Resoluteness occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning as far more than a volitional attitude: it is, at its most rigorous articulation, an ontological structure of authentic selfhood. Heidegger’s Being and Time provides the corpus’s densest treatment, defining resoluteness as Dasein’s reticent, anxiety-ready projection upon its ownmost Being-guilty — the existential mode through which the self is fully disclosed to itself and wrested back from the dispersal of das Man. Crucially, resoluteness achieves its full authenticity only as anticipatory resoluteness, held open toward death and thus rendered genuinely transparent. The term does not denote rigidity; Heidegger insists it must remain free to take itself back, responsive to the factical situation while retaining existentiell constancy. A second, entirely distinct deployment of the term appears in the I Ching tradition, where resoluteness names the quality of Hexagram 43 (Kuai / Break-through): the energetic turning of the strong against the weak, a cosmological-ethical principle of decisive advance. Carol Anthony’s reading extends this into the psychology of the ego’s ‘spell of helplessness,’ where resoluteness is the counter-force that breaks self-doubt. These two streams — the ontological-existential and the divinatory-ethical — together reveal resoluteness as a concept bridging authenticity, temporal self-possession, and the practical courage to overcome inner obstruction.
Resoluteness brings Dasein back to its ownmost potentiality-for-Being-its-Self… anticipatory resoluteness understands the potentiality-for-Being-guilty authentically and wholly that is to say, primordially.
This passage establishes resoluteness as the existential mode by which Dasein returns to authentic selfhood, achieving full transparency only as anticipatory resoluteness oriented toward Being-guilty and death.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Resoluteness gains its authenticity as anticipatory resoluteness. In this, Dasein understands itself with regard to its potentiality-for-Being, and it thus does so in such a manner that it will go right under the eyes of Death.
Heidegger argues that resoluteness becomes genuinely authentic only when it is shaped by anticipation of death, transforming it into a fully transparent appropriation of one’s thrown existence.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Resoluteness is authentically and wholly what it can be, only as anticipatory resoluteness… it brings one without illusions into the Resolution upon factical possibility.
Heidegger demonstrates that resoluteness, understood as escape or seclusion from the world, is a perversion; authentic resoluteness is instead a lucid, non-illusory confrontation with Dasein’s finite possibilities.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
In resoluteness the issue for Dasein is its ownmost potentiality-for-Being… Resoluteness brings the Being of the ‘there’ into the existence of its Situation.
Resoluteness is identified as the act that gives Dasein authentic transparency and brings the concrete situational ‘there’ into existence, overcoming the scattered inauthenticity of das Man.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
We have characterized resoluteness as a way of reticently projecting oneself upon one’s ownmost Being-guilty, and exacting anxiety of oneself.
This passage provides Heidegger’s formal definition: resoluteness is a reticent, anxiety-demanding projection upon one’s ownmost guilt-structure, constituting the phenomenological core of authentic care.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
In resoluteness lies the existentiell constancy which, by its very essence, has already anticipated every possible moment of vision that may arise from it. As fate, resoluteness is freedom to give up some definit[e possession].
Heidegger links resoluteness to fate and existentiell constancy, arguing it is not a momentary act but a mode of being that structurally anticipates all situational possibilities and constitutes authentic historicality.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
Break-through means resoluteness. The strong turns resolutely against the weak.
Wilhelm identifies resoluteness as the governing principle of Hexagram 43 (Kuai), framing it cosmologically as the decisive, forceful movement of yang energy overcoming yin obstruction.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
Break-through means resoluteness. Miscellaneous Notes BREAK-THROUGH means resoluteness. The strong turns resolutely against the weak.
This parallel passage confirms the I Ching’s equation of resoluteness with break-through, positioning it as the ethical-cosmological imperative of decisive action against inferior forces.
, The I Ching or Book of Changes, 1950thesis
In this phenomenon lies that existentiell choosing which we seek — the choosing to choose a kind of Being-one’s-Self which, in accordance with its existential structure, we call ‘resoluteness’.
Heidegger traces resoluteness back to the foundational existentiell choice of wanting-to-have-a-conscience, establishing it as the structural outcome of Dasein’s authentic self-choosing.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
The phenomenal content of this meaning, drawn from the state of Being of anticipatory resoluteness, fills in the signification of the term ‘temporality’.
Heidegger reveals that temporality as authentic care derives its full phenomenal meaning from anticipatory resoluteness, making this existential the key to understanding primordial time.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Resoluteness breaks the spell of helplessness that the ego casts over us… creeping vines symbolize the way the slightest feelings of negation grow unnoticed to usurp our attitude and collapse our resoluteness.
Anthony interprets resoluteness in a psychological register as the inner force that dissolves the ego’s manufactured illusion of helplessness, maintaining the will against insidious self-doubt.
, A Guide to the I Ching, 1988supporting
The question of the possible connection between anticipation and resoluteness… nothing less than the demand that we should project these existential [structures primordially].
This passage frames the philosophical problem of how anticipation and resoluteness are structurally connected, positioning their integration as the central demand of authentic existential interpretation.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
Resoluteness, by its ontological essence, is always the resoluteness of some factical Dasein at a particular time.
Heidegger insists that resoluteness is never abstract but always concretely situated, anchoring the existential structure in the particular factical moment of a given Dasein.
, Being and Time, 1962supporting
By stressing the ontology of guilt (of being-in-debt), Heidegger dissociates himself from what common sense most readily attaches to the idea of debt… Ontology stands guard on the threshold of ethics.
Ricoeur critically examines the ontological priority Heidegger assigns to being-guilty, showing that this move undergirds resoluteness by severing it from ordinary ethical notions of indebtedness.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
The call of conscience fails to give any such ‘practical’ injunctions, solely because conscience calls Dasein forth to the potentiality-for-Being-its-Self.
This passage contextualizes resoluteness by clarifying why the call of conscience, which summons Dasein toward resoluteness, refuses to supply concrete prescriptions, privileging ontological disclosure over moral instruction.
, Being and Time, 1962aside