In recent debates, especially within the French-speaking world, we have seen a question reappear that one might have thought definitively settled after the stubborn refutations of what was qualified (or rather disqualified) under the title of the “myth of the given”—the question, precisely, of Gegebenheit. Yet it was not a matter of taking up once again—doubtless one time too many—the debate over the possibility of unconstituted givens, whether they be understood in the manner of sense-data, as in the Lockean tradition; or as the contents of Erlebnisse in the debate concerning protocol statements between Carnap and Neurath; or, in the Bergsonian style, as immediate givens of consciousness. Rather, the point was to question the mode of being, or, better, of manifestation (precisely not the mode of being) of certain phenomena. For the principle—supposing that it be one—that everything that shows itself must first give itself (even if everything that gives itself nevertheless does not show itself without remainder)1 implies that one is questioning givenness as a mode of phenomenality, as the how or manner (Wie) of the phenomenon. The issue, then, is no longer the immediate given, the perceptive content, or the lived experience of consciousness—in short, of something that is given (das Gegebene), but instead of the style of its phenomenalization insofar as it is given, or in short, its givenness (donnéité) (Gegebenheit).2 The sometimes suspected ambiguity of the French word donation is in fact limited, for donation reflects the ambiguity of the German Gegebenheit, which indicates both that which finds itself given (das, daß) and its mode of manifestation (Wie). Thus the place of the debate, as well as its stake, found itself shifted from the theory of knowledge (Erkenntnistheorie) to phenomenality, and thus to phenomenology. But this shift itself promptly opened up another question: is givenness (donation) limited and able to stand on its own supposed phenomenological determination—that of given-ness (donnéité), of Gegebenheit in the sense of a mode of phenomenality—or does it inevitably slide toward givenness as an ontic process? One could thus understand givenness as a gift (in the more general framework of a sociology of the gift), as a modality of production (according to economy or technology), or indeed as a substitute for creation (in the theological sense, here generalized or tacit). It was sometimes this last hypothesis that was privileged, out of suspicion that in givenness lay the simple restoration, hidden but easily spotted, of creation, itself understood in the purely onto-theological sense as a transcendent causality and grounding.3
My intention in this essay will only be to verify the strictly phenomenological status of givenness, and therefore to understand it as a mode of phenomenality and not as an ontic given—as a given-ness (Gegebenheit), and not as a metaphysical and onto-theological foundation. This verification can be conceived of in two ways: either by a strictly conceptual analysis, which would trace back from the crisis of every a priori foundation toward the necessary recourse to an a posteriori principle, as paradoxical as this formulation might at first seem—this is something I have attempted elsewhere.4 Or—and this more modest path is the one we will follow here—by sketching the phenomenological genealogy of the concept of givenness or Gegebenheit, as found in certain uses in the early Heidegger and in late Husserl, respectively, as they worked with the theory of the object, such as it was developed by Bolzano, Meinong, and their contemporaries.
To establish the phenomenological status of givenness beginning with Heidegger, we could proceed, without any transition, to Zeit und Sein, which develops quite explicitly the original function of es gibt. Nevertheless, I shall not take this route, because, in a certain way, this text, more aporetic than it is conclusive, does not establish givenness in detail, but instead supposes it as already secured: the thesis that es gibt Sein, es gibt Zeit serves as point of departure, without ever being granted a genuine phenomenological exposition. And this starting point itself remains rather provisional, since the double es gibt ends up by quickly canceling itself in the Ereignis, the anchoring of which in Gegebenheit soon becomes quite problematic.5 Instead, then, we might reverse course and take up one of the texts from the very beginning—specifically, the very first course from Freiburg, taught during the Kriegsnotsemester of 1919. But this approach remains debatable: even if the discussion Heidegger was then conducting with Natorp and Rickert opened up the right perspective (which I will confirm here), the young Heidegger did not yet have at his disposal the analytic of Dasein, or even the hermeneutics of facticity, with the result that these shortcomings color with a considerable indecision his moreover frequent uses of es gibt, Gegebenheit, and even Ereignis.6 The risk of drawing incorrect correspondences in this reading between the beginning and the eventual accomplishment, and of making imprudent anticipations, would become almost inevitable. It seems, then, that the surest path is to examine the function and the reach of givenness in Sein und Zeit itself; for even if these do not affect the occurrences of Gegebenheit,7 but of es gibt, they appear as significant as they are difficult to interpret.
Let us note first of all that, from the moment the formal position on the question of being is articulated (at §2), the first occurrence of the expression es gibt arises: “Aber ‘seiend’ nennen wir vieles und in verschiedenem Sinne. Seiend ist alles, wovon wir reden, was wir meinen, wozu wir uns so und so verhalten, seiend ist auch, was und wie wir selbst sind. Sein liegt im Daß- und Sosein, in Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, im ‘es gibt.’ An welchem Seienden soll der Sinn von Sein abgelesen werden [. . .]?” (But we call many things ‘existent’ [seiend], and in different senses. Everything we talk about, mean, and are related to is in being in one way or another. What and how we ourselves are is also in being. Being is found in the fact and the manner of being, in realitas, in the presence-to-hand of things [Vorhandenheit], subsistence, validity, existence [Da-sein], and in the ‘it gives’ [es gibt][, too]. In which being is the meaning of being to be found; from which being is the disclosure of being to get its start?)8 Here one hears, in fact, an echo of Brentano’s question on the plurality (or here, the diversity) of the meanings of being, formulated by a recension composed as much of the traditional metaphysical meanings as of those, already in outline, that the existential analytic will bring out. But to this double list, es gibt has just been added, the literal sense of which we will retain—it gives—without covering over and concealing it with its usual English or French equivalents, there is, il y a, which are inexact though well established.9 But the addition of this syntagma raises in itself a difficulty: for, if es gibt does not belong to the meanings of being, nor to the categories of beings, nor even to the lexicon of metaphysics, why has it just been added to their list? And furthermore, is it a term of the same rank as the others, or is it a new theme altogether? If the latter is the case, does it still belong to the question of beings and to the search for the meanings of being? The occurrences of es gibt that immediately follow offer no answer to these questions, because they stick to the preconceptual usage of everyday language.10
And yet, an interpolated clause provides a first indication: “Welt ist selbst nicht ein innerweltlich Seiendes, und doch bestimmt sie dieses Seiende so sehr, daß es nur begegnen und entdecktes Seiendes in seinem Sein sich zeigen kann, sofern es Welt ‘gibt.’ Aber wie ‘gibt es’ Welt?” (The world itself is not an innerworldly being, and yet it determines innerworldly beings to such an extent that they can only be encountered and discovered and show themselves in their being because “it gives” the world. But how does “it give” the world?)11 The being is discovered only in the world, precisely because it is only insofar as it is innerworldly, never without an already-opened world. From this transcendental anteriority of the world over the innerworldly being, it obviously follows that the world is not numbered among the innerworldly beings. And because only the being is, it is necessary to infer from this that the world, which is not a being, cannot properly be said to be. Thus we will not say that the world is, but rather, with all rigor, that “it gives” the world—that es gibt the world. A similar exclusion from being of that which cannot be defined as a being is specifically confirmed in §44, which summarizes the fundamental accomplishment of the first section of the published part, by enthroning es gibt as such in the existential analytic: “Sein—nicht Seiendes—‘gibt es’ nur, sofern Wahrheit ist. Und sie ist nur, sofern und solange Dasein ist. Sein und Wahrheit ‘sind’ gleichursprünglich.” (“It gives” [Es gibt] being—not beings—only insofar as truth is. And truth is only because and as long as Da-sein is. Being and truth “are” equiprimordially.)12 The first sentence confirms the preceding point: if only beings are, and if “so gewiß das Sein nicht aus Seiendem ‘erklärt’ werden kann [being certainly cannot be ‘explained’ in terms of beings],”13 then being itself in the strict sense is not, but comes to pass by virtue of an es gibt. Conversely, Dasein, privileged as it may appear in relation to all other beings, still remains a being,14 and thus one can say of it that it is (without quotation marks). This contrast, moreover, serves only to ratify a formula from §43: “Allerdings nur solange Dasein ist, das heißt die ontische Möglichkeit von Seinsverständnis, ‘gibt es’ Sein.” (However, only as long as Da-sein is, that is, as long as there is the ontic possibility of an understanding of being, “it gives” [gibt es] being.)15 At the risk of oversimplifying, it would be necessary to conclude that the difference (soon called ontological) between beings and being passes between that which is and that which it gives.
The second sentence of the passage from §44 extends to truth the privilege accorded to being: truth only is with a restriction, because it lines up equiprimordially with being, which itself is not, either; they only “are” with the restriction of quotation marks. Thus es gibt intervenes in the place and locus of is when the question is no longer that of a being, even a privileged one, but instead of being or of that which demands being’s phenomenalization: first the world, then, as here, truth. Yet a certain ambiguity remains, especially seeing as this text still avails itself of typographical means in order to maintain that being “is,” that truth is, and that the one and the other both “are.” However, this ambiguity is corrected by an earlier statement from the same §44: “Wahrheit ‘gibt es’ nur, sofern und solange Dasein ist.” (“It gives” [“gibt es”] truth only insofar as Da-sein is and as long as it is.)16 Thus, only the being (par excellence) with the rank of Dasein really is, whereas truth demands another procedure, an es gibt. To which one could doubtless add several quick indications concerning time. For the second section of the published part ends up putting into question just as clearly whether time can be, if not in its common and metaphysical sense: “Dabei blieb noch völlig unbestimmt, in welchem Sinne die ausgesprochene öffentliche Zeit ‘ist,’ ob sie üperhaupt als seiend ansgesprochen werden kann.” (We did not determine at all in what sense the public time expressed “is,” or whether it can be addressed as being at all.)17 As a matter of fact, it is necessary that time first find itself reduced (metaphysically) to presence, and then that presence itself be reduced to the present, and the present, in turn, to the instant, which is itself further supposed to be a point (Aristotle, Hegel), in order that time might come back to be in the strict sense, in this case in the sense of metaphysics. Inversely, a correct phenomenological analysis of time according to the original temporality of Dasein will speak solely of “die Zeit [. . .], die ‘es gibt’ [of time, that ‘it gives’].”18
Let us conclude provisionally: while one should obviously not read Sein und Zeit imprudently as anticipating Zeit und Sein, one can and even must recognize in them, among other common decisions, the following two: first, that being is no more than time is, because only a being can and must be; and second, that that which is not nevertheless gives itself—in other words, it phenomenalizes itself according to the es gibt. We find, then, a phenomenality of the es gibt (and, in this sense, of givenness, Gegebenheit), which approaches time and being in their interference with one another, whereas the phenomenality of is/ist describes only Dasein’s involvement with other beings, whose being Dasein puts into play.
Certainly, this conclusion may seem surprising. First, because the step back outside of metaphysics and its obstruction of the Seinsfrage would demand, paradoxically, the renunciation of the phenomenology of being, of the verb is/ist/einai, in order to attain a phenomenology that is, in fact, resolutely non-ontological (although not meontological), at least in the sense of the metaphysical ontologia. Next, the conclusion surprises because a preliminary question asserts itself: Does this step back from (or out in front of) is/ist/einai, and thus to the side of (or beyond) beings, arise from the possibilities of the phenomenological method as such—provided that this as such here retains any meaning? In outlining a shift toward the es gibt, does Sein und Zeit proceed simply by force, or does it in fact open out a possibility already implicitly inscribed within phenomenology? Asked another way, does its usage of es gibt/it gives remain without precedent and indeterminate, or does it achieve a previously glimpsed possibility of acceding to Gegebenheit?
It seems, in fact, that one might trace the usages of es gibt in Sein und Zeit back to three problematics nearly contemporary with Gegebenheit: (a) The thesis in §16 that beings “can only be encountered and discovered and show themselves in their being only for as much as ‘it gives’ the world [sofern es Welt ‘gibt’],” such that one must first ask, “But how does ‘it give’ the world? [wie ‘gibt es’ Welt?],”19 can be read as the taking up of one of Emil Lask’s central theses: “Das Gegebene ist dabei nicht bloß das Sinnliche, sondern die ganze ursprüngliche Welt überhaupt, woran sich die kontemplative Formenwelt aufbaut. [. . .] Ursprünglich gibt es gar nicht ‘Gegenstände,’ sondern nur jenes Etwas, das kategorial gefaßt Gegenstand wird.” (The given, therefore, is not the mere sensory, but the most original, complete world in general, upon which the intellectual world of forms is erected. [. . .] Originarily it does not give “objects,” but only a something which, once grasped categorically, becomes an object.)20 The original character of the Gegebene far surpasses the anteriority of the material and the sensory content (das Sinnliche), but results in nothing less than the world itself. And what we mean by the world consists precisely not in objects—for they do not compose the world, but instead become possible on its basis, which is always already given. (b) As for the passage from §2, which maintains that all the significations of the being (l’étant) find themselves dominated by the jurisdiction of es gibt (“Aber ‘seiend’ nennen wir vieles und in verschiedenem Sinne. [. . .] Sein liegt im Daß- und Sosein, in Realität, Vorhandenheit, Bestand, Geltung, Dasein, im ‘es gibt.’ An welchem Seienden soll der Sinn von Sein abgelesen werden [. . .]?”),21 it takes on its full force if one reads it alongside what Rickert thematized under the title of the “universal form of givenness or factuality, die allgemeine Form der Gegebenheit oder Tatsächlichkeit.”22 He intended in this way to define within factuality itself a category, completely irreducible to the categories that define the matter or substance of the given, because it designates the very fact that the given finds itself given, and given in its individuality. For, Rickert insists, givenness, as mode of the given, rightfully demands its own category: “the category of givenness or factuality [die Kategorie der Gegebenheit oder Tatsächlichkeit].”23 According to such a category, givenness indeed already determines every signification of beings, which also means that it precedes it. (c) There remain divisions 43–44, which, far from subsuming all ontico-ontological significations under the es gibt, have recourse to it only for being, truth, the world, and time, as opposed to all particular beings, including Dasein. Yet even this radical distinction finds a precedent in Natorp. Indeed, if he admits givens, Natorp excludes the I itself from all givenness: “Datum hieße Problem; Problem aber ist das reine Ich eben nicht. Es ist Prinzip; ein Prinzip aber ist niemals ‘gegeben,’ sondern, je radikaler, um so ferner allem Gegebenen. ‘Gegeben’ würde überdies heißen ‘Einem gegeben,’ das aber hieße wiederum: Einem bewußt. Das Bewußt-sein ist im Begriff des Gegebenen also schon vorausgesetzt.” (Given signifies problem; but the pure I is not a problem. It is a principle; now, a principle is never “given,” but it is all the more radical in proportion to its remoteness from any given. Furthermore, “given” would mean “given to someone,” which in turn would mean “conscious for someone.” The conscious being thus finds itself presupposed in the concept of the given.)24 Just as, in Sein und Zeit, Dasein above all does not arise from es gibt, for Natorp, the I is exempt from it. Of course, the difference between them is, for that, all the more visible: for Natorp, given signifies given as an object to consciousness, whereas for Heidegger, the object present-at-hand (vorhanden) conceals the innerworldly es gibt within itself. Nonetheless, it remains that Natorp’s question is taken up by Heidegger, if only to find itself radically overturned, just as Dasein overturns the I.25
From this short overview, we can at least conclude that Heidegger in Sein und Zeit could by no means be unaware of the fact that his uses of es gibt took place within a strategic debate among his contemporaries about the status, situation, and breadth of Gegebenheit. All share one basic question: Should one define objects or beings? Should one start with an ontology or with a theory of the object? But this basic question is formulated by each of them against the background of a presupposition that remained implicit, even though it had seeped into all of the debates: Can one distinguish between objects and beings without first relating them to the givenness in them? No one saw or explained this better than Husserl, whose work was at the same time both conclusive for the neo-Kantian debate and inaugural of a new dispute with Heidegger.
In Die Idee der Phänomenologie (The Idea of Phenomenology), the very text in which, in 1907, he for the first time and definitively asserts the operation of the reduction, Husserl puts the reduction to work for the sake of givenness. “Überall ist die Gegebenheit, mag sich in ihr bloß Vorgestelltes oder wahrhaft Seiendes, Reales oder Ideales, Mögliches oder Unmögliches bekunden, eine Gegebenheit im Erkenntnisphänomen, im Phänomen eines Denkens im weitesten Wortsinn.” (Givenness is everywhere, whether it is announced by what is merely represented or by a true being, what is real or what is ideal, what is possible or what is impossible, [this givenness] is a givenness within a phenomenon of cognition, in the phenomenon of thought, in the widest sense of the term.)26 Indeed, if “absolute givenness is the ultimate term [absolute Gegebenheit ist ein Letztes],”27 it is the direct result of the reduction: “Erst durch eine Reduktion, die wir auch schon phänomenologische Reduktion nennen wollen, gewinne ich eine absolute Gegebenheit, die nichts von Transzendenz mehr bietet.” (Only through a reduction, the same one we have already called phenomenological reduction, do I attain an absolute givenness which no longer owes anything to transcendence.)28 We can’t really distinguish Husserl from Natorp, Rickert, or Lask by his recourse to givenness, which they all have in common. He surpasses them by the condition he places on it—the operation of the reduction—which alone justifies the irreducibility of the given, truly irreducible because in fact resulting from the reduction. Given always signifies for Husserl given to cognition, to the I beneath the figure of a phenomenon, that is to say, according to the “wonderful” noetico-noematic “correlation [wunderbaren Korrelation]”29 between the lived experiences of consciousness and the intentional object. This does not imply, as it does for Natorp, that the I simply remains the principle, outside of givenness, of a given comprehended as a simple fact, because the I itself has a role in the givenness in the consciousness of the temporal flux and its variations. Nor does this characterize givenness as an unjustified category of factuality, as in Rickert, because phenomena that are neither factual nor effectual also give themselves—for example, logical idealities. Nor, finally, does this concern only the world, as for Lask, because even formal impossibilities, which are part of the world, may find themselves given.
Indeed, the very text that concluded with the fundamental declaration, “Überall ist die Gegebenheit [. . .] eine Gegebenheit im Erkenntnisphänomen [Everywhere givenness ( . . . ) is a givenness within a phenomenon of cognition (knowledge)],” develops a long list of the “different modes of authentic givenness”; it includes nearly all possible phenomena in givenness, among which are precisely those excluded by Natorp, Rickert, or Lask. Indeed, Husserl enumerates (a) “the givenness of the cogitatio,” and (b) “the givenness of the cogitatio preserved in a fresh recollection”—thus, the I (against Natorp). Next, (c) “the givenness of the unity of appearance enduring in the phenomenal flux,” (d) “the givenness of change itself,” (e) “the givenness of things to the ‘outer’ sense,” and (f) the givenness of various perceptions of the imagination and of memory. Overall, one could say that facts and beings of the world are at issue. But, Husserl adds, “naturally also [natürlich auch],” we must include in Gegebenheit (g) “logical givenness”—namely, “the givenness of universals, of predicates,” and so on; and (h) therefore, in the end, even “the givenness of a non-sense, of a contradiction, of a nothing, etc. [auch die Gegebenheit eines Widersinns, eines Widerspruchs, eines Nichtseins usw.].”30 Now, these last figures of givenness do not belong to the world (as Lask would have it), nor do they come under the category of factuality (following Rickert), nor do they constitute a fact of experience (as for Natorp). By what right, then, do non-sense, contradiction, and nothingness (or even the impossible) take a place within Gegebenheit? In effect, givenness becomes for Husserl universal exactly inasmuch as the reduction universally exercises its jurisdiction.
But from whence does it come that the things that do not figure as exceptions, specifically the impossible, non-sense, contradiction, and misunderstanding, still merit the title of given and also arise from givenness, since they exceed the limits of beings? Must one conclude that Gegebenheit extends beyond Seiendheit, beyond the being as the possible of metaphysics?
Husserl’s decision becomes intelligible only by reference to a problem that was formulated but left open-ended by Bolzano in §67 of his Wissenschaftslehre, which is symptomatically titled “Es gibt auch gegenstandlose Vorstellungen [There Are (It Gives) also Objectless Ideas].” Bolzano, as we know, postulates that every representation has an object, a something, that it represents, “even the representation [thought] of nothing [auch der Gedanke Nichts einen Stoff hat].”31 He proposes at least three examples: first, contradiction (a round square) and non-sense (green virtue), two unthinkable formal impossibilities; next, an impossibility of fact, strictly empirical, but not formally unthinkable (a mountain of gold). We note right away two determining points. (a) These three examples correspond to the ultimate extensions of givenness in Husserl. (b) In order to qualify these representations without objects, and which therefore surpass the limits of beingness, Bolzano has recourse to es gibt just as Husserl does to Gegebenheit. Properly speaking, one cannot say that “for Bolzano [. . .] ‘nothing’ doesn’t ‘exist’ any less insofar as it is a representation,”32 precisely because neither being nor existing extends to it, only givenness (se donner/es gibt).
However, more so than through Bolzano and even Twardowski,33 the connection between givenness and representations without objects was established by Meinong. Indeed, his 1904 Theory of the Object (Gegenstandstheorie) expressed it in the form of a celebrated paradox, which states that “it gives objects, about which it is valid to affirm that such objects do not give themselves [es gibt Gegenstände, von denen gilt, daß es dergleichen Gegenstände nicht gibt].”34 Indeed, that which is not, either because it contradicts itself or because it has no signification, nonetheless remains a conceivable and conceived of object, even if only to find itself rejected as unreal, incomprehensible, or absurd: it remains an object exactly in that one must conceive it in order to recognize it precisely as not being. Thus even that which is not still comes under the object, since a theory, specifically, the theory of the object, has taken charge of it. Such an object is no longer defined by its being, nor even by its consistency (Bestand, bestehen) but by its givenness: “It does not give [es gibt] any object that, at least as a possibility, is not a potential object of knowledge. [. . .] Everything knowable is given [ist gegeben]—precisely to knowledge. Furthermore, insofar as all objects can be known, one can recognize without exception, whether they are or are not [mögen sie sein oder nicht sein], givenness [die Gegebenheit] as their most universal property.”35 Even the fact of withholding from at least possible knowledge by taking the status of object still implies no decision regarding the being of this object, or its possibility (its noncontradictory essence), or its position (its existence in the world), but requires only the minimum of givenness, of what es gibt assures. Above all one must not say that the object is in the mode of es gibt, because Gegebenheit dispenses it from being, to the point “that one might perhaps say that the pure object holds itself ‘beyond being and non-being’ [der reine Gegenstand stehe ‘jenseits von Sein und Nichtsein’]”; or that, insofar as given, it appears as “being outside of being [außerseiend].”36 Thus, there emerges a science that is more comprehensive than metaphysics, since the latter limits itself to the region of that which is or can be (the possible), by excluding the impossible. As universal as it may be, the ontologia of metaphysica generalis still remains an “a posteriori science, which retains from the given for its research only that which can fall into line under the gaze of an empirical knowledge, which is to say, the whole of effectivity [eine aposteriorische, die vom Gegebenen so viel in Untersuchung zieht, als für empirisches Erkennen eben in Betracht kommen kann, die gesamte Wirklichkeit].” Another science, the theory of the object, precedes it and comprehends it, insofar as it confirms itself as truly “an a priori science, which takes into account all the given [die alles Gegebene betrifft].”37
Thus we must recognize in Meinong not only the merit of his having pushed the problem introduced by Bolzano to its paradoxical consequences, but above all his having neatly erected Gegebenheit as a more powerful and more comprehensive authority than being, at least as being is understood by the ontologia of metaphysics. Even that which is not—which is to say, what cannot be, because it does not accede to possibility—can be thought in the mode of the object, and thus, as such, something given. From Bolzano to Meinong, through what we roughly term neo-Kantianism, a gap thus opens between being and object. By saying es gibt where one cannot say it is, this gap allows for a step back (Schritt zurück), outside of being, and perhaps outside of metaphysics as well.
So the question no longer involves deciding whether or not givenness (Gegebenheit, es gibt) has the rank of a philosophical concept: the agreement of an entire tradition established it as one, such that Husserl, and also Heidegger, were able simply to inherit it.38 But now a different, and doubtless more delicate, question arises: how should we interpret the gap that givenness opens up between itself and the being (l’étant) in the metaphysical sense? Kant clearly showed that beyond the metaphysical division (Suarez, Wolff) between the possible (the being, ens), and the impossible (nothingness, nihil), there had to be “a still higher [concept], and this is the concept of an object in general [Gegenstand überhaupt], taken problematically, without its having been decided whether it is something or nothing [ob es etwas oder nichts ist].”39 But even Kant himself did not, in the end, decide on the ontological status (or lack thereof) of this “object in general.” So what answers were offered to this question? Natorp, closest to Kant, tends to apply the given to all phenomena. Rickert and, in a sense, Lask, extend the given toward a transcendental determination (factuality, or the world). Twardowski and Meinong, and then Husserl, tend, in rather similar ways, to identify the object and the given, which are themselves set up as a universal determination of phenomenality.
But this very expansion does not go far before it gives rise to a new difficulty. This is what it looks like in Husserl. When he claims to describe “the cardinal and principal difference between the domains of consciousness and reality [die prinzipielle Unterschiedenheit der Seinsweisen, die kardinalste, die es überhaupt gibt, die zwischen Bewußtein und Realität],” he thinks and defines it once again inside of the one and only givenness, speaking of “a principal difference in the mode of givenness [ein prinzipieller Unterschied der Gegebenheitsart].”40 If even this differentiation leaves givenness undifferentiated, what specificity does it retain? And above all how is this universal undertaking reconciled with the caesura that the reduction implies? A certain ambiguity inevitably threatens the Husserlian Gegebenheit: if every object is based on the given, as at least all possible objects, in fact, are, then givenness would retain an intrinsic link with beings and would still remain a mode of being (Seinsweise) among others. The very universalization of Gegebenheit, at least as Husserl has achieved it, as a universalization of objectity (Gegenständlichkeit), loses its radicality and weakens its breakthrough beyond being, außerseiend.41
By contrast, the strategic reversal of Sein und Zeit becomes evident. It is Heidegger’s purpose to “destroy” the ontologia of metaphysics, which amounts to freeing himself from all ontology, above all from the ontology of the object (in other words, from the formal ontology of Husserl). This destruction is conducted by recourse to the existential analytic, where the mode of being of Dasein finds itself described, at first, at least, in strict opposition to the mode of being of objects and other innerworldly beings. In this sense, Dasein is not, at least in the sense that innerworldly beings are—and precisely are no longer, once anxiety opens Dasein to itself in the Nichts. How can we formulate clearly this step back outside the mode of being of innerworldly beings and of objects? By an extremely violent reversal, if one refers to givenness as a modality of objects (according to Bolzano, Twardowski, Natorp, Meinong, Husserl). For Sein und Zeit, in fact, es gibt not only no longer qualifies the object (whether impossible or general), but precisely all that which is no longer, in the sense of ontologia and of formal ontology, because its mode of being differs ontologically from all the other beings—Dasein, or rather all that which puts into operation its ontico-ontological privilege: truth, the world, time, and being. Heidegger thus turns the es gibt against the object, while his predecessors had invoked it in order to separate the object from (possible) beings. But they all, at least, had already agreed that givenness marks a border, which, in one way or another, puts the beingness of beings into question.
Thus givenness certainly has the status of a concept, because we can sketch its conceptual history. It does not pass only through Husserl and Heidegger, but also through all of neo-Kantianism, beginning with Bolzano’s taking up of a question already sketched out by Kant. From Wissenschaftslehre, givenness passed, through Erkenntnistheorie and Gegenstandstheorie, to phenomenology and to the Seinsfrage. The question remains, today, to know if, in the final analysis, givenness might not arise from itself and from nothing else—not even from being or the Ereignis.