Missing in action: affectivity in being and time

Abstract

Despite the importance that Heidegger assigns to affectivity structurally in Being and Time, accounts of the relevant sorts of affectivity are frequently and, in some cases, perhaps even egregiously missing from existential analyses that form the centerpiece of the work. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate as much. After recounting the considerable insights of Heidegger’s general account of disposedness and affectivity and the fundamental status he assigns to them, the focus of the paper turns to the secondary status often accorded them in the first half of Being and Time and the seemingly crucial absence of an adequate account of the affective dimension of authentic existence, in the second half of the work. After making the argument that, according to Heidegger’s own criterion, the adequate rootedness of the existential analysis demands a more robust account of the affective character of existing authentically, the paper concludes with an open question about the mood of undertaking the existential analysis itself.