Write a 2,500 word response on one of the following topics. You must discuss at least two pieces of
secondary literature in your answer. Suggested pieces are listed below each topic.
Please follow these requirements:
• Do not write your name on the pages of your essay. Only write your name on the essay
cover sheet. Please do put your SID in the footer or header of your essay.
• Use 12 point font, 1.5-line spacing, and “normal” margins (between 2 and 3 cm)
• Make sure you follow a recognised referencing style consistently. Either footnotes or in-text
referencing are fine. Endnotes are discouraged.
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1. Explain how “Dasein’s openness to the world is constituted existentially by the attunement of
disposedness [or state-of-mind, Befindlichkeit].” (176) What are the consequences of the
phenomena of disposedness and mood for knowing/cognition (Erkennen), especially the scientific
mode of inquiry? Do you agree with Heidegger’s account of disposedness and mood?
Mulhall, Stephen, ‘Can There Be an Epistemology of Moods?’, Royal Institute of Philosophy
Supplements, 41 (1996), 191–210
Ratcliffe, Matthew, ‘Heidegger’s Attunement and the Neuropsychology of Emotion’,
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 1 (2002), 287–312
2. Why does Heidegger think that “interpretation is never a presuppositionless apprehending of
something presenting to us” (191). Is he right? Why or why not? What consequences does this have
for how we carry out interpretation?
Hoy, David Couzens, ‘Heidegger and the Hermeneutic Turn’, in The Cambridge Companion to
Heidegger, ed. by Charles B. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 170–
194 [also in the 2nd edition from 2004]
Lafont, Cristina, ‘Hermeneutics’, in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and
Mark A. Wrathall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 265–284
3. What is Heidegger’s stance towards the traditional conception of truth as agreement? How does
primordial truth relate to truth in this traditional sense? Do you agree with Heidegger’s account of
truth? Why or why not?
Wrathall, Mark A., ‘Heidegger and Truth as Correspondence’, International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, 7 (1999), 69–88
Cerbone, David R., ‘Realism and Truth’, in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. by Hubert L. Dreyfus
and Mark A. Wrathall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 248–264
4. Heidegger says that “Dasein is dying as long as it exists” (295). In what sense is death
constitutive of Dasein? Do you agree with Heidegger’s view? Why or why not?
*Blattner, William D., ‘The Concept of Death in Being and Time’, Man and World, 27 (1994), 49-
70
*Malpas, Jeff, ‘Death and the End of Life’, in Heidegger and the Thinking of Place: Explorations in
the Topology of Being (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 2012), pp. 177–198
5. What does it mean for Dasein to be authentically? What, if any, are the implications of the idea of
authenticity for ethics (conceptions of how we should act, what good and bad action consists in)?
Give reasons for you answer.
*Kellner, Douglas, ‘Authenticity and Heidegger Challenge to Ethical Theory’, Martin Heidegger:
Critical Assessments, vol. 4 ed. Christopher Mcann (London: Routledge, 1992), 198-213
*Guignon, Charles B., ‘Heidegger’s “Authenticity” Revisited’, The Review of Metaphysics 38:2
(1984), 321-339
6. Heidegger writes that “Temporalizing does not signify that ecstases come in a ‘succession’. The
future is not later than having been, and having been is not earlier than the Present.’ (401) Explain
what ecstatic temporality is. Why does Heidegger think that “the ordinary conception of time” as
the successive ordering of the earlier and later is “derivative” of ecstatic temporality (374)? Is he
right on the latter point? Why or why not?
Blattner, William, ‘Temporality’, in A Companion to Heidegger, ed. by Hubert L. Dreyfus and
Mark A. Wrathall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), pp. 311–324
Dostal, Robert J., ‘Time and Phenomenology in Husserl and Heidegger’, in The Cambridge
Companion to Heidegger, ed. by Charles B. Guignon, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993), pp. 141-169 [also in the 2nd edition from 2004]
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