The Foundations
and Cognition of Human Existence
Ludwig Binswanger
Munich: Ernst Reinhart Verlag, 1964
Table of Contents
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
I. The spatiality of loving togetherness: Exposition of
problems
II. The temporality of loving togetherness: Exposition
of problems
III. Being-in-the-world as taking-care (Heidegger)
IV. Being-in-the-world as care: Being-at-home as love
a. The spatiality of taking-care and the spatiality of
loving togetherness
b. The temporality of taking-care and the temporality of
loving togetherness
c. The disclosedness of home of loving togetherness, and
the closed-up-ness of the world of taking-care: Living and theoretical
discoveries.
d. Self-hood in commerce and we-ness and self-hood in love
e. 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
I. Dealing-with
II. Communicating
III. Taking-part
IV. From the we-ness of love to the we-ness of sympathy: Sympathy
and release
V. 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
I. Introduction
II. Taking-by-something
III. Physical (umweltlichen) taking-by-something
a. Taking-by-the-hand: Grabbing
b. Taking-by-the-teeth: Biting
c. Taking-by-the-senses: Perception
d. Taking-by-the-mouth: The spoken name
IV. social taking-by-something
a. Taking-by-the-ear -- Impressionability
b. Taking-by-the-weakenesses (the passions) -- Influence,
suggestibility, affectivity
c. Taking-by-the-word -- Answerability or responsibility
d. Taking-by-the-name -- Historicity
e. In social taking-by-something, the free-wheeling manner
of anthropological access and research methodologies: The emergence
of problems in psychological cognition.
f. The anthropological sense of social taking-by-something:
Discourse.
g. 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
I. Introduction
II. The problem of self-love (self-concern)
a. The philautia of Aristotle
b. Christian self-love according to Augustine
1. Christian self-love according to Augustine
2. Self-love in "The Succession" by Augustine
III. The discursive being-to-oneself: The personality in intrapersonal
(eigenweltichen) interaction
a. Historical introductory comments
b. The reduction of discursive principles of cognition
in intrapersonal interaction
c. Jung's doctrine of the persona and the archetypic images
d. The self of being-to-oneself. The Eigenwelt
(self-world)
e. Only barely alive and naked terror
f. The role of love in being-to-oneself
IV. Being-oneself or being-fundamentally (as mine)
a. Existence and existential tendencies: The autobiography
of H. G. Wells
b. Existence and pseudoexistence: Stirner's construction
of uniqueness
c. Body and existence: Forgetting, sleep, psychosis
d. Speech, skill, and coming-to-cognition
e. Being-fundamentally as existence and as love
(note: Sein zum Grunde, being-fundamentally, literally means
being to the ground, the foundation.)
V. 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
I. Love and existential cognition
II. Care and existential cognition
a. Existential cognition and social taking-by-something
b. Existential cognition and intrapersonal taking-by-something
c. Existential cognition and existence
III. Existential cognition as overcoming the contradiction between
love and caring
Chapter Two
The unfolding of existential cognition
I. Towards a gnosology of psychological cognition
II. Meeting and form (Gestalt)
III. Existential cognition, form, and idea
IV. The truth of existential cognition
a. Form according to Kant, Hegel, Honigswald and the connection
to existential cognition
b. Form and change according to Goethe and the connection
to existential cognition
c. The relations of Goethe's and Husserl's phenomenology
and Heidegger's existential analysis to existential cognition
d. Phenomenology and love: Pure phenomenological
ideation and loving imagination.
e. 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
V. The coherence of existential cognition
Translated by C. George Boeree 1998. All errors mine and mine
alone!
Return to top
Return to Binswanger
article
Return to homepage