Dasein is, according to Heidegger.
In contrast to any interpretation that would construe being-in-the-world as
meaning simply being-related-to-the-world (in which way ever), it is
Heidegger's contention that Dasein is literally situated in the midst of the
world, in the midst of what there is.
Now, as the quotation above has it, it is precisely in and through its
corporeality or embodiment that the human being finds itself in the midst of
the world. The same point is expressed in the 1928/29 lectures, where
Heidegger even states that 'Dasein is physical-body [Korper] and lived-body
[Leib] and life; it does not just have nature as its perceptual object - it is
nature' (GA 27, p.328). Thus, Heidegger can also refer to the body as
something that connects the human being - although it has a mode of being
of its own- with the being of animals (GA 27, p.71) and other entities not
having the mode of being of Dasein (Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik
[GA 3], p.290).
The facticity or 'thrownness' of human beings - the fact that we find
ourselves situated in the midst of things - is something that is above all
revealed to us in our affectivity (Befindlichkeit) and moods (GA 2, p.181 ).
Bodily situatedness and moods should thus be closely connected, on
Heidegger's account. This supposition is unequivocally confirmed by the
material found in the recently published volume eighteen of the
Gesamtausgabe: the discussion of embodiment is precisely introduced in the
context of Aristotle's account of passions or emotions (pathe). Heidegger
argues that a pathos is something that 'carries Dasein away' (GA 18, p.197),
and that this phenomenon of being carried away cannot be restricted to only
a part of Dasein, such as its mind or soul (GA 18, pp.122, 177). As he puts it,
'Strictly speaking, I cannot say: the soul hopes, fears, feels compassion;
rather, I can always only say: the human being hopes, is courageous' (GA
18, p.197). In other words, it is the whole Dasein that is affected by the
emotions or passion - and, as Heidegger emphasizes more than once, that
also includes Dasein's body (GA 18, pp.202, 203, 206, 207).
We should dwell for a moment on Heidegger's motivation for introducing
the notion of body in this lecture course. It is not insignificant that the
background for Heidegger' s discussion of embodiment is formed by the wish
to emphasize that emotions or passions are not merely mental phenomena.
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This suggests that Heidegger introduces the considerations of the body, not
because he has some special desire to enter into this problematic, but because
he finds it may help, at this particular point in his reading of Aristotle, to
prevent a possible misunderstanding. The crucial thing to understand is that
the kind of 'being-carried-away' and being-affected that the pdthe are affects
the whole human being, and not just its soul or mind. This is the reason why
Heidegger feels he must emphasize that Dasein 'as being in the world,
insofar as it is affected by the world, is also affected with regard to its
corporeality, that everything aims at the living in its full being-there' (GA
18, p.202). But Heidegger's defense of a holistic perspective isn't restricted
to his treatment of passions and emotions. His ontological agenda as such, as
we shall see shortly, necessitates that we take the whole human being into
account, without dividing it up into various components or domains. In the
1924 lecture course, as in subsequent writings, Heidegger is anxious to make
absolutely clear to his audience that what he intends to investigate is the
being of the whole human being (GA 18, p.l92; GA 2, p.64; GA 20, p.l73).
And, as he unambiguously states it, 'the whole being of the human being [is]
characterized in such a way that it must be grasped as the corporeal beingin-the-world of the human being' (GA 18, p.l99).
Thus, having briefly reviewed some of the most important of Heidegger's
references to the body or to embodiment, it has become clear to us that there
are some two or three contexts in which Heidegger mentions the body. First,
he introduces it in the context of Dasein' s using interaction with its
surrounding world. He thus claims that our orientation in terms of 'updown', 'left-right' etc., carries an essential reference to our body. Second, he
refers, on a couple of occasions, to the body in order to emphasize that
being-in-the-world is not to be equated with simply being-related-to-theworld, but must rather be understood as a concrete 'thrownness' into, or
situatedness in 'the midst of the world'. Finally, and closely connected with
the second point, he introduces the body in his discussion of moods or
emotions. Heidegger emphasizes that emotions affect the whole, bodily
being-in-the-world of Dasein; thus, the notion of 'body' is here introduced in
an attempt to avoid a misunderstanding that would attribute to a supposed
part of the human being what in fact belongs to the mode of being of the
'whole' human being.
This concern with articulating the mode of being of the 'whole' human
being is, however, not only the reason why Heidegger feels compelled, in his
lecture course on Aristotle, to introduce the notion of human embodiment. It
is also, as we shall see, what motivates Heidegger to abandon the
terminology of 'body' and 'embodiment'.

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Ill. The Problem of the Body

Let me now consider some of Heidegger' s less enthusiastic remarks on
the body. I shall only briefly review a few of the quite numerous passages,
and turn immediately to concluding what, from Heidegger's perspective,
constitutes the problem with the notions of embodiment and body.
One might think that the reason why Heidegger does not want to say
anything about the body or about human embodiment is that these notions
refer to something 'ontic', that is, to something that concerns beings or
entities, rather than being, or manners of being - the latter constituting the
exclusive theme of Sein und Zeit. Yet Heidegger's texts do not indicate that
this is a reason why the theme of body may legitimately be put aside. For
careful readers of Heidegger, this should come as no surprise. According to
Heidegger, a manner of being is always a manner of being of something that
is, i.e., an entity (GA 24, p.28), and this means that a manner of being is
'only accessible in and through an entity [Seienden]' (ibid.). 19 If this is the
case, then we can hardly afford to avoid all concepts that refer to entities;
rather, our thematic gaze must be directed precisely at entities, but in such a
way that their modes of being are thereby revealed (ibid.). In this context it is
also worth recalling that such crucial Heideggerian notions as Dasein and
Zeug both denote something 'ontic': they denote entities or beings (the
human being, and the mostly encountered intra-mundane entity), rather than
manners or modes of being. Thus, one cannot argue that it is simply because
the notion of 'body' refers to an entity, rather than to a mode of being, that
Heidegger refuses to talk about it. Rather, there must be something that
disqualifies this 'ontic' notion, and renders other ontic notions - such as
Dasein - more appropriate.
To return for a moment to the theme of pathe, the 1924 Aristotle course in
fact contains an important hint or two as to Heidegger' s dissatisfaction with
the notion of body. Worthy of attention is thus the way Heidegger speaks
dismissively of the traditional conception of passions or emotions as states of
the soul, even if such a conception is not blind to possible 'accompanying
corporeal manifestations' (korperlichen Begleiterscheinungen) (GA 18,
p.177). The problem, as Heidegger sees it, is not that this way of
understanding pathe has forgotten to take the body into account; the problem
is rather the dualistic approach as such: 'one divides the phenomenon into
mental and corporeal states that stand in a certain relation to each other' (GA
18, p.177). Being concerned with grasping the being of the 'whole' Dasein,
Heidegger cannot accept this dualistic approach. The 'so-called "bodily
states" in anxiety, joy, and the like, are not accompanying manifestations'
(GA 18, p.198), he stresses, as if they were merely supplementing otherwise
strictly mental occurrences, but integral moments of the phenomena as such.
It is thus not only the strictly mentalistic account of passions and emotions,

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but also conceptions where the notion of 'body' figures on one side of a
dualistic divide that Heidegger attempts to overcome by stressing that
passions affect the 'whole' being-in-the-world as such (including the body).
With regard to the question of the precise meaning of being-in-the-world,
Heidegger is equally unhappy with a certain use of the notion of 'body'. If
being-in-the-world means both being-related-to-the-world, or being-worlddisclosing, and being situated in the midst of what there is, then it is again
tempting to divide the issue along roughly these lines:
Being-in is a spiritual property, and the 'spatiality' of the human being is a characteristic of
its corporeality [Leiblichkeit], that is always 'founded" by materiality [Korperlichkeit]. With
this, we are back at a being-present-at-hand-together of a thus characterized spirit-thing and
a material thing, and the being of the thus composed entity as such becomes really obscure.
[GA 2. pp.75f; cf. GA 20, p.l73]

The tendency that Heidegger criticizes is thus again that of 'splitting' up the
human being into various components, making it impossible to grasp the
being of the 'whole' thus composed. We are, as Heidegger puts it,
accustomed to conceiving ourselves as a unily of body-soul-spirit - a
conception which is precisely destructive to the project of understanding our
mode of being as such (GA 2, pp.64f). Can our being be 'constructed of the
being of the material basis, the body, the soul, and the spirit? Is the being of
the person the product of the modes of being of these layers of being?', as
Heidegger rhetorically asks in a lecture course (GA 20, p.l73). This worry is
what motivates Heidegger to repeatedly utter critical remarks on the notion
of 'body', e.g., when he emphasizes in Sein und Zeit that 'the "substance" of
the human being is not spirit conceived as a synthesis of soul and body, but
rather existence' (GA 2, p.l57), and that the 'spatiality of Dasein should [ ... ]
not be interpreted as an imperfection that marks human existence due to the
fatal "connection of the spirit with a body"' (GA 2, p.487).
There are a great number of other passages that one could refer to in this
context, but the essential point is already clear. It is Heidegger's contention
that the terminology of 'body' furthers conceptions of the human being as
composed of a number of different types of entities; it furthers what we
might term an 'analytic' conception of the human being. 20 Notions such as
'body', 'embodiment', 'corporeality', tend to bring other notions such as
'mind', 'soul', and 'the mental' with themselves. To speak of the human
'body' is already to invoke the complementary notion of the human 'mind'
or 'soul'; the notions of 'embodiment' and 'incarnation' seem to suggest that
something is embodied or incarnated, and so forth. At least the way we
usually speak of the body, it is understood as one side or component of
ourselves, referring already to other sides or components. 21
Now one could easily take this to mean that Heidegger's agenda is simply
that of refuting Cartesian dualism. To be sure, this is part of what Heidegger
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is up to, but by no means the whole story. Heidegger's phenomenological

project is guided by the idea that one cannot make intelligible ourselves, or
the things around us in terms of sides, layers, components, and so forth.
More precisely, he believes that accounts of these types cannot be
phenomenologically verified; they do not correspond with the way we
actually experience ourselves, and the things around us. Instead, Heidegger
claims that we experience things in and through an understanding of their
mode of being (GA 24, pp.l3f). This holds not only for non-human things,
but for ourselves as well: I experience myself as one entity, not as two or
three interconnected ones - but an entity with a peculiar manner of being.
Much is thus lost if we adopt an analytic conception. We lose sight of the
way we actually experience things: it is simply incorrect to claim that we
experience each other as composed of a number of different entities,
according to Heidegger. And this is not just a matter of correcting a few false
moves; it even covers up the real task of philosophy. From Heidegger's
perspective, if we subscribe to an analytic view, we make it close to
impossible to pose the type of question that it is precisely the business of
philosophy to pose: the question of the fundamental structures of what there
is (cf. GA 20, p.248). More precisely, this question has been answered for us
in advance. The analytic view holds that one can divide beings up into
layers, sides, components, parts, domains and so forth. Now, if a being such
as a human being has both a certain weight, say, and the ability to engage in
philosophical discussions, one version of the analytic view would hold that
this is because such a creature has not only a material, physical side
(component, etc.), but also a mental side. The properties of the one side or
component (weight, extension, etc.) are different from the properties of the
other side or component (perception, thought, feelings), and together these
sides thus make it intelligible that the creature in question can exhibit both
types of traits. But notice how both sides, or components, are implicitly
posited as things that might have very different properties, but nevertheless
have in common their occurrence as things. That is, in both cases being is
implicitly understood as 'being on hand', as simply 'occurring', or what
Heidegger calls 'presence-at-hand' (Vorhandensein). Thus, a question has
been silently bypassed, viz, the question whether the human being as such
could have a peculiar mode or manner of being, different from that of merely
occurring (cf. GA 24, p.24 ). Heidegger calls this question - which by no
means concerns the human being only - the 'question of being' or the
question of the 'meaning of being'. This, he believes, is the most
fundamental question of philosophy, and yet one that has not been posed
since Aristotle (GA 2, p.3).
So the analytic conception is far from harmless. It harbors a certain
questionable ontology that is all the more powerful for being implicit and
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unarticulated (GA 18, pp.272, 275). Heidegger wants to question this

prevailing ontology on phenomenological grounds. His critique does not
mainly concern Cartesian dualism but, more fundamentally, the type of
ontology a dualistic view (as well as other analytic views) furthers. It might
be that the terminology of 'body' and 'embodiment' counters Cartesianism;
but this does not render it harmless in Heidegger's eyes. Furthering an
analytic account of the human being, the 'body terminology' implicitly
posits the being of the human being as 'presence-at-hand', Heidegger
thinks. 22
IV. Being in the Midst of the World: Dasein
It should be clear from our discussion so far that a certain type of criticism
of Heidegger's refusal to discuss the body is completely misguided. One
cannot accuse Heidegger of lapsing into a mentalistic conception of
subjectivity, because such a criticism takes for granted the analytic
conception of the human being - precisely the conception Heidegger is
trying to overcome. It is only when one sees the human being as composed
of a 'bodily' and a 'mental' side, that the refusal to deal with the former may
legitimately be seen as an inappropriate elevation of the latter. Heidegger
rejects this way of conceiving the entity that we ourselves are altogether. Yet
as we saw above, what Heidegger says about the being-in-the-world of
Dasein has everything to do with embodiment. As he puts it in volume
eighteen of the collected works, the being of the human being 'must be
grasped as the corporeal being-in-the-world' (GA 18, p.199).
But what, then, is our 'corporeal' or 'bodily' being-in-the-world? A rough
outline of an answer to this question can already be gleaned from what has
been said so far. First of all, what Heidegger has in mind cannot possibly be
a physical being-on-hand in space. As Heidegger puts it in his 1925/26
lectures on logic, 'presence-at-hand and occurring within the world must be
sharply distinguished from being-in a world, which belongs to the essential
manner of being of Dasein' (Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit [GA 21],
p.240n). We are dealing with a different kind of being, one that specifically
belongs to the human being. We humans are in the world, but in it as
involved, affectively, cognitively, and practically, with the world (GA 2,
p.l40). We are bodily in the world, in the midst of what there is, but not as a
mere thing is there within the world; rather, we are in the world as threatened
by it, as practically engaged in it, and so on and so forth. To put this rather
provocatively, we are transcendental subjects, we are 'places' where the
world opens up, acquires meaning, becomes articulated; but these
'transcendental places' emerge in the very midst of the world, indeed emerge
as subjectivities overpowered by the disclosed world (GA 26, p.279), unable
to master it (GA 27, pp.326, 329). As Heidegger says in his Kant book, with

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the existence of Dasein, the world is 'broken into' in such a way that it is
thereby 'opened', i.e., disclosed or manifested (GA 3, pp.228f; GA 27,
p.l37). This expression conveys both the 'transcendental' status of the
human being, and its situatedness in the world it discloses.
The bodily being of subjectivity - thrown into the midst of things as the
place where things come into being - is what Heidegger tries to capture with
the notion of Dasein. According to Heidegger's own later verdict, the latter
notion is 'completely inadequate and awkward' (Seminare [GA 15], p.380),
but perhaps we should not agree with Heidegger on this point. In fact, maybe
Dasein is the best possible term to capture the strange manner of being that
belongs to the kind of entity that we are. It is composed of the two words Da
('there' or 'here') and sein ('being'). 23 Now the word Dasein is no invention
of Heidegger' s; in fact, as he himself points out in the 1927 lecture course
Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie, the word appears quite frequently
in German philosophy before Heidegger, e.g., in Kant and Husser! (GA 24,
p.36). But while the latter two understand Dasein- 'being-there' -to refer to
the being-there of things, their presence-at-hand, Heidegger interprets the
'Da' of Dasein quite differently (GA 24, p.36). In Heidegger's use of the
word, what Dasein conveys to us is that to be a human being is to be a
'there' (GA 2, pp.l76f; GA 20, p.349; GA 27, p.l36), i.e., a 'place' or a
sphere of dis-closedness (Erschlossenheit) into which other entities can
somehow enter: 'The expression "there" means this essential disclosedness'
(GA 2, pp.176f). In other words, being a 'there' means first of all to be a
place where the world, and worldly entities become manifest and articulated
- it means being 'the peculiar place for the totality of entities' (GA 27,
p.360), or the 'place of the transcendental', as Heidegger himself says on one
occasion. 24 But there is more to it than that. Being a 'there' means not only
being the place where the world is disclosed, it means being this 'place' as
something that is itself disclosed. As Heidegger puts it in an early lecture
course, having the world disclosed means that 'that entity that is in the world
is co-visible. This co-visibility [Mitsichtigkeit] is expressed in the there'
(Einfiihrung in die phiinomenologische Forschung [GA 17], pp.288f). Thus,
being a 'there' means also being-oneself-disclosed, or being-exposed, being
abandoned into the midst of what there is, in a world one cannot master.
These two points taken together, the notion of Dasein indicates that being a
human being is being a 'sphere of manifestness' (ein Umkreis von
Offenbarkeit) in the double sense of the manifest sphere where entities
become manifest (GA 27, pp.132-7).
It is important not to misconstrue or underestimate the point Heidegger is
trying to make. He is not trying to say that, in addition to being the place
where the world appears, Dasein is, through its embodiment, also 'anchored'
in the midst of things. This would obviously be a return to the analytic view.
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Nor is Heidegger simply stressing that both 'features' necessarily and

equally belong to the entity that we are. Rather, he is claiming that Dasein is
in the midst of what there is as a place where what there is becomes
articulated; or, to put it differently, the place where the world becomes
articulated emerges as a place situated in the midst of the world. It emerges,
in other words, as a corporeal or bodily being-in-the-world.
V. Conclusion
We should now be able to understand why Heidegger in Sein und Zeit
refuses to discuss the body. As we saw above, Heidegger states in the recently
published volume eighteen of the collected works that when he conceives
Dasein as being-in-the-world, this has everything to do with its corporeality.
In section two of this paper, I pointed out some two or three different contexts
in which Heidegger stresses the importance of human embodiment. Indeed, I
tried to show in this paper that Heidegger' s phenomenology of Dasein is
precisely an attempt to articulate in an adequate terminology our corporeal or
bodily being. But to such an end, the notions of 'embodiment' and 'body' are
counterproductive. They further an analytic conception of the human being, a
conception that in tum furthers an implicit ontology of 'presence-at-hand',
making it close to impossible to capture what Heidegger thinks is our real
manner of being, viz. our being-bodily-in-the-midst-of-the-world-as-worlddisclosing - the hyphens precisely indicating that this is a unitary
phenomenon that may not be divided into components displaying different
features (cf. GA 2, p.71; GA 24, p.234).
All in all, then, it is not the case that Heidegger 'holds that the body is not
essential' .25 Nor should we conclude that the problematic of body and
embodiment is something Heidegger 'has not thought through' .26 It is quite
the other way around: Heidegger clearly does think these things through, and
he does think our corporeality is something essential. But the crucial thing is
how to articulate this in a way that remains faithful to the phenomenon, and
it is by taking this question very seriously that Heidegger is led to abandon
the notion of body. His careful analyses show that if we want to be able to
conceive the being of the human being as bodily being-in-the-world, then,
paradoxically, we would be well advised to avoid the terminology of body
and embodiment.27
University of Copenhagen
Bibliography
Cerbone, David R. 'Heidegger and Dasein's Bodily Nature: What is the Hidden Problematic?'
International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8 (2000): 209-30.
Cosmus, Oliver. 'Die Leiblichkeit im Denken Heideggers'. In Die erscheinende Welt:
Festschrift for Klaus Held, eds. H. Hiini & P. Trawny, 71-86. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot,
2002.

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Crowell, Steven Galt. Husser/, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning: Paths toward
Transcendental Phenomenology. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern U. P., 2001.
Dahlstrom, Daniel 0. Heidegger's Concept of Truth. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2001.
Dreyfus, Hubert. Being-in-the-World: A Commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time.
Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991.
Gethmann, Carl F. Verstehen und Auslegung: Das Methodenproblem in der Philosophie Martin
Heideggers. Bonn: Bouvier, 1974.
Heidegger, Martin. GA 2: Sein und Zeit, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1977.
- . GA 3: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1991.
- . GA 6.1: Nietzsche I, ed. B. Schillbach. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1996.
-. GA 9: Wegmarken, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1976.
- . GA 15: Seminare, ed. C. Ochwadt. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1986.
- . GA 17: Einfiihrung in die phiinomenologische Forschung, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann.
Frankfurt a. M.:.Klostermann, 1994.
- . GA 18: Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, ed. M. Michalski. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 2002.
- . GA 19: Platon: Sophistes, ed.l. SchiiBier. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann, 1992.
- . GA 20: Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, ed. P. Jaeger. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1979.
-. GA 21: Logik: Die Frage nach der Wahrheit, ed. W. Biemel. Frankfurt a.M.: Klostermann,
1976.
- . GA 24: Die Grundprobleme der Phiinomenologie, ed. F.-W. von Herrmann. Frankfurt a.M.:
Klostermann, 1975.
- . GA 26: Metaphysische Anfangsgriinde der Logik, ed. K. Held. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1978.
- . GA 27: Einleitung in die Philosophie, eds. 0. Saame & I. Same- Speidel. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1996.
- . GA 29/30: Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt- Endlichkeit- Einsamkeit, ed. F.-W.
von Herrmann. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1983.
- . GA 56/57: Zur Bestimmung der Philosophie, ed. B. Heimbiichel. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1987.
-. GA 63: Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitiit), ed. K. Brocker-Oltmanns. Frankfurt a. M.:
Klostermann, 1982.
-. Zollikoner Seminare, ed. M. Boss. Frankfurt a. M.: Klostermann, 1987.
-.Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson. Oxford: Blackwell, 1962.
Husser!, Edmund. Husserliana IX: Phiinomenologische Psychologie, ed. W. Biemel. The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1962.
- . 'Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der
Metaphysik', ed. R. Breeur. Husser/ Studies II (1994): 3-63.
Kisiel, Theodore. The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993.
Levin, David Michael. 'The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment: Heidegger's Thinking of
Being'. In The Body: Classic and Contemporary Readings, ed. D. Welton, 122-49. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1999.
Ptiggeler, Otto. Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, 4th impression. Stuttgart: Neske, 1994.
Waldenfels, Bernhard. Das leibliche Selbst: Vorlesungen zur Phiinomenologie des Leibes.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000.
References
I. Heidegger, Platon: Sophistes (Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 19), p.46. Hereafter, all references to
volumes in Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe will follow the standard pattern: the abbreviation

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3.

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4.

5.

6.

7.
8.
9.
10.
II.
12.
13.

14.

15.
16.
17.

'GA', followed by volume number. However, when introducing a particular volume I shall
include the full title as well. Additional information is found in the bibliography. In order
to ensure a consistent terminology, all translations will be mine, unless otherwise
indicated.
Among the first was Heidegger's mentor Edmund Husserl. See Husser!,
'Randbemerkungen Husserls zu Heideggers Sein und Zeit und Kant und das Problem der
Metaphysik'. Even commentators who are sympathetic towards Heidegger's philosophy as
such have found reason to criticize his unwillingness to discuss the phenomenon of body.
Hubert Dreyfus, e.g., declares that on this point Heidegger's account is 'unsatisfying'
(Dreyfus, Being-in-the- World, p.l37).
Cf. Otto Piiggeler, Der Denkweg Martin Heideggers, p.260. Steven Crowell, Husser/,
Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning, pp.212f.
Kisiel, The Genesis of Heidegger's Being and Time, p.293.
Of course, one could concede that the early Heidegger does not think embodiment is a
fundamental structure of the being of Dasein, and maintain that this changes, at least to
some extent, in the later Heidegger (an argument of this type is found in Oliver Cosmus,
'Die Leiblichkeit im Denken Heideggers'). But I don"t think this is what Levin wants to
claim. Also, as I hope to make clear in the course of this article, this assessment of the
early Heidegger's treatment of embodiment is highly contestable.
Levin, 'The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment', p.I31. My point is of course not that
Befindlichkeit has no relation to embodiment (cf. the following section of this paper), but
only that Levin does not argue convincingly for the point.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p.l38.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp.I26f.
Ibid., p.136.
This also seems to be the argument of David R. Cerbone in his recent article 'Heidegger
and Dasein's Bodily Nature: What is the Hidden Problematic?'. However, some of
Cerbone's claims are clearly at odds with the argument of the present article. For instance,
Cerbone declares that 'Dasein qua Dasein should only be described in terms. of
existentialia, and nowhere does Heidegger suggest that embodiment is one of them'
(p.213). That Heidegger nowhere refers to embodiment as an essential aspect of Dasein's
mode of being is simply not correct, as this article will document. More generally,
Cerbone's central argument - that Heidegger avoids the problematic of embodiment
because this cannot be dealt with before the structure of the world is made clear (cf. esp.
p.225) - differs fundamentally from the argument of the present article. According to the
latter, Heidegger simply wants to avoid the terminology of 'body' and 'embodiment'- not
because he thinks these concepts designate a problematic that has to remain 'hidden' until
the structure of the world is analyzed sufficiently, but because he considers them
ontologically prejudiced.
In the later Heidegger, too, one finds remarks on the body. Especially worthy of mention
are Heidegger's lectures on Nietzsche in the late thirties and early forties (Nietzsche I [GA
6.1], esp. pp.95-100), and the Zollikoner Seminare. But the critique has mainly been
directed at Heidegger's refusal in Sein und Zeit to deal with the body, so a satisfactory
reply to the critique should preferably be made on the basis of texts from that period alone.
In translating Ent-fernung with 'dis-stance', I follow Hubert Dreyfus' suggestion. Cf.
Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, pp.xf, 130f.
The translation of these passages from Sein und Zeit partly follows Macquarrie and
Robinson's translation. Cf. Being and Time, pp.79f.
See, e.g., Einleitung in die Philosophie (GA 27), p.328; Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik
(GA 29/30), p.403; Wegmarken (GA 9), p.I66.

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18. In his reflections on the bodily nature of transcendental subjectivity, Husser! does in fact
describe a transcendental subject that is in the world. But at the very least it doesn'tfollow
from the fact that transcendental subjectivity cannot be understood in isolation from the
transcendent world that it must also be placed in that world. Cf. Carl F. Gethmann.
Verstehen und Auslegung, p.247.
19. Heidegger thus concludes that ontology - the investigation of being - has an ontic
foundation (GA 2, p.576; GA 24, p.26).
20. Of course, in the present context 'analytic' does not refer to so-called analytic philosophy.
Rather, the conception in question is analytic in the sense that it dissolves or divides the
human being into various components.
21. Cf. Bernhard Waldenfels, Das leibliche Selbst, p.16. Waldenfels clearly sees Heidegger's
worries, but unlike Heidegger, he thinks we can overcome these problems without having
to abandon completely the terminology of embodiment.
22. This is also the reason why Heidegger avoids such terms as 'subject' and 'human being'
(cf., e.g., GA 2, pp.62, 153, and Ontologie (Hermeneutik der Faktizitdt) [GA 63], pp.21-9,
47, 81 ), and instead introduces the notion of Dasein (see the penultimate section of this
paper).
23. Some wise reflections on the proper translation of the concept of Dasein are found in
Daniel 0. Dahlstrom's recently published study, Heidegger's Concept of Truth,
pp.xxiii-xxv.
24. In the famous 1927 letter to Edmund Husser!, published in Husserliana IX:
Phdnomenologische Psychologie, pp.600-2. The expression 'Ort des Transzendentalen'
appears on p.60 I.
25. Dreyfus, Being-in-the-World, p.137. Cf. p.41.
26. Levin, 'The Ontological Dimension of Embodiment', p.136.
27. The research leading to this article was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation, and carried
out at the Danish National Research Foundation: Center for Subjectivity Research.

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