Fear in Being and Time

A Hermeneutic-Exegetical Approach to the Experience of Fear in the Existential Analytic of Dasein

Abstract

In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger draws a rigorous distinction between fear (Furcht) and anxiety (Angst), assigning the latter the role of fundamental affective disposition. This distinction has led to an underestimation of fear in the specialized literature, where it is often treated as a secondary phenomenon in contrast to anxiety. This article proposes a reinterpretation of fear as a methodologically relevant experience within Heidegger’s ontological project. The research is guided by the question: can fear be understood, beyond its traditional characterization, as a structurally significant mood within the existential analytic of Dasein? To address this, a hermeneutic-exegetical approach is adopted, developed in three stages: (1) an analysis of the philosophical sources that influence Heidegger’s conception of fear, particularly Aristotle and Augustine; (2) a phenomenological reading of the structure of fear in Dasein’s everydayness, with special attention to the for-the-sake-of-which of fear and the mode of the threatening; and (3) a problematization of fear’s function as an improper disposition, questioning whether it may nonetheless fulfill a methodological role within the work. Ultimately, the aim is to show that fear, far from being a mere threshold to anxiety, constitutes a legitimate path for understanding Dasein’s facticity and its openness to the world.