weltlos

sans-monde
worldless

NT: Worldless (weltlos), 55, 110-111, 188, 192, 206, 211, 316, 366, 388 [BT]

Although philosophers are quick to conclude that what distinguishes human beings from other kinds of being is that we are not just natural objects, but knowing subjects, Heidegger claims that a more fundamental difference, and one universally overlooked by philosophers, is the way that Dasein inhabits a world (Welt). For that reason, Heidegger uses the term “being-in-the-world” to designate the basic ontological constitution of Dasein. To be precise about what distinguishes Dasein from other beings, we first need to recognize the difference between the way something is objectively present in space, like a desk in a room, and the way we inhabit our environment (Umwelt). In Heidegger’s view, a piece of furniture is “inner-worldly” (innerweltlich), or objectively present in the world, but essentially “worldless” (weltlos), or indifferent to other beings. We, on the other hand, are “worldly” (weltlich) in the sense that our existence is defined by our worldly concerns, our dealings with the things we encounter in the world, and our disclosure of the context in which they have meaning to us. On the one hand, we are ontologically distinct from the objects surrounding us, which we understand in terms of our own possibilities, but on the other hand, we are nothing like an isolated, worldless subject of the sort that philosophers have traditionally identified with the acquisition of knowledge. For such a subject is commonly understood as something no less objectively present—as a peculiar sort of thing with its own distinctive properties—than the objects of nature. Yet, Heidegger says, “Dasein understands itself ontologically—and that means also its being-in-the-world—initially in terms of those beings and their being which it itself is not, but which it encounters ‘within’ its world” (BT 58-59/58). For Heidegger, being-in-the-world is a phenomenal unity prior to the very distinction between subject and object, [101] which is at the root of the problem of knowledge. As a perceiver and a knower, he argues, “Dasein does not first go outside of the inner sphere in which it is initially encapsulated, but, rather, in its primary kind of being, it is always already ‘outside’ together with some being encountered in the world already discovered” (BT 62/62). Heidegger initially clarifies this in terms of the being of the objects that we encounter in our everyday dealings, the “readiness-to-hand” or “handiness” (Zuhandenbeit) of useful things, but he ultimately explains it on the basis of temporality as an original “outside of itself” in the directions of the future, past, and present. [MasseyOT]