ABSTRACT
Heidegger’s account of resoluteness is meant to clarify what it means to gear back into the world from out of the breakdown accomplished by Angst. Though a good deal of work has been done on the active projective dimension of resoluteness—wherein we understandingly take up our abilities to be in a transparent and responsible manner—less has been written on the affective manifestation of resoluteness—or what Heidegger calls “readiness for anxiety.” This chapter examines what he could mean by this, suggesting that what shows up as mattering to Dasein in resoluteness is the condition of normative plurality that Angst reveals. In readiness for anxiety, Dasein displays a responsive attunement to this normative plurality and the condition of irrevocable normative tension to which it gives rise. I argue that this is not a purely negative experience, however. Rather, we must recognize gratitude for these sources of normativity to be an essential affective element of resoluteness.
