Before We Write Who the Other Person Is

Heidegger’s “as-structure”, Husserl’s lifeworld, and the art of describing without closing off

The care professional sits at the kitchen table with the assessment form in front of her. The woman has explained that her hands have grown slower and that breakfast takes time. The municipality can offer help with preparing her food.

“I would like to carry on doing it myself,” she says.

The professional nods and writes: “She declines assistance.”

The sentence records something that has happened. An offer has been made, and the woman has declined it. But what exactly is she saying no to? Someone taking over breakfast? Help with what has become difficult? Or having her morning organised differently?

Good care requires descriptions that draw distinctions in ways that bring the connections into view. The woman’s no must be understood together with what she wants to hold on to. Here, Heidegger’s reading of Aristotle and Husserl’s investigation of the relationship between experience and judgement can give practical judgement a philosophical language.

What follows brings their analyses into a situation of care: we draw out the ethical implications through the encounter at the table.

Before the Sentence

In Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics), volume 29/30 of his collected works, Heidegger investigates what makes it possible to say something about something. One of his examples is a blackboard. Before a judgement sets out what the board is, we must already have had it in view “als etwas Einheitliches” — as something unified (p. 456).

This does not mean that we must first have made a silent judgement, “the board is black”, before saying the same thing aloud. The point is that the statement unfolds something already encountered within a context. It does not begin with disconnected components.

Heidegger calls this an “as-structure”: something shows itself as something.

At the kitchen table, breakfast is already part of a morning. The bread knife, the coffee cup, and the woman’s slow movements belong within a context before the professional begins to record them. But what this context means to the woman has not yet been adequately understood.

The professional may hear her reply as a lack of insight and ask: “Do you understand that you need help?”

She may also hear it as an attempt to preserve something and ask: “Which parts of breakfast would you like to carry on doing yourself?”

The first question asks for an admission; the second asks for a description.

What Her No Holds Together

Two Greek concepts are central to Heidegger’s analysis: synthesis, combining, and diairesis, separating. He rejects the idea that affirmation simply combines while negation separates. Both forms of statement do both (pp. 459, 463).

“The board is not red” also shows the board. We must bring the board and the colour red into a single context of understanding in order to say that the colour does not belong to it. Negation is no mere disconnection.

This becomes crucial when the woman says no.

“It’s not that I love buttering slices of bread,” she says. “But it’s my time of day.”

Her no holds something together. She rejects having others take over because she wants to preserve an activity that gives her morning direction. She distinguishes between receiving support and being sidelined.

The case note, too, holds together and separates. The problem arises when it is read as though the woman’s no simply breaks her connection to assistance. What her negation also holds on to then disappears.

The professional question therefore becomes more precise: what is she rejecting, and what is she affirming through her refusal?

Perhaps she needs help precisely so that she can carry on doing things herself.

The Awkwardly Positioned Table

Heidegger offers another example that brings us closer to this situation: “diese Tafel steht ungünstig” — this table is awkwardly positioned (p. 460).

“Awkwardly” says something about the table´s position within a context. It may be placed where some people cannot see it, or where it is difficult to use. To understand the statement, we must have more in view than the table in isolation.

Heidegger stresses that the awkward position is not first thought of separately and then attached to the table. The table is apprehended within a unity that the statement unfolds. When we distinguish how it is positioned, that unity itself is to become manifest: “sich gerade bekundet” (p. 461).

Here we find a criterion for the description at the kitchen table: it must draw distinctions in ways that make the context clearer.

The fact that the woman takes a long time matters. But her slowness means different things depending on whether we see breakfast as a task to be completed or as an activity she wants to retain. Both considerations need to be explored. She may expend so much energy that she does not manage to eat, while having someone take over completely may deprive her of something essential.

A good description makes this tension visible. It preserves the connection between her need for help and her wish to keep doing something herself.

A True Note Can Narrow Understanding

Heidegger describes the statement’s apophansis as letting something be seen. In the analysis of truth on these pages, uncovering and covering over characterise the true and the false statement respectively.

When we say that the case note can be true and yet conceal something, we are therefore extending the inquiry. The question now concerns what an accurate record does to our understanding of a person.

On pages 462–64, Heidegger examines how a statement lets a being be seen as something present-at-hand, as something that is this way or that. The case note can have a corresponding effect when it stands as a settled determination: she is someone who declines assistance.

The woman then appears as a recorded state of affairs. The movement within her reply — what she is trying to protect and what she might be willing to accept — becomes harder to see.

A care record must be selective. It is not meant to contain her whole life. But what it selects must allow the next professional to understand what is at stake. Otherwise, the next conversation may begin with an expectation of resistance, long before the woman has said anything.

Husserl: Judgement Grows out of Experience

The closest connection to Husserl here is found in Erfahrung und Urteil, Experience and Judgment. The work was prepared and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe and published in 1939, drawing on Husserl’s manuscripts and lectures, including material from the 1920s.

Husserl asks how the fully formed judgement, “S is p”, grows out of pre-predicative experience. Before we explicitly determine something as having a property, it is already given to us as something towards which we can direct our attention and which we can investigate further.

Through what he calls explication, we unfold determinations of what we experience. We attend to particular features while retaining our grasp of the same thing whose features they are. The parts of the investigation acquire meaning through this continuing connection.

This comes close to Heidegger’s thought that judgement sets out an already apprehended unity. In Husserl, the connection to the lifeworld is also explicit: experience takes place within an already given world, with its familiarity, habits, and inherited understandings. Pre-predicative therefore does not mean that our everyday experience is untouched by language and earlier judgements.

Neither the woman nor the professional arrives at the kitchen table without a history. The woman knows her morning through many years of lived practice. The professional recognises signs of a need for assistance through education and experience. Both may discover something they have not yet seen.

Husserl’s question helps us investigate which experience the finished description rests on and how it has been unfolded. Have we followed what the woman is trying to show us, or has a familiar category brought the inquiry to a premature close?

The difference between the philosophers also becomes clearer. Husserl examines how an object’s meaning and a judgement’s validity are constituted within the experiential life of consciousness. Heidegger directs the analysis towards the world itself: on page 458, he describes the “as-structure” as an essential feature of world. The question concerns how something can encounter us as something within an open context.

Their questions meet before the finished sentence, but lead onwards in different directions.

Until Tomorrow

Until tomorrow is not a long time. The professional may see that the note is too brief and think that she will revise it later. Another visit is waiting. The wording remains.

In the second part of The Sickness unto Death, in the section on the Socratic definition of sin, Kierkegaard’s pseudonymous author Anti-Climacus examines the transition from having understood to acting. The will need not openly protest against what has been recognised. It can let time pass: “vi vil dog see det an til imorgen” — let us wait and see until tomorrow. In the meantime, understanding grows dimmer, until it begins to accommodate itself to what one is already doing.

Anti-Climacus examines this within a theological understanding of sin; here we borrow his account of postponement and its effect on understanding.

When the professional next reads the note, perhaps it seems adequate after all. The woman did say no. What had been worth investigating has become easier to overlook. Postponement has changed what the professional thinks she needs to do.

A Note That Leaves the Future Open

But the woman is still sitting at the table. The professional puts down her pen.

“When you say you want to carry on doing it yourself, do you mean the whole of breakfast?”

The woman pauses to think.

“I might need help with the coffee pot. It’s become heavy. But I want to butter the bread myself.”

The refusal alone is no longer at the centre. The woman has distinguished between two parts of breakfast in a way that makes their connection clearer. She wants support with what is difficult so that she can retain what she can still do.

The professional must still assess nutrition, safety, and what the service can offer. The conversation provides a better basis for that assessment. It makes it possible to explore assistance that responds to what the woman herself is trying to accomplish.

A new note might read:

“She wishes to continue preparing breakfast herself. She finds the coffee pot heavy and would like help finding a solution. Together, we will explore how she can safely retain her breakfast routine.”

Heidegger also reminds us that statements can show what has been and what is to come, and that the verb carries time within it. “She declines assistance” can, in the use of the record, freeze an event into a lasting determination. “Together, we will explore” allows room for something still to become different.

The new note, too, is provisional. A solution must be tried, and the woman may change her mind. But the description has preserved the connection between her difficulties and what she wants to continue doing.

At the kitchen table, the cup still stands in the same place. The assistance has acquired a clearer direction.

Before closing the record, the professional turns the screen towards her.

“Is this a description you recognise yourself in?”