Abstract

“To behave” (sich verhalten)is to find oneself engaged in a world according to a bundle of privileged relations (Verhältnisses), which engages in existence the fundamental modes of being of the self: questioning, transcendence, finitude, temporality, freedom. In this sense, “behaviour” (Verhalten) will itself be able to reveal itself as “fundamental”, by taking over the question of being, and this, on the one hand, in comparison with daily superficial and irresolute behaviour, and, on the other hand, in comparison with the determined behaviour of the animal (Benehmen). These analyses make it possible to bring to light in Heidegger before the Kehre, in a striking contrast with Behaviourism, and especially Merleau-Ponty, a phenomenology of behaviour which is no longer expressed merely in terms of “reflex”, or of “structure” and goes as far as questioning the behaviour which the philosopher must take in regard to himself.