The Call of Conscience – Part 3 (BT272/273) (2025) Malerei von Noël Van Hoof

Martin Heidegger – Being and Time – BT272/273

In the call of conscience, what is it that is talked about – in other words, to what is the appeal made? Manifestly Dasein itself. This answer is as incontestable as it is indefinite. If the call has so vague a target, then it might at most remain an occasion for Dasein to pay attention to itself. But it is essential to Dasein that along the disclosedness of its world it has been disclosed to itself, so that it always understands itself. The call reaches Dasein in this understanding of itself which it always has, and which is concernful in an everyday, average manner. The call reaches the they-self of concernful Being with Others.
And to what is one called when one is thus appealed to? To one's own Self. Not to what Dasein counts for, can do, or concerns itself with in being with one another publicly, nor to what it has taken hold of, set about, or let itself be carried along with. The sort of Dasein which is understood after the manner of the world both for Others and for itself, gets passed over in this appeal; this is something of which the call to the Self takes not the slightest cognizance. And because only the Self of the they-self gets appealed to and brought to hear, the “they” collapses. But the fact that the call passes over both the “they” and the manner in which Dasein has been publicly interpreted, does not by any means signify that the “they” is not reached too. Precisely in passing over the “they” (keen as it is for public repute) the call pushes it into insignificance [Bedeutungslosigkeit]. But the Self, which the appeal has robbed of this lodgement and hiding-place, gets brought to itself by the call.
When the they-self is appealed to, it gets called to the self. But it does not get called to that Self which can become for itself an 'object' on which to pass judgement, nor to that Self which inertly dissects its 'inner life' with fussy curiosity, nor to that Self which one has in mind when one gazes 'analytically' at psychical conditions and what lies behind them. The appeal to the Self in the they-self does not force it inwards upon itself, so that it can close itself off from the 'external world'. The call passes over everything like this and disperses it, so as to appeal solely to that Self which, notwithstanding, is in no other way than Being-in-the-world.

(Translation by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson)

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Martin Heidegger