The ethics of authenticity: Heidegger's retrieval of the Kantian ethic in "Being and Time"

Abstract

The purpose of this study is twofold: first, to unearth the ethic implicit in, or, better, the possible ethical implications of, Heidegger's Being and Time; and, second, to demonstrate the exact manner in which its latent ethic or ethical bearing, involves a retrieval of the Kantian ethic as Heidegger casts it. Specifically, it is argued that, in summoning Dasein to its authenticity, the call of conscience commands self-responsibility, respect for one's dignity as end-in-itself, preservation of one's ownmost potentiality-for-being as possibility, and 'philosophizing', understood as a radical and perpetual (self)questioning. Furthermore, it is shown that these self-directed imperatives entail certain obligations towards Others. Ultimately, the Heideggerian 'ethic of authenticity' is criticized for its excessive emphasis on the form of the will, as opposed to its content. While the study demonstrates how almost every one of the obligations to which Dasein is summoned by the call of conscience can be said to have been retrieved through Heidegger's appropriative reading of Kant, the study's chief conclusion is that the Heideggerian ethic's almost exclusive attention to the how of Dasein's being can be retraced to a certain, voluntaristic strand in the early Heidegger's interpretation of the Kantian ethic.