ABSTRACT

When Heidegger introduces his philosophical project in the introduction to Being and Time, he places the theme of self-consciousness at the heart of his theoretical concerns. This chapter argue that in emphasizing the practical knowledge of skillful competence in this way, Heidegger's pragmatist readers have illicitly denied to Heidegger a second form of practical knowledge no less essential to his project—namely, the first-personal knowledge of one's activity in and through its unfolding. It reconstrues the form of our self-awareness as an action-guiding practical knowledge of what to do to sustain one's being in the world, realized in our affective lives. Such practical, affective self-consciousness will be a formal characteristic of the kind of self-movement proper to Dasein, the understander of being. The chapter shows that Heidegger seeks to unify the active and passive aspects of self-consciousness in the activity of living inquiry, and in so doing, reclaim the value of self-consciousness for ontological research.