© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

*This is a draft
Publication: COMPARATIVE AND CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/17570638.2017.1358926

Is Guilt a Feeling?
An Analysis of Guilt in Existential Philosophy
Hye Young Kim
Freie Universität Berlin, Germany

The concept of guilt in relation to conscience and anxiety is not referred to as a feeling or an
emotion in existential philosophy. Rather, the phenomenon of guilt is analyzed through the
structure of existence. In Being and Time, Heidegger interprets guilt in the context of Dasein’s
understanding of its own Being. The nature of Dasein as a finite entity permeates the analysis of
guilt, which is based on the analysis of negation (nullity) and the time structure of Dasein
(temporality). An existential interpretation of guilt, conscience, and anxiety offers a new
dimension of the study of emotions with regard to the understanding of human Being.

Keywords Heidegger, Kierkegaard, Guilt, Angst, Conscience, Emotions

Dasein and Guilt

In this paper, the concept of guilt in the framework of Heidegger’s Being and Time is analyzed
with regard to the philosophical study of emotions. Guilt is a term which is frequently used in
our daily life, mainly in the sense of feeling or being guilty. This concept is normally
accompanied with the concept of conscience, for example, whether to have a guilty conscience
or to follow what conscience whispers to the heart. Mostly it applies to a situation in which an
action is ethically judged. Whether an action is morally sound or not is the standard for having a
bad conscience or feeling guilty. These two phenomena, conscience and guilt, are revealed in the
form of feelings. When your conscience pricks you, it means that you feel morally bad. In the
context of an existential understanding, however, Heidegger takes these concepts as crucial
elements for understanding human existence, not in terms of moral judgments, but as moments

1
of the self-understanding of Dasein. Dasein is a term that refers to each of us as a human being.
Heidegger calls this entity “Being-in-the-world,” because it exists in the world. The way this
entity exists in the world, though, is different from any other entities in the world, which are
there with me as a particular and personal individual. This entity differentiates itself from other
entities in the world by taking its own Being as an issue. In other words, Dasein is an entity
which raises a question about its own Being for itself and understands itself in a certain way.
This self-understanding is the way of existence of Dasein itself.

Being and Temporality

This understanding process is a temporal process, which Heidegger refers to as “temporality”
(Zeitlichkeit). The title of Heidegger’s most well-known work is Being and Time, but more
precisely stated, it is rather Being and temporality, for it deals with the Being of human Dasein
and its temporality. The temporality of Dasein doesn’t indicate the objective, or rather, ordinary
conception of time with past, present, and future, which is indifferent and equally effective for
every entity. Each Dasein has its own temporality that moves in an ecstatic structure. In this
structure, instead of the ordinary distinctions of the past, the present, and the future, there are
three temporal phenomena: having-been (Gewesenheit), being-present (Gegenwart), and future
(Zukunft) with its characteristics of “towards…” (Auf-sich-zu), “back to…” (Zurück auf) and
“alongside…” (Begegenlassen von) (Heidegger 2006, 329). These phenomenal (phenomenal)
characteristics are the “ecstases,” which disclose the movement of temporalizing (Zeitigung)
within a complete structure of temporality (Heidegger 2006, 328-329). What this temporal
movement reveals is the nature of Dasein’s Being, because Dasein can understand itself (that is,
its Being and not-Being) through this movement, and it exists in this manner. First of all, it is
necessary to examine the structure of this temporalizing movement as the structure of the self-
understanding of Dasein. By doing so, we can analyze the role and the meaning of guilt and
conscience in the context of Dasein’s existence.

The Structure of the Being of Dasein

The movement of temporality is based on the facticity (Faktizität) of Dasein; the facticity that it
is thrown in the world (in die Welt geworfen) and projects itself onto the future possibilities of its
Being (Sichentwerfen in die Möglichkeiten) (Heidegger 2006, 56). In this sense, Heidegger refers
2
to this temporal movement as thrown-projection (geworfener Entwurf). This temporal movement
always flows towards the future. Heidegger calls it “future-oriented” (zukünftig). This movement
is, however, double-sided. When Dasein projects itself towards the future, it necessarily has to
come back to its present thrownness (Zurückkommen auf die Geworfenheit). These two
simultaneous movements together constitute one complete movement.
I argue that this is a circular movement, which comes to existence between two end
points. One of the endpoints is the point of thrownness, and the other point is the future
possibility of Dasein’s Being. The most authentic future possibility of the Being of Dasein is the
possibility of not-Being, namely death. The point of thrownness indicates that Dasein is thrown
in the world in the form of having been there. Because Dasein is an entity which is thrown in the
world, it exists in the world finitely. This finiteness of the Being of Dasein determines the nature
of Dasein.
The thrownness of Dasein and the death of Dasein rest upon, in essence, the identical
phenomenon of the nature of Dasein’s existence, in other words, the phenomenon of “not.” This
is the nullity which permeates the understanding of Dasein. Fundamentally, Dasein is, according
to Heidegger, Being-towards-death (Sein-zum-Tode), for it exists as a finite entity in the world,
in the way that it runs towards the future and comes back to the present. This movement of
existence is, at the same time, the process of existential understanding of Dasein. Dasein exists
only in the way that it questions its own Being and thereby understands itself. Thus, for Dasein,
existence is understanding. In other words, by being there, that is, through thrown-projecting,
Dasein can understand itself. This self-understanding of Dasein relates necessarily to the
understanding of its most authentic possibility of Being, which is its not-Being, or death. The
possibility of death as the most authentic possibility of Being reveals itself to Dasein through a
certain feeling, which brings Dasein face to face with the nullity in the future. This feeling is
anxiety. This could be referred to as a feeling, or perhaps something else entirely, depending on
how the conception of feeling is defined. However, for now I temporarily refer to the
phenomenon of anxiety as feeling, because it is experienced and regarded as a type of feeling in
the context of everyday life. The question of whether it is appropriate to call this a feeling will be
raised again and analyzed later in this paper. Once this anxiety opens up the way to run towards
death, Dasein calls itself from its everyday life, where it is normally “lost” in other entities in the
world. This is the call of the conscience. Within this whole process of temporality through
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anxiety and the call of conscience, Dasein’s guilt constitutes and discloses the basis of its
existence. This is the nullity as the basis of this finitely existing Being-in-the-world.

Anxiety and Guilt in the Process of Understanding

One of the significant points of Heidegger’s interpretation of Dasein lies in the fact that the
starting point of this existential process of understanding is the phenomenon of anxiety. Since
anxiety has played an important role in existential philosophy, for instance, in the work of
Kierkegaard, it is actually not at all a new invention of Heidegger to relate this specific concept
to issues of existential philosophy. However, just as with the concept of Dasein, Heidegger gives
it a new definition and tries to approach it from a different angle. He calls anxiety “the basic
state-of-mind” that brings Dasein into the authentic understanding of its own Being (Heidegger
2006, 184). Once the possibility of authentic understanding is disclosed to Dasein, it can
be ”guilty” of its own Being. In this context, “being guilty” means that Dasein is responsible for
its own Being, which in essence relates to its understanding of itself (Heidegger 2006, 283-284).
This is the essential character of Dasein; the finite Being is placed in the center of this process of
understanding of Dasein through anxiety and guilt. In other words, anxiety in this context is an
anxiety that arises in the face of the possibility of death. And the guilt of Dasein implies its
responsibility for its own finiteness, namely death. This responsibility does not indicate the
possibility of a choice of life or death, but rather the existential understanding of its own Being
as a finite one.
For Dasein, according to Heidegger, anxiety and guilt mean the basis for its authentic and
active, and therefore free, way of existing through understanding its own Being. Heidegger
himself doesn’t refer to these two concepts as “emotions” or “feelings.” They do not, however,
relate to an intellectual or a rational process of understanding either. He instead calls anxiety
“the-state-of-mind” and guilt “the basis-Being.” By doing so, he must have intended to avoid
confusion that could be caused by common understandings of emotions or feelings, especially in
relation to the concept of understanding, which he already applies in a different sense within his
own existential interpretation. I reckon that there are two problems in referring to these concepts
as emotions or feelings: 1. The definitions of, and the difference between, the words “emotion’
and “feeling” are ambiguous. 2. Anxiety and guilt as feelings are shadowed with a negative
connotation that blurs the positive interpretation of Dasein as a free entity. Anxiety and guilt in
4
Dasein’s existential understanding should be brought up as a separate issue in the framework of
the philosophy of Dasein and reexamined in the context of the study of emotions.

Feelings and Emotions

In this context, it is necessary to look briefly into feeling and emotion as two different concepts.
In effect, it is hard to expect a theoretical perspicuity in defining and distinguishing these two
concepts. However, Antonio Damasio draws a line between emotions and feelings on a vertical
axis with different degrees: feelings are closer to higher reason and emotions are farther from it.
He differentiates between these two phenomena based on their orientation. According to
Damasio, feelings are inwardly directed and they are private, whereas emotions are outwardly
directed and have a public characteristic. What matters, though, in both cases, is their impact on
the mind (Damasio 1999, 36). He focuses on the role and the connection of consciousness to
feelings and emotions. His approach to consciousness concerning feelings and emotions forms
the core basis of his theory on human feelings. Although emotions and consciousness are
different phenomena, he claims, their underpinnings may be connected (Damasio 1999, 38). He
delineates the different states of emotions and feelings in relation to consciousness. There is a
state of emotion, which is triggered and executed non-consciously, a state of feeling represented
non-consciously, and a state of feeling made consciously known to the organism having both
emotion and feeling (Damasio 1999, 37). According to Damasio, feelings are closer to the state
of consciousness, and therefore to higher reason, than emotions, which are rather biological
phenomena (Damasio 1999, 50-51). Whether the kinds of emotions Damasio introduces as
primary or universal emotions, such as happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise or disgust,
should be characterized as more private or public, is a debatable point (Damasio 1999, 50).
On the other hand, Agnes Heller (2009) defines “to feel” from an anthropological and
social perspective. She says that to feel means to be involved in something. This something is
anything in which one can be involved. However, she points out that this “something” doesn’t
indicate a concretely determined object, because she sees phenomena without objects, like
anxiety, desire, and fear, as feelings. A significant point about this something is found in that this
something is always present (Heller 2009, 11). Here, we can find the hint of a necessary
connection between feelings and time. This feeling-time conjunction will be mentioned again
concerning the anxiety and guilt of Dasein. According to Heller’s (2009, 85-86) definition,
5
emotions are partly occurrences of pure feeling, like being moved or experiencing devotion, and
partly feeling dispositions. Emotions are, therefore, different types of feelings. Heller’s definition
of feeling as being involved in something, as something both private and public, has a broader
realm of meanings. A significant point of Heller’s understanding of feelings is that she interprets
feeling as an act, which is more than a biological reaction. It is evident that her philosophy on
feelings shows a trace of an existential philosophical background. Not only her use of terms like
anxiety as a feeling without object and her assertion of its connection to time, but also her
understanding of feeling as an act reminds one of Heidegger’s existential interpretations of
anxiety in relation to human existence.
Are anxiety and guilt feelings? Or rather, emotions? The answer to the question of
whether Heidegger names these phenomena specifically as feelings or emotions is clear: no. He
didn’t choose these particular concepts for the phenomena of anxiety and guilt. But he also does
not say that they are not feelings or emotions. Instead, he uses the expression “states of mind” for
anxiety, which could translate as atmosphere or state. This is what seizes Dasein, through which
Dasein can come to a realization of the fundamental state of its own Being, and eventually
understand the structure and the meaning of its own existence.

Anxiety and Nothingness (Nichts)

Heidegger’s concept of anxiety is the door to the temporality of Dasein as its own time. Dasein’s
past, present, and future are in a process in which Dasein exists in the way that it understands
itself. Dasein runs towards its future before it has actually come, which is the own-most (eigenste)
possibility of Being, or death, and it comes back to its present, where it already and always has
been. In this temporal process lies the concept of anxiety as the stage at which Dasein comes to
its first realization of the own-most possibility of Being as the possibility of nothing. Anxiety, in
this sense, is the state in which Dasein starts to become conscious of its own Being, or rather, of
its way of existence. In this way, Dasein can understand itself. In the sense that anxiety is
aroused in the face of death as the end, the state of nothing is the state of Being in which Dasein
understands its Being as a whole, or more specifically, as a whole temporal process. Only
through death can any human being understand its own Being as a whole. Heidegger doesn’t
necessarily call the temporality of Dasein a process, but that is my interpretation of temporality.

6
Through this interpretation of temporality as process, the mobility of this temporal structure of
Dasein as its own basic way of existence is better disclosed.
The main task of understanding the existence of human Dasein is to understand this
temporal process. In face of this nothing, in other words, understanding the possibility of not-
being as Dasein’s most authentic possibility of Being, Dasein stands in anxiety. This is not fear
or dread, but a fundamental state of Being of Dasein. In the sense that Dasein is conscious of its
own existence, anxiety or care (Sorge) would be rather a feeling than an emotion, if we take
Damasio’s definitions of feelings and emotions to be true. But Heidegger does not name this
state of Being a mere feeling. Anxiety is the state that comes when Dasein faces its future and
runs towards it before it has actually come. After that, it comes back to its present. This temporal
movement of Dasein is the very structure of its existence as an understanding entity. Heidegger
calls this whole process “care” (Sorge). Care is a name for the whole process of Dasein’s
existence, of which the ground is its nothingness. Dasein starts to understand the structure of care
from the basic state of mind, anxiety.

Guilt and Understanding

Now the question is: what role then does guilt play in this context? According to the lexical
definition, guilt has two meanings: First, it means responsibility for wrong-doings or doing
something bad. The other meaning of this word relates to a negative feeling that is caused by
knowing or thinking that you have done something bad. Guilt in the context of Being and Time,
however, does not refer to a bad feeling, like a guilty feeling, in the sense of “laying a guilt trip”
on somebody. But it’s also not guilt as responsibility for doing something wrong or bad. Guilt in
Being and Time has a different spectrum of meanings, just as Heidegger’s concept of Dasein has
its peculiar definition in the framework of the analytic of Dasein. It entails responsibility
(Verantwortlichkeit), but not for bad things or wrong doings. Dasein’s responsibility is an
existential responsibility, which means that Dasein is responsible for its own Being itself, not for
a particular object in the world, or for its own specific actions or memories. What Dasein does
when it is responsible for its own Being is to understand its own Being. Being-guilty reveals the
fundamental structure of Dasein’s Being. Normally, Dasein is fallen in the midst of everyday life
with other entities and things in the world. But when its conscience calls Dasein back, Dasein
can be authentically guilty and eventually understand itself. This understanding of Dasein
7
doesn’t indicate, however, an intellectual process of understanding. What the call refers back to
is the state of Dasein in which Dasein faces its most authentic possibility of Being. In doing so,
Dasein understands its own existence. The point of the phenomenon of Dasein’s understanding
lies in the fact that this self-understanding of Dasein itself is its existence. Therefore, this
existential understanding differentiates itself from the intelligibility of Dasein.1

Guilt and Nullity

What Dasein is responsible for is, therefore, its finite Being. Nullity as the possibility of not-
Being permeates the entirety of Dasein’s existence. Heidegger states that the character of “not”
lies in the idea of “guilty” (Heidegger 2006, 283). In this sense, Dasein’s being-guilty is the
ground of its own Being:
In the structure of thrownness, as in that of projection, there lies essentially a
nullity. This nullity is the basis for the possibility of inauthentic Dasein in its
falling; and as falling every inauthentic Dasein factically is. Care itself, in its very
essence, is permeated with nullity through and through. Thus “care”—Dasein’s
Being—means, as thrown projection, Being-the-basis of a nullity (and this Being-
the-basis is itself null). This means that Dasein as such is guilty, if our formally
existential definition of “guilt” as “Being-the-basis of a nullity” is indeed correct.
(Heidegger 2006, 285)
However, this “not” is clearly different from the concepts of privation and lack. Heidegger points
out that these concepts are not very transparent in themselves, and for the ontological
interpretation of the phenomenon of guilt they are insufficient (Heidegger 2006, 286). The “not”
of guilty for Dasein means the possibility of Being, which constitutes the complete structure of
Dasein’s existence. This is not a lack of its existence, but rather, this “not” starts and completes
the very movement of temporality and the self-understanding of Dasein.

1
An interpretation of Dasein’s understanding in relation to intelligibility, as stated in the following, can be read as
problematic: “Rather, the call refers back to a more basic level of intelligibility which in turn undergoes
development in a more radical form of understanding” (Schalow 1985, 371). In the same paper, conscience is
described with intelligibility as the essence of conscience, which enables the act of calling: “In owning up to itself in
this primordial way, Dasein brings the intelligibility of its own conscience into understanding” (Schalow 1985, 373).
The existential act of calling of the conscience, however, is not an act which consists of an intellectual
understanding, but rather, it is the very way of Being of Dasein itself.

8
 At this point, Heidegger raises a question about the ontological source of the character of
“not” in the context of the history of traditional metaphysics:
Has anyone ever made a problem of the ontological source of notness, or prior to
that, even sought the mere conditions on the basis of which the problem of the
‘not’ and its notness and the possibility of that notness can be raised? And how
else are these conditions to be found except by taking the meaning of Being in
general as a theme and clarifying it? (Heidegger 2006, 286)
My answer to this question is “yes.” Schelling, in the first book of the Ages of the World
(Weltalter), has already analyzed the “notness,” namely, negation as the primordial source of
every movement. The essence of Dasein’s Being as temporality lies in its movement. Schelling
proclaims: “Negation is therefore the necessary precedent (prius) of every movement” (Schelling
2000, 16). According to Schelling, “negation is the first transition whatsoever from nothing into
something” (Schelling 2000, 16). However, Omne agens agit propter finem; in other words,
everything that acts, acts on account of an end. Thus, “all beginning is, in accord with its nature,
only a desire for the end or for what leads to the end and hence, negates itself as the end”
(Schelling 2000, 16). On this account, the structure of this movement has to be circular, in which
the beginning and the end meet, or rather, are one and the same, for it is only in a circular form
that two opposite points can mutually exclude each other and simultaneously be the same. This
circular movement based on the primordial negation reveals also the structure of Dasein’s Being
as temporality in a whole process.

Guilt and Knowing

Feeling guilty has something to do with knowing something, such as realizing that you have
done something bad or done something falsely, in other words, that you are involved in
something in a negative way. In the guilt of Dasein, the core process of feeling guilty still
remains: knowing something. This function of feeling guilty as knowing or realizing something
enables the process of Dasein’s self-understanding of its own Being. Being-guilty is, however,
more primordial than any knowledge about it, according to Heidegger (Heidegger 2006, 286).
What Dasein has to know, or rather, understand, is not something as a particular entity in the
world, nor an action, nor a thought, nor anything that is something, but nothing, which sets
Dasein in the position of being able to take its own Being as an issue and to understand itself.
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Dasein is Being-to-Death (Sein-zum-Tode), in the sense that its end holds the meaning of its
Being as a whole; and grasping the meaning of Being as a finite entity is the key question to
Dasein’s understanding of Being. Dasein faces its possibility of not-being, and this nothing as the
fate of Dasein causes Dasein to exist in the present constantly facing the future as an existing
entity that already and always has been there.
When Dasein as Being-to-Death understands itself in this temporal process, it is guilty of
its own Being. By being guilty, Dasein can exist as a free entity that understands its own
existence in its own “time” (Zeitlichkeit). In other words, Dasein structures its own temporality
in its “free” way of existing by fully taking on its guilt. Guilt, in this context, is therefore not at
all a negative emotion or a conscious moment of feeling bad, but it rather points to the positive
and active structure of Dasein’s existence as a process of understanding. Conscience is possible
only because Dasein is guilty in the basis of its Being (Heidegger 2006, 286). This conscience
gives us “Being-guilty as something which at bottom we are to understand,” because Dasein
“closes itself off from itself as something thrown and falling” (Heidegger 2006, 286). This
thrownness and falling of Dasein is not a lower state of Being for Dasein, but it is rather an
equally crucial and necessary way of existence which enables Dasein to be guilty, and eventually
to understand itself. The fall of Dasein into everyday life with others is, nevertheless, not a
negative phenomenon, but a necessary condition of Being. Inauthentic understanding of Being is
not a degraded version of existential understanding. When Dasein calls itself from the
inauthentic fallen state in daily life and runs towards its most authentic possibility of Being, it
has to come back to its inauthentic present.

The Call of Conscience

Conscience (Gewissen) relates to knowing (Wissen), which doesn’t necessarily indicate only an
ethical awakening. In the face of death, ethics cannot play the role of the standard for evaluating
the value of life. Amongst the living, there is no one who deserved life, nor who didn’t deserve
life. Life was granted equally and indifferently, whether one is good or evil. When a person who
is seriously injured by a car accident is brought to a trauma surgeon, the surgeon doesn’t and
cannot ask first if that person’s life was moral or immoral, or if that person deserves to live or die.
He has to do his best to help the wounded person survive. The problem of morality comes in

10
only at the next level. Whether that person was good or bad can only be judged when he no
longer stands in the face of death.
Conscience makes one able to pause in the middle of life and look into oneself. In other
words, when conscience calls one to “come back” to itself, the true sense (Sinn)2 of one’s Being
is revealed. In the face of death, all ethical problems fall into the categories of inauthentic
everyday life, and only the most authentic problem of Being or not-Being remains. However, this
doesn’t mean that the call of conscience in the ontological sense is completely separated from the
problem of good and bad. The moment when conscience is awake and calls is the moment when
one has to undertake their own judgment of their own actions, thoughts or, fundamentally, their
own existence. The judgments of moral values, namely questions of good or bad, shake everyday
life and bring one into an uncomfortable (unheimlich)3 state of mind. When I think about the
value of life, the death of others, and the possibility of my own death, I question myself, my
Being, or rather, the meaning of my Being, and vice versa. The inauthentic problem of good and
bad is different from the authentic question of Being or not-Being. But the latter is not possible
without the former.
The catalyst of the call for conscience is guilt. Having a good or bad conscience depends
on the phenomenon of guilt. In Korean, conscience has a different name than in Indo-European
languages, which translates as “good heart (mind).” There is no such expression as “bad
conscience” (schlechtes Gewissen) in Korean. It’s either only good or not there at all. They say
“the non-existence of good mind” instead of “bad conscience.” This name of “good mind”
discloses the necessary condition of the conscience to know and distinguish good and bad. What
moves the good mind is, in this case also, guilt. When guilt is added to the “good mind,” this
good mind, namely the conscience, makes one feel uncomfortable. In this sense, guilt is being-
the-ground for one to turn back to oneself and face one’s own existence. However, only through
conscience can one be guilty. Conscience first has to call the one who is fallen in the midst of the

2
In the sense of purpose or end.
3
Normally the German term “unheimlich” means “eerie, uncanny or weird.” However, in the context of the analysis
of Dasein, this word is rather used in the sense that Dasein is seized with an “abnormal” feeling, which is not of
everyday life and authentic, when it faces the possibility of nothing, in other words, its own death. This feeling
doesn’t indicate a feeling of fear or horror; instead it means the anxious state of mind, which is rather an
uncomfortable feeling. In this sense, Heidegger analyzes the word “unheimlich” as a combination of the negative
prefix “un-” and “heim,” which means “home.” Therefore, this is a feeling of being thrown outside of one’s
comfort zone.

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inauthentic way of life back to its most authentic state of Being. This call of the ontological
conscience, though, is different from the “normal” call which reveals the difference between
good and evil. This call is the call of reticence, which brings us to the face of nothing, or rather,
not-Being as the most authentic possibility of Being. The call is the call of care (Heidegger 2006,
286). When Dasein stands in front of the possibility of nothing, it is, in the true sense, guilty.
“Being-guilty constitutes the Being to which we give the name of ‘care’” (Heidegger 2006, 287).
Heidegger summarizes as follows: “This calling-back in which conscience calls forth, gives
Dasein to understand that Dasein itself—the null basis for its null projection, standing in the
possibility of its Being—is to bring itself back to itself from its lostness in the ‘they’; and this
means that it is guilty” (Heidegger 2006, 287).

The Reticence of Conscience

The silence of conscience has double meanings: First,the call is silent because the call is based
on the nullity of Being; and second, the ethical issues are silenced in existential understanding.
Being cannot be morally judged or evaluated. In this sense, conscience that works for moral
judgments in everyday life doesn’t arouse bad or good feelings for certain actions. Everyone is
thrown in the world. No one chose or could choose to throw oneself in the world. Everyone dies
at one point, and the fate of death doesn’t evaluate one’s morality. You may want to live longer
or want to die, but either way, one can exist only finitely, and has to go just as they had to come.
First, the moment of death is the moment of nothing, where everything falls into nothing
as my Being becomes nothing. The details of life, others, and things that are filling the
inauthentic life are dimmed away and only nothing, as the most authentic possibility of Being,
comes into existence (zur Erscheinung kommen). In this state, what the call calls is nothing;
namely, it calls in silence.
Second, this reticence exposes the distinction between ethics and ontology. The authentic
way of understanding of Being, or rather, understanding the authentic possibility of Being, does
not necessarily relate to or reveal the ethical issues of life. Knowing that I die could eventually
lead me to live a life with better attitudes, but knowing this fact does not affect specific, moral
elements of life. The act of judging what is good and what is bad is not applicable for one’s
Being or not-Being. How can one’s existence itself or death itself be judged morally? It cannot

12
be. Heidegger himself states clearly: “The primordial ‘Being-guilty’ cannot be defined by
morality, since morality already presupposes it for itself” (Heidegger 2006, 286).

Guilt and Freedom

Heidegger conjoins this concept of guilt with the concept of freedom. Dramatically stated, this
freedom of human beings that necessarily comes with the knowledge of their existence and the
world, in which they exist as Being-in-the-world, could be described almost as an overcoming of
their mortality. We still die, but by knowing, human beings had to become responsible for their
own being, in other words, their own mortality. Namely, they understand their own Being, and
through this they exist as free entities. It’s almost an anti-theological answer to the theological
question of the mortality of human beings and its understanding: a positive answer to the
mortality of human beings, and to a negative interpretation of the original sin and the fall of the
humankind.
The guilt and freedom of Dasein are two sides of one coin. The core of this connection is
understanding, which is the basic way of existing for Dasein. Just as Kierkegaard also utilizes the
fable of Adam and Eve and their knowing of good and evil, I argue that under the analytic of
Dasein concerning guilt, and Dasein as a free entity, lies the metaphor of Adam’s falling (that is,
being guilty) and his knowing, which, in the case of Dasein, could be pointing to its
understanding of Being as the most fundamental understanding.
The thing that is still left in the dark in the discourse of guilt and anxiety in Heidegger’s
analytic of Dasein is the background or Heidegger’s clear reasoning for choosing this particular
terminology. The question is basically: Why anxiety? Why guilt rather than simply responsibility?
The concept of anxiety is deeply related to the finiteness of human Dasein. The necessary
connection between anxiety and nothing is relatively well-described in The Concept of Anxiety
by Kierkegaard (2010). It is hard not to notice the connection between this particular part of
Being and Time and the writings of Kierkegaard on anxiety.
For Kierkegaard (2010, 488), anxiety is one of the most human phenomena that
differentiates humans from animals. In Kierkegaard’s theory of anxiety, the possibility of
nothing (death), necessarily conjoined with the concept of guilt, plays an important role. The
human characteristic is conferred on the concept of anxiety based on the finiteness of human
beings. Through anxiety, one can be guilty, and by being guilty, one is unguilty [unschuldig]
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(Kierkegaard 2010, 489). He structures his discourse on anxiety, guilt, unguilt, death, and
ignorance [Unwissenheit] with the problem of freedom. At this point, it is not difficult to reckon
that Heidegger’s concepts of guilt and anxiety are not his idiosyncratic terminology. Heidegger,
however, doesn’t explain his specific reason for selecting the word guilt. This could be
interpreted as an inevitable but hidden trace of the theological background of Heidegger’s
philosophy and the influence of Kierkegaard’s philosophy, although Heidegger doesn’t mention
or quote Kierkegaard concerning the problem of guilt and Dasein. The concept of guilt in
Kierkegaard’s philosophy is connected to the knowing and not-knowing problem. The one who
doesn’t know is unguilty, and the one who knows is guilty. Kierkegaard’s biblical interpretation
of guilt and knowledge seems to have reached out to Heidegger’s theory of human existence.
Heidegger doesn’t mention Adam and Eve and their guilt for their mortality, but the whole story
of understanding and the finiteness of human existence and the responsibility of human beings
seems to be rooted in the story of the original “guilt” of mankind. One can’t deny the influence
of Kierkegaard’s philosophy on Heidegger, even if Heidegger himself doesn’t identify this
connection to Kierkegaard clearly in his work. Stephen Mulhall sees that Heidegger attempts to
distinguish himself from theological theoreticians with his “ethico-religious concepts such as
guilt and conscience” and to offer an answer to a question that Kierkegaard posed (Mulhall 2001,
121-122).

Guilt and Anxiety in the Study of Emotions

Guilt and anxiety in the analytic of Dasein do not represent feelings or emotions that have
functions either biologically or socially. However, according to what we understand under the
concept of feeling or emotion, this existential terminology of feelings (or emotions) can open a
new dimension of emotional studies. When feelings are not considered as fully independent
phenomena, separated from rationality, body or the whole being as a mental / intellectual
organism, but rather as immediate and fundamental phenomena which constitute the existence of
human Dasein as understanding, this existential interpretation of guilt and anxiety as it is in the
whole structure of existence could tell us more than just some theories of feelings as fractions of
human understanding.
In this context, the question of whether anxiety and guilt are feelings or emotions doesn’t
have much significance. But through an existential interpretation of anxiety and guilt, we can see
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the possibility of overcoming the limited understanding of human Being as either a fully rational
or physical existence or as a mere combination of these two, instead thinking of it as a practically
living whole. Feelings or emotions are not rationality, but through them we become conscious of
our way of Being in a fundamental way. The existential understanding of feelings like anxiety
and guilt gives us a new possibility of interpretation of our Being, not as a theory, in which my
mind and my body are artificially separated and set against each other, but as a practice, in which
we actually and factically live and face the fundamental understanding of our own Being in a
positive way.

Contact Information:
hye.young.kim[at]fu-berlin.de

References

Damasio, Antonio. 1999. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of
Consciousness. Orlando: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Heidegger, Martin. 2006. Sein und Zeit. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.
Heller, Agnes. 2009. A Theory of Feelings. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
Kierkegaard, S. 2010. Der Begriff der Angst. München: dtv.
Mulhall, S. 2005. Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time. London:
Routledge.
Schalow, F. 1985. “The Hermeneutical Design of Heidegger’s Analysis of Guilt.” The Southern
Journal of Philosophy 23(3): 361-76.
Schelling, F. W. J. 2000. The Ages of the World. Translated by J. Wirth. New York: State
University of New York Press.

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