ABSTRACT
This chapter sets the stage for a later, more complete description of this primordial self. An adequate account of the difference between the everyday and the primordial selves, however, turns on our ability to tease apart two intricately interwoven aspects of human existence. The first aspect is the intelligibility of existence. Intelligibility is articulated by the practices into which we are habituated. The second aspect is the sense of human existence as such. The chapter shows that how this sense differs from the intelligibility embedded in any set of practices, that the more primordial self can be discerned. According to many existential phenomenologists in the Anglophone world, one of Heidegger's most significant contributions to philosophy was his recognition of the way that intelligibility is closely tied to practices. Practical intelligibility simply articulates its domain differently than cognitive intelligibility. From the perspective of the everyday practices, the existential revolutionary is even more unintelligible than the ironist.
