A Heideggerian Account on Sense-certainty through Ent-fernung Based on a Re-entry into Hegel’s Phenomenology

Abstract

This paper presents a Heideggerian account of sense-certainty. As a phenomenon, sense-certainty was originally thematized by Hegel in his Phenomenology of Spirit as a kind of experience that involves what “immediately appears as the richest kind of knowledge” (Hegel 1977, §91, 58). The need for a Heideggerian account of sense-certainty can be motivated as follows: First, Heidegger does not consider sense-certainty in his limited account of perception in Being and Time. Second, Hegel’s account pushes the onto-theo-ego-logic of the Western philosophical tradition, which Heidegger is critical of. In this paper, I propose that sense-certainty, freed from its onto-theo-ego-logical basis, can be critically reconstrued in relation to Heidegger's notion of de-distancing [Ent-fernung].

Keywords: sense certainty, Heidegger, Hegel, perception, de-distancing