The 'Art of Existing': Intuition and Singularity. Contributions to the Ethical Dimension of Heideger's Thought in Light of his Metontology

Abstract

The ‘art of existing’ (Existierkunst) that emerges within the framework of the notion of metontology (Metontologie), as presented by Heidegger in 1928, is the closest we have to an approach to the ethical elements that metontology explicitly announces. In this article, I argue that the notion of ‘intuitive representations’ (anschauliche Vorstellung), which Heidegger develops in his reflection on representational thinking in the mid-1930s – in a text not generally regarded as relevant to his ethical reflections – can enrich our understanding of the ‘art of existing’ by offering a key to deciphering what it truly means ‘to see singularity’, in the sense implied by this art. In this respect, I suggest that the notion of ‘intuitive representations’ emerges as an important element in the task of recovering the mode of dwelling evoked by the name ethos, and that it can therefore contribute to the development of what Heidegger designates with the expression ‘original ethics’ (ursprüngliche Ethik).