Abstract

How does everyday, inauthentic Dasein dominated by das Man become authentic? The aim of this article is to answer this and other questions about Dasein's authenticity by carrying out an analysis of the 'call of conscience'. This analysis, in turn, provides insights about Dasein's possibility for ethical existence. We will see that even though there are some puzzling issues in Heidegger's explanation of Dasein in its everydayness and its authenticity, the Heideggerian Existential Analytic is not 'anti-ethical' as some have claimed. We will also see that the Existential Analytic's commitment to the ontic raises doubts about Heidegger's claim that the Analytic is prior to any ethics and examine how reading Being and Time as a project of 'metontology' may dissolve these doubts. Finally, the paper offers a suggestion about the importance of 'authentic historicality' in a factical account of the moral life.