The Self and Its Witness; On Heidegger's Being and Time

When Heidegger argues in and Time that Being-with [Mitsein] is constitutive for Dasein, he breaks with a tradition that begins its inquiry concerning man by posing an isolated subject. with Heidegger writes, belongs to the of Dasein, which is an issue for Dasein in its very Being (BT, 161).1 The existential analytic does not first pose the individual Dasein as given and then proceed to construct its relation to others and to the surrounding world. On the contrary, it seeks to define the constitution of the self within the simple and multifold relation to Others, to things and to oneself2 as this relation is founded in, but also determines, a comprehension of Being. And yet if Heidegger succeeds in revealing through his analysis of Mitsein one limit of metaphysical thought about the subject, he seems unwilling or unable to work at this limit in a sustained manner; his analysis of Dasein in and Time leads back insistently to the solitary self. In the light of Heidegger's agonistic relation with Nietzsche and his identification with Hdlderlin (relations that I have sought to explore in the study from which this essay is extracted3), this evasion of the question of the Other may be seen to

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