The Hermeneutical Dimension of Affectivity in Martin Heidegger’s Early Lectures

Abstract

This paper focuses on the role affectivity plays in the so-called young Martin Heidegger’s hermeneutical transformation of phenomenology. After establishing in the introduction the close connection existing between affectivity and facticity, I take the notion of movedness (Bewegtheit) of factical life as my main guiding thread. Firstly, I explain the peculiar meaning this notion has in young Heidegger’s philosophy. Secondly, I analyze the double “basic movedness” (Grundbewegtheit) of love and hate as being the intentional matrix of curare (Bekümmerung) according to the Heideggerian interpretation of Augustine’s Confessions during the summer semester lecture course in 1921. Thirdly, I consider the double movedness of pathos and Befindlichkeit as laid out in the summer semester lecture course in 1924, called Basic Concepts of Aristotelian Philosophy. And, finally, I elucidate the “Logic of the Heart” behind the hermeneutics of facticity as jointly articulating both the New Testament tradition of affectus (Augustine) and the Greek tradition of pathos (Aristotle).