There is a further aspect to the project whereby Dasein enters into the space of reasons through the possibilizing of factic grounds. Heidegger terms such a project “resoluteness” (Entschlossenheit), defined as “the self-projection upon one’s ownmost being-guilty” (343/297). To “hear” the call of con-science “correctly is . . . tantamount to having an understanding of oneself in one’s ownmost potentiality for being” (333/287)—that is, to be guilty, to take over being-a-ground. With the help of “On the Essence of Ground” we have understood resoluteness as sovereignty, as Dasein’s awareness of itself as being-possible, acting for the sake of what is best (agathon). But what be-longs to such an ability-to-be? On the one hand, I cannot improve on the answer that John Haugeland has provided in terms of his notion of “exis-tential commitment.” To be resolved is to take responsibility for the stan-dards inherent in the practices in which I am engaged; only so is it possible for there to be practices rather than mere occurrences. For instance, if some-thing can be a rook only because there is a practice, chess, in which it counts as such a thing, the idea of “counting” itself depends on my commitment to the game, without which the standards that determine success or failure might have normative authority but would lack normative force. This is not to say that, lacking my commitment, there could be no rooks—institutions and practices are social, after all—but neither do these things exist apart from all first-person commitment.47
On the other hand, this notion of commitment does not tell the whole story, for it does not reflect the specifically discursive aspect that, for Hei-degger, belongs to taking over being-a-ground. To be responsible is to be answerable (verantwortlich) (334/288), and to be answerable for something is to be accountable for it, that is, to be prepared to give an account of oneself. Ad-umbrated here is a necessary connection between resoluteness—as the pos-sibilizing of factic grounds into normative reasons—and the practice of giv-ing reasons. To say that somethgiv-ing becomes a reason for me is to say that it speaks for something else, justifies it; and such a thing makes sense only within the constitutive rules of a practice of giving reasons. Thus, whatever be the particular project on which I resolve—whatever it is to which I commit ontically—I always at the same time commit myself to accountability as giving an account (ratio reddende). The practice of giving reasons has its ori-gin in the call of conscience; it is the “discourse” of an authentic response to the call.
However, this claim appears to run afoul of the fact that Heidegger de-fines authentic discourse as “reticence,” not “giving reasons” (343/298). On the received view, authentic Dasein does not try to justify itself by giving an Conscience and Reason 59
account of what it is doing; rather, it goes silently about the world-historical business upon which it has resolved in its decisionistic way. Now it would be possible to undermine the received view drawing solely upon Being and Time—reticence is compatible with the discursive project of giving an ac-count to oneself and, thereby, being prepared to acac-count for oneself to oth-ers—but that would still leave a central question unanswered: if Heidegger meant us to understand that resoluteness entails the practice of giving rea-sons, why didn’t he say so? The answer is that he did say so, only not in Being and Time. To establish a specific textual connection between authentic dis-course and the project of reason-giving we must return to the essay “On the Essence of Ground.”
“To what extent does there lie in transcendence the intrinsic possibility of something like ground [Grund; reason] in general” (EG, 125)? Though
“On the Essence of Ground” does not discuss conscience explicitly, in an-swering this question it suggests how resoluteness entails the practice of giv-ing reasons. Identifygiv-ing transcendence with a notion of freedom that is on-tologically more original than that drawn from the concept of causality, Heidegger notes that prior to all comportment freedom is the condition for being gripped by the normative. Transcendence means that human beings
“can be obligated to themselves, i.e., be free selves.” And this, in turn, makes possible “something binding, indeed obligation in general” (EG, 126). Hence freedom—what Being and Time calls “taking over being-a-ground”—is the
“origin of ground in general. Freedom is freedom for ground” (EG, 127).
In unpacking what this latter claim means, Heidegger shows us where the project of reason-giving arises.
There are three ways that “in grounding, freedom gives and takes ground”
(EG, 127), and each of these ways corresponds to one aspect of the care struc-ture. First, there is grounding as “taking up a basis” (Bodennehmen) within be-ings, a kind of “belonging to beings” whereby Dasein is “thoroughly attuned by them” (EG, 128). This factic grounding corresponds to care as disposition.
Second, there is grounding as “establishing” (Stiften), which “is nothing other than the projection of the ‘for-the-sake-of,’” that is, Dasein’s understanding.
Formally conceived as taking over being-a-ground, understanding opens up the space of reasons through orientation toward the normative, the agathon, seeing in light of what is “best.” Neither form of grounding is itself “a com-portment toward beings,” but together they “make intentionality possible transcendentally in such a way that . . . they co-temporalize a third manner of grounding: grounding as the grounding of something [Begründen].” It is this form of grounding, Heidegger insists, that “makes possible the manifestation of beings in themselves, the possibility of ontic truth” (EG, 129).
Now as we would expect, this third form of grounding belongs to dis-course as the remaining moment of the care structure. First, Heidegger tells 60 Steven Crowell
us that the “originary” sense of Begründen means “making possible the why-question in general” (EG, 129). Thanks to the “excess of possibility” that is given in the “projection of world” (i.e., the excess, grounded in the for-the-sake-of as agathon, that constitutes world as a normative totality of signifi-cance and brings entities “more in being” by holding them to constitutive standards), “the ‘why’ question springs forth” in relation to those beings
“that press around us as we find ourselves” (EG, 130). If, in Being and Time, Heidegger defined authentic discourse as reticence—the silencing of the everyday way things are talked about so that the call of conscience can be heard—he now makes plain that answering the call involves discourse as Be-gründen, answering for oneself and for things. In the face of the collapse of the one-self, Dasein confronts the question “Why this way and not other-wise?” (EG, 130), and thereby becomes accountable.
As Heidegger explains, the “ontological ground of beings” lies in our
“understanding of being,” which provides “the most antecedent answer” to the why-question (EG, 130). But an answer to the why-question is a reason.
“Because such Begründen prevails transcendentally from the outset through-out all becoming-manifest of beings (ontic truth), all ontic discovery and disclosing must account [ausweisen] for itself ” (EG, 130; my emphasis). To ac-count, in this sense, is to give reasons: “What occurs is the referral [An-führung] to a being that then makes itself known, for example, as ‘cause’ or as the ‘motivational grounds’ (motive) for an already manifest nexus of be-ings”—a referral that is “demanded” by the “what-being and how-being of the relevant beings” (EG, 130).48And only because there is such a demand can Dasein “in its factical accounting and justifications, cast ‘reasons’ aside, suppress any demand for them, pervert them, cover them over” (EG, 131).
Lest there be any doubt about the matter, Heidegger terms the transcenden-tal answering, which makes this ontic reason-giving possible,“legitimation”
(Rechtgebung) (EG, 132). Conscience, then, calls one to take over being-a-ground, to answer for oneself, to legitimate by giving grounds, that is, rea-sons. Hence Heidegger concludes his essay by bringing these two elements of conscience (hearing and answering) together in relation to the regret-tably undeveloped, but essential, reference to the one to whom reasons are fi-nally given and without whom the whole thing makes no sense:“And only being able to listen into the distance”—that is, vernehmen as registering the call—“awakens Dasein as a self to the answer of the other Dasein, with whom it can surrender its I-ness”—that is, to whom it must account for it-self—“so as to attain an authentic self ” (EG, 135).
Needless to say, all this calls for more scrutiny. Even if the textual evidence of a connection between conscience and reason is sufficiently persuasive, it would still be necessary to examine more closely the connection between understanding (the for-the-sake-of as agathon, normativity) and conscience Conscience and Reason 61
both as hearing the call and as giving reasons. And it would be necessary to show how these two moments of conscience remain decisive in Heidegger’s later writings, when he inquires into the two aspects of reason—reason as Vernehmen, hearing, taking to heart, heißen, and nous, on the one hand; and reason as ratio reddende, account-giving, legitimation, and logos on the other.
But it is already something to have shown that Being and Time retains an im-portant place for reason, that conscience underlies both our responsiveness to reasons and our practice of giving them.49
62 Steven Crowell
according to Heidegger in Being and Time (Sein und Zeit), the primary locus of truth is not an assertion or judgment and its essence does not con-sist in the correctness of an assertion or judgment, that is, its correspondence with an object. Heidegger argues that truth in the most original sense of the word is, instead, the disclosedness of being-here and, as such, the “onto-logical condition of the possibility” of the truth and falsity of assertions.1 The locution “condition of the possibility of . . . ,” recurring throughout Being and Time,2suggests that this “original phenomenon of the truth” has a structural role akin to that of transcendental truth in Kant’s theoretical phi-losophy. This kinship is not surprising, since, as we now know from Heideg-ger’s lectures and other writings shortly before and after the composition of the final draft of Being and Time, his thinking at this time takes a decidedly Kantian turn, lamented by some, applauded by others.3
Yet one good turn deserves another, and in Contributions to Philosophy (From Enowning) (Beiträge zur Philosophie [Vom Ereignis] ) Heidegger tells us that fundamental ontology was merely “transitional,” its transcendental path
“provisional,” and its account of truth “insufficient.”4 Beginning in 1930, Heidegger turns from transcendental truth and the truth of being-here to
“the truth of being” and “the truth that prevails,” a change in focus that per-sists for the better part of the next three decades. This change in focus, moreover, dominates Heidegger’s work during this period. In 1938 he him-self alerts his readers to nine different addresses and writings composed since 1930 on the question of truth. Nor does this emphasis on the question of truth fade from his writings and addresses in the years just before, during,
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