Abstract
In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger examined in detail the primordial guilt (ursprüngliche Schuld) that haunts one as long as one exists and that one must acknowledge. Heidegger viewed ethics from an ontological perspective, arguing that the source of ethical guilty being lies in the ontological character of Dasein, which cares about itself. Where does the “guilt” in “admitting one’s own guilt” originate? It is precisely because there is a primordial guilt that one is forced to acknowledge as long as one exists, and because one acknowledges this guilt and decides to behave in various ways that evil is not nullified, but can truly be established as one’s own matter. This was demonstrated in the discussion of Being and Time. However, Heidegger’s argument on resoluteness has been understood as an argument that encourages one to behave as one pleases, and has been criticized as a decisionistic assertion that one’s own arbitrary resolve decides what is good. This paper will show that Heidegger did not subscribe to the position called “decisionism,” but rather developed an argument that criticizes it. This paper proceeds as follows. First, we will review the criticisms leveled at Heidegger for being a decisionist. The criticism is that Heidegger recommends that one’s own free decision function as a norm, so to speak, instead of the norm of “Das Man” (Section 2). However, Heidegger’s intention was not to shift from one norm to another. He was aiming to break away from following some norm in the first place in order to clarify the ontological conditions that make good and bad possible (Section 3). Then, as an ontological condition for good and bad, we will see how the Dasein is described as a “primordially guilty being (ursprüngliches Schuldigsein)” (section 4). In light of these, we will again confirm that Heidegger’s argument is not decisionism (Section 5).
