Being-free for one's ownmost Being-guilty (BT287/288) (2025) 绘画 由 Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT287/288

The meaning of the “call” becomes plain if, in our understanding of it, we stick to the existential sense of “Being-guilty”, instead of making basic the derivative conception of guilt in the sense of an indebtedness which has 'arisen' through some deed done or left undone. Such a demand is not arbitrary, if the call of conscience, coming from Dasein itself, is directed towards that entity alone. But if so, the “summons to Being-guilty” signifies a calling-forth to that potentiality-for-Being which in each case I as Dasein am already. Dasein need not first load a 'guilt' upon itself through its failures or omissions; it must only be 'guilty' authentically – 'guilty' in the way in which it is.
Hearing the appeal correctly is thus tantamount to having an understanding of oneself in one's ownmost authentic potentiality for becoming guilty. When Dasein understandingly lets itself be called forth to this possibility, this includes its becoming free for the call, Dasein is in thrall to [hörig] its ownmost possibility of existence. It has chosen itself.
In so choosing, Dasein makes possible its ownmost Being-guilty, which remains closed off from the they-self. The common sense of the “they” knows only the satisfying of manipulable rules and public norms and the failure to satisfy them. It reckons up infractions of them and tries to balance them off. It has slunk away from its ownmost Being-guilty so as to be able to talk more loudly about making “mistakes”. But in the appeal, the they-self gets called to [angerufen] the ownmost Being-guilty of the Self. Understanding the call is choosing; but it is not a choosing of conscience, which as such cannot be chosen. What is chosen is having-a-conscience as Being-free for one's ownmost Being-guilty. “Understanding the appeal” means “wanting to have a conscience”.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

相关主题

Martin Heidegger