facticity

noun

1. (uncountable, usually)The quality or state of being a fact.

   “[F]rom the earliest times down to the middle of the last century the writers of the Jewish and Christian Churches, with the exception of the Deists in England and of some isolated views, unanimously held fast the facticity of the events recorded in this book [the Book of Jonah in the Bible].”

2. (specifically, uncountable, usually)In existentialism, the state of being in the world without any knowable reason for such existence, or of being in a particular state of affairs which one has no control over.

   “For as sure as the absolute knowledge (in the infinite facticity—actual existence—of each single knowledge) is only in the absolute form of the For-itself, so sure each knowledge goes also beyond itself; or, viewed from another point, is in its own Being absolutely outside of itself, and encircles itself entire.”

   “In particular, we cannot choose the circumstances of our birth and our entire bodily condition. These "facticities" appear to us as having no foundation or justification. Why is one person born blind and another born with perfect vision? Facticities are thus contingent, they present themselves as simply "there."”

   “The dynamics of affective motivation change the immanently given fact (Tatsache) into a processional facticity which originally contains within itself its own temporalizing dynamics. If, as [Friedrich] Nietzsche contended early on, there are no facts but only interpretations of them, facticity is inhabited by an originary plasticity.”

   “The ownmost possibility of be-ing itself which Dasein (facticity) is, and indeed without this possibility being "there" for it, may be designated as existence. It is with respect to this authentic be-ing itself that facticity is placed into our forehaving when initially engaging it and bringing it into play in our hermeneutical questioning.”

   “[Martin] Heidegger replaces spirit—the principle of subjectivity—with the principle of facticity, which binds the activity of philosophizing to factical life, that is to say, to Dasein.”

3. (countable, usually)A fact that is not changeable or that is assumed to be true without further evaluation.

   “Near-synonyms: given, axiom, postulate”

   “[O]nce institutionalized, patterns of responses and the symbolic representations take on the qualities of objective facts, that is, "facticities" that appear to be naturally occurring objects but which in fact are precarious dramatic effects of human interaction. As facticities, these meanings can be internalized by members of the community and shape their experience and self-interpretation.”

   “Because we are abandoned a priori to preestablished factors that constitute our social, psychological, and biogenetic ontogeny, we have no control over our racial facticities. Simply put, we have no choice about our race.”