The Role of <i>Techne</i> in the Authenticity-Inauthenticity Distinction

Abstract

n this paper I propose to do the following: I will discuss the notions of intentionality and self-understanding of Dasein as developed in Heidegger’s Basic Problems of Phenomenology. In doing so, I will try to show the interrelation of Dasein’s always being intentionally directed towards something and its self-interpretation. As we will see, the everyday world has, for Heidegger, a character of “equipmental contexture.” This means that Dasein returns to itself from out of things, equipment, tools, or—quite differently—the work of art. In a word, Dasein is mirrored back toward itself from the things made, from the products of techne.1 From this will follow the important distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity. There is a sense in which the following pairings could be discerned: tools or pieces of equipment link up with inauthenticity, while the work of art links up with authenticity. I will say more on the subject of tools a bit later in the essay. Both kinds of things are things insofar as they are entrenched in techne. The common root seems almost inexplicable in the light of the vast difference between tools and the artwork. Moreover, both Dasein and techne seem to have another equally enigmatic common root: that of temporality. Temporality is the essential bond between Dasein and the double sense of techne, which suggests the double-sidedness of temporality itself. It is precisely this doublesidedness that I would like to have as the backdrop to my discussion as a whole. Finally, I will turn to a few pages of Heidegger’s Being and Time and Bernard Stiegler’s book Technics and Time I in order to complicate this notion of the two senses of temporality, the owned and disowned, originary and everyday, and its relation to work and techne. The overarching question here will be: Can the distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity be sustained? By way of stage-setting, it is important to say a few words about the overarching theme of Section Fifteen of the Basic Problems, entitled “The fundamental problem of the multiplicity of ways of being and of the unity of