The Experience of Being. For an Affective Reduction in Martin Heidegger

Abstract

With this article I intend to tackle what Heidegger repeatedly names — without fully thematizing — Erfahrung, which I read here in connection with the Erlebnis of the phenomenological tradition and, thus, in continuity with a philosophical project aimed at returning to the "things themselves". However, more precisely, I argue that this encounter with things (Dinge) instead of their representation (Gegenstände; Vorstellungen), whilst reducing to the immanence of our experience those objects that would transcend it, does not amount to an instance of transcendental reduction, but rather ensues from an affective one. Namely, the process of appropriation and transformation that, pivoting on our attunement (Stimmung) to being itself, brings us and things alike back to the "da" of our "Da-sein", wherein phenomenality eventuates (ereignen).