Gatherings: The Heidegger Circle Annual

Volume 10, 2020

The Confluence of Authenticity and Inauthenticity in Heidegger’s Being and Time

I argue that there is a confluence of authenticity and inauthenticity inherent to the structure of average everydayness in Being and Time. I support this reading by recasting Heidegger’s notion of fallenness in Being and Time in terms of its precursor, ruinance, which he introduces in his 1921–22 lecture course, Phenomenological Interpretations of Aristotle: Initiation into Phenomenological Research (ga 61). In this lecture course, Heidegger explains that ruinance is constituted by a dual movement of relucence and prestruction: the former, an intentional openness to the world; the latter, a securing that conceals that openness. While this dual movement is not expressed explicitly in these terms in Being and Time, I show that it is nevertheless tacitly operative in the structure of falling and that it grounds the duality of average everydayness. I frame this study around the debate on how Dasein can be authentic despite its fallenness, given that fallenness paradoxically renders Dasein essentially inauthentic.