The Contemporary Impossibility of Astonishment and the Sense of Dread in Martin Heidegger

Abstract

This article seeks to explain, from a phenomenological perspective, what Heidegger means when he states, in the Contributions to Philosophy, that astonishment is the fundamental affective temper of the first beginning, and that fright (Entsetzen, Schrecken) is the fundamental affective temper of the other beginning. Furthermore, the thesis is put forward that wonder, in its full philosophical sense, has become a practically impossible affective temper in our time, taking the following argument as a starting point: if astonishment is provisionally defined as a suspension of everyday referentiality with respect to things, and on the other hand it is considered that today's world is configured by robust networks of information and knowledge, whose overabundance points to a full referentiality, hardly questionable, then one can consider the possibility that the referential suspension implied in astonishment is not only improbable, but even unnecessary and superfluous, since the meaning and functioning of things tends to be more assured than ever; with all this, the very relevance and possibility of philosophy itself is also called into question. The realization of this impossibility, among other things, may point to the emergence of a fundamental fear, of a philosophical nature.