Dissertation Construction 08

Wilderness Matters: Understanding Interconstituent Ecologies

08

The ontic definition of world is "as that 'wherein' a factical Dasein as such can be said to 'live'. "World has here a pre-ontological existentiell signification. Here again there are different possibilities: 'world' may stand for the 'public' we-world [Mitwelt], or one's 'own' closest (domestic) environment [Umwelt]" (BT, p. 93).

Ontic refers to specific entities. Ontological refers to the way of being of entities. Heidegger asks the question of the meaning of being. There is a perplexity and sense of wonder in the question of being. Sean Kelly differentiates philosophic wondering and scientific curiosity. The mood of wonder and perplexity characterizes the thinking that is dissatisfied by reduction of wonder to a description of material processes. If we wonder about being, what are we wondering about? Being is the ground of intelligibility as a background such that we rarely have an explicit understanding of being to the point that we take things for granted. However, we need the background of being to stand forth as a human being understanding ourselves and what we stand for in-the-world. The stand we take on our being is what we mean to be. Standing forth is how we co-constitute the way in which we matter in-the-world and the way in which things-in-the-world matter to us.

Dasein is factical, not factual. Factual refers to mere facts. Facticity, based on Kelly's interpretation (see previous link) is how somebody stands as a being against a backdrop of being in all that somebody's foreground and background understandings of themselves as a being. 

What does it mean to have a "pre-ontological existentiell signification"? To be characterized as existentiell relates to things that are existentialia. This is to be considered against a notion of categories. Categories are formal indications that attribute the factual aspect of entities. Existentialia are the basic structures of somebody's (Dasein's) mode of being. To have an existentiell signification refers to playing a role in the co-constitution of the way in which somebody matters in-the-world and the way in which things-in-the-world matter to somebody.

To have pre-ontological signification is to exist as something neither actively or passively. To say that the world is pre-ontological is to say that the world is neither a matter of a subject (somebody) taking on the world actively, nor is it a matter of a subject's passively being given it. It is a matter of somebody and the world coming together in co-constitution.