Commentary on Alphonso Lingis’s article, The World as a Whole Essay

Commentary on Alphonso Lingis’s article, â€Å"The World as a Whole† Martin Heidegger’s work in Being and Time elucidated a phenomenological ontology in which death and anxiety function as the imminent possibility of impossibility, circumscribing Dasein and inscribing weight to Dasein’s temporal existence. He constructs an individual whose ontological whole is made of three fundamental elements that function as a whole; understanding, feeling and action. This being, Dasein (translated as Being There), exists in the world, and Heidegger constructs Dasein’s ontology as being-in-the-world. This is the way Alphonso Lingis predicates his understanding of Heidegerrian phenomenology in an essay from Research in Phenomenology entitled â€Å"The World as a Whole†. In this paper, I will review this article, for it holds two extremely interesting facets to be understood by any student of phenomenology. First off, it is a very well written review of Heidegger’s phenomenology: it spans from the work in Being and Time to the work done in Poetry Language Thought, and all the way to a later essay entitled â€Å"Things†. Heidegger’s work changed radically over this time, and Lingis does a great job at showing a fluidity in his work, particularly through the notion of dwelling. Also in this article one can find some great similarities between the work of Martin Heidegger and Alphonso Lingis’s own work on death, anxiety, imperatives, the elemental and enjoyment. Lingis’s own writing rarely refers explicitly to his predecessors, his writing is full of imagery and refers constantly to experience, it can be difficult for a reader of Lingis to locate his influences by just reading his work. But, this work (along with Deathbound Subjectivities) shows Li... ...g experience as a burden, â€Å"when we are in the mood of exhilaration†¦the sense of lightness of being†¦is the sense of alleviation of the burden of being and thus presupposes and reveals it†¦Why not say that the oppressive, burdensome sense of the world presupposes the more basic sense of the lightness of the clearing around us. † This is a key point in Lingis’s transition from Heidegger, and shows his Levinasian influences. In conclusion, this article is a great artifact for any student of phenomenology. Lingis is a very articulate writer, who can point out the most perplexing complexities in Heidegger’s work and lay them out for anyone to read. He also makes huge steps in realizing Heidegger’s limitations in his notions of equipmentality and mood by recognizing the burden of the world not primary to existence, that existence is primarily lived through enjoyment.