DASEIN AS ATTENTION

Eastern Division APA presentation, December 2014

Yet if you don’t consider that in Logos, as the gathering toward the originally all-unifying One, something like attentiveness [Achtsamkeit] prevails, and if you begin to ask yourself whether attentiveness is not in fact the same as the constant waiting on that which we named the pure coming, then perhaps one day you will sense that … the essence of the human as the being that waits is experienced.

Heidegger, Country Path Conversations

1. Introduction

This paper is part of a larger project where I argue that Dasein

can be fruitfully understood as attention. Although it is well

known that attentiveness is important in Heidegger’s thought, it

has not been widely recognized that attention in the form of

Achtsamkeit and Aufmerksamkeit becomes a major concept for Heidegger

after the completion of the Beiträge, beginning with works such as

the 1939 On the Essence of Language and the 1941-42 Das Ereignis.1

Focusing on attention brings out the sort of effort that

Heidegger is calling for, for instance when he defines thinking

as in-die-Acht-nehmen in the 1951-52 WCT, or when he says in the

1942-43 Parmenides:

1 See Appendix for abbreviations for cited works of Heidegger.

What man heeds [achtet], what respect [Achtung] he gives to the heeded, how original and how constant he is in his heedfulness, that is what is decisive as regards the dignity allotted to man out of history.To think is to heed the essential. In such heedfulness essential knowing resides.

The relation between attention and thinking is also laid out in

Das Ereignis:

Heedfulness [Aufmerksamkeit]—as inceptual thinking … is outside of all ‘reflexion’ and every ‘systematics’ and ‘science’…. Heedfulness is the heedful [aufmerksame] name for essential thinking, the changed ‘title’ for ‘philosophy’ (§320)

Today I present some argumentation for the posited relation

between Dasein and attention, and look back to Being and Time to

see how attention is operative in that text. The argument rests

in part on the intimate relation between attention and care,

which is touched on briefly below, but the claim that I focus on

today is that attention is essentially related to the presencing

of Being. Heidegger says as much in WCT when he considers

Parmenides’ Fragment 5, which is translated as “thinking [in-die-

Acht-nehmen] and Being are the Same.”

2

For Heidegger the Being of the early Greeks is presencing, where

entities emerge from concealment into unconcealment, linger a

while, and then withdraw into concealment. At the same time,

presencing is a gathering and an ordering—that is, for Heidegger

physis and logos are the same.2 My claim is that attention is

human presencing, how we come into presence as engaged in

various modalities, and that we can be more or less gathered in

the process. If we are scattered, dispersed, or distracted, then

that is how we are, how we come into presence, and likewise if we

are gathered and focused. I argue that the effort of attention

collects us in our being, and in so doing brings forth a more

integrated manifestation. Worldly entities are made manifest in

the course of such engagement, and in this manner attention

participates in the presencing of Being.

In addressing the nature of attention it is essential to

recognize two related dimensions, selection (highlighting,

foregrounding) and effort (intensity, vigilance). Under the 2 “To say is legein…. It names the inexhaustible mystery that the speaking of language comes to pass from the unconcealment of what is present…. The logos by itself brings that which appears and comes forward in its lying before us to appearance—in its luminous self-showing” (EGT 64). See References for abbreviations for cited works of Heidegger.

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former fall connotations such as noticing, engaging, and

appearing, while under the latter we see connotations such as

steadfastness, enduring, and holding. These two dimensions are

well recognized in the cognitive psychology literature, where

attention is the subject of extensive study, as well as in

Heidegger himself when he takes up the question in the 1939 On

the Essence of Language. It should also be noted that affect (or

Befindlichkeit in Heideggerian terms) is very important in

determining the deployment of attention; in fact, interest and

concern are often taken to be synonymous with attention.

On this basis I argue that attention is my presence in the world.

Attention as presence means that I cannot be there without it.

As Heidegger puts it in BT, “Dasein brings its ‘there’ along with

it. If it lacks its ‘there’, it is not factically the entity

which is essentially Dasein….” (BT 133). If attention is

elsewhere, then so am I. This theme appears in Fundamental

Concepts of Metaphysics (63), for example:

How often it happens, in a conversation among a group of people, that we are ‘not there’, how often we find that we were absent, albeit without having fallen

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asleep…. In such being absent we are precisely concerned with ourselves, or with something else. Yet this not-being-there is a being-away.

Thus I argue that attention is the ‘there’ of Dasein. (It should be noted

that the constitution of the ‘there’ as formulated in various

phases of Heidegger’s work still applies.) The dimension of

effort makes attention my presence because of my participation

in bringing it about. That presence is in the world, with the

things themselves. Below are three arguments for the claim:

1. Attention is understood in cognitive science to be selection

(or emergence in Heideggerian terms), but we can ask how it is

that selection occurs. The claim is that selection requires my

presence because I must be there for any selected object to

appear to me. Attention as presence means that it is the site of

the manifestation of and encounters with entities. This

understanding of Dasein is prominent in Introduction to Metaphysics,

for instance, where Heidegger says “The almighty sway of Being …

makes Dasein into the site of its appearing.” Attention as

presence (Gegenwart) is also argued in William McNeill’s 1999 The

Glance of the Eye.

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2. The understanding of attention as presence is implicit in the

language, in the very meaning of the term. It would be

nonsensical, for instance, to say that although I am fully

engaged in a particular activity, my attention is engaged not in

this but in some other activity. Only when attention shifts to

an activity can one say ‘I am’ to engagement in that modality,

that one is explicitly aware of being engaged in such a fashion.

In fact, saying ‘I am’ results in the deployment of attention in

a corresponding manner. For instance, if I say “I am speaking” or

“I am walking,” attention attests to the truth of the matter by

being directed accordingly. That is, when I say “I am speaking,”

attention is directed to the very act of speaking itself. If on

the other hand I say “I am walking” while seated on the couch, I

know it to be false because attention is directed in accordance

with what I take walking to be, and I see that I am not walking.

It is understood that attention is required for full engagement,

for my full presence in the course of an activity.3 It is

3 The notion of “full attention” can be thought of as a regulative ideal whichcannot be indefinitely sustained by finite creatures such as ourselves.

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common, for instance, for students’ minds to be elsewhere, which

means that they do not hear all that the professor has to say;

or, at a minimum, they do not take in all of the nuances of the

presentation. It is understood that we can be more or less

there, more or less present in our being, more or less collected

or dispersed. If attention is scattered and dispersed, so are we,

likewise if it is focused and collected. This means that full

attention brings my whole being to bear in the course of

engagement. If I am fully focused, I see and hear with all of my

being.

It is possible to use this conception to distinguish modes of

engagement which are more or less synonymous with attention. I

want to argue, for instance, that ‘concern’ and ‘listening’ are

virtually synonymous with attention as they are employed in

Heidegger’s work. As for the former term, we attend to matters of

concern because they concern us, and therefore our attention

(which is the basis for concerned engagement) is directed

accordingly. Circumspective concern (Umsicht), in particular I

Similarly, the limits of “vigilance” are well recognized in the cognitive science literature.

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argue, is attention that is engaged in everyday dealings with

equipment. As for the latter term, we can see that the statement

“I am listening intently to what you are saying, but my attention

is otherwise engaged,” is nonsensical, because it suggests that

one is fully engaged in listening, which is not possible if one’s

attention is otherwise engaged. When Heidegger uses the term

listening (especially proper or authentic listening) it is

synonymous with acute and sustained attention, and indeed it is

fundamental throughout his work. On the other hand, it is

possible to say “I was in class but my attention was otherwise

engaged,” which means that although I was physically present I

was actually elsewhere in my Being. Heidegger says in EGT that

if one is not listening the reverberation goes in one ear and out

the other (Early Greek Thinking 65). Similarly, one can indeed say

“I was walking to the store, but my attention was otherwise

engaged” because walking in this case is a peripheral or

background activity which takes place outside of the focus of my

engagement.

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3. Attention is our presence in the world, from which it follows

that we are in the world. It is how we gain access to the things

themselves as the site of their manifestation. We can get an

indication of this by considering the discussion of spatiality in

BT. In §23 Heidegger says that the spatiality of Dasein is

characterized by de-severance, which “is a circumspective

bringing-close—bringing something close by, in the sense of

procuring it, putting it in readiness, having it to hand” (BT

105). Something becomes close when attention, in its concernful

dealing with the ready-to-hand, centers on a particular piece of

equipment. That is, attention, as my presence in the course of

concerned engagement, centers on the objects that concern me as I

go about the everyday. The claim is that objects become near because

of attention, because of my presence, regardless of the relative position

of the body. Attention is thus literally in the world, and so am

I. Heidegger gestures toward this in PLT when he says: “When I

go toward the door of the lecture hall, I am already there, and I

could not go to it at all if I were not such that I am there. I

am never here only, as this encapsulated body; rather, I am

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there, that is, I already pervade the room, and only thus can I

go through it” (PLT 157).

That completes the arguments for attention as presence. Now, we

are all familiar with the effort of attention, with the necessity

of staying with a particular activity in order to complete it

successfully. It typically appears in the notion of

“concentration,” or keeping one’s mind on a particular

intellectual task, but attention is by no means limited to such

activities. The notion employed here is that of staying with any

one of a variety of modes of engagement, of maintaining one’s presence

in the course of an encounter with an entity. The act of staying

with, of holding one’s ground in the face of competing influences,

which can also be seen as a standing, stilling, enduring,

sustaining, or watching, enables the opening and gathering that

is essentially related to Heidegger’s notion of Being. As

Heidegger puts it in WCT, “In attending we collect ourselves

toward what lies before us, and gather what we have taken heed

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of” (What is Called Thinking 209, translation modified).4 This is the

basis for the claim that attention is human Being, or Dasein.

In what follows I limit myself to a retrospective look at

attention in Being and Time, where I argue for a dialectical

relation between attention and understanding which is the most

general form of the hermeneutical circle. While the terms achten

and Aufmerksamkeit appear infrequently in BT, the dimensions of

selection and effort are quite important there. Selection

appears in the form of the unconcealment terms ‘uncovering’ and

‘disclosure’, while effort as “staying with” appears in a variety

of forms. I begin with a discussion of the relation between

attention and care in this text, followed by unconcealment and

effort.

There are two ways in which care can be understood, as a state in

which things matter to us, and as the act of attending to matters

of concern. Attention is obviously implicated in the second

aspect of care, and it is also related to the first because the

4 Im Achten sammeln wir uns auf das Vorliegende und versammeln das in die Acht Genommene.11

manner in which attention is directed depends on our concerns, on

the way that things matter to us.5 Attention is therefore called

for and necessary for proper care to be taken in matters of

concern. This can be seen in Heidegger’s discussion in §42 of

the pre-ontological fable that supports the claim that care is

the being of Dasein. He notes Burdach’s “double meaning” of the

term ‘cura’ as “not only ‘anxious exertion’ (note the dimension

of effort here) but also ‘carefulness’ [Sorgfalt] and

‘devotedness.’” Thus we see the relation between attention and

care, particularly in the term “carefulness.”

More generally we see the relationship in the ‘Sorg’ words which

are employed in the text, such as Sorge (care), Besorgen (concern),

Fürsorge (solicitude), and Sorgfalt (carefulness). It is interesting

that while Besorgen is translated as ‘concern’ by Macquarrie and

Robinson, it is translated as ‘taking care’ and ‘heedfulness’ in

Stambaugh, and as ‘concerned about and attend to’ by van Buren in

his translation of Ontology—The Hermeneutics of Facticity. Thus we see

again the relation between attention and concern which is also

5 See Steinbock (2004) for a Husserlian discussion of the relation between affect and attention.

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indicative of the relation of attention to care, since Heidegger

notes the relation between concern and care in §12. The relation

between attention and care is also evident in other care words

which appear in BT, such as hüten, wahren, and pflegen.

Next I turn to attention and unconcealment: Something comes to

the fore in the light of attention, and something is revealed in

the process—either an entity, Dasein, or both. In BT Heidegger

employs two terms for this sort of revelation: Entdeckung

(uncovering or discovery) and Erschlossenheit (disclosure), where

uncovering refers to entities and disclosure refers to Dasein

(BT 85).6 Unconcealment [Unverborgenheit] is employed much more

frequently in the later Heidegger, whereas disclosure appears

there only rarely and uncovering only somewhat more so. In this

section I consider how attention is related to the fundamental

modes of uncovering in BT.

6 In BPP (215) Heidegger uses Enthüllen (unveiling) instead of unconcealing as ageneral term for both Entdecken (unveiling extant beings) and Erschließen (unveiling Dasein), and equates Erschließen with Offenbarheit (opening up). He also equates unveiling with making manifest (Offenbarmachen), thus beginning tointroduce more key‘opening’ terms.

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As noted above, the fundamental terms for attention, achten and

Aufmerksamkeit, appear quite infrequently in BT. Achten and its

conjugates only appear five times in the text, being translated

as heed, notice, or regard, typically in contexts of Heidegger’s

own activity (or that of others) in the text, such as “we can

further elucidate the temporality of concern by giving heed

[achten]…” (BT 354), or “Here we must notice [achten] that …” (BT

389). Beachten appears more often but in similarly peripheral

usages, typically being translated as note or notice, while

betrachten and beobachten typically appear as observation. The

other fundamental term, Aufmerksamkeit, appears only once in the

text, in a context that provides a clue as to why these terms are

not employed more meaningfully.7 It appears in the discussion of

the temporality of circumspective concern (§69), where Heidegger

distinguishes between practical encounters and “thematical

perception.” Inquiring into the existential structure of

circumspective encounters, he says: “This question is now aimed

not at those factical occasions which turn our attention

[Aufmerksamkeit] to something already presented, but rather at the

7 The adjective aufmerksam appears four times in a manner similar to the way that achten is deployed.

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ontological meaning of the fact that it can thus be turned” (BT

354). Heidegger is careful to distinguish between abstract,

detached consciousness of the present-at-hand and engaged praxis

with the ready-to-hand. He makes use of terms such as stare

[starren, begaffen] and behold [anschauen] to make similar statements

throughout the text, for instance when referring to “a fixed

staring at something that is purely present-at-hand” (BT 61).

But he goes on to say that even theoretical research has a praxis

of its own (BT 358), and is thus in the world, not detached in an

“inner sphere” (BT 62). The point is that these activities are

also examples of worldly engagement, and that all of them have an

associated practical understanding. So the idea of pure

beholding or intuiting is a myth, because it is always engaged

and accompanied by an understanding. Heidegger says that the

task of grasping the present-at-hand is essentially

unintelligible, which means again that all worldly engagement

must be accompanied by understanding.

Apparently for the Heidegger of BT attention (especially

Aufmerksamkeit) is also an example of detached consciousness. He

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seeks to correct the myth by introducing a new set of terms that

more appropriately take into account the role of understanding.

He does so first in §28 by considering the notion of lumen

naturale, which is intimately related to attention in Descartes,

who looms large in this text.8 Light metaphors are very

important in Heidegger, and they are also important for

attention, as in the spotlight theory of attention and the notion

of foreground as the highlighting of attention. In this section

lumen naturale is transformed to the clearing, which is equated with

the ‘there’ and disclosedness.

Heidegger goes on in §31 on understanding to introduce another

transformed term for detached consciousness, sight. He says that

seeing goes beyond perceiving with the bodily eyes, which is

something he repeats in a number of other contexts as part of his

argument against mechanistic metaphysics. He recognizes that any

of the senses enable discovery, but maintains continuity with the8 “[I]ntuition is the indubitable conception of a clear and attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason” (CSMI, 14), “Rather, each of us, according to the light of his own mind, must attentively intuit only thosethings which are distinguished from all others” (CSMI, 49), “free from errors which may obscure our natural light and make us less capable of heeding reason” (CSMI, 116), and “If one concentrates carefully, all this is quite evident by the natural light” (CSMII, 32).

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philosophical tradition by using sight to refer to access in

general. Finally, he emphasizes that sight is grounded “primarily

in understanding.”

In a similar fashion, Heidegger discusses hearing and listening

in §34 on discourse and language, linking them with

understanding and making the same sort of critique of

physiological explanations that he does for sight. For

Heidegger, we encounter the Being of entities in their readiness-

to-hand by way of understanding and these fundamental existential

modalities. But perhaps the pendulum has swung too far in

avoiding the meaningful use of attention terms. For I wish to

show that attention is essential for discovery, for the

manifestation of entities, working hand in hand as it does with

the understanding. What first appears, what we first attend to,

is the creaking waggon. Heidegger says that world disclosure (or

understanding) is the ground for uncoveredness, and I do not

dispute this, but after presenting textual evidence below I argue

in the next section for attention as equally essential for

discovery. Heidegger wishes to eliminate intuition terms which

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are divorced from the understanding, but they need to be

incorporated to account for the role of effort, for example in

producing fresh insight, and in the spatio-temporality of

manifestation.

There is considerable textual evidence for the relation between

attention and discovery. We can see it clearly in Basic Problems of

Phenomenology (310), where Heidegger equates attention and

uncovering: “The question is, How can something missing fall

upon our attention [auffallen]?... How is the uncovering

[Entdecken] of a missing thing possible?” We can also see it in

light of the intimate relation between attention and concern,

given the relation between concern and uncovering which is noted

several times in BT. We also see the relation between attention

and disclosure when Heidegger says “Thus in concernful solicitude

the Other is proximally disclosed” (BT 124). But the clear

emphasis in BT is on these modes of uncovering as grounded in

understanding and not in the presencing of attention.

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I now conclude with a discussion of the hermeneutical circle in

terms of attention and understanding: Heidegger develops his

notions of sight and hearing as based on the understanding, but

my assertion is that understanding is not enough; attention as

presencing must also be accounted for. While understanding

enables general access to the world and its entities, I argue

that attention is the basis for access to particular entities as

they are made manifest. That is, as world constitutive,

understanding enables access to the world in general and

determines how the things that appear are interpreted.9

Attention, on the other hand, is the site of manifestation of

particulars. In order to show how the two are related, I discuss

the hermeneutical circle in terms of attention and understanding,

where understanding guides attention, which in turn provides

deliverances which develop the understanding in its further

guidance.

I begin by showing how the problem of attention arises and why it

is essential in worldly engagement. We can ask, as stated in

9 The role of language as distinct from understanding is beyond the scope of the present paper.

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§31, given that understanding itself has possibilities, and that

it can devote itself in various ways, how is it that

understanding is indeed devoted? In fact, in the one mention of

Aufmerksamkeit in the text, Heidegger is examining how concern

turns to itself when something cannot be used, which is a turn of

attention. Similarly, when he says that every sense has its own

domain of discovery, we must ask how it is that a given sense is

selected for such engagement in the first place. For under

normal circumstances all senses are available for worldly access;

to which sense is one present at a given moment? For me to be

able to say “I am seeing,” or “I am touching,” attention must be

correspondingly deployed. It may be true that my feet are

touching the ground, but only when attention shifts to the

sensation can I say ‘I’ to that, can I say “I feel my feet

touching the ground.” Attention as my presence is what enables

me to say ‘I’ to any engagement.10

10 The same applies to other modalities such as thought and imagination. It is implicit that attention is the basis for the activity, and thus it can be said that I am thinking, imagining, etc.

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Of course, understanding is intimately involved in the selection

process.11 Attention moves to what is most salient, or relevant,

or what matters most, because it is understood to be so. But

encounters with worldly entities cannot be reduced to

understanding alone, for in that case there would be no

possibility of fresh perception, or new insight. For this we

need my presence as the site of manifestation of entities. As

Heidegger says, sight provides general access to the world and

its entities, and certainly if we had no understanding of Being

and world it would indeed be inaccessible to us, but it must be

asked how it is that particular entities are “discoverable in

varying degrees of explicitness and with a varying circumspective

penetration” (BT 71). What determines the quality of the

encounters, the depth of revelation, if not attentiveness? The

role of attention is ineliminable here.

While understanding guides attention in its deployment, attention

is actual presence to the things themselves. The deliverances of

11 I take understanding to be thrown projection. E.g., state of mind always has its understanding, and understanding always has its mood, BT 143. See also BT(148), where Heidegger discusses the enigma of thrown-projective Being-in-the-World.

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attention are fully indeterminate, contrary to the assertions of

those who argue for a “linguistic determinism” in Heidegger. The

effort of attention plays an essential role in determining

entities in their very spatio-temporality, in the fusion and

tension in which they are made manifest.12 As noted in Introduction

to Metaphysics, for instance, the holding of a manifesting entity in

its inherent tendency to disperse itself is the fundamental work

of Being, in which we participate by way of effort of attention.

I am arguing that attention as the site of manifestation of

entities must be considered to be equiprimordial with the

understanding. Consideration of attention enables incorporation

of effort, which is missing if Being is limited to understanding.

In order to see how this conception of the circle comes out of

BT, it is necessary to consider the relation between uncovering

and disclosure, both of which involve attention. Heidegger

considers disclosure to be insight into the Being of Dasein,

which must be accomplished by attention for the insight to be

12 E.g., “Gathering is never just driving together and piling up. It maintains[behält] in a belonging-together that which contends and strives in confrontation. It does not allow it to decay into mere dispersion and what is simply cast down” (IM 142).

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mine. However, in BT Heidegger often refers to the prior

disclosure which guides attention, and equates it with

understanding. In general the relation is one of the explicit to

the implicit. As Macquarrie and Robinson say in a footnote,

To say that something has been ‘disclosed’ or ‘laid open’ in Heidegger’s sense, does not mean that one has any detailed awareness of the contents which are thus ‘disclosed’, but rather that they have been ‘laid open’to us as implicit in what is given, so that they may bemade explicit to our awareness by further analysis or discrimination of the given…. (BT 75, fn. 1)

The explicit by definition requires attention, for in this case

something stands before me. So the deliverances of attention

consist of the results of encounters with entities other than

Dasein and insight into the nature of Dasein itself, all of which

contribute to the understanding, which in turn guides Dasein in

its further encounters.

Heidegger lays out the hermeneutical circle of interpretation and

understanding as an existential fore-structure of Dasein in §32.

Interpretation as the apophantic ‘as’ develops the understanding.

It enables explicit understanding, in that what is disclosed in

understanding can be made to stand out explicitly:

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To say that “circumspection discovers” means that the ‘world’ which has already been understood comes to be interpreted. The ready-to-hand comes explicitly into the sight which understands. (BT 149, italics in original)

Circumspective concern as everyday attention is the basis here,

together with the understanding, for discovery and hence

interpretation. Putting the circle in terms of attention follows

from the fact that the development of the understanding depends

upon the deliverances of attention. Heidegger also discusses how

interpretations recede to the background and serve there as the

basis for further circumspection (BT 150). Thus we see how the

understanding is modified by way of the deliverances of

attention, thereby serving as the basis for further

circumspection, and we see the dialectic of attention and

understanding as the most general form of the hermeneutical

circle.

Abbreviations for Cited Works of HeideggerBT: Being and Time. Trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, New York, Harper & Row, 1962. Pagination from the German, Sein und Zeit, Tübingen, Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1993. BPP: The Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Trans. A. Hofstadter, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982.CPC: Country Path Conversations. Trans. B. Davis, Bloomington, IndianaUniversity Press, 2010.

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EGT: Early Greek Thinking. Trans. D. Krell and F. Capuzzi, New York,Harper & Row, 1975.FCM: Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Trans. W. McNeill and N. Walker, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1995.IM: An Introduction to Metaphysics. Trans. G. Fried and R. Polt, New Haven, Conn., Yale University Press, 2000.OEL: On the Essence of Language. Trans. W. Gregory and Y. Unna, Albany, State University of New York Press, 2004.P: Parmenides. Trans. A. Schuwer and R. Rojcewicz, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1992.PM: Pathmarks. Ed., W. McNeill, Cambridge University Press, 1998.PLT: Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. A. Hofstadter, New York, Harper & Row, 1971.TE: The Event. Trans. R. Rojcewicz, Bloomington, Indiana UniversityPress, 2012.WCT: What Is Called Thinking? Trans. F. Wieck and J. Gray, New York, Harper & Row, 1968.

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