Heideggerian Hermeneutics: Understanding as Thrown Projection

According to traditional hermeneutics, interpretation functions as a means to the end of Ideal understanding. Contra to this however, Heidegger posits understanding, and further, interpretation, as the “basic mode of Dasein’s Being,”[1] essentially arguing for an ontological hermeneutics. In regard to textual understanding, often the foci of hermeneutical investigation, if a passage was not comprehended, interpretation was resorted to in order to enable the telos of understanding. In a move against what can be referred to as the detached spectator position,[2] Heidegger asserts that understanding is existentially driven by Dasein’s thrown-projection. Put simply, understanding is thrown projection.[3] In his own terms, “Dasein, as essentially understanding, is proximally alongside what is understood.”[4]. In this essay I will argue that the initial understanding, if conceived of as ‘thrown projection,’ is inescapable, and in agreement with Heidegger, that in Dasein’s thrownness, an initial lens is created that colours all future interpretation. By concentrating on paragraphs 31 and 32 of Being and Time, often cited as the basis of Heidegger’s hermeneutics, I will first elucidate what Heidegger means when he suggests understanding is ‘thrown projection,’ in order to explicate the consequences for interpretation and hermeneutics in general.

However, prior to doing this, I believe it is pertinent to address the Heideggerian assertion that understanding is inseparable from the larger question of Being. The work of Gadamer and Habermas, and the tradition of German Hermeneutics in general was highly influenced by such a radical importance placed on individual consciousness in relation to meaning and interpretation. Responding to Dilthey, who would position understanding as a “category of life”[5], Heidegger would go further to suggest understanding is an existentiale, and thus, the conditions of possibility of being-in for Dasein.[6] As such, in order to discuss the principles governing the activity of interpretation, and the consequences therein within this framework, I must first attempt to analyse the notion of Dasein.

Within the Heideggerian corpus, the neologism Dasein is utilised in a manner to side-step common-use words such as ‘human’ that otherwise carry over traditional connotations of the world as static, stable or fixed.[7] Whilst Heidegger is interested in the study of Being in its generality, the subject Dasein is utilised within his methodology as it “is that entity in which as Being in the world is an issue for itself.”[8] Despite often being translation from German to be “existence,” the expression Dasein is to be understood as ‘Being-there.’[9] However, it does not follow that we are to think of Dasein then as a contingent combination of Being, in-ness and the world, or as Görner would say as “one thing being in another thing”[10] but rather as a coherent and unitary phenomenon.[11] Furthermore, Dasein, is defined by the joint dynamic activities of intentionality and disclosure. As Being-in-the-world, Dasein’s conscious experience always has a directional feature; an experience ‘of something’, and hence an intentionality or an ‘aboutness’ of the world.[12] This is evident, as Heidegger would suggest, when in everyday language we utilise the expression “understanding something.”[13]

Within Dasein attending to the world, the world additionally discloses itself within the experience; from Dasein’s ego-centric perspective it seems that the world itself is ‘shown’ to Dasein. What then becomes of interest to hermeneutics, is in Heidegger’s equation of ‘Being-there’ to ‘a non-reflective and practical ‘understanding’ of the world.’ 

Now, with the explication of the ontological inquiry into the nature of Dasein and its’ relevance to the present essay, and furthermore to hermeneutics in general, I will attempt to unpack what I believe Heidegger intended in Chapter 31 of Being and Time, in positioning “Being-there as understanding.”[14] As suggested earlier, traditional hermeneutics posited understanding as an ideal end goal. Antecedent theories to Heidegger, such as that of Schleiermacher, would suggest understanding, in reference to textual passages, is achieved in the activity of interpretation, and furthermore, that such achievement is only realised once the original meaning is comprehended in its entirety. And yet, for Heidegger, it seems that all knowledge is derivative from an initial, non-reflective thrown-projection. And, more radical still, that interpretation is not (at all, or ever) a forebearer to this projection. How can this be?

For Heidegger, the Being of the ‘there’ is to be considered as thrown into existence. Prima facie, it seems almost nigh impossible to refute such a claim. After all, we (as Dasein) do not seemingly have any control over the choice to be born, where that happens to be, who our parents are, or furthermore, how we are raised. He would then continue to claim, “and as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the kind of Being which we call “projecting.”[15] In other words, this ‘thrown projection,’ if my analysis has not led me astray, constructs the foundation for any (and all) cognitive awareness. Moreover, Dasein is posited as essentially understanding, albeit with a reconceptualisation of what ‘understanding’ really is[16]. How can it be that Dasein’s existence is understanding?

Thrownness (German: Geworfenhei) for Dasein is not just experienced at the inception of Being, for the reason that this past way of being ‘thrown’ subsequently echoes into every moment thereafter. It would follow that the notion of thrownness can be understood, to an extent, as a ‘past-for-the-present’ mood that contingently allows for, and shapes interpretation.[17] Subsequently, thrown-projection, or Entwurf, within the Heideggerian canon, is best placed by acknowledging the etymological translated of this term as ‘a sketched project, yet to be carried through’[18]. As such, it can be suggested that Dasein forms an intelligibility of the world within this thrownness by way of projecting “itself in terms of possibilities.”[19]

This everyday intelligibility however, according to Heidegger remains implicit, and acts rather as Dasein’s general mode of Being. Within this structure of Being, there exists both a presence-at-hand (German: Vorhandensein), and a readiness-to-hand (German: Zuhandensein), with the former entailing Being in its brute existence, and the latter a pre-linguistic intelligibility of a thing in connection to its practical application. As Grondin explicated within the Heideggerian corpus, “all ‘things’ have an anticipatory understanding “as” things destined for this or that use.”[20] It would follow from such a proposition, that I have an understanding of an entity such as a hammer in relation to the readiness-to-hand I have projected onto this item of equipment in regards to my Being-in-the-world.[21] Given what one would assume as ‘normal’ conditions, this would be the hammer’s potentiality in hammering, to make a shelter, or a table, or any possibility practically available to Dasein.  Yet, as previously stated, this ‘understanding’ is according to Heidegger both pre-linguistic and implicit. Hence, my previous statement that suggested Heidegger reconceptualised the term ‘understanding’; my everyday use of such a term seems to evoke an active task of comprehension. It would follow then that my intelligibility of the hammer, or rather my ‘understanding’ is primordial to the extent that only in its breakage or rather, an un-readiness-to-hand, that such disturbance would require explicit interpretation on the behalf of Dasein.[22] 

According to Heidegger, interpretation is to be thought of as the development of projected understanding.[23] Again however, I believe it easiest to return to the German etymology of the term, auslegung, chosen to represent the word ‘interpretation’ within Heideggerian hermeneutics to expound the relevant meaning behind this phenomenon. Whilst there are often several connotations to any prefix verb, I believe that auslegen has been chosen to express the idea of laying something “out” or further, putting something on display.[24] As such, it would follow that in interpretation, the implicit content of understanding comes to be “laid-out” in an explicit manner. And yet the question would inherently arise next, how can implicit understanding ever come to be explicit? I believe that ‘understanding’ especially in relation to the example of the hammer earlier is not to be thought of as a micro-instance of understanding directed towards something, much like in common conscious thought, but as a more general understanding of all existence.

Within interpretation then, Dasein is able to distinguish differing aspects (potentialities/possibilities) of understanding by appealing to structural categories. Heidegger states himself, “that which is explicitly understood – has the structure of something as something.”[25] As such, it would follow that in interpretation, I can explicitly understand a hammer as an object, as a tool, as a piece of wood, or even a doll. So far, despite ontological connections, it appears as though the departure from traditional hermeneutics comes in the reversal of order between ‘understanding’ and ‘interpretation.’ And yet, by no means is this true of Heideggerian hermeneutics. For he would continue by stating, “Any interpretation which is to contribute understanding must already have understood what is to be understood"[26]. Or rather, the entire thematic framework that covers a network of potentialities of an entity’s ‘as something’ in relation to Dasein’s thrownness, has already been understood primordially. By ‘laying out’ or making explicit a particular ‘as which’ of an entity during interpretation, Dasein is then able to highlight a different set of practical possibilities. Returning to the example of a hammer, once broken, and confronted with an un-readiness-to-hand, I am pulled to move away from an implicit and hidden understanding of such, and am forced to interpret the hammer to another ‘as-something’ end, for example, as an object. It would follow from such a theory however that all knowledge, derivative of this initial understanding of something as something, requires us to engage practically with the world. In other words, can a hammer ever be understood without the ‘there’ of Being?

Ultimately, not only do I believe that Heidegger would suggest ‘no’ in virtue of his conception of Dasein as Being-there, essentially the understanding or thrown projection thereof, but I also tend to agree with him on this point. It is often posited within hermeneutics that a collective ‘understanding’ can be arrived at; that there exists an ideal Truth of a text. I have always been skeptical of this aim, in virtue of our relation to our environment. Is it not true that my intelligibility of a hammer may differ from someone of a differing background, culture, race or gender?

I believe so, and to argue as such I will subsequently utilise a scene, albeit a fiction, from the childhood story ‘The Little Mermaid.’  The protagonist, Ariel, upon viewing the object, a fork, for the first time, does not understand the entity in relation to the textual name ‘fork’, for she calls the entity a ‘dinglehopper.’ Without any explicit instructions, she understands the fork as a tool, not to eat with, but to comb out tangles from her hair. It seems to follow commonsensically that this understanding is contingently related to her own thrown-projection.[27] In agreement with the corpus of Heideggerian ontological hermeneutics, Ariel’s intelligibility of this fork is not only due to the relation to her environment of the ocean, but to her existential situation. Ariel understands her own Being, a mermaid, in relation to human beings (Dasein and Mitsein[28]). It is only upon her engagement and in meeting a real human, who one could say has a vastly differing thrown-projection than our protagonist, that Ariel interprets explicitly the ‘as-something’ of the fork as a tool for eating. As such, it would appear that the Truth (or what traditional hermeneutics would position as Ideal understanding) of the fork was unconcealed to Ariel once the entity was allowed to appear as what it is. Such an example can also go to illustrate Heidegger’s claim that our inner world essentially becomes defined in terms of its relation to an outer world. Consequently, I agree with the Heideggerian claim that not only is our initial understanding inescapable but also that all interpretation will be grounded by this pre-condition for intelligibility.

Objections to such a view tend to be on the basis that such a circle seems to suggest we are trapped in our initial understandings. However, such an objection, I believe, is a misapprehension of Heidegger’s notion of understanding to be existentially related to our ‘thrownness,’ instead conceiving of ‘understanding’ as the telos of interpretation. As conversely, it is within this initial understanding that Dasein is able to form any intelligibility of the world, and and thus, we are not ‘trapped’ or ‘limited’ by this understanding, but rather just ‘bound’ to it in a hidden sense.

In summary, whilst Heidegger’s notion of thrown-projection seems to introduce a radically ontological realm to hermeneutics, against the Diltheyan idea of a ‘detached surveyor‘ I believe that he has successfully illustrated how interpretation is manipulated through Dasein’s own essence, that of Being-there. Whilst the scope of this paper did not allow for an explication of areas such as how mood or affectedness can play a role within understanding, and thus interpretation, I believe that I have argued, with the help of Ariel, how interpretation, or the ‘laying out’ of understanding’s projections, is intrinsically “always already” anchored by our thrownness of existence.

[1] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, in The Hermeneutics Reader, eds. K. Mueller-Vollmer, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 217.

[2] See: W. Dilthey, “The Hermeneutics of the Human Sciences”, in The Hermeneutics Reader, eds. K. Mueller-Vollmer, (Oxford: Basil Blackwell 1986), 148-64.

[3] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 216.

[4] Ibid., 237.

[5] Ibid., 214.

[6] Ibid., 216.

[7] Paul Görner, “Heidegger, fundamental ontology”, in Twentieth-Century German Philosophy, (Oxford, 2000), 71; Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 216.

[8] P215

[9] Ibid., 216.

[10] Paul Görner, “Heidegger, fundamental ontology”, 67.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 222.

[13] Ibid., 215.

[14] Ibid.

[15] Ibid., 217.

[16] See: Page 05 of this paper.

[17] Of which I will expound later on.

[18] Paul Görner, “Heidegger, fundamental ontology”, 68.

[19] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 217.

[20] Jean Grondin, “Heidegger: Hermeneutics as the Interpretation of Existence.” In Introduction to Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. by Joel Weinsheimer, (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1994), 94., italics added.

[21] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 216.

[22] Michael Wheeler, "Martin Heidegger", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2018 Edition), edited by Edward N. Zalta. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2018/entries/heidegger/

[23] Ibid., 221.

[24] Michael Wheeler, "Martin Heidegger."

[25] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 222.

[26] Martin Heidegger, “The Disclosure of Meaning”, 225.

[27] I am of course, within this example positioning Ariel as if she has Being as an issue for herself, like Dasein.

[28] Being-with of Dasein