A strange thought to me after awakening this morning and it was concerned with the use of this word. I would, quite naturally, associate dasein with animal life, lacking consciousness, but in fact it is used exactly the other way around. The experience of being that is peculiar to human beings is due to consciousness, and therefore dasein relates to that experience.
What then would we describe as a being without consciousness? The reason I ask is because I had an experience about twenty years ago that worried us for some time. According to my wife, I awoke and washed, had breakfast and drove off to work. The thing that was strange for her was that I was less talkative than usual. At work, I took over from the night shift. Again, I was less talkative than usual but didn’t seem impaired in any way. I then walked down the ward and in a patients room I suddenly became conscious that I didn’t know how I arrived at work. I looked out of the window to check if I had come by car. That was the case.
The question arises, whether I wasn’t conscious through this episode, or did I lose my memory? I can’t remember any part of it. It does, however, illustrate the fact that consciousness is having memories and thoughts of the future, whereas the state I seem to have been in was only concerned with the present and seems to have been either habit or instinct. I would have called this state dasein, if it wasn’t already used for the state of consciousness.
What do you think?