Is It Possible to Have an Experience of Being? 'Machenschaft' and Experience in Heidegger's Private Writings

Abstract

According to Heidegger in his private writings of the 1930s-40s, contemporary humankind has become incapable of experience (Erfahrung). It can relate to beings (Seienden), but it fails to have an authentic experience of Being (Seyn), which acts as the foundation of every possible ontological experience. In this paper, we would like to reconstruct the thesis of an impossibility of experience, as we can find it in the writings from the posthumous legacy, recently published and less studied. Our aim is to show that this historical interpretation, which has exerted so much influence on the philosophy of the 20th century, cannot be interpreted radically nor without limits. If we do so, we take the risk to be left without a phenomenological ground capable of accounting for our experience –in any of its determinations. Heidegger exposes a historical impasse, where the tendency is that we only have experience of beings in its present and effective determination (Wirklichkeit). However, if we accept that it is only from an experience of Being that all other experiences can be considered, then we close our eyes to the first phenomenological fact of the givenness of life –which Heidegger himself defended in his early courses.