What does it mean to be conscious of? Conscious of the outside world or conscious of oneself? To Heidegger it is the latter. One must first be awed by the, presence, nay, the power and dread of being in the world. Animals of the wild sense the dread, animals domesticated feel comforting presence of being cared for by a structure not their own. Humans feel the power of being in the world by the sheer strength of intentionality, that is the ability to project their being onto a world they have confidence they are within and have the power to partake of it through the will of choice.
The choice can be of sheer brute force because taken up solely by primal being in the world; or it can be tempered by the projected presence and consciousness of others being in the world charted by their own space. The former, and surely, the most prominent in the dawn of history, was being in the world as the perennial warrior whose intentionality was to ravage contiguous space. The latter through the ages conditioned its intentionality by affinitive gestures toward a mate or a village — in other words upgrading consciousness of oneself to that of others.
Though infrastructures enabling convenience, culture and governance in modern society, the essential primal wills — within the framework of spotty civilization — brute power and affinity are still driving forces. Being in the world is not just to be human per se but to be grateful for its presence as an artist is immersed in the beauty of his or her impression that evokes something other than itself in virtue of its enduring satisfaction in creating greater value of otherness and of permanence.
In this world of coercion and terror — exemplified by the misguided warrior — being in the world denies sublimated intentionality of awe and presence stripped of the intensity of dread in order to sense being as a state of grace. By their presence in the world, the criminal, terrorist, or anyone who resorts to coercion whether physical, cultural or political blasphemes the intentional objective of truly being in the world with respect to the other.
Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: March 14, 2004.