DADAISM. Modernist protest movement in art and literature sparked by World War I. Beginning in Zurich in 1916, Dada spread to Paris and New York. The Dadaists rejected conventional values of progress, reason, and beauty, which they felt were travestied by the horrors of the war. Instead, they celebrated an art of random occurrences and “nonsense,” ridiculing middle-class conformity, patriotism, and militarism as well as the institution of art itself. Leading Dadaists included Tristan Tsara, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball, and Marcel Duchamp. In Paris in the early 1920s, Dadaism evolved into surrealism. Like French existentialism after World War II, Dadaism was both reviled and celebrated by the media. This explains Jean-Paul Sartre’s remark in 1947 that the vogue of existentialism is like “le nouveau Da-Da” (cited in Marjorie Grene, Introduction to Existentialism, 49).
DAS MAN (Ger. “the one,” “the they”). In the vocabulary of Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, das Man designates the average, everyday manner of Dasein’s existence. Heidegger observes that the ordinary trend of human life is to think and behave just like everyone else, conforming one’s thoughts and actions to the expectations of others. Thus, Heidegger concludes, the standard subject of existence is not an individualized self but an average “anyone,” a collective, impersonal manner of being. While das Man is the standard mode of Dasein’s existence, it is the mode in which Dasein is decidedly “not itself–: It lives without awareness of the necessity of choice and decision, and thus without awareness of freedom. Das Man levels down “possible options of choice to what lies within the range of the familiar, the attainable, the respectable.” Settling all questions in advance, it removes the need for Dasein to make choices for itself. Dasein thus “becomes blind to its possibilities, and tranquillizes itself with that which is merely ‘actual’” (BT, 239). In this manner, das Man is the foundation of inauthentic existence: By disburdening Dasein of its freedom and responsibility, it ensures that it exists in alienation from its genuine human possibilities. See also AUTHENTICITY AND INAUTHENTICITY.
DASEIN. This expression, the ordinary German word for “being” or “existence,” is employed by Martin Heidegger as the philosophical term for human being. It plays a crucial role in the philosophy of Being and Time, which offers a detailed analysis of Dasein’s unique mode of being as existence. Critical to Heidegger’s conception is the idea that Dasein is not a “subject” in the sense of a preformed mental, physical, or spiritual entity that subsequently comes into contact with a world. Rather, Dasein is essentially being-in-the-world, and what it is cannot be specified apart from its involvement in the world and with others; through this involvement, and not prior to or independently of it, Dasein comes to know itself and to take up a stance toward its own being. A correlate to this idea is that the world, and indeed being itself, are not preextant realities but emerge in conjunction with Dasein. The world and being are that toward which Dasein comports itself, that toward which it “transcends.”
Heidegger emphasizes the nonsubjective character of Dasein in various ways. Dasein is not a specific type of thing to be defined by essential properties, such as rationality or spirituality. It is not a substance, mental or physical, with unchanging properties. Dasein designates the how of human being rather than the what or essence, for human beings do not have an essence in the same sense as objects like a table, a planet, or a triangle. Dasein’s being is always “an issue for it” and never merely an occurrent state that it contemplates objectively. Dasein is not a thing on a par with other things but rather the being in relation to which all other things exist. Accordingly, Dasein must be approached not through an enumeration of objective properties but through an elucidation of its distinctive manner of existing. This is the sense of Heidegger’s statement that “The ‘essence’ of Dasein lies in its existence” (BT, 67). Dasein’s essence can be described by identifying the basic possibilities that organize any human life. These Heidegger calls Existentialien (existentialia), distinguishing them from the traditional philosophical concept of categories. The enumeration of Dasein’s existentialia constitutes one of the most original aspects of Heidegger’s philosophy. They include being-towards-death, facticity, falling, historicality, mineness, and thrownness. Heidegger suggests that Dasein’s being at the most general level may be qualified as care.
Heidegger sometimes employs the term in hyphenated form, Dasein, to exploit its constitutive meaning, “being (sein) there (Da).” The “there” that is constitutive of Dasein’s being is in effect the world itself, for Dasein exists spatially and temporally “outside of itself,” in and through its engagements with things and among others. The there of Dasein is decidedly not a type of consciousness, which Heidegger assumes to be a self-sufficient mental awareness on the model of the Cartesian cogito. Dasein’s there is described, rather, as a space of “disclosure” for other beings as well as for itself. One of Heidegger’s chief insights is that the range of human projects and activities—building, farming, calculating, performing scientific experiments, making art, and so forth—discloses a range of different possibilities in things, or alternately, a range of distinct modes of being. Dasein is thus described as a uniquely ontological being in that, through its various projects, moods, and involvements, it reveals the diversity of ways in which things, including human beings, can be said to be. As Dasein’s mode of being comprises all other possible modes of being, the analysis of Dasein is referred to as fundamental ontology. Finally, because Dasein is distinguished by a fundamental self-concern, it exists either in the mode of “not being itself” or of “being itself”: that is, either inauthentically, uncritically accepting the possibilities dictated by tradition and society, or authentically taking hold of existence in terms of possibilities consciously chosen and affirmed. See also DAS MAN; EGO.
DASEIN ANALYSIS. See EXISTENTIAL PSYCHOTHERAPY.
DEATH. The subject of death receives scant attention in the history of philosophy. In certain respects, existentialists are the first philosophers in modern times to recognize its importance and propose a philosophical treatment. For existentialists, death is not a physical event or biological process but the awareness that one is going to die. Varying interpretations of this awareness are offered by different writers; it is generally agreed, however, that awareness of death is constitutive of existence, not merely a psychological state that may or may not be present, and that it is linked to an awareness of freedom, and thus to the exercise of authenticity. Martin Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein assigns central importance to the experience of death, though a similar emphasis can be found in other German philosophers of existence. For example, the Jewish German existentialist Franz Rosenzweig begins The Star of Redemption (1922) with these words: “All cognition of the All originates in death, in the fear of death. Philosophy takes it upon itself . . . to rob death of its poisonous sting” (3). Similarly, Karl Jaspers speaks of death as one of the limit situations that occasion the emergence of Existenz. Common to the existentialist view is the idea that death is dimmed down when treated simply as a natural fact or as an unproblematic passage to a “beyond” rather than an event that evokes fear and anxiety. In Heidegger’s account, a full existential awareness of death is a necessary condition for authenticity, for death places the contents of one’s life in a properly finite and first-person perspective: “Only by the anticipation of death is every accidental and ‘provisional’ possibility driven out. . . . Once one has grasped the finitude of one’s existence, it snatches one back from the endless multiplicity of possibilities” (BT, 435). Thus, according to Heidegger, anxiety in the face of death shocks Dasein out of everyday complacency and allows it to understand itself as a “finite freedom,” that is, as a power of choice that can be exercised only on the basis of the constraints of the situation. See also BEING-TOWARDS-DEATH; DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH, THE; ECSTASIS.
DEATH OF GOD. Friedrich Nietzsche understood the “death of God” as the loss of belief in transcendent values occasioned by the decline of religion in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. For Nietzsche, the core illusion of the Western tradition was its belief in an omniscient, omnipotent God, the source of value and purpose on earth and the guarantor of truth. The development of modern science and emergence of modern political institutions had, he thought, contributed to the demise of the religious worldview, including the decay of such metaphysical adjuncts to religion as the idea of the soul as distinct from the body. But what will humans propose to replace the religious view? The answer to this question was not clear. Nietzsche saw the death of God as heralding a period of nihilism in 19th-century Europe, when societies might succumb to “baser” values of self-preservation and utilitarian interest and lose sight of “nobler” values such as artistic creation. Ultimately, however, he had faith that the challenge of nihilism could be met by those resilient and “cheerful” enough to live and create in the absence of metaphysical illusions. For such “higher men,” Nietzsche predicted, the death of God will be an occasion to affirm earthly existence: to redeem the value of the body and the senses and to enjoy the exercise of the creative drives free from the crippling constraints of morality and religion.
DEATH OF IVAN ILYICH, THE (1886). This short novel by Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was significant to certain existentialists for its vivid portrayal of the experience of death. Ivan Ilyich is a magistrate in tsarist Russia, fond of cards and a glass of wine, and occasionally of reading “some book which was much talked about.” He embodies the comfortable complacency that existentialists identify with inauthentic existence. One day, while arranging the curtains of his new apartment, he falls and injures himself. The injury does not appear serious, but gradually his pain increases. Doctors make vague diagnoses yet remain unconcerned; their chief interest is to suppress recognition of the reality of death. His family also encourages him in the illusion that he is merely sick and will get better. Only his servant, a peasant named Gerasim, is able to accept that he is dying and to provide him some comfort. Ilyich suffers physically, but nagging moral doubts (he wonders whether his entire life has not been a mistake) increase his pain immensely. Finally, only hours before dying, he is comforted by a vision of light, an apparent religious conversion.
Tolstoy’s story was particularly influential for Martin Heidegger, who cited the story in a footnote to a discussion of being-towards-death in Being and Time. For Heidegger, The Death of Ivan Ilyich dramatized the difficulty of arriving at an authentic awareness of death in face of society’s tendency to obscure and deny it.
DE BEAUVOIR, SIMONE. See BEAUVOIR, SIMONE DE.
DECISION. See CHOICE; MOMENT, THE.
DECISIONISM. Historically the term refers to a right-wing revolutionary political theory formulated in the 1920s by the German political philosopher and jurist Carl Schmitt, in response to the perceived weakness and ineffectualness of the Weimar parliamentary democracy. Schmitt’s decisionism defined authentic political choices as “absolute decisions” “created out of nothingness,” which gain their power from an abrogation of law and consensus and issue out of a kind of “dictatorship” rather than a “legitimacy.” Schmitt’s Political Theology (1922) drew an analogy between the “state of exception” or emergency in which political law is abrogated and true political sovereignty is revealed, and the divine miracle in which natural laws are abrogated and God’s sovereignty is revealed.
In more general terms, decisionism is sometimes used to refer to a theory of moral choice or action that stresses the groundless, subjective, and arbitrary character of ethical decisions. Martin Heidegger, Søren Kiekegaard, and Jean-Paul Sartre have each been accused of a type decisionism. The criticism is tempered in the case of Heidegger and Sartre by their emphasis on the situated and hence socially and morally constrained nature of authentic decision. See also MOMENT, THE.
DESAN, WILFRED (1909–2001). Belgian American philosopher and early commentator on Jean-Paul Sartre’s philosophy. Desan studied philosophy in Belgium at the University of Lille before pursuing interests in cinematography. He met Sartre in Paris in the 1940s and developed a keen interest in existentialism. Immigrating to the United States in 1948, Desan earned a Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard University. In 1954, he published The Tragic Finale, a penetrating early discussion of Sartre’s argument in Being and Nothingness.
DESCARTES, RENÉ (1596–1650). French philosopher and mathematician, considered the father of modern Western philosophy. From an existentialist perspective, Descartes’s philosophy is criticized for its strict mind/body dualism and for its rationalism. Martin Heidegger proposed an extensive critique of Descartes’s view of self and world. According to Heidegger, Descartes’s conception of the human being as a “thinking thing” (res cogitons) opposed in its being to the “extended things” (res extensae) that make up the physical world was a seminal expression of the theoretical prejudice of traditional metaphysics. By defining the person as a mental substance distinct from the world and from other people, Descartes reduced the human being to a knowing subject that manipulates and calculates a universe of objects present-at-hand.
Jean-Paul Sartre offered a more positive assessment. While he too rejected Descartes’s substance ontology, he embraced Descartes’s central idea that consciousness provides the necessary starting point for philosophy. In this, he remained at odds with Heidegger’s understanding of consciousness as a derivative metaphysical concept. Sartre also followed Descartes in the assumption that consciousness remains free from causal determination.
DESPAIR. See KIERKEGAARD, SØREN.
DESTRUCTION (Ger. Destruktion). Martin Heidegger refers to the necessity of an internal critique or “destruction” of the history of Western philosophy as a necessary component of fundamental ontology. However, destruction is not a purely negative attempt to eradicate the past. Such an attempt would be futile because philosophy is necessarily guided by inherited concepts and assumptions. The goal of destruction is rather to “stake out the positive possibilities” latent within ancient ontology and to bring them to fruition in a contemporary context. This was the general intention of Heidegger’s Being and Time, which drew upon a renewed understanding of ancient Greek metaphysics, in particular the metaphysics of Aristotle, as well as a critical reappraisal of seminal texts like Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, in its revisionary account of human existence.
DEUX MAGOTS, CAFÉ LES. This café in the heart of Saint-Germain-des-Près was a central meeting place for Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and other writers and artists associated with the existentialist movement in Paris in the 1940s and 1950s. After 1946, when tourists began to flock to the Café de Flore to catch a glimpse of Sartre at work, Sartre and Beauvoir moved their base of operations to the neighboring Café Les Deux Magots.
DIALECTIC. See HEGEL, G. W. F; KIERKEGAARD, SØREN.
DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM. See HISTORICAL MATERIALISM.
DIALOGUE (Ger. Zwiesprache). In the philosophy of Martin Buber, dialogue denotes an authentic, open encounter between self and other. In dialogue, the other person is recognized as subject rather than as object, as a source of freedom irreducible to my conception of him or her. Reciprocally, the self exists authentically, as a whole self, only in dialogue with another.
“The basic movement of the life of dialogue is the turning toward the other (Hinwendung)” (BMM, 25). This is accomplished in mundane acts like greeting another person, having a conversation, or simply exchanging meaningful glances. It is exemplified as well in the creation of art, music, and poetry, which for Buber derive their power from being addressed to the eyes and ears of another. At the highest level, dialogue becomes an encounter with the absolute other or God. Yet even here dialogue operates not on some transcendent plane or in a mystical union but in the action and suffering of concrete existence, “not above the struggle with reality but in it” (The Martin Buber, 227). Dialogue is ultimately an experience of the world’s mystery and meaning through an encounter with otherness.
“Monologue,” in contrast, is not simply a turning away from the other but “reflexion” (Ruckbiegung), literally, a “bending back” of the self on the self: “[R]eflexion [is] when a man withdraws from accepting with his essential being another person in his particularity . . . and lets the other exist only as his own experience” (BMM, 27). See also AVAILABILITY.
DILTHEY, WILHELM (1833–1911). German philosopher identified with the philosophy of life and influential particularly in the development of German philosophy of existence. Dilthey directed himself to understanding life in all its variety and richness, borrowing ideas from the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and G. W. F. Hegel. Where Kant had identified categories of the mind that organize our perception of the physical world, Dilthey proposed “categories of life” that organize our experience of ourselves, the world, and others. This experience is organized not only perceptually but also in terms of categories of “value,” “meaning,” and “purpose,” which operate below the level of explicit awareness. Categories of life are combined to form different worldviews, generalized interpretations of reality akin to what Hegel had called “forms of spirit.”
To gain a comprehensive picture of life requires broadening one’s inquiry beyond the scope of philosophy. In particular for Dilthey, it required studying those “human sciences” (Geisteswissenschaften) that concern themselves with life as it is experienced and not merely as an object of scientific observation. Disciplines such as history, psychology, literary criticism, and comparative religion are distinguished by their intrinsic reference to the experience of conscious human beings, in contrast to the natural sciences, which seek to explain all phenomena, including consciousness, in terms of nonconscious physical processes. Dilthey thus advanced an important distinction between causal explanation (Erklärung) used in natural science and hermeneutical understanding (Verstehen) used in the human sciences. The method of understanding is required of the human sciences because it allows one to grasp the “lived meanings” (Erlebnisse) of words, ideas, and feelings experienced by individuals in different cultures and historical periods. Because lived meanings are constantly changing and developing in the lives of individuals and in the development of cultures, they cannot be formalized or placed in a final system. Dilthey held that a formal science of human life and culture modeled on natural science is a grievous mistake. At the same time, Dilthey recognized universal features of human life that allow an interpreter to empathetically grasp ideas, art, and literature of the past.
Dilthey’s importance for existentialism lies primarily in his influence on Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. In Being and Time, Heidegger accepted the thrust of Dilthey’s analyses of “life” and “lived experience” while criticizing the language in which they were expressed as “ontologically undifferentiated” and “indefinite” (BT, 210). According to Heidegger, Dilthey’s concept of “life” takes for granted a more basic understanding of “world” and of human being as essentially being-in-the-world. Nonetheless, Heidegger was clearly influenced by Dilthey’s work. He acknowledged his debt to Dilthey’s understanding of how life is bounded and defined by death (BT, 249, n.vi). More substantively, Heidegger recognized Dilthey’s “pioneering work” (BT, 378) on the subject of historical time. Heidegger’s discussion of human historicality (BT, §73–77) was intended as a clarification and amplification of Dilthey’s views.
Karl Jaspers’s Psychology of Worldviews was also in a sense an elaboration upon an idea of Dilthey. Dilthey had introduced the concept of Weltanschauung, or worldview, to designate the holistic attitude by which a person perceives, evaluates, and responds to the world. He identified three basic worldviews: naturalism, subjective idealism, and objective idealsm. Jaspers expanded this typology to include more psychological attitudes like narcissism, pessimism, and optimism. Dilthey’s conception of history and of life were, finally, essential for the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Ortega acknowledged his debt by identifying Dilthey as “the most important thinker of the second half of the nineteenth century” (History as a System, 213). See also PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE.
DIONYSIAN. See APOLLONIAN AND DIONYSIAN.
DOS PASSOS, JOHN (1896–1970). American novelist and short-story writer whose experimental fiction, in particular his U.S.A. novel trilogy, translated into French in the 1930s, influenced the style of Albert Camus’s The Stranger as well as Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea and The Roads to Freedom trilogy. As a literary critic, Sartre had deep appreciation for Dos Passos. In a 1938 review, Sartre opined, “I regard Dos Passos as the greatest writer of our time” (LPE, 96).
DOSTOEVSKY, FYODOR (1821–1881). Russian novelist, one of the greatest novelists of the 19th century. His influence on literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was profound, and he is widely cited as a forerunner of the modern psychological novel. In the 1950s and 1960s, Dostoevsky’s status as a forerunner of existentialism was promoted by the American philosopher and critic Walter Kaufmann. Kaufmann’s judgment, in his popular anthology Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre, that Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is “the best overture for existentialism ever written” (Kaufmann, 14), confirmed for some Dostoevsky’s existentialist credentials. Kaufmann placed importance on the fact that, toward the end of his life, Friedrich Nietzsche had discovered Notes from Underground and read it as the expression of “a kindred spirit.” Yet Kaufmann also made clear that Dostoevsky was not an existentialist in a strict sense of the term, only a harbinger of existential themes such as the experience of guilt, suffering, and shame, and the rejection of the classical view of the human being as a knowing subject. Dostoevsky’s stylistic influence can be detected in the early fiction of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. See also EXISTENTIALIST LITERATURE.
DUALISM. See BODY AND MIND.
DURATION. See BERGSON, HENRI.