Sebastian Luft, Marquette University

Weltanschauung

Contribution to The Cambridge Heidegger Lexicon, ed. by Mark Wrathall

Weltanschauung literally means intuition of world or commonly translated as

worldview. Heidegger, while critical of the term as it was used in his day, nonetheless
gives it a positive meaning in his middle period.

Weltanschauung as a term is coined by Kant in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. In

Kant, it addresses the problem how reason is able to have an intuition of the totality of
being. This is the concept of W., which is capable of conceiving the infinity of the
sensible world under one concept, to which there can be no sensible correspondence. In
his own original way, Heidegger will recover this Kantian meaning in his own positive
definition of the term. For the sake of simplicity, the English term worldview shall be
used here, as its philosophical meaning is equally artificial in English as in the original
German.

The term continues to be used by the German Idealists and other thinkers in the
nineteenth century; however, it does not take on the specific meaning of the term to
which Heidegger, among others, react, until the late 19th century. As of this time, the
term takes on an ideological slant as in phrases such as pessimistic or political
worldview. As such, it signifies a peoples or an individuals view of the world,
including ones values and norms; everybody has a worldview of some sort.

In Dilthey, it takes on a negative meaning, as something to which philosophy, as a W.-

Lehre (doctrine of worldview), can provide a positive solution. The problem with a
worldview is that insofar as it is a radically subjective view of the world, the evidently
existing, historically developed plurality of worldviews leads to a relativism of claims
about the world. Obeying the fads and fashions of worldviews means kowtowing to a
complete relativism. Philosophy has the role, once its transcendental claims have been
overcome (as Dilthey believes he must, to further Kants philosophy), of categorizing
worldviews, effectively producing a typology of worldviews, distinguishing, e.g.,
between cultural, metaphysical or psychological worldviews. This task can also be taken
in a psychological manner, according to which a psychology of worldviews can trace the
emergence of worldviews as anthropological constants (Jaspers). In this way, philosophy
can anchor worldviews and can thereby help overcome this relativism. In fact, it is only a
philosophical consideration of worldviews as indicated that can achieve this in the age of
nihilism.

It is in this context that Heidegger steps in with his critical evaluation of the term. The
point where he enters the debate is essentially whether or not philosophy has, or ought to
have, any influence on the formation of worldview. Is philosophy responsible for
creating, or is it precisely its task to create, a philosophically justified or grounded
worldview? Or is a worldview something over which philosophy has no influence and
which is something that is generated on its own and has its own originary right?
Heideggers tendency in answering these questions is critical of Diltheys approach,
similarly to the way in which he rejects the notion, inherited from Husserl, that
philosophy should be a (rigorous) science. That philosophy should not engage in
furnishing a worldview was a widespread sentiment among philosophers in the first
decades of the 20th century, and Heideggers contribution to the debate is not particularly
original. It is a sellout of philosophy both to provide a worldview or to model itself after
science. In his mature phase, too, the discussion of worldview takes place in the context
of philosophy vis--vis science and worldview.

In his early work, Heidegger is unambiguously critical of the term, in that even
philosophy comes under the sway of having to produce a worldview that is to satisfy
ones personal whim; and, a worldview merely follows this whim: Today, W. is tailored
to life rather than the other way around (GA 16, 11, of 1911). In his earliest lectures in
Freiburg of 1919, Heidegger argues for a radical incompatibility (Unvereinbarkeit)
between philosophy and worldview. He goes so far to say that the construction of a
worldview must not be the task of philosophy, as especially the Southwest Neo-Kantians
claimed, but rather that it is a phenomenon alien to philosophy (philosophiefremdes
Phnomen, GA56/57, 12). This, in turn, motivates Heideggers definition of philosophy
as a pre-theoretical primal science.

In Being and Time, the term crops up occasionally and with essentially the same negative
connotation. What is emphasized here is the derived character of a worldview rather than
being something originary. Indeed, only an existential anthropology in the way
Heidegger envisions can provide a philosophically satisfying account of worldviews (cf.
SZ, 301). Both religious faith as well as worldviews can only take on their full
signification when interpreted in the light of the existential analysis of Dasein (cf. SZ,
180). Only an existential-ontological analysis of the sort Being and Time provides can
interpret worldviews as what they truly are: essential expressions of existential
possibilities of Dasein.

The most sustained treatment of the term can be found in Heideggers lecture course of
1928/29, Einleitung in die Philosophie, Heideggers first semester after his return from
Marburg. Here, too, Heidegger demarcates philosophy from both science and worldview.
In section two, dedicated to the discussion of the relation between philosophy and
worldview, Heidegger gives a detailed definition of worldview, beginning from its
historical and linguistic origin. A worldview is preliminarily defined as a form of
position-taking (Stellungnahme) of ones own convictions (GA 27, 233), whether these
are actively taken or passively taken over from ones tradition. In this sense, having an
Anschauung is synonymous to having an Ansicht, a view, as in the phrase ich bin der
Ansicht, as in English I am of the view. As such, it signals a certain Haltung (attitude
or literally holding) of Dasein (GA 27, 233). From here, Heidegger goes on to give an
existential interpretation of worldview as a modality of being-in-the-world, in which the
notion of Haltung will become crucial.
Worldview is now defined as one mode of being-in-the-world, whose essential character
is transcendence, which is essentially determined by having-no-hold [Halt-losigkeit].
Transcendence freedom! (GA 27, 341). This having-no-hold, which is the condition
for us to be free, is an essential or metaphysical structure of Dasein (cf. ibid., 341 f.). It
is in this sense that Dasein looks ahead at Dasein im Ganzen (Dasein as a whole),
which recaptures the sense of wholeness of world in the original Kantian sense, which
Heidegger discusses earlier in the lecture in detail (cf. GA 27, 248-304).

Once this definition has been reached, Heidegger discusses different forms of worldview
that are derivative of this existential meaning, Bergung and inauthentic or degenerate
Haltung. The authentic form of Haltung is nothing other than philosophy itself.

Mythical existence is a form of worldview, in which Dasein experiences itself as having

a certain nestedness (Bergung) within omnipotent being. In this respect, Heidegger
acknowledges the work on mythical thought by Cassirer, while objecting to its lack of
an existential dimension (ibid., 357-362).

A degenerate manner of Bergung is the worldview of the modern Betrieb (business). It

no longer provides a sense of Geborgenheit (comfort, security), but manifests itself in
forming institutions of power, in which the need for comfort has been shunned. This
creates an inner emptiness of Dasein (ibid., 364), in which Dasein, rather than finding a
new sense of comfort, loses itself. Once this stage has been reached, the need for
worldviews (in the negative sense) arises, which are made to fit superficial needs. These
analyses anticipate Heideggers later critique of technology.

In contrast to these, Heidegger returns to what is presumably an authentic form of having

a worldview via the concept of Haltung. Heidegger defines the relation between
philosophy and worldview in that philosophy is itself a Haltung in a special sense as it is
explicit transcending (ibid., 378). In this respect, philosophy is worldview par
excellence. It is not that worldview is the condition of the possibility of philosophy or
vice versa, but rather philosophy is worldview. Because philosophy necessarily is
worldview , it can for that reason not be the task and goal of philosophy to furnish
[ausbilden] a worldview. (ibid., 379) It is rather a Haltung in the original Greek sense
of ethos (), which is more originary than a positive ethics but an original stance
towards being as a whole, without wanting to dominate or subject entities (as in
degenerate Bergung). Thus, with worldview as Haltung philosophizing occurs
[geschieht] (386), which is nothing other of the awakening of the problem of being.
Only this sense of worldview is the basis upon which an explicit investigation of special
regions and types of beingscience, in other wordscan arise.

This is the last time in his career that Heidegger will make a positive attempt to define
worldview in the framework of his existential ontology, prior to the Kehre. After his
turning to seinsgeschichtlich thinking, Heidegger sees having an image or a picture of
the world (Weltbild is the term he uses there, though he might as well have used
Weltanschauung) as indicative of an historical epoch, namely that of modernity. In his
essay The Age of the World Picture of 1938, having a Weltbild is a sign of the
technological mastery over the world that the West has engendered in modernity.
Whether the positive account given a decade earlier is still valid given its later placement
in an historical setting, remains unanswered.