Existentialists reject both realist and idealist accounts by arguing that in our ordinary experiences there is no separation between ‘inner’ and ‘outer,’ between self and world. On their view, these accounts distort the fact that we are, first and foremost, “already out there,” already engaged in the world and “opened toward beings” (Heidegger 1992, 167). Indeed, interpreting existence in terms of being-in-the-world suggests that the debate between realism and idealism is not even worthy of philosophical consideration (e.g., Guignon 1983). This is because the whole problem is based on an error that assumes human beings are basically self-enclosed minds who are trying to get clear about their beliefs of mind-independent objects. Against this view, existentialists argue that we are already enmeshed in the world in our everyday practices and that we already understand things in terms of their practical uses and purposes. I do not, for instance, first stare at the computer and reflect on its objective properties before I use it. As a professor involved in the acts and practices of the academic world, I already inhabit an understanding of the computer in terms of its practical function and use. My hands simply begin to press the keys, with my eyes leveled at the screen and my elbows resting on the desk. This kind of oriented and purposive activity is performed pre-reflectively, without the accompaniment of mental representation.
Interpreting existence in terms of situated understanding also allows existentialists to challenge the ‘fact — value’ dualism central to modern philosophy. On this view, there is a fundamental distinction drawn between what is objective or real in the physical universe versus what is subjective or existing only in our own minds. The aim of the philosopher or scientist is to bracket out ‘values,’ that is, the subjective colorings that we impose on things based on our own idiosyncratic tastes, cultural backgrounds, and sensory apparatuses in order to discover mind-independent ‘facts.’ What is factual or true, as we saw earlier, is usually interpreted in terms of what is quantifiable, pertaining to the measurable qualities of mass, weight, movement, and spatial-temporal location. The upshot of the fact-value dichotomy is that there can be no such thing as a ‘moral fact’ and that the meaning, significance, and purpose of things comes to be regarded as merely subjective or a sociocultural projection rather than qualities that adhere to the things themselves. Existentialists reject this picture by arguing that in our everyday dealings we never encounter quantifiable objects in isolation. Rather, the things we encounter are already bound up in contexts of meaning, and their significance is disclosed not through inner acts of consciousness but through our purposive involvements within this context. “[We] do not, so to speak, throw a ‘signification’ over some naked thing which is present-at-hand,” says Heidegger, “we do not stick a value on it; but when something within-the-world is encountered as such, the thing in question already has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world” (1962, 190–191).
In other words, although it may be an objective fact that my computer weighs a certain number of pounds, this is not how I encounter it in everyday life. It is not a brute object ‘present-at-hand’ (vorhanden); it is ‘ready-to-hand’ (zuhanden), an available and functional tool that already means something to me because it is bound up with the purposive activities, projects, and equipment that constitute my identity as a professor. The computer matters to me, in this case, because I use it to communicate with students, to do research, to contact journal and book editors, and to compose manuscripts that I hope will be published one day, and these activities are ultimately performed in an effort to fill out my self-interpretation as a responsible, hard-working professor. What this reveals is that the fact — value distinction is itself derived from a more basic way of being in which we are bound up in shared contexts of meaning, and in these contexts fact and value are inseparable. We can unpack this account in more detail by turning to Heidegger's famous account of the ‘work-world’ (Werkwelt) in Being and Time.
The work-world
In section 15 of Being and Time, Heidegger offers an example of hammering in the workshop to show that the hammer makes sense only in relation to other things, to nails, boards, gloves, and to purposive human activities such as building a cabinet or framing a door. This means that the equipment that we use in ordinary situations is never understood in isolation. “Taken strictly,” says Heidegger, “there ‘is’ no such thing as an equipment” (1962, 97). Equipment is meaningful only in relation to a practical context, and it is because we are already familiar with the context as a whole that the hammer can reveal itself to me as a hammer. With the workshop analogy, Heidegger is suggesting that when we use things in ordinary situations, we already embody an understanding of equipment, and this understanding is constituted not by staring at it from a standpoint of detachment, but by “seizing hold of it” (98), that is, by manipulating, handling, and using it. Indeed, in these kinds of situations mental reflection actually gets in the way of how we use and handle things. It is for this reason that Heidegger uses the word ‘comportment’ (Verhalten) to refer to ordinary human practices, because the word does not carry with it any mentalistic undertones (Dreyfus 1991, 50–51).
I do not, for instance, first reflect on the physical properties of the doorknob before I open the door. In the flow of my daily life, I simply reach out and open the door. In doing so, the objective, thing-like properties of the door “withdraw” or disappear (Heidegger 1962, 99). In fact, it is usually only when there is a breakdown in the flow of my workaday activities — when, for instance, the door does not open when I turn the knob — that the door becomes ‘unworldly’ (enweltlich), that is, it is pulled out of its relational context and obtrudes as an object. In these experiences of breakdown, the unusable door “just sits there; it shows itself as an equipmental thing which looks so and so, and which, in its readiness-to-hand as looking that way, has constantly been present-at-hand” (103). To think, then, that the mind is forever mediating our ordinary dealings with things is, for Heidegger, “an absurdity which misconstrues the basic ontological structure of the being that we ourselves are” (1982, 64). When things are functioning smoothly, we are not explicitly conscious or aware of the equipment we are using because we are already absorbed in the activity and in the meaningful context as a whole, and it is through this activity that our understanding of equipment is revealed. The act of opening the door, then, requires a pre-reflective understanding of a whole ‘referential totality,’ the purposive interconnection of hallways, lights, knobs, stairs, and so on that allows the door to reveal itself as a door. The upshot of this view is that intra-worldly things are organized and structured by the ways in which they relate to other things, and it is our involvement in this context that reveals how they make sense and matter to us in the ways that they do.