On the distortion of the concept of human in bioethics

Abstract

This article presents the hegemonic interpretation on the concept of “human” in Bioethics and represents this paradigm from Martin Heidegger's concept of Dasein (“there being”). In the first part, we discuss how the “oblivion of being” (Seinsvergessenheit) allows the emergence of the “subject,” who finds in modern reason and metaphysics fertile ground for dominance of the dual model, subject-object, on all contemporary phenomena, specifically bioethics. In the final part of the article, we reflect on the originality of Heidegger's interpretation of human experience as Dasein. We intend to broaden the debate and the bioethical perspective on the concept of “human” and, with it, a whole range of “successors” concepts completely submerged in layers of tradition.

Keywords:
Bioethics; Humans; Philosophy; Metaphysics

Resumo

Este ensaio apresenta a interpretação hegemônica de “humano” na bioética e representa esse paradigma a partir do conceito de Dasein (ser-aí), de Martin Heidegger. A primeira parte do artigo discute de que maneira o “esquecimento do ser” (Seinsvergessenheit) possibilita emergir o “sujeito”, que encontra na razão e na metafísica modernas solo fértil para o predomínio do modelo dual, sujeito-objeto, em todos os fenômenos, e em específico na bioética. Buscando outro encaminhamento, na parte final do trabalho reflete-se acerca da originalidade da interpretação heideggeriana sobre a experiência humana enquanto Dasein. Pretende-se potencializar debate que possa alargar o horizonte da bioética ao desencobrir o conceito de “humano” e, com ele, toda uma gama de conceitos herdeiros”, integralmente submersos em camadas calcificadas de tradição.

Palavras-chave:
Bioética; Humanos; Filosofia; Metafísica

Resumen

Este ensayo presenta la interpretación hegemónica del concepto de “humano” en la bioética y representa este paradigma con base en el concepto de Dasein (ser-ahí), de Martin Heidegger. En la primera parte del artículo, se discute la manera en que el “olvido del ser” (Seinsvergessenheit) permite que surja el “sujeto”, que encuentra en la razón y en la metafísica modernas un terreno fértil para el predominio del modelo dual, sujeto-objeto, en todos los fenómenos y, en concreto, en la bioética. Buscando otra dirección, en la parte final del trabajo, se reflexiona sobre la originalidad de la interpretación heideggeriana de la experiencia humana en cuanto Dasein. Se pretende potenciar un debate que pueda ampliar el horizonte de la bioética al desvelar el concepto de “humano” y, con él, toda una gama de conceptos “herederos”, completamente sumergidos en capas calcificadas de tradición.

Palabras clave:
Bioética; Humanos; Filosofía; Metafísica

According to Martin Heidegger, sometimes metaphysics has a pejorative sense, whose meaning only becomes clear in the context of all its philosophy. Metaphysics grounds an age in that, through a particular interpretation of beings and through a particular comprehension of truth, it provides that age with the ground of its essential shape. This ground comprehensively governs all decisions distinctive of the age¹. This metaphysical foundation is based on two pillars, not always explicit: a determined interpretation of the entity and a determined conception of truth. In other words, on the foundational basis of the “metaphysics of modernity,” on which all thought about relevant contemporary phenomena – such as science and technology – is developed, shines brightly a determination of the being of the entity, the representation, and is configured a concept of truth, the certainty of the statement of representation.

As a relevant phenomenon of modernity, there is in bioethics a determined interpretation of the entity, in particular of the human “being,” and a specific understanding of what the essence of truth is, in the certainty of the representation of the “model” of human being. Bioethics has its origin in pertinent considerations on the advancement of the so-called “biotechnologies,” and in line with modern ethics, was developed in terms of a “practical” or “applied” ethics based on and constituted by the metaphysics of modernity.

The entities to which this practical ethics refer, and more specifically bioethics, are given and fixed by an interpretation of modern reason about what is “human being,” “subject,” “object,” “other,” etc. In this same sense, a conception of truth, fidelity and meaning founds a determined representation of human being and, consequently, of value and excellence. And much has already been reflected on how these assumptions of modern reason underpin ethical thinking.

This article is based on the observation that we are experiencing an “ethical crisis.” However, beyond the understanding of the term as a collapse of values that once governed human experience, we understand that a very old horizon is at the origin of this “crisis”: the separation between what was originally understood as “human being” – and not only “living being” – and what is understood as “human,” only, since Renaissance humanism and the Cartesian cogito.

As the driving force of this crisis, and moving with ever more vigor within it, is what Heidegger called “oblivion of being” (Seinsvergessenheit) and “abandonment of being” (Seinsverlassenheit), above all due to the restriction established in the modern interpretation, which reduces the expression “human being” to only “human.” This shattered interpretation of “human,” unable to say the being of human in its radical depth, is implicated – or we could say “applied” – in a modern ethics that falls short of that conceived in its reference to ethos, from the originating thought up to Aristotle. Hence the proliferation of ethics and normative committees of all kinds, in the face of the impotence of the established representation of human being, which affects bioethics itself.

More than ever, there is a pertinent invitation to question the “founding pillars” of modern metaphysics – “interpretation of the entity” and “essence of truth” – as beacons of modern reason, guiding the thinking that navigates the turbulent waters of contemporary science and technology, to name just a few of their developments. This essay focuses on reflecting on aspects of the shattered interpretation of human being – the “entity” or “being” that we all are – as hegemonically conceived in the field of bioethics. In the wake of this goal – that is, to indicate mistakes in the interpretation of the human “being” as just “human” –, we intend to provide elements for a new interpretation of “human,” based on the concept of Dasein (being there) in Martin Heidegger's philosophy.

To highlight the questionable assumptions of this pillar of bioethics, we seek to undertake what Heidegger calls “reflection”: courage to put up for question the truth of one's own presuppositions and the space of the one's own goals¹. The reader is therefore invited to reflect on the most complete expression of our reality: “human being.” But this merits an important warning: reflection should not be confused with paralysis and passive contemplation. Meditative thinking is not to be confused with mere human machination; it is beyond instrumentalized reflection.

And this is only possible because, even though the perspective of human “being” contaminated by technoscience is dominant today, there is still the possibility of a recognition, of a call from conscience, of an appeal from ethos. A reminder of the home of the human “being” who, by listening to such a call (Ruf), makes everything “re-versible,” in the sense of returning to the center, to the home of man, to ethos, from where the true ethics that we need so much can shine.

The subject-object misery

“Reason” (meaning both the Greek noûs, intelligence, and logos, language), through its pseudo-foundation on a thinking, speaking and acting subject, acquires its “modern” credential and henceforth governs all human relations, whether of human beings with themselves, with other humans or with things. Everything is now regulated under the aegis of the “human,” removed from what according to Heidegger would be their “home”: the ethos.

McNeill explains that the ethos must be understood temporally as a way of Being, yet such dwelling must be understood, on the one hand, in terms of our stance and conduct in the moment of action – the way in which we are held and hold ourselves, and thus “dwell,” in the presence of the moment². In the “abandonment of being” (Seinsverlassenheit), an expression used by Heidegger to refer to the omission of the reflection about “being” (Sein) in Western philosophy, what is called “subject-object relationship” prevails. This disposition was not only a great impulse for modern science, emerging at the same time, but a watershed for the human being, henceforth considered only in its “human, too human” aspect, based on the body, where a “mind” is seated, and from where, as a “subject,” he is able to think, speak and act, always in relation to objects, that is, to the world and intramundane beings:

The arrival of the subject, for Heidegger, does not result from a mutation in the essence of man as a rational animal, but from a mutation in the essence of truth. It is not as though man one fine day decides to become a subject. Descartes, searching for the subjectum – that is, the thing that “bears” its own qualities (the word “subject” means “support”), the most stable and solid subjectum, the one most constantly present, but above all the truest, most certain one – situates it not within man (who is always taken to be a composite), but in the “I,” the soul, reason, thought, which are all equivalent terms. It is truth defined in terms of a certainty for conscience (and no longer in terms of the eidos, energeia or actualitas) that demands a “subject” in which the adequation of the evidence can be grasped in the infallible self-presence of the instant³.

Through the guiding thread of the metaphysics of modernity, the “representation,” it is possible to further deconstruct the “subject,” as Haar ³ does when mentioning the Heidegger's essay ⁴ and properly elaborates this singular feature of modern reason: representation is investigative and dominant objectification. In other words, representation is an investigative practice with the purpose of “conquering” the entire entity by the thought that calculates from a “subject”.

The term re-presentation, in the critical sense accorded it, belongs to an interpretation, or rather to an unthought of the essence of subject, because neither Descartes, nor Kant, nor indeed Hegel or Nietzsche explicitly defines the subject by representation. What is implied in the representation is in the first place an unlimited objectivization of every entity, which necessarily entails the self-objectivization of the subject. The subject is the “stage” on which every entity, including itself, must appear in order to be known and confirmed with certainty. Thinking understood as re-presentation means positing the totality of entities as opposed, as standing opposite (Gegenstand), but also presenting oneself before oneself as an objectivized subject. In the second place, this double presentation entails the necessity of submitting oneself to truth as certainty, that is, to the guarantee of a calculation. Representation is a calculative method that ensures that whatever can be calculated has an incessant grip on constant presence. This calculative method implies an aggression, an “attack” on entities as a whole⁵.

Therefore, it is precisely in this sense, from the need to carry out a technical assault on what is given, that we see emerge the concept of subject. The limited “subjectivity” occurs by the fantasy separation between subject and object, in which any object presents itself as a projection of the subject. The “entity,” that is, everything that presents itself, now has the sense of “representedness” of the subject that represents it.

It is not a matter of saying that the entity, whatever it may be, is a mere representation or occurrence in human consciousness. Nor is it intended to doubt the reality of the entity as something that is seen in itself and from itself in its very being⁵. However, we should reflect on what are the implications of the interpretation of entity that prevails in modernity, on what it means, in this case, “to be,” and how the entity needs to be reached and ensured by man as the one who has become a subject. This excerpt from Heidegger sheds light on these issues:

Being is the representedness secured in reckoning representation, through which man is universally guaranteed his manner of proceeding in the midst of beings, as well as the scrutiny, conquest, mastery and disposition of beings, in such a way that man himself can be the master of his own surety and certitude on his own terms. (…) A basic trait of every metaphysical definition of the essence of truth is expressed in principle that conceives truth as agreement of the knowledge with beings: veritas est adaequatio intellectus et rei. But according to what has been said previously we can easily that this familiar “definition” of truth varies depending on how the being with which knowledge is supposed to agree is understood, but also depending on how knowledge, which is supposed to stand in agreement with the being, is conceived. Knowing as percipere and cogitare in Descartes’ sense has its distinctive feature in that it recognizes as knowledge only something that representations presents to a subject as indubitable that can all times reckoned as something so presented (…). [O]nly what is secured in this fashion we have described as representing and presenting-to-oneself is recognized as a being. That alone is a being which the subject can be certain of in the sense of his representation. The true is only merely secured, the certain. Truth is certitude, a certitude for which it is decisive that in it man as subject is continually certain and sure of himself. Therefore, a procedure, and advance assurance, is necessary for the securing of truth as certitude in an essential sense. “Method” now takes on a metaphysical import that is, as it were, affixed to the essence of subjectivity⁶.

In this sense, representation ensures the subject the possibility of a science. The representation that is processed on the real, ensuring and guaranteeing its status, is the elaboration that processes the real and exposes it in an objectity. With this, all real is transformed, beforehand, into a variety of objects for the processing assurance of scientific research and, why not, of the way of being and acting of the human. The primacy of scientific certainty goes hand in hand with the valorization of the “subject,” who operates and accomplishes the remarkable achievements of science and technical thinking.

This “framing” of man as a “subject” served the Enlightenment project to “intellectualize” nature, through the systematic cataloging of all its diversity and the faithful and mathematical representation of its figurative form. The figure of a “rational subject” emerges with constant and gradual intensity, the only one capable of apprehending the “whole,” attributing to it an “order,” a rational “ordering.” This same paradigm was appropriated by modern ethics, configuring the way in which action is discussed and, therefore, the concepts of “authorship,” responsibility.

But under what conditions have we seen the “subject” paradigm emerge? There are several possible answers to this question. However, we understand that one reason stands out: the eagerness to deconstruct medieval values. Thus, from the Renaissance onwards, we saw the paradigm that had guided the way of being of the Western man emptied and its wonder lost, founded above all on the concepts of theism and creationism, that is, on the belief in gods and in the creation of the world from the will of a supernatural being. This period of European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, considered the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and Modernity, fundamentally marks the birth of the “subject”.

Many authors have discussed this decline in medieval metaphysics, but few with the talent of Friedrich Nietzsche ^7,8. According to him, the birth of the subject also marks the death of God: God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him…⁹, says the German philosopher. We dismantled the paradigms that guided our values. In the first part of Thus spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche ⁸ reports three transformations of the spirit, which are announced by Zarathustra himself. The announcement consists in showing how the spirit becomes a camel; the camel, lion; and the lion at last a child. To understand the leap in relation to the paradigms of other times, we are particularly interested in the way of being of the lion and the camel. According to Cabral:

Regarding the ethical-axiological issue, the camel is that way of being that, like what happened in the Middle Ages, assumes the strength of “You must” (…). “You must” is the expression that marks the unrestricted submission of existence to the moral-axiological canons positivized or objectified by the Greco-Christian tradition that has guided the entire West for a long time. (…) Before this situation, it was already known, in advance, what should be done. Sexuality, political life, economic life, etc. were already guided by the “reins” of Christian morality positivized in the form of a doctrinal manual, which served as deontological a priori of medieval man¹⁰.

Nietzsche announces a transmutation: the camel suddenly turns into a lion, because we have been taken by another way of being. Instead of “you must,” we have “I want.” We finally won our freedom, precisely because we are no longer at the mercy of “you must.” As Cabral points out:

It is no longer said: “I follow what they said I must”; but rather: “I must follow exactly what I want.” It is through this that is the “I” that, now, standing the lion's way of being, the acting is made, effected. The “I” is the very legislator and shaper of all ethical-axiological reality. (…) It is easy to notice the parallel between the mentioned typology – camel, lion – and the unfolding of the destination of Western thought. This is because (…) this typology also concerns the presence of a horizon of meaning from which the totality of the ways of being of the entity that we are grows and intensifies, that is to say, even the philosophical thought prevails. In this sense, the camel refers to the Greek, post-Socratic thought, especially that developed in schools – and to medieval-patristic and scholastic thought. The lion, on the other hand, refers to all modern thought, that is, post-Cartesian¹¹.

Instead of acquiescence in the face of what “is,” or divine guidelines that guide action, we now have “ourselves,” corporeal structures endowed with a reason capable of acting, thinking and deliberating about reality. Since then, there is an absolute mastery of the subjective element that now leads all humanity and all understanding of the world. According to Heidegger ¹², it is in the wake of Cartesian philosophy that this metaphysics of the entity “man” as a “subject” is clearly manifested.

Before Descartes, and still with him, every entity is conceived as sub-iectum. The term sub-iectum is the Latinized translation and interpretation of the Greek term hypokeimenon: something that underlies, is at the base, already there. According to Heidegger ¹², through Descartes and since then man, the human “self,” has become predominantly “subject”. And insofar as this interpretation separates human experience into body and mind (res extensa and res cogitans), he, man, comes to provide the measure for the entity of each and every entity.

The term “reason” itself comes from the Latin word ratio, “measure.” In this sense, the original depth of the concept of logos is reduced to an instance of the human, capable of conceiving as “real” only that which can be calculated, measured. This means that with human as a sub-iectum there is now a decision as to what can be effectively established as “being.”

Man himself is the one to whom the power to enjoin belongs as a conscious task. The subject is “subjective” in that the definition of the being and thus man himself are no longer cramped into narrow limits, but are in every respect de-limited. The relationship to beings is a domineering proceeding into the conquest and domination of the world. Man gives beings their measure by determining independently and with reference to himself what ought to be permitted to pass as being. The standard of measure is the presumption of measure, through which man is grounded as subiectum in and as the midpoint of beings as a whole. However, we do well to heed the fact that man here is not the isolated egoistic. I, but the “subject,” which means that man is progressing toward a limitless representing and reckoning disclosure of beings¹³.

Faced with the subject's increasingly radical emergence, the calculating thinking (das rechnende Denken) ¹⁴ finds its apex in the metaphysics of modernity, or metaphysics of representation. What remains now is to seek value and meaning in our infinitely diminished life, in the face of this immeasurable whole, impossible to recognize us as part or any participation¹⁵. Its most radical development is the predominance of technical thinking over all knowledge disciplines, including ethics and, therefore, bioethics. And this is the reason why the contemporary ethical crisis is a “subjective crisis,” or “crisis of rationality.”

The Cartesian subject, of knowledge, is imposed, and therefore a series of “successor” concepts, such as acting, deciding, deliberating. All of these instances are now abducted by calculating. According to Heidegger, for modern reason, and therefore for man-subject, the appearance of a grain, for example, is a chemical process within the set of forces and units that constitute a reciprocal causality, mechanically understood, between the seed as a thing, soil properties and heat irradiation¹⁶.

This system of interpretation of the real prevails within bioethics itself. Thus, modern representation can only see a mechanical system of cause and effect between processes, whose consequences are certain results. Governed by modern reason, contemporary ethics are and will remain “mechanical.” But what is the contribution of the Heideggerian Dasein to this imbroglio? How can a new interpretation of human provide a new beginning for bioethics? These are the questions that guide the next section.

Human being as Dasein

From everything that has been said so far, a certain interpretation of “human” as a composite is clear, namely: a body (which the Greeks called soma) and reason. Therefore, according to tradition, “man” is the living being capable of reasoning, possessing the logos, the rational animal. And reason, understood here in the light of modernity, is the power to perceive, to grasp, to glean, to compact, to gather, to synthesize (…). And this, it is said, is a power, an internal force¹⁷.

Such assumption leads to interpreting the human as composed of an inside and an outside, an internal and an external. But would it be possible to think of human no longer in the context of this structure (inside versus outside, subject versus object)? And even, why should we oppose this prevailing perspective? The answer to the first question is “yes,” but we believe that it is more useful to focus on the second question. We must take a leap that enables us to abandon the dual paradigm that prevents full understanding of the phenomenon.

As Fogel warns us, it is necessary to disimagine that man is, e.g., a self, or a conscience, or a soul, or a spirit. On the other hand, it is equally necessary to unlearn or disimagine that man is, from the start, something like matter, energy, physical body, or bio-physiological, the basis of impulses, instincts, reflexes or something thus natural. Man, life, or human existence (this is how man is understood here), right away, is no thing, nothing, but… But what? A void, a hollow, a hole, which can be called possibility of possibility. Better and more precisely: the reality of freedom as possibility of possibility¹⁸.

In addition to the contribution of the Greek thought, the conception of man as the reality of freedom as possibility of possibility, originally declared by Kierkegaard ¹⁹, was, according to Fogel, one of the great influences for Heidegger to think of man no longer as something given, done or constituted, that is, already fixed, either as self, or as a soul, or as an individual, or as conscience (…) or a subject²⁰. But what, after all, is man?

To refer to man, Heidegger uses the term Dasein. Three preliminary considerations are pertinent here: 1) the term is considered by Heidegger to be untranslatable; 2) Dasein is not an answer to the question “what is man?”; and 3) the Heideggerian analytical project, set in motion in Being and Time²¹, his most important work, seeks to understand the question of the meaning of being (Frage nach dem Sinn von Sein) and, therefore, never had the ultimate purpose of understanding specifically the being-there, but rather using it to answer this question.

Regarding the first claim, we must assume that there is much dispute among scholars of Heidegger's thought, and the translation of the key terms of his thought is one of those spaces of conflict in which, it seems, consensus has not been reached. The fact is that translating is going towards the thinking of the key term, although comments are always needed to complement the translation. And even when the choice is to keep the term in German, there is always a comment accompanying the first occurrence in the text.

Thus, the untranslatability is evident in any of the situations, when translating the key terms or not, at the same time that it is extremely relevant to understand them to liberate the thought in its stay in Heidegger's discourse. As the Brazilian translator of Being and Time, Marcia Sá Cavalcante Schuback, points out, translating is only possible as conducting toward that from where the word speaks. To translate is not simply to conduct one language to another, one word to another, but conducting the language to the horizon of experience from which a word is pronounced, is enunciated²². According to Schuback, the non-translation makes the most common word in German, Dasein, the oddest word when pronounced in Portuguese, “Dasein,” thus becoming unfaithful to the most characteristic feature of Heidegger's language²³.

Regarding the second claim, philosophers have very good reasons for placing man at the center of their investigations. However, it would be a mistake to think that the Heideggerian Dasein responds to this same initiative. In this sense, Casanova calls attention to something important:

The term “being-there” designates, at first, simply the being of man. However, it does not prove to be just another definition that will unavoidably join the list of definitions coined within the history of Western thought. Almost as if we could say: being-there is the Heideggerian concept of man. No, no and once again no! The use of the term being-there indicates in the present context a radical transformation in the very way of thinking about the being of man. First of all, it is necessary to bear in mind the fact that being-there is not a term coined by Heidegger based on the question: what is man? The term being-there makes it impossible to ask such question from the beginning, as it has a way of being that fundamentally distinguishes it from all entities marked by the presence of quiddidative properties²⁴.

As for the third claim, Heidegger clarifies the need to analyze Dasein as a horizon to reflect on the meaning of being: But it remains naive and opaque if its investigations into the being of beings leave the meaning of being in general undiscussed. And precisely the ontological task of a genealogy of the different possible ways of being (a genealogy which is not to be construed deductively) requires a preliminary understanding of “what we really mean by this expression ‘being’”²⁵.

After all, the being of man is radically different from the being of other entities in the world. According to Heidegger, Dasein is, necessarily, that entity that carries with it the question of the meaning of being: This being which we ourselves in each case are and which includes inquiry among the possibilities of its being we formulate terminologically as Dasein ²⁶. And it is precisely at this point in his work that Heidegger ²¹ understands the existential analytics of the Dasein as a way to think of a fundamental ontology, that is, the conditions of possibility of the question of the meaning of being.

However, as Casanova indicates, fundamental ontology does not mean superontology here, but rather points to the understanding of the need to ask first of all for the very possibility of ontology²⁷. The possibility of a fundamental ontology is, therefore, necessarily articulated with the existential analytics of the Dasein, which in turn is now seen at the center of Heideggerian reflection. These notes, albeit of a preambular nature, given the specific space of an academic article, already comfort us with new perspectives on the possibility of apprehending the “human being” as Dasein in the field of bioethics.

It is very difficult to access a definitive conception of Dasein. According to Heidegger himself, the being-there remains incomparable, it does not admit any aspect through which it could be subsumed as something known. (…) The being-there interrupts any attempt at explanation²⁸. However, from a panoramic perspective capable of clarifying, even if provisionally, the Heideggerian Dasein, it is possible to understand the paradigmatic turn proposed here, especially in the dimension of action, of praxis. This is, without a doubt, the great development of this “new” perspective of man: the very sense attributed to what “acting” means, in the horizon of bioethics, comes from an impoverished perspective of the concept of human.

As Heidegger warns, the meaning given to action is ultimately based on the interpretation of what thinking is²⁹. But where action is conceived as production of an effect, this relationship is no longer visible, and no “philosophy of action” can return to the decisive point. Only the work of “destruction” (Destruktion) of the metaphysical way of thinking enables liberating the way of another understanding of man and, therefore, of acting. The more we manage to advance in this way, the more thinking and acting do not cease to refer to each other:

For a long time, the essence of acting has not been thought through with much decision. Acting is only know as the production of an effect, whose effectiveness is evaluated by its usefulness. The essence of acting, however, is to consummate. Consummate means: to bring something to completion, to the fullness of its essence. Bring it to that fullness, producere. (…) Therefore, in the proper sense, only that which already is can be consummated. Now, what is, first of all, is the Being. Thought consummates the reference of the being to the essence of man. It does not produce or effect it. Thought only restores it to the being, as something that was given to it by the Being itself³⁰.

Perhaps the great “turning point” of the Heideggerian concept of Dasein consists in the dissolution of the dual model, subject-object, in which thinking and acting are in false communion. Dasein has always been, willing or not, knowing or not, in a determined significant context. That is, it is always in the unveiling (aletheia), in the appearing, in the showing of things, acting and reacting according to a determined way of unveiling that presents itself within each situation.

Fogel says it well when he explains: not that the real is something sub-existent, apathetic, indifferent, to which some sense, some interpretation couples, sticks, shapes. (…) Everything that is and exists, only is and exists because it is always exposed, concretized, accomplished sense. In this sense, man is not the author of this interpretation, but also work, result, consequence. There is no one³¹. Dasein, irreparably thrown (Geworfen) at the They (das Man), is always immersed in idle talk (Gerede).

Here, two important concepts were mentioned for the first time, and it is necessary to clarify them. The first one, “the They,” was used by Heidegger to refer to something that is present in all of us. “The They” removes the weight and experience of anguish (Angst) from Dasein, making it possible to reconfigure the original and authentic condition of man as being-in-the-world. The concept can be understood through a certain view of common sense, public opinion, or the Greek doxa itself. Dasein tends to interpret itself as a “thing,” a substance (Vorhandenheit), not understanding the obvious about its nature as a being-in-the-world, in contrast to the other entities it deals with. According to Sloterdijk, not even the language of “the They” says anything of their own, just participating in the idle talk³².

The idle talk is, therefore, the reduction of the possibilities of the discourse (Rede) to chatter, indolent talking, gossip, small talk, chat. The idle talk is the uprooted speech of the particular situation and the experience of particular Dasein, conveying the general, impersonal, a people interpretation. And, here, yet another concept should be used: curiosity (Neugier), characterized by the constant need for novelty, for what is always new. The curious chatterer is always looking for news.

Idle talk and curiosity give rise to ambiguity and duplicity. When everything is talked about, issues whose nature should be constantly open, aporia, are presented as resolved. In this constant noise, in which we have always been thrown (Geworfen), there is a tendency of submission to “the They,” to “them,” to what they say and do, and this process Heidegger calls “falling” (Verfallen). The relationship with other entities whose way of being is like that of Dasein remains contaminated by “the They.” According to Heidegger, coexistence in “the They” is not indifferent, but rather tense, as it is about listening to one another secretly. Under the mask of being for each other, there acts the being against each other³³.

The very reduction of man to subject, as we have tried to investigate in this essay, is one of the products of the “falling” of Dasein in the idle talk of “the They.” That which is too close to be evident, the interpretation of our way of being as existence (ek-sistence) in the opening of the there, is readily covered by the noise of idle talk, which potentiates a constant escape to the impersonal context, of them, us, of “the They.” According to Schuback, Heidegger used “existence” to designate all the richness of the reciprocal relations between Dasein, being, and all entifications, through this privileged entification: man. In this sense, only man exists. The stone is but does not exist. The car is but does not exist. God is but does not exist³⁴.

Lost in this confusion, of which it is also a part, Dasein becomes deaf to its inner voice, to the appeal of “something” that invites it to become itself, bringing together all its possibilities. An important note on this aspect is found in Hervé Pasqua: The others [the They] does not mean: the rest of man besides me, from which the self would dissociate. The others are, rather, those from which, most often, we do not distinguish ourselves, among whom we also are³⁵.

Still according to Pasqua, losing itself in the publicity of Us and its idle talk, the self makes, by the force of listening to the Us, deaf ears to itself. If Dasein must be able to be reconducted, removed from this loss where it no longer listens to itself… it is still necessary for it to be able to find itself first, to whom itself made and continues to make deaf ears, having no ears but for the Us. This exterior chatter, this deafening noise of the speakers’ words, this siren song that exercises seduction in everyday life, in a word the tyranny of Us, is torn apart by the silent appeal of conscience that reconduct Dasein back to itself: “That which, by appealing, leads to understanding, is conscience” ³⁶.

The calling (Ruf) is, therefore, a silent shout that resonates inside the there, like an echo from afar. But how can we listen to this appeal? How to “silence” the chatter inside the there and allow oneself to hear the calling that comes from the far to the far? Philosophy is this realizing it, says Fogel, entering it³⁷ – appropriation as necessary as it is distant in the field of bioethics.

Final considerations

This article tried to devise, albeit briefly, the outlines of a new interpretation of the human. Through brief notes on the poverty of the idea of man as a subject, we sought to outline elements for an appropriation of the concept of Dasein. We understand that this perspective, from Heidegger, can contribute to change paradigms or – to stay in the Heideggerian lexicon – to “another beginning” (anderen Anfang) of important concepts in the field of bioethics.

This field has long been in horizons of problematization sedimented by a certain interpretation of entity. In this sense, the paradigmatic turn that we now propose aims to face the burial of these original meanings, allowing a profound reinterpretation of concepts such as justice, autonomy and decision-making, all inheritors of the metaphysics of modernity and distorted from its profound possibilities. For this reason, we do not deviate from the original sense of ethics, but we seek, in an ever new way, to produce small modulations of the assumptions that have been sedimented throughout tradition.

In this sense, any reduction of the human “being” to merely bodily or mental aspects, or even to the sum of the two, is the result of a mistake, a drift, a merging in a people. Although the existence of Dasein is not solitary, being even impossible to be an absolute self, independent of others, it is necessary to distinguish it from others, to remove it from the dominion of others. After all, possessed by “the They,” it is no longer possible to recognize oneself, and we disappear in the “us.” To interpret oneself as a subject is to yield to the tyrannical invitation of a people, it is to disappear in the noise of us.

Referências

• ¹
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• ²
  McNeill W. The time of life: Heidegger and ethos. New York: Suny; 2006. p. 11. Tradução livre.
• ³
  Haar M. Heidegger and the essence of man. Albany: State University of New York Press; 1993. p. 86. Tradução livre.
• ⁴
  Heidegger M. Op. cit.
• ⁵
  Haar M. Op. cit. p. 87. Tradução livre.
• ⁶
  Heidegger M. Nietzsche. Rio de Janeiro: Forense; 2007. v. 2. p. 126.
• ⁷
  Nietzsche F. A gaia ciência. Lisboa: Guimarães; 2000.
• ⁸
  Nietzsche F. Assim falou Zaratustra. Rio de Janeiro: Nova Cultural; 2005.
• ⁹
  Nietzsche F. Op. cit. 2000. p. 239.
• ¹⁰
  Cabral AM. Heidegger e a destruição da ética. Rio de Janeiro: Editora UFRJ; 2009. p. 18.
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  Cabral AM. Op. cit. p. 19.
• ¹²
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• ¹⁴
  Heidegger M. Serenidade. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget; 2001.
• ¹⁵
  Castro JC. A humanidade esquecida: a ciência na esteira da “metafísica da modernidade”. Princípios [Internet]. 2016 [acesso 30 out 2020];23(42):125-50. p. 138. DOI: 10.21680/1983-2109.2016v23n42ID9046
  » https://doi.org/10.21680/1983-2109.2016v23n42ID9046
• ¹⁶
  Heidegger M. Heráclito. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumará; 1998. p. 102.
• ¹⁷
  Fogel G. Homem, realidade, interpretação. Rio de Janeiro: Mauad X; 2015. p. 13.
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  Fogel G. Op. cit. p. 16.
• ¹⁹
  Kierkegaard S. The concept of anxiety. Princeton: Princeton University Press; 1980. p. 42.
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  Fogel G. Op. cit. p. 17.
• ²¹
  Heidegger M. Ser e tempo. Petrópolis: Vozes; 2006.
• ²²
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• ²³
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  Heidegger M. Op. cit. 2006. p. 42.
• ²⁷
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• ²⁸
  Heidegger M. Mindfulness. Norfolk: Continuum International Publishing Group; 2006. p. 288. Tradução livre.
• ²⁹
  Heidegger M. Sobre o humanismo. Rio de Janeiro: Tempo Brasileiro; 1995. p. 24.
• ³⁰
  Heidegger M. Op. cit. 1995. p. 23-4.
• ³¹
  Fogel G. Op. cit. p. 54.
• ³²
  Sloterdijk P. Critique of cynical reason. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press; 2001. p. 197. Tradução livre.
• ³³
  Heidegger M. Ser e tempo. Op. cit. 2006. p. 239.
• ³⁴
  Schuback MSC. Notas explicativas. In: Heidegger M. Ser e tempo. Op. cit. 2006. p. 561-82. p. 562.
• ³⁵
  Pasqua H. Introdução à leitura do Ser e Tempo de Martin Heidegger. Lisboa: Instituto Piaget; 1993. p. 67.
• ³⁶
  Pasqua H. Op. cit. p. 135.
• ³⁷
  Fogel G. Op. cit. p. 57.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  20 Jan 2021
• Date of issue
  Oct-Dec 2020

History

• Received
  08 Apr 2019
• Reviewed
  07 Oct 2020
• Accepted
  08 Oct 2020