On October 24, 2024, Pope Francis released his last encyclical wherein he refers to Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), the author of Being and Time (1927). The books' 1927 edition was edited by the author of On the Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Internal Time (1928), Edmund Husserl (1859-1938) who established phenomenology as the study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.
The opening paragraph of Heidegger's book reads: 'For manifestly you have long been aware of what you mean when you use the expression "being". We, however, who used to think we understood it, have now become perplexed."
It reads: "Do we in our time have an answer to the question of what we really mean by the word 'being' ? Not at all. So it is fitting that we should raise anew the question of the meaning of Being. But are we nowadays even perplexed at our inability to understand the expression 'Being'? Not at all. So first of all we must reawaken an understanding for the meaning of this question. Our aim in the following treatise is to work out the question of the meaning of Being and to do so concretely. Our provisional aim is the Interpretation of time as the possible horizon for any understanding whatsoever of Being."
Heidegger writes: "it will not be possible to interpret that ontology adequately until the question of Being has been clarified and answered and taken as a clue-at least, if we are to have regard for the soil from which the basic ontological concepts developed, and if we are to see whether the categories have been demonstrated in a way that is appropriate and complete. We shall therefore carry the discussion of these presuppositions only to the point at which the necessity for restating the question about the meaning of Being become plain. There are three such presuppositions."
1 . First, it has been maintained that 'Being' is the 'most universal' concept....An understanding of Being is already included in conceiving anything which one apprehends as an entity.'But the 'universality' of 'Being' is not that of a class or genus. The term 'Being' does not define that realm of entities which is uppermost when these are Articulated conceptually according to genus and species...The 'universality' of Being 'transcends' any universality of genus. In medieval ontology 'Being' is designated as a 'transcendens'.
Drawing on Plato and Aristotle, Heidegger recalled how Hegel defined 'Being' as the 'indeterminate immediate' and makes this definition basic for all the further categorical explications of his 'logic'.
2. Secondly, it is maintained that the concept of 'Being' is indefinable. This is deduced from its supreme universality, and rightly so...'Being' cannot indeed be conceived as an entity;....nor can it acquire such a character as to have the term "entity" applied to it. "Being" cannot be derived from higher concepts by definition, nor can it be presented through lower ones. But does this imply that 'Being' no longer offers a problem? Not at all. We can infer only that 'Being' cannot have the character of an entity. Thus we cannot apply to Being the concept of 'definition' as presented in traditional logic, which itself has its foundations in ancient ontology and which, within certain limits, provides a quite justifiable way of' defining "entities". The indefinability of Being does not eliminate the question of its meaning; it demands that we look that question in the face.
3· Thirdly, it is held that 'Being' is of all concepts the one that is self evident. Whenever one cognizes anything or makes an assertion, whenever one comports oneself towards entities, even towards oneself, 1 some use is made of 'Being'; and this expression is held to be intelligible 'without further ado', just as everyone understands "The sky is blue', 'I am merry', and the like. But here we have an average kind of intelligibility, which merely demonstrates that this is unintelligible. It makes manifest that in any way of comporting oneself towards entities as entities-even in any Being towards entities as entities-there lies a priori an enigma. The very fact that we already live in an understanding of Being and that the meaning of Being is still veiled in darkness proves that it is necessary in principle to raise this question again.
In his 590-page long Being and Time (1962 edition), Heidegger refers
to these three kinds of Being:1) availableness (‘readiness-to-hand’ or
‘handiness’); 2) occurrentness (‘presence-at-hand’ or ‘objective
presence’; and 3) existence, which is the kind of Being that
characterizes human existence or ‘Dasein’. These three are not meant as
an exhaustive list of the kinds of Being. He suggests other kinds of Being which includes: life, numbers, and perhaps nature. The works of
art also have a distinct kind of Being.
The relevant part of the Pope's encyclical reads: "For Heidegger, as interpreted by one contemporary thinker, philosophy does not begin with a simple concept or certainty, but with a shock:'Thought must be provoked before it begins to work with concepts or while it works with them. Without deep emotion, thought cannot begin. The first mental image would thus be goose bumps. What first stirs one to think and question is deep emotion. Philosophy always takes place in a basic mood (Stimmung)'."
-Byung-Chul Han, Heideggers Herz. Zum Begriff der Stimmung bei Martin Heidegger, München, 1996, p. 39 cited in https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/encyclicals/documents/20241024-enciclica-dilexit-nos.html#_ftn12
The German word Stimmung refers to something between mood and atmosphere. Being in a mood means a subjective feeling that separates oneself from others.
The encyclical concludes saying: "In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their
worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with
the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying,
consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system
that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs."
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