The Foundations and Cognition of Human Existence

Ludwig Binswanger

Munich: Ernst Reinhart Verlag, 1964

As translated by Dr. Boeree

Part One: Foundations of human existence (Dasein)

Introduction

(note: Erkennen = recognize, perceive, discern, realize. Erkenntnis = perception, realization, cognition. I will use cognition, but it should be understood as including perception and knowledge.)

Chapter One

The togetherness (Miteinandersein) of me and thee

We-ness.

A. Loving being-together

We-ness in love

  1. The spatiality of loving togetherness: Exposition of problems
  2. The temporality of loving togetherness: Exposition of problems
  3. Being-in-the-world as taking-care (Heidegger)
  4. Being-in-the-world as care: Being-at-home as love
    1. The spatiality of taking-care and the spatiality of loving togetherness
    2. The temporality of taking-care and the temporality of loving togetherness
    3. The disclosedness of home of loving togetherness, and the closed-up-ness of the world of taking-care: Living and theoretical discoveries.
    4. Self-hood in commerce and we-ness and self-hood in love
    5. The historicity of care and the eternity of love
      1. The potential for the decline of love
      2. Love and death
      3. Love and speech

B. The togetherness of friendship

The we-ness in participation

  1. Dealing-with
  2. Communicating
  3. Taking-part
  4. From the we-ness of love to the we-ness of sympathy: Sympathy and release
  5. We-ness in love and the idea of mankind

(note: teilnehmen = participation, lit. taking part; teilen-mit = dealing-with; mitteilen = communication; teilnehmen-an = taking part, role playing; teilnahmen = sympathy, participation, sympathetic participation, bonding)

Chapter Two

The being-with (Mitsein) of one and another

The personality in the sense of social (mitweltichen) interaction

  1. Introduction
  2. Taking-by-something
  3. Physical (umweltlichen) taking-by-something
    1. Taking-by-the-hand: Grabbing
    2. Taking-by-the-teeth: Biting
    3. Taking-by-the-senses: Perception
    4. Taking-by-the-mouth: The spoken name
  4. social taking-by-something
    1. Taking-by-the-ear -- Impressionability
    2. Taking-by-the-weakenesses (the passions) -- Influence, suggestibility, affectivity
    3. Taking-by-the-word -- Answerability or responsibility
    4. Taking-by-the-name -- Historicity
    5. In social taking-by-something, the free-wheeling manner of anthropological access and research methodologies: The emergence of problems in psychological cognition.
    6. The anthropological sense of social taking-by-something: Discourse.
    7. Discourse and personality
      1. Taking-by-the-word makes access to the Mitwelt possible
      2. Taking-by-the-weaknesses makes access to the Mitwelt possible
      3. Taking-by-the ear makes access to the Mitwelt possible
      4. Taking-by-the-summons (by name) makes access to the Mitwelt possible

Chapter Three

Being-to-oneself and being-oneself proper

  1. Introduction
  2. The problem of self-love (self-concern)
    1. The philautia of Aristotle
    2. Christian self-love according to Augustine
      1. Christian self-love according to Augustine
      2. Self-love in "The Succession" by Augustine
  3. The discursive being-to-oneself: The personality in intrapersonal (eigenweltichen) interaction
    1. Historical introductory comments
    2. The reduction of discursive principles of cognition in intrapersonal interaction
    3. Jung's doctrine of the persona and the archetypic images
    4. The self of being-to-oneself. The Eigenwelt (self-world)
    5. Only barely alive and naked terror
    6. The role of love in being-to-oneself
  4. Being-oneself or being-fundamentally (as mine)
    1. Existence and existential tendencies: The autobiography of H. G. Wells
    2. Existence and pseudoexistence: Stirner's construction of uniqueness
    3. Body and existence: Forgetting, sleep, psychosis
    4. Speech, skill, and coming-to-cognition
    5. Being-fundamentally as existence and as love

    (note: Sein zum Grunde, being-fundamentally, literally means being to the ground, the foundation.)

  5. Closing remarks

Second Part

The being of existential cognition (Daseinserkenntnis)

Introduction

Discourse on Hegel's dialectic unification of love and reason in the movement from cognition to acknowledgement

Chapter One

Overcoming the contradiction between love and caring in existential cognition

  1. Love and existential cognition
  2. Care and existential cognition
    1. Existential cognition and social taking-by-something
    2. Existential cognition and intrapersonal taking-by-something
    3. Existential cognition and existence
  3. Existential cognition as overcoming the contradiction between love and caring

Chapter Two

The unfolding of existential cognition

  1. Towards a gnosology of psychological cognition
  2. Meeting and form (Gestalt)
  3. Existential cognition, form, and idea
  4. The truth of existential cognition
    1. Form according to Kant, Hegel, Honigswald and the connection to existential cognition
    2. Form and change according to Goethe and the connection to existential cognition
    3. The relations of Goethe's and Husserl's phenomenology and Heidegger's existential analysis to existential cognition
    4. Phenomenology and love: Pure phenomenological ideation and loving imagination.
    5. Dilthey's struggle for life-cognition and existential cognition
      1. Skilled living, categories and forms of living, cognition, and understanding
      2. habits and methods of historians: Enthusiastic depths
      3. The problem of general validity in cognition in the human sciences or understanding
      4. Understanding according to Dilthey and existential cognition: Historical and psychological "culture" ("construction")
      5. Dilthey's understanding and people's modes
        • Understanding and the dual mode
        • Understanding and the plural mode
        • Understanding and the singular mode
      6. Critique of historical reason and critique of psychological reason
  5. The coherence of existential cognition