Being and Time

The question just mentioned has today fallen into oblivion, although our age counts its renewed affirmation of “metaphysics” as progress. Nevertheless, people regard themselves as exempt from the exertions of rekindling a battle of giants over Being. And yet the question broached is not just any question. It kept Plato and Aristotle absorbed in inquiry, only, to be sure, to fall silent from then on—as a thematic question of genuine investigation. What the two achieved has persisted through manifold shifts and “overpaintings” all the way into Hegel’s “Logic.” And what was once wrested from the phenomena through the utmost exertion of thought, even if only fragmentarily and in initial attempts, has long since been trivialized.

Nor is that all. On the basis of the Greek approaches to interpreting Being, a dogma has developed that not only declares the question of the meaning of Being superfluous but also sanctions the failure to ask it. It is said: “Being” is the most universal and emptiest concept. As such, it resists every attempt at definition. Nor does this most universal and therefore indefinable concept require any definition. Everyone constantly uses it and already understands in each case what they mean by it. Thus what, as something concealed, drove ancient philosophizing into unrest and kept it there has become a matter of self-evidence as clear as day—so much so that anyone who still asks about it is accused of a methodological error.

At the beginning of this investigation, we cannot discuss in detail the prejudices that ever anew sow and nurture the absence of any need to ask about Being. They are rooted in ancient ontology itself. This, in turn, can be adequately interpreted—with respect to the ground from which the basic ontological concepts have grown, the adequacy of the demonstration of the categories, and their completeness—only by following the guiding thread of the previously clarified and answered question of Being. We shall therefore pursue the discussion of these prejudices only far enough to make the necessity of repeating the question of the meaning of Being intelligible. There are three of them:

1. “Being” is the “most universal” concept: τὸ ὂν ἐστι καθόλου μάλιστα πάντων. Illud quod primo cadit sub apprehensione est ens, cuius intellectus includitur in omnibus, quaecumque quis apprehendit. “An understanding of Being is always already included in everything one apprehends in beings.” But the “universality” of “Being” is not that of a genus. “Being” does not delimit the highest region of beings insofar as they are conceptually articulated according to genus and species: οὔτε τὸ ὂν γένος. The “universality” of Being “surpasses” every generic universality. In the terminology of medieval ontology, “Being” is a “transcendens.” Aristotle already recognized the unity of this transcendentally “universal,” over against the multiplicity of the highest generic concepts with substantive content, as the unity of analogy. With this discovery, despite all his dependence on Plato’s ontological way of posing the question, Aristotle placed the problem of Being on a fundamentally new basis. To be sure, even he did not illuminate the darkness of these categorial connections. Medieval ontology discussed this problem in many ways, above all in the Thomist and Scotist schools, without attaining fundamental clarity. And when, finally, Hegel determines “Being” as the “indeterminate immediate” and makes this determination the basis for all subsequent categorial explications of his “Logic,” he maintains the same direction of view as ancient ontology, except that he relinquishes the problem already posed by Aristotle: the unity of Being over against the multiplicity of “categories” with substantive content. Accordingly, when one says that “Being” is the most universal concept, this cannot mean that it is the clearest concept and requires no further discussion. The concept of “Being” is, rather, the darkest.note

2. The concept “Being” is indefinable. This was inferred from its highest universality. And rightly so—if definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. In fact, “Being” cannot be conceived as a being; enti non additur aliqua natura: “Being” cannot be brought to determinacy by having a being predicated of it. Being cannot, by way of definition, be derived from higher concepts or presented through lower ones. But does it follow from this that “Being” can no longer present a problem? By no means; the only possible conclusion is: “Being” is not anything like a being. Therefore, the mode of determining beings that is legitimate within certain limits—the “definition” of traditional logic, which itself has its foundations in ancient ontology—is not applicable to Being. The indefinability of Being does not exempt us from asking about its meaning; rather, it calls us precisely to do so.note

3. “Being” is the self-evident concept. In all knowing and asserting, in every comportment toward beings, and in every comportment toward oneself, use is made of “Being,” and the expression is understood “without further ado.” Everyone understands: “The sky is blue”; “I am glad” and the like. Yet this average intelligibility merely demonstrates unintelligibility. It makes manifest that an enigma lies a priori in every comportment and every Being toward beings as beings. That we always already live in an understanding of Being while the meaning of Being is at the same time shrouded in darkness proves the fundamental necessity of repeating the question of the meaning of “Being.”

Appealing to self-evidence within the sphere of the basic concepts of philosophy, and especially with regard to the concept “Being,” is a dubious procedure, if indeed the “self-evident,” and it alone, “the secret judgments of common reason” (Kant), is to become and remain the explicit theme of the analytic (“the philosophers’ business”).

The consideration of these prejudices, however, also made clear that not only is the answer to the question of Being lacking, but even the question itself is obscure and without direction. To repeat the question of Being therefore means: first of all, adequately to work out how the question is to be posed.

The question of the meaning of Being is to be posed. If it is a fundamental question, or indeed the fundamental question, then questioning of this kind requires an appropriate transparency. We must therefore briefly discuss what belongs to a question as such, so that, on this basis, the question of Being can be brought into view as a privileged question.

Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking receives its prior direction from what is sought. Questioning is a cognitive search for beings with respect to the fact that they are and the way they are. This cognitive search can become an “investigation,” a determination that lays bare that toward which the question is directed. Questioning, as questioning about something, has what it asks about. Every questioning about something is, in some way, addressed to something. Besides what is asked about, questioning also involves something it interrogates. In investigative—that is, specifically theoretical—questioning, what is asked about is to be determined and brought into conceptual form. What is asked about then contains, as what is properly intended, what is asked for—that at which questioning reaches its goal. Questioning itself, as the comportment of a being—the questioner—has its own character of Being. Questioning can be carried out as “casual asking” or as the explicit posing of a question. What is distinctive about the latter is that questioning becomes transparent to itself beforehand with respect to all the constitutive features of the question just mentioned.

The question of the meaning of Being is to be posed. We are thus faced with the need to discuss the question of Being in relation to the structural moments just cited.

As a seeking, questioning requires prior guidance from what is sought. The meaning of Being must therefore already be available to us in some way. It has been indicated: we always already move within an understanding of Being. Out of this grow the explicit question of the meaning of Being and the tendency toward a concept of Being. We do not know what “Being” signifies. But even when we ask, “what is ‘Being’?” we remain within an understanding of “is,” without being able to fix conceptually what “is” means. We do not even know the horizon from which we should grasp and fix the meaning. This average and vague understanding of Being is a fact.

This understanding of Being may waver and blur to any degree, even moving at the very boundary of mere acquaintance with a word—this indeterminacy of the understanding of Being that is always already available is itself a positive phenomenon that calls for clarification.

Yet an investigation into the meaning of Being will not seek to provide this clarification at the outset. The interpretation of the average understanding of Being acquires its necessary guiding thread only with a fully developed concept of Being. From the clarity of that concept and from the modes of explicitly understanding it that belong to the concept, it will be possible to determine what the darkened, or not yet illuminated, understanding of Being means, and what forms of darkening, or of hindrance to an explicit illumination of the meaning of Being, are possible and necessary.

The average, vague understanding of Being may also be shot through with inherited theories and opinions about Being, in such a way that these theories remain hidden as sources of the prevailing understanding.—What is sought in questioning about Being is not entirely unknown, even though at first it is altogether ungraspable.

What is asked about in the question to be worked out is Being: that which determines beings as beings, that in terms of which beings, however they may be considered, are always already understood. The Being of beings “is” not itself a being. The first philosophical step in understanding the problem of Being consists in not μῦθόν τινα διηγεῖσθαι—“telling no story”—i.e., in not determining beings as beings, with regard to their origin, by tracing them back to another being, as though Being had the character of a possible being. Being, as what is asked about, therefore requires a mode of showing proper to it, one that differs essentially from the discovery of beings.note

Accordingly, what is asked for—the meaning of Being—will likewise require a conceptuality of its own, one that again differs essentially from the concepts within which beings become determinate in their meaning. Insofar as Being constitutes what is asked about, and Being means the Being of beings, it follows that beings themselves are what is interrogated by the question of Being. They are, so to speak, interrogated with regard to their Being. But if they are to yield the features of their Being without distortion, they must, in turn, first have become accessible as they are in themselves. With respect to what it interrogates, the question of Being requires the attainment and prior securing of the right mode of access to beings. But we use “being” of many things and in different senses. Everything we speak about, everything we have in mind, and everything toward which we comport ourselves in one way or another is a being; we ourselves are also beings, both in what we are and in how we are. Being lies in the fact that a being is and in the way it is, in reality, presence-at-hand, subsistence, validity, Dasein, and in the “there is.” From which being is the meaning of Being to be read off? From which being is the disclosure of Being to take its point of departure?

Is the point of departure arbitrary, or does a particular being have priority in working out the question of Being? Which is this exemplary being, and in what sense does it have priority? If the question of Being is to be posed explicitly and carried out in full transparency to itself, then, in light of what has been explained so far, working out this question requires the explication of the way of looking toward Being, understanding its meaning, and grasping that meaning conceptually; the preparation of the possibility of making the right choice of the exemplary being; and the working out of the genuine mode of access to this being. Looking toward something, understanding and grasping it, choosing it, and gaining access to it are constitutive comportments of questioning and thus are themselves modes of Being of a particular being—the being that each of us, as a questioner, is. Working out the question of Being therefore means: making a being—the one that questions—transparent in its Being. The asking of this question, as a mode of Being of a being, is itself essentially determined by what is asked about in it—by Being. We use the term Dasein for this being, which we ourselves each are and which, among other things, has questioning as a possibility of Being. The explicit and transparent posing of the question of the meaning of Being requires a prior, adequate explication of a being (Dasein) with respect to its Being.

But is such an undertaking not obviously circular? Having first to determine beings in their Being and then, on that basis, intending only then to pose the question of Being—what is this other than going in a circle? Is not what the answer to this question is first supposed to provide already “presupposed” in working out the question? Formal objections, such as the charge of a “circle in the proof,” always easy to raise in the domain of inquiry into principles, are invariably sterile when concrete paths of investigation are under consideration. They contribute nothing to understanding the matter and impede advance into the field of investigation.

In fact, however, the posing of the question just described contains no circle at all. Beings can be determined in their Being without an explicit concept of the meaning of Being already needing to be available. Were this not so, there could as yet be no ontological knowledge, and the actual existence of such knowledge can hardly be denied. “Being” is indeed “presupposed” throughout ontology to date, but not as a concept already available—not in the form in which it is sought. The “presupposing” of Being has the character of looking toward Being in advance, in such a way that, on the basis of this look, the being given in advance is provisionally articulated in its Being. This guiding look toward Being grows out of the average understanding of Being in which we always already move and which ultimately belongs to the essential constitution of Dasein itself. Such “presupposing” has nothing to do with positing a foundational proposition from which a sequence of propositions is deductively derived. There can be no “circle in the proof” at all in posing the question of the meaning of Being, because answering the question is not a matter of grounding by derivation but of a showing that lays bare the ground.

There is no “circle in the proof” in the question of the meaning of Being, but there is a peculiar “backward- or forward-relatedness” of what is asked about (Being) to questioning as a mode of Being of a being. The fact that questioning is essentially affected by what it asks about belongs to the most intrinsic meaning of the question of Being. This says only: the being with the character of Dasein has a relation—perhaps even a privileged one—to the question of Being itself. But does this not already establish a particular being in its priority of Being, thereby giving in advance the exemplary being that is to serve as what the question of Being primarily interrogates? What has been discussed so far neither establishes Dasein’s priority nor settles whether it can, or even must, function as the being to be interrogated primarily. Nevertheless, something like a priority of Dasein has announced itself.

The characterization of the question of Being along the guiding thread of the formal structure of the question as such has brought out this question’s distinctive character, and has done so in such a way that working it out, let alone solving it, calls for a series of fundamental considerations. But the distinctive status of the question of Being will come fully to light only when it has been adequately delimited with respect to its function, its intention, and its motives.

So far, the need to repeat the question has been motivated, for one thing, by the venerability of its origin, but above all by the absence of a definite answer, and even by the lack of any adequate formulation of the question. But one may demand to know what purpose this question is meant to serve. Does it remain nothing more than the business of free-floating speculation about the most general generalities—is it, indeed, only that—or is it at once the most fundamental and most concrete question?

Being is in each case the Being of a being. The totality of beings can, according to its various regions, become a field for laying bare and delimiting determinate domains of subject matter. These domains in turn—for example, history, nature, space, life, Dasein, language, and the like—can be thematized as objects in corresponding scientific investigations. Scientific research singles out and initially fixes these domains of subject matter naïvely and crudely. The elaboration of the domain in its basic structures has, in a certain way, already been accomplished through prescientific experience and interpretation of the region of Being within which the domain of subject matter itself is delimited. The “basic concepts” that have arisen in this way initially remain the guiding threads for the first concrete disclosure of the domain. Although the main weight of research always lies in this positivity, its genuine progress takes place not so much in gathering results and preserving them in “handbooks” as in questioning the fundamental constitutions of the domain in question—a questioning usually prompted, reactively, by a growing knowledge of the matters.

The genuine “movement” of the sciences takes place in a revision of their basic concepts that is more or less radical and more or less self-transparent. The level of a science is determined by the extent to which it is capable of undergoing a crisis in its basic concepts. In such immanent crises within the sciences, the relation of positive investigative questioning to the matters themselves that it questions begins to waver. Everywhere today, tendencies have emerged in the various disciplines to place research on new foundations.

Mathematics, seemingly the most rigorous and most firmly structured science, has entered a “crisis of foundations.” The struggle between formalism and intuitionism concerns gaining and securing the primary mode of access to what is to be the object of this science. The theory of relativity in physics grows out of the tendency to bring out the intrinsic interconnection of nature itself as it exists “in itself.” As a theory of the conditions of access to nature itself, it seeks, by determining all relativities, to preserve the invariance of the laws of motion and thereby brings itself face to face with the question of the structure of the domain of subject matter given to it, with the problem of matter. In biology, a tendency is awakening to question back behind the determinations of organism and life supplied by mechanism and vitalism, and to determine anew the way of Being of living beings as such. In the historical human sciences, the drive to penetrate through what has been handed down, its presentation, and its transmission to historical actuality itself has intensified: literary history is to become a history of problems. Theology seeks a more primordial interpretation of the human being’s Being toward God, an interpretation prefigured by the meaning of faith itself and remaining within faith. It is slowly beginning once again to understand Luther’s insight that its dogmatic systematics rests on a “foundation” that did not grow out of a questioning that is primarily one of faith, and whose conceptuality not only fails to suffice for the theological problematic but conceals and distorts it.

Basic concepts are the determinations in which the domain of subject matter underlying all the thematic objects of a science comes to be understood in advance in a way that guides all positive investigation. Accordingly, these concepts receive their genuine demonstration and “grounding” only in a correspondingly prior thorough investigation of the domain itself. But insofar as each of these domains is drawn from a realm of beings themselves, such prior research that creates basic concepts is nothing other than an interpretation of these beings in terms of the fundamental constitution of their Being. Such research must run ahead of the positive sciences; and it can. The work of Plato and Aristotle is proof of this. Such a grounding of the sciences differs in principle from the “logic” that limps behind, examining a contingent state of a science with respect to its “method.” It is productive logic in the sense that it leaps ahead, as it were, into a determinate domain of Being, first discloses it in its constitution of Being, and makes the structures gained available to the positive sciences as transparent directives for questioning. Thus, for example, what is philosophically primary is not a theory of concept formation in historiography, nor a theory of historical knowledge, nor yet a theory of history as the object of historiography, but the interpretation of genuinely historical beings in terms of their historicality. So too, the positive yield of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason lies in its initial approach to working out what belongs to nature in general, not in a “theory” of knowledge. His transcendental logic is an a priori subject-matter logic of nature as a domain of Being.

But such questioning—ontology taken in the broadest sense and without reliance on ontological orientations and tendencies—itself still requires a guiding thread. Ontological questioning is indeed more primordial than the ontic questioning of the positive sciences. Yet even it remains naïve and opaque if its investigations into the Being of beings leave the meaning of Being in general unexamined. And precisely the ontological task of a genealogy of the various possible ways of Being—a genealogy that does not construct deductively—requires a preliminary clarification of “what, then, we actually mean by this expression ‘Being’.”

The question of Being therefore aims not only at an a priori condition for the possibility of the sciences that thoroughly investigate beings as beings of this or that kind and in doing so always already move within an understanding of Being, but also at the condition for the possibility of the ontologies themselves that precede the ontic sciences and ground them. Any ontology, however rich and tightly interlocked the system of categories at its disposal may be, remains fundamentally blind and a distortion of its very own intention unless it has first adequately clarified the meaning of Being and grasped this clarification as its fundamental task.

Ontological research itself, properly understood, gives the question of Being its ontological priority, a priority extending beyond the mere revival of a venerable tradition and the advancement of a problem that has so far remained opaque. But this scientific priority, grounded in the subject matter itself, is not the only one.

Science in general can be defined as the whole constituted by a nexus of grounding relations among true propositions. This definition is not complete, nor does it capture science in its meaning. As modes of human comportment, sciences have the way of Being of this being (the human being). We refer to this being terminologically as Dasein. Scientific research is neither the only nor the most immediate possible way of Being of this being. Moreover, Dasein itself is marked out ahead of other beings. This distinction must provisionally be brought to light. In doing so, the discussion must anticipate the analyses that follow and that alone will provide the genuine demonstration.

Dasein is a being that does not merely occur among other beings. Rather, it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its Being, its own Being is at issue for it. It then belongs to this constitution of Dasein’s Being that, in its Being, it has a relation of Being to this Being. And this in turn means: Dasein understands itself in its Being in some way and with some degree of explicitness. It is characteristic of this being that, with and through its Being, that Being is disclosed to the being itself. Understanding of Being is itself a determination of Dasein’s Being. Dasein’s ontic distinction lies in the fact that it is ontological.

Being ontological does not yet mean here: developing ontology. If, therefore, we reserve the title ontology for explicit theoretical questioning about the meaning of beings, then Dasein’s being ontological in the sense meant here must be called pre-ontological. But this does not mean anything like simply being ontic, but rather being in the way of an understanding of Being.

The Being itself toward which Dasein can comport itself in one way or another, and toward which it always somehow comports itself, we call existence. And because the essence of this being cannot be determined by specifying a what with substantive content, but instead lies in the fact that it has in each case to be its Being as its own, the term Dasein was chosen as a pure expression of Being to designate this being.

Dasein always understands itself in terms of its existence, a possibility of itself: to be itself or not to be itself. These possibilities have either been chosen by Dasein itself, or Dasein has drifted into them, or it has always already grown up within them. Existence is decided only by each Dasein itself, in the manner of taking it up or failing to do so. The question of existence can only ever be resolved through existing itself. The self-understanding that guides this we call existentiell. The question of existence is an ontic “matter” for Dasein. This does not require the ontological structure of existence to be theoretically transparent. The question concerning this structure aims to lay out what constitutes existence. We call the interconnection of these structures existentiality. Its analytic has the character not of an existentiell understanding, but of an existential one.

As regards its possibility and necessity, the task of an existential analytic of Dasein is prefigured in Dasein’s ontic constitution. But insofar as existence determines Dasein, the ontological analytic of this being always already requires a prior look toward existentiality. We understand existentiality, however, as the constitution of Being of the being that exists. But the idea of Being already lies within the idea of such a constitution of Being. Thus the possibility of carrying out the analytic of Dasein also depends on the prior elaboration of the question of the meaning of Being in general.

Sciences are ways of Being of Dasein in which it also comports itself toward beings that it need not itself be. Yet the following belongs essentially to Dasein: Being in a world. The understanding of Being that belongs to Dasein therefore concerns, with equal primordiality, both the understanding of something like “world” and the understanding of the Being of beings that become accessible within the world. The ontologies that take as their theme beings whose character of Being is not that of Dasein are accordingly grounded and motivated in Dasein’s own ontic structure, which encompasses within itself the determinacy of a pre-ontological understanding of Being.

Therefore fundamental ontology, from which alone all the others can arise, must be sought in the existential analytic of Dasein.

Dasein accordingly has priority over all other beings in several respects. The first priority is ontic: this being is determined in its Being by existence. The second priority is ontological: on the basis of its determination by existence, Dasein is “ontological” in itself. But with equal primordiality—as a constituent of its understanding of existence—the following also belongs to Dasein: an understanding of the Being of all beings whose way of Being is not that of Dasein. Dasein therefore has the third priority, as the ontic-ontological condition for the possibility of all ontologies. Dasein has thus proved to be the being that, ahead of all other beings, must be interrogated first in ontological terms.

The existential analytic, for its part, ultimately has existentiell—that is, ontic—roots. Only when philosophically investigative questioning is itself taken up in an existentiell manner as a possibility of Being of Dasein as it exists in each case does the possibility exist of disclosing the existentiality of existence, and with it the possibility of undertaking an adequately grounded ontological problematic at all. With this, however, the ontic priority of the question of Being has also become clear.

The ontic-ontological priority of Dasein was recognized early on, without Dasein itself thereby being grasped in its genuine ontological structure or even being posed as a problem with that aim. Aristotle says: ἡ ψυχὴ τὰ ὄντα πώς ἐστιν. The soul (of the human being) is, in a certain way, all beings; the “soul,” which constitutes the Being of the human being, discovers, in its ways of being, αἴσθησις and νόησις, all beings with respect to the fact that they are and the way they are, that is, always also in their Being. This proposition, which points back to the ontological thesis of Parmenides, was taken up by Thomas Aquinas in a characteristic discussion. Within the task of deriving the “transcendentals,” that is, the characters of Being that extend beyond every possible determination of a being in terms of substantive content and genus, beyond every modus specialis entis, and that necessarily pertain to every something, whatever it may be, the verum too is to be demonstrated as such a transcendens. This is done by appealing to a being that, by virtue of its way of Being, itself has the capacity to “come together” with any being whatsoever. This distinguished being, the ens, quod natum est convenire cum omni ente, is the soul (anima). The priority of “Dasein” over all other beings that emerges here, though not ontologically clarified, plainly has nothing in common with a bad subjectivization of the totality of beings. –note

The demonstration of the ontic-ontological distinctive status of the question of Being is grounded in the preliminary indication of Dasein’s ontic-ontological priority. But the analysis of the structure of the question of Being as such (§ 2) encountered a distinctive function of this being within the very posing of the question. Here Dasein revealed itself as the being that must first be adequately elaborated ontologically if the questioning is to become transparent. But it has now been shown that the ontological analytic of Dasein constitutes fundamental ontology as such, and hence that Dasein functions as the being that must, in principle, be questioned in advance about its Being.

If the interpretation of the meaning of Being becomes the task, Dasein is not only the primary being to be questioned; it is moreover the being that always already, in its Being, comports itself toward what is asked about in this question. The question of Being is then nothing other than the radicalization of an essential tendency of Being belonging to Dasein itself, the pre-ontological understanding of Being.

In characterizing the tasks involved in the “posing” of the question of Being, it was shown that what is required is not only a fixing of the being that is to function as what is primarily interrogated, but also an explicit appropriation and securing of the right mode of access to this being. Which being assumes the privileged role within the question of Being has been discussed. But how is this being, Dasein, to be made accessible and, in an interpretation that understands, as it were, brought into view?

The ontic-ontological priority demonstrated for Dasein could tempt one to suppose that this being must also be what is primarily given, both ontically and ontologically, not only in the sense of an “immediate” graspability of the being itself, but also with respect to an equally “immediate” prior givenness of its way of Being. To be sure, Dasein is ontically not merely near but even the nearest—indeed, we ourselves are it in each case. Even so—or precisely for that reason—it is ontologically the most distant. To be sure, it belongs to its ownmost Being to have an understanding of that Being and always already to maintain itself within a certain interpretedness of its Being. But this by no means says that this nearest pre-ontological interpretation of its own Being could be adopted as an appropriate guiding thread, as though this understanding of Being had to arise from a thematically ontological reflection on its ownmost constitution of Being. Rather, in keeping with a way of Being that belongs to it, Dasein tends to understand its own Being from the being to which it essentially relates constantly and in the first instance—from the “world.” In Dasein itself, and thus in its own understanding of Being, lies what we will show to be the ontological back-reflection of the understanding of world upon the interpretation of Dasein.

Thus Dasein’s ontic-ontological priority is the reason why its specific constitution of Being—understood in the sense of the “categorial” structure belonging to it—remains concealed from Dasein. Ontically, Dasein is “nearest” to itself; ontologically, it is most distant from itself; yet pre-ontologically, it is not foreign to itself after all.

For now, this indicates only that an interpretation of this being faces peculiar difficulties, which are grounded in the way of Being of the thematic object and of the thematizing comportment themselves, and not, say, in an inadequate endowment of our faculty of cognition or in a lack of an adequate conceptual apparatus that is apparently easy to remedy.

Yet because an understanding of Being not only belongs to Dasein but also takes shape or disintegrates along with Dasein’s own way of Being in each case, Dasein can possess a rich interpretedness. Philosophical psychology, anthropology, ethics, “politics,” poetry, biography, and historiography have pursued Dasein’s comportments, capacities, powers, possibilities, and fortunes, each along different paths and to varying extents. The question remains, however, whether these interpretations were as primordial in their existential execution as they may have been primordial in existentiell terms. The two need not necessarily go together, but neither do they exclude each other. Existentiell interpretation can call for an existential analytic, if indeed philosophical cognition is grasped in its possibility and necessity. Only when Dasein’s basic structures have been adequately worked out with explicit orientation toward the problem of Being itself will what has so far been gained in the interpretation of Dasein receive its existential justification.

An analytic of Dasein must therefore remain the first concern in the question of Being. But then the problem of gaining and securing the guiding mode of access to Dasein becomes all the more pressing. Put negatively: no arbitrary idea of Being and actuality, however “self-evident” it may be, may be brought to bear upon this being in a constructive-dogmatic manner; nor may any “categories” prefigured by such an idea be imposed ontologically upon Dasein without scrutiny. Rather, the mode of access and interpretation must be chosen in such a way that this being can show itself in itself and from itself. Specifically, this mode is to show the being in the way it is in the first instance and for the most part, in its average everydayness. In this everydayness, not arbitrary and accidental structures but essential ones are to be brought out, structures that persist as determinative of Being in every way of Being of factical Dasein. The preparatory bringing-out of the Being of this being then emerges from a look toward the basic constitution of Dasein’s everydayness.

The analytic of Dasein, conceived in this way, remains wholly oriented toward the guiding task of working out the question of Being. Its limits are determined by this. It cannot aim to provide a complete ontology of Dasein, though such an ontology must of course be developed if anything like a “philosophical” anthropology is to stand on a philosophically adequate basis. With a possible anthropology, or rather its ontological grounding, as its aim, the interpretation that follows offers only some, though not inessential, “pieces.” But the analysis of Dasein is not only incomplete; to begin with, it is also provisional. At first it merely brings out the Being of this being without interpreting its meaning. Rather, it is meant to prepare the laying bare of the horizon for the most primordial interpretation of Being. Once this horizon has been gained, the preparatory analytic of Dasein calls for its repetition on the higher and proper ontological basis.

The meaning of the Being of the being we call Dasein will be shown to be temporality. This demonstration must prove itself in the repeated interpretation of the provisionally indicated structures of Dasein as modes of temporality. But with this interpretation of Dasein as temporality, the answer to the guiding question—the question that asks about the meaning of Being in general—is not thereby already given. The ground for gaining this answer has, however, been prepared.

By way of indication, it was shown: a pre-ontological Being belongs to Dasein as an ontic constitution. Dasein is such that, in being, it understands something like Being. Holding fast to this connection, it is to be shown that the point from which Dasein inexplicitly understands and interprets anything like Being at all is time. Time must be brought to light and genuinely grasped as the horizon of all understanding of Being and every interpretation of Being. To make this intelligible requires a primordial explication of time as the horizon of the understanding of Being, starting from temporality as the Being of Dasein that understands Being. This task as a whole also entails the demand to distinguish the concept of time thus gained from the vulgar understanding of time, which has become explicit in an interpretation of time of the kind that has crystallized in the traditional concept of time—a concept that has persisted from Aristotle through and beyond Bergson. In doing so, it must be made clear both that and how this concept of time and the vulgar understanding of time as such arise from temporality. The vulgar concept of time is thereby restored to its own independent legitimacy—contrary to Bergson’s thesis that the time meant by this concept is space.

“Time” has long functioned as an ontological—or rather, ontic—criterion for the naive differentiation of the various regions of beings. One sets “temporal” beings (the processes of nature and the events of history) apart from “non-temporal” beings (spatial and numerical relations). It is customary to distinguish the “timeless” meaning of propositions from the “temporal” course of propositional assertions. Furthermore, one finds a “chasm” between “temporal” beings and the “supratemporal” eternal and attempts to bridge it. Here “temporal” in each case means as much as being “in time,” a determination that, to be sure, is still obscure enough. The fact remains: time, in the sense of “being in time,” functions as a criterion for separating regions of Being. How time comes to have this distinctive ontological function, and indeed by what right precisely something like time functions as such a criterion, and, finally, whether its genuine potential ontological relevance comes to expression in this naively ontological use of time—none of this has so far been either asked or investigated. “Time”—specifically within the horizon of the vulgar understanding of time—has, as it were, “of itself” fallen into this “self-evident” ontological function and has maintained itself in it to this day.

By contrast, on the ground of the worked-out question of the meaning of Being, it must be shown both that and how the central problematic of all ontology is rooted in the phenomenon of time, rightly seen and rightly explicated.

If Being is to be grasped from time and the various modes and derivatives of Being, in their modifications and derivations, do in fact become intelligible from a look toward time, then Being itself—not, say, merely beings as beings “in time”—is thereby made visible in its “temporal” character. But “temporal” can then no longer mean merely “being in time.” What is “non-temporal,” as well as what is “supratemporal,” is also “temporal” with respect to its Being. This in turn is so not merely in the manner of a privation over against something “temporal” as a being “in time,” but in a positive sense, one that admittedly still has to be clarified. Because the expression “temporal” is already taken, in the meaning just cited, by prephilosophical and philosophical usage, and because the expression will also be claimed for a different meaning in the investigations that follow, we call the primordial meaning-determinacy of Being and of its characteristics and modes from time its Temporal determinacy. The fundamental ontological task of interpreting Being as such therefore includes within itself the working out of the Temporality of Being. It is only in the exposition of the problematic of Temporality that the concrete answer to the question of the meaning of Being is given.

Because Being can only ever be grasped from a look toward time, the answer to the question of Being cannot lie in an isolated and blind proposition. The answer is not grasped by repeating what it says propositionally, especially when it is passed on as a free-floating result for merely taking note of a “standpoint” that may differ from the way the matter has been treated so far. Whether the answer is “new” is of no consequence and remains an external matter. What is positive about it must lie in its being old enough to learn to grasp the possibilities prepared by “those of old.” In accordance with its ownmost meaning, the answer gives an instruction for concrete ontological research to begin its investigative questioning within the horizon that has been laid bare—and it gives only that.

If, in this way, the answer to the question of Being becomes an instruction furnishing a guiding thread for research, then this means that it is adequately given only when the specific way of Being of ontology hitherto, together with the fortunes of its questioning, finding, and failing, comes to be seen from the answer itself as something necessary in accordance with Dasein.

All research—and not least research moving within the sphere of the central question of Being—is an ontic possibility of Dasein. Its Being finds its meaning in temporality. Yet temporality is at the same time the condition of the possibility of historicality as a temporal way of Being of Dasein itself, quite apart from whether and how it is a being “in time.” The determination of historicality is prior to what one calls history (world-historical happening). Historicality means the constitution of Being of Dasein’s “happening” as such, on the ground of which alone such things as “world-history” and historical belonging to world-history first become possible. In its factical Being, Dasein is in each case how and “what” it already was. Whether explicitly or not, it is its past. And not merely in such a way that its past, as it were, trails along “behind” it and it possesses what is past as a property still present-at-hand, which at times continues to exert an effect within it. Dasein “is” its past in the manner of its Being, which, roughly speaking, in each case “happens” from out of its future. Dasein, in its particular way of being and thus also with the understanding of Being belonging to it, has grown up into a handed-down interpretation of Dasein and within it. From this interpretation it understands itself in the first instance and, within a certain range, does so constantly. This understanding discloses the possibilities of its Being and regulates them. Its own past—and that always means the past of its “generation”—does not follow after Dasein but has in each case already gone ahead of it.

This elementary historicality of Dasein can remain hidden from Dasein itself. But it can also be discovered in a certain way and cultivated in its own right. Dasein can discover tradition, preserve it, and explicitly follow it up. The discovery of tradition and the disclosure of what it “hands down” and how it hands it down can be taken up as a task in its own right. Dasein thereby brings itself into the way of Being of historiographic questioning and research. But historiography—more precisely, historiographicity—is possible as a way of Being of questioning Dasein only because Dasein is determined in the ground of its Being by historicality. If this remains hidden from Dasein, and for as long as it does, Dasein is also denied the possibility of historiographic questioning and of discovering history. The absence of historiography is no proof against Dasein’s historicality but, as a deficient mode of this constitution of Being, is proof of it. An age can be non-historiographic only because it is “historical.”

On the other hand, if Dasein has seized the possibility inherent in it not only of making its existence transparent to itself, but of asking after the meaning of existentiality itself—that is, prior to this, after the meaning of Being as such—and if, in such questioning, a view of Dasein’s essential historicality has opened up, then the following insight is unavoidable: questioning about Being, which was indicated with respect to its ontic-ontological necessity, is itself characterized by historicality. The working out of the question of Being must therefore, from the ownmost meaning of Being of questioning itself insofar as it is historical, hear the directive to ask after its own history, that is, to become historiographic, in order, through a positive appropriation of the past, to bring itself into full possession of its ownmost possibilities of questioning. In accordance with the mode of enactment belonging to it—that is, as a prior explication of Dasein in its temporality and historicality—the question of the meaning of Being is brought by itself to understand itself as a historiographic question.

Yet the preparatory interpretation of Dasein’s fundamental structures with regard to its nearest and average way of Being, in which it is consequently also historical in the first instance, will make the following manifest: Dasein not only has an inclination to fall prey to its world, in which it is, and to interpret itself reflectively back out of that world; together with this, Dasein also falls prey to its tradition, grasped more or less explicitly. This tradition takes Dasein’s own guidance, questioning, and choosing out of its hands. This applies not least to the understanding rooted in Dasein’s ownmost Being—the ontological understanding—and to its capacity for development.

The tradition that thereby comes to dominate, in the first instance and for the most part, makes what it “hands down” so inaccessible that it instead conceals it. It consigns what has been handed down to taken-for-grantedness and blocks access to the primordial “sources” from which the transmitted categories and concepts were in part genuinely drawn. Tradition even causes such an origin to be forgotten altogether. It cultivates a lack of need even to understand the necessity of such a return. Tradition uproots Dasein’s historicality to such a degree that Dasein now moves only within an interest in the manifold array of possible types, currents, and standpoints of philosophizing in the most remote and alien cultures, and seeks through this interest to conceal its own groundlessness. The consequence will be that, for all its historiographic interest and all its zeal for a philologically “objective” interpretation, Dasein no longer understands the most elementary conditions that alone make possible a positive return to the past in the sense of productively appropriating it.

At the outset (§ 1), it was shown that the question of the meaning of Being has not only remained unresolved, has not only failed to be posed adequately, but, despite all interest in “metaphysics,” has fallen into oblivion. Greek ontology, together with its history—a history that, through manifold filiations and distortions, still determines philosophy’s conceptuality today—is proof that Dasein understands itself and Being as such in terms of the “world,” and that the ontology which has thus grown up falls prey to tradition, which lets it sink into taken-for-grantedness and into mere material to be worked over anew (as it is for Hegel). This uprooted Greek ontology becomes a fixed body of doctrine in the Middle Ages. Its systematic structure is anything but a joining together of inherited pieces into an edifice. Within the limits of a dogmatic adoption of the Greek basic conceptions of Being, this systematic structure still contains much work that leads farther and remains to be unearthed. In its scholastic form, Greek ontology passes essentially by way of Suarez’s Disputationes metaphysicae into the “metaphysics” and transcendental philosophy of the modern age, and still determines the foundations and aims of Hegel’s “Logic.” Insofar as certain privileged regions of Being come into view in the course of this history and henceforth primarily guide the problematic (Descartes’ ego cogito, subject, I, reason, spirit, person), they remain, in keeping with the pervasive neglect of the question of Being, uninterrogated as to Being and the structure of their Being. Instead, the categorial stock of traditional ontology is transferred to this being with corresponding formalizations and merely negative restrictions, or else dialectic is called on for help with the aim of an ontological interpretation of the substantiality of the subject.

If the question of Being itself is to gain transparency with respect to its own history, the hardened tradition must be loosened and the concealments it has produced stripped away. We understand this task as the destruction of the transmitted stock of ancient ontology, carried out along the guiding thread of the question of Being and leading back to the primordial experiences in which the first and thereafter guiding determinations of Being were gained.

This demonstration of the provenance of the basic ontological concepts—the investigative issuing of a “birth certificate” for them—has nothing to do with a bad relativization of ontological standpoints. Nor does the destruction have the negative sense of shaking off the ontological tradition. On the contrary, it is to mark out this tradition in its positive possibilities—and that always means in its limits—limits that are factically given with the particular posing of the question and with the delimitation of the possible field of investigation mapped out in advance by that question. The destruction does not take a negating stance toward the past; its critique strikes “today” and the prevailing way of treating the history of ontology, whether framed doxographically, as intellectual history, or as a history of problems. Yet the destruction does not seek to bury the past in nullity; it has a positive intention; its negative function remains inexplicit and indirect.

Within the present treatise, whose aim is a fundamental working out of the question of Being, the destruction of the history of ontology—which belongs essentially to the posing of the question and is possible only within it—can be carried out only at fundamentally decisive stations in that history.

In keeping with the positive tendency of the destruction, one must ask in the first instance whether and to what extent, in the course of the history of ontology, the interpretation of Being was ever brought together thematically with the phenomenon of time, and whether the problematic of Temporality necessary for this was worked out in principle and could have been worked out. The first and only one who traveled some distance along a path of investigation toward the dimension of Temporality—or rather, who let the force of the phenomena themselves drive him in that direction—is Kant. Once the problematic of Temporality has been established, it may be possible to bring light into the darkness of the doctrine of schematism. Along this path, however, it can then also be shown why this domain, in its proper dimensions and its central ontological function, had to remain closed to Kant. Kant himself knew that he was venturing into a dark domain: “This schematism of our understanding, as regards appearances and their mere form, is an art hidden in the depths of the human soul, whose true procedures we shall scarcely ever divine from nature and lay before our eyes without concealment.” What Kant here, as it were, recoils from must be brought to light thematically and fundamentally if the expression “Being” is indeed to have a demonstrable meaning. In the end, the very phenomena brought out in the following analysis under the title “Temporality” are the most secret judgments of “common reason,” whose analytic Kant determines to be the “business of philosophers.”

In pursuing the task of the destruction along the guiding thread of the problematic of Temporality, the following treatise attempts to interpret the chapter on schematism and, from there, Kant’s doctrine of time. At the same time, it is shown why insight into the problematic of Temporality had to remain denied to Kant. Two things prevented this insight: first, the neglect of the question of Being altogether and, in connection with it, the lack of a thematic ontology of Dasein—in Kantian terms, a prior ontological analytic of the subjectivity of the subject. Instead, despite all essential further developments, Kant dogmatically adopts Descartes’ position. Second, however, despite taking this phenomenon back into the subject, his analysis of time remains oriented by the inherited vulgar understanding of time, and this ultimately prevents Kant from working out the phenomenon of a “transcendental time-determination” in its own structure and function. As a result of this twofold aftereffect of tradition, the decisive connection between time and the “I think” remains shrouded in complete darkness; it does not even become a problem.

By taking over Descartes’ ontological position, Kant shares in an essential neglect: that of an ontology of Dasein. In terms of Descartes’ ownmost tendency, this neglect is decisive. With “cogito sum,” Descartes claims to furnish philosophy with a new and secure ground. But what he leaves undetermined in this “radical” beginning is the way of Being of res cogitans, more precisely the meaning of Being of the “sum.” The stay at the second station on the path of the destructive return into the history of ontology is devoted to working out the inexplicit ontological foundations of “cogito sum.” The interpretation not only proves that Descartes had to neglect the question of Being altogether; it also shows why, on the strength of the absolute “being-certain” of the cogito, he came to believe himself exempt from the question of the meaning of this being’s Being.

For Descartes, however, matters do not stop with this neglect alone and thus with the complete ontological indeterminacy of res cogitans sive mens sive animus. Descartes carries out the fundamental reflections of his “Meditationes” by transferring medieval ontology onto this being, which he posits as fundamentum inconcussum. The res cogitans is ontologically determined as ens, and for medieval ontology the meaning of Being of ens is fixed in the understanding of ens as ens creatum. God as ens infinitum is the ens increatum. Createdness, however, in the broadest sense of something’s having-been-produced, is an essential structural moment of the ancient concept of Being. The apparent new-beginning of philosophizing reveals itself as the planting of a fateful prejudice, on the ground of which the ensuing age neglected a thematic ontological analytic of the “mind” along the guiding thread of the question of Being and at the same time as a critical confrontation with inherited ancient ontology.

Any expert on the Middle Ages sees that Descartes is “dependent” on medieval scholasticism and uses its terminology. But philosophically nothing is gained by this “discovery” for as long as it remains obscure what fundamental import the way medieval ontology works its way into the ontological determination—or non-determination—of res cogitans has for the ensuing period. This import can be assessed only once the meaning and limits of ancient ontology have first been shown on the basis of an orientation toward the question of Being. In other words, the destruction finds itself faced with the task of interpreting the ground of ancient ontology in the light of the problematic of Temporality. In this, it becomes manifest that the ancient interpretation of the Being of beings is oriented toward the “world” or “nature” in the broadest sense, and that it in fact gains its understanding of Being from “time.” The external evidence for this—but admittedly only that—is the determination of the meaning of Being as παρουσία, or οὐσία, which in ontological-temporal terms means “presence.” A being is grasped in its Being as “presence”; that is, it is understood with regard to a particular mode of time, the “present.”

The problematic of Greek ontology, like that of every ontology, must take its guiding thread from Dasein itself. Dasein—that is, the Being of the human being—is circumscribed in the vulgar as well as the philosophical “definition” as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, the living creature whose Being is essentially determined by the capacity to speak. The λέγειν (cf. § 7, B) is the guiding thread for gaining the structures of Being of the being encountered in speaking to it and speaking about it. Therefore ancient ontology, as it takes shape in Plato, becomes “dialectic.” As the ontological guiding thread itself is progressively worked out—that is, the “hermeneutics” of λόγος—the possibility of a more radical formulation of the problem of Being grows. “Dialectic,” which was a genuine philosophical predicament, becomes superfluous. Therefore Aristotle “no longer had any understanding” for it, because he set it on a more radical ground and thereby did away with it. The λέγειν itself, or the νοεῖν—the simple apprehension of something present-at-hand in its pure presence-at-hand, which Parmenides had already taken as the leading-string for the interpretation of Being—has the temporal structure of the pure “making-present” of something. The being that shows itself in and for this apprehension, and that is understood as the being in the proper sense, accordingly receives its interpretation with regard to—the present; that is, it is conceived as presence (οὐσία).

Yet this Greek interpretation of Being is carried out without any explicit knowledge of the guiding thread functioning in it, without knowledge or even understanding of the fundamental ontological function of time, without insight into the ground of the possibility of this function. On the contrary, time itself is taken as one being among other beings, and an attempt is made to grasp time itself in its structure of Being from the horizon of the understanding of Being that is inexplicitly and naively oriented toward it.

Within the following fundamental working out of the question of Being, the detailed temporal interpretation of the foundations of ancient ontology—above all of its highest and purest scientific stage in Aristotle—cannot be presented. Instead, this working out offers an interpretation of Aristotle’s treatise on time, which can be chosen as the discrimen for the basis and limits of the ancient science of Being.

Aristotle’s treatise on time is the first fully executed interpretation of this phenomenon to have been handed down to us. It has essentially determined every subsequent conception of time—including Bergson’s. At the same time, analysis of the Aristotelian concept of time makes it clear in retrospect that Kant’s conception of time moves within the structures brought out by Aristotle, which means that Kant’s basic ontological orientation—for all the differences of a new mode of questioning—remains the Greek one.

Only in carrying out the destruction of the ontological tradition does the question of Being gain its genuine concretion. In this destruction it secures for itself full proof of the inescapability of the question of the meaning of Being and thus demonstrates the meaning of speaking of a “repetition” of this question.

Every investigation in this field, where “the matter itself is deeply shrouded,” will guard against overestimating its results. For questioning of this kind constantly compels itself to face the possibility of disclosing a still more primordial and more universal horizon from which the answer to the question: what does “Being” mean? could be drawn. Such possibilities can be discussed seriously and with positive gain only if the question of Being is first reawakened at all and a field for critically assessable confrontations has been secured.

With the preliminary characterization of the investigation’s thematic object (the Being of beings, or the meaning of Being in general), its method too seems already to be prefigured. Distinguishing Being from beings and explicating Being itself is the task of ontology. And the method of ontology remains questionable in the highest degree as long as one seeks counsel, for example, from historically handed-down ontologies or attempts of that kind. Since the term ontology is used for this investigation in a formally broad sense, the path of clarifying its method by tracing its history rules itself out of its own accord.

Using the term ontology does not endorse any particular philosophical discipline that would stand in connection with the others. The aim is not at all to fulfill the task of a discipline given in advance; on the contrary, if anything, a discipline may take shape from the substantive necessities of determinate questions and from the mode of treatment demanded by the “things themselves.”

With the guiding question about the meaning of Being, the investigation stands at the fundamental question of philosophy as such. The mode of treating this question is phenomenological. This treatise thereby commits itself neither to a “standpoint” nor to a “school of thought,” because phenomenology is neither and can never become either as long as it understands itself. The expression “phenomenology” signifies primarily a concept of method. It characterizes not the substantive What of the objects of philosophical research, but the How of these. The more genuinely a concept of method is operative, and the more comprehensively it determines the fundamental course of a science, the more primordially it is rooted in confrontation with the things themselves, and the farther it is from what we call a technical maneuver, of which there are many even in the theoretical disciplines.

The title “phenomenology” expresses a maxim that can be formulated as follows: “to the things themselves!”—against all free-floating constructions and accidental discoveries, against adopting concepts that are only seemingly verified, against the seeming questions that often spread themselves out as “problems” through generations. Yet this maxim—one might object—is quite self-evident and, moreover, expresses the principle of every scientific cognition. One cannot see why this self-evidence should expressly be incorporated into the title of a research undertaking. What is at issue is indeed a “self-evidence” that we want to bring nearer to ourselves, insofar as this matters for shedding light on the procedure of this treatise. We set out only the preliminary concept of phenomenology.

The expression has two constituent parts: phenomenon and logos; both go back to Greek terms: φαινόμενον and λόγος. Considered externally, the title phenomenology is formed on the same pattern as theology, biology, and sociology, names that are translated as: science of God, of life, of community. Phenomenology would accordingly be the science of phenomena. The preliminary concept of phenomenology is to be brought out by characterizing what is meant by the two parts of the title, “phenomenon” and “logos,” and by fixing the meaning of the name composed from them. The history of the word itself, which presumably arose in Wolff’s school, is of no importance here.

A. The Concept of the Phenomenon

The Greek expression φαινόμενον, to which the term “phenomenon” goes back, is derived from the verb φαίνεσθαι, which means: to show itself; φαινόμενον therefore says: what shows itself, what is self-showing, the manifest. φαίνεσθαι itself is a middle-voice formation of φαίνω, to bring into daylight, to place in brightness; φαίνω belongs to the stem φα-, like φῶς, light, brightness, i.e., that within which something can become manifest, visible in itself. We must therefore retain as the meaning of the expression “phenomenon”: what shows itself in itself, the manifest. The φαινόμενα, “phenomena,” are then the totality of what lies in daylight or can be brought to light, which the Greeks sometimes simply identified with τὰ ὄντα (beings). A being can now show itself from itself in different ways, depending on the mode of access to it. It is even possible for a being to show itself as what it is not in itself. In this self-showing, the being “looks” “as though it were

...”. We call such self-showing semblance. And so in Greek too the expression φαινόμενον, phenomenon, means what looks like something, the “ostensible,” “semblance”; φαινόμενον ἀγαθόν means a good that looks like one—but “in actuality” is not what it gives itself out to be. For the further understanding of the concept of phenomenon, everything depends on seeing how the things named in the two meanings of φαινόμενον (“phenomenon” as what shows itself and “phenomenon” as semblance) are structurally related to one another. Only insofar as something, by its very meaning, lays claim to showing itself, i.e., to being a phenomenon, can it show itself as something it is not, can it “merely look as though it were …” In the meaning φαινόμενον (“semblance”), the primordial meaning (phenomenon: the manifest) is already included along with it as founding the second. We terminologically reserve the designation “phenomenon” for the positive and primordial meaning of φαινόμενον, and distinguish phenomenon from semblance as the privative modification of phenomenon. But what the two terms express has in the first instance absolutely nothing to do with what is called “appearance” or even “mere appearance.”

Thus one speaks of “appearances of illness.” What is meant are bodily occurrences that show themselves and, in showing themselves as what thus shows itself, “indicate” something that does not itself show itself. The occurrence of such occurrences, their self-showing, goes together with the presence of disturbances that do not themselves show themselves. Appearance as appearance “of something” therefore says precisely not: showing itself, but the announcing-itself, by way of something that does show itself, of something that does not show itself. Appearing is a not-showing-itself. This “not,” however, must in no way be conflated with the privative not that determines the structure of semblance. What does not show itself in the manner of what appears can never seem either. All indications, representations, symptoms, and symbols have the formal basic structure of appearing just cited, although they still differ among themselves.

Although “appearing” is not, and never is, a self-showing in the sense of phenomenon, appearing is nevertheless possible only on the ground of something’s showing itself. But this self-showing, which also makes appearing possible, is not appearing itself. Appearing is announcing-itself through something that shows itself. If one then says that with the word “appearance” we point to something in which something appears, without itself being an appearance, this does not delimit the concept of phenomenon but presupposes it; this pre-supposition, however, remains covered over because, in this determination of “appearance,” the expression “appear” is used in two senses. That in which something “appears” means that in which something announces itself, i.e., does not show itself; and in the phrase “without itself being ‘an appearance,’” appearance means self-showing. This self-showing, however, belongs essentially to the “wherein” in which something announces itself. Phenomena, therefore, are never appearances, but every appearance depends on phenomena. If phenomenon is defined with the help of a concept of “appearance” that is, moreover, still unclear, then everything is turned upside down, and a “critique” of phenomenology on this basis is indeed a curious undertaking.

The expression “appearance” can itself once again mean two things: first, appearing in the sense of announcing-itself as not-showing-itself, and then the announcing thing itself—what, in its self-showing, indicates something that does not show itself. Finally, appearing can be used as a designation for the genuine sense of phenomenon as self-showing. If these three different states of affairs are designated “appearance,” confusion is unavoidable.

But the confusion is still essentially heightened by the fact that “appearance” can take on yet another meaning. If the announcing thing, which in its self-showing indicates the nonmanifest, is understood as what occurs on the nonmanifest itself and emanates from it, in such a way that the nonmanifest is thought as what is essentially never manifest—then appearance means bringing-forth, or what is brought forth, which, however, does not constitute the genuine Being of what brings it forth: appearance in the sense of “mere appearance.” The brought-forth announcing thing does indeed show itself, and does so in such a way that, as an emanation of what it announces, it continually veils within itself precisely what it announces. But this veiling not-showing is once again not semblance. Kant uses the term appearance in this coupling. For him, appearances are first the “objects of empirical intuition,” what shows itself in such intuition. This what-shows-itself (phenomenon in the genuine, primordial sense) is at the same time “appearance” as the announcing emanation of something that hides itself in the appearance.

Insofar as a phenomenon is constitutive for “appearance” in the meaning of announcing-itself through something that shows itself, while this phenomenon can be modified privatively into semblance, appearance too can become mere semblance. In certain lighting someone can look as if their cheeks were flushed; this redness, which shows itself, can be taken as an announcement of the presence of fever, which in turn once again indicates a disturbance in the organism.

Phenomenon—showing itself in itself—means a distinctive mode in which something is encountered. Appearance, by contrast, means an ontic relation of reference within beings themselves, such that what refers (what announces) can fulfill its possible function only if it shows itself in itself, if it is “phenomenon.” Appearance and semblance are themselves founded in phenomenon in different ways. The confusing multiplicity of the “phenomena” named by the designations phenomenon, semblance, appearance, and mere appearance can be disentangled only if the concept of phenomenon is understood from the outset: what shows itself in itself.

If, in this formulation of the concept of phenomenon, it remains indeterminate which being is addressed as phenomenon, and if it remains open in general whether what shows itself is in each case a being or a characteristic of the Being of beings, then only the formal concept of phenomenon has been obtained. But if what shows itself is understood as a being accessible, for example, through empirical intuition in Kant’s sense, then the formal concept of phenomenon receives a legitimate application. Phenomenon in this use fulfills the meaning of the ordinary concept of phenomenon. This ordinary concept, however, is not the phenomenological concept of phenomenon. Within the horizon of Kant’s problematic, what is phenomenologically understood by phenomenon can, allowing for other differences, be illustrated as follows: what already shows itself within appearances—the phenomenon understood in the ordinary way—in advance and along with them, though unthematically, can be brought thematically to show itself; and these things that thus show themselves in themselves (“forms of intuition”) are phenomena of phenomenology. For space and time must evidently be able to show themselves in this way; they must be able to become phenomena if Kant, in saying that space is the a priori wherein of an order, is thereby to lay claim to a transcendental assertion grounded in the matter itself.

But if the phenomenological concept of phenomenon is now to be understood at all, regardless of how what shows itself may be more closely determined, then insight into the meaning of the formal concept of phenomenon and its legitimate application in an ordinary meaning is an indispensable prerequisite.—Before the preliminary concept of phenomenology is fixed, the meaning of λόγος must be delimited, so that it becomes clear in what sense phenomenology can be a “science of” phenomena at all.

B. The Concept of Logos

The concept of λόγος has many meanings in Plato and Aristotle, and in such a way that the meanings pull apart without being positively guided by a basic meaning. This is in fact only a semblance, one that persists as long as interpretation is unable adequately to grasp the basic meaning in its primary content. If we say that the basic meaning of λόγος is discourse, this literal translation acquires full validity only through a determination of what discourse itself means. The later history of the meanings of the word λόγος, and above all the manifold and arbitrary interpretations of subsequent philosophy, continually cover over the genuine meaning of discourse, which lies openly enough in daylight. λόγος is “translated”—that is, always interpreted—as reason, judgment, concept, definition, ground, relation. But how could “discourse” be modified so that λόγος means everything just listed, and does so within scientific usage? Even if λόγος is understood in the sense of assertion, and assertion as “judgment,” this seemingly legitimate translation can still miss the fundamental meaning, especially if judgment is understood in the sense of some contemporary “theory of judgment.” λόγος does not mean judgment, and in any event does not mean it primarily, if judgment is understood as a “combining” or a “taking a position” (acceptance—rejection).

λόγος as discourse means, rather, δηλουν: to make manifest what, in discourse, the discourse is “about.” Aristotle explicated this function of discourse more sharply as ἀποφαίνεσθαι. The λόγος lets something be seen (φαίνεσθαι), namely what the discourse is about, and it does so for the one engaging in discourse (middle voice), or for those engaging in discourse with one another. Discourse “lets be seen” ἀπὸ ... from the very thing itself about which the discourse is. In discourse (ἀπόφανσις), provided it is genuine, what is said is to be drawn from that about which discourse is, so that discursive communication, in what it says, makes manifest what it is speaking about and thus makes it accessible to the other. This is the structure of λόγος as ἀπόφανσις. Not every “discourse” has this mode of making-manifest in the sense of a letting-see that points something out. Requesting (εὐχή), for example, also makes manifest, but in another way.

In its concrete enactment, discoursing (letting-see) has the character of speaking, of vocal utterance in words. The λόγος is φωνή, and specifically φωνή μετὰ φαντασίας—vocal utterance in which something is in each case sighted.

And only because the function of λόγος as ἀπόφανσις lies in a letting-see that points something out can λόγος have the structural form of σύνθεσις. Synthesis here does not mean combining and linking representations, manipulating mental occurrences, with respect to which connections the “problem” is then supposed to arise of how they, as something inner, agree with the physical outside. Here συν has a purely apophantic meaning and says: to let something be seen in its being-together with something, to let something be seen as something.

And again, because λόγος is a letting-see, it can be true or false. Everything also depends on keeping free of a constructed concept of truth in the sense of an “agreement.” This idea is by no means primary in the concept of ἀλήθεια. The “Being-true” of λόγος as ἀληθεύειν means: in λέγειν as ἀποφαίνεσθαι, to take the being about which there is discourse out of its hiddenness and let it be seen as unconcealed (ἀληθές), to uncover it. Correspondingly, “Being-false,” ψεύδεσθαι, means deception in the sense of covering over: placing something in front of something else (in the mode of letting-see) and thereby passing it off as something it is not.

But because “truth” has this meaning and λόγος is a determinate mode of letting-see, λόγος precisely must not be designated the primary “place” of truth. If, as has now become customary across the board, truth is determined as what “properly” belongs to judgment, and this thesis is moreover supported by an appeal to Aristotle, then not only is this appeal groundless, but above all the Greek concept of truth is misunderstood. “True” in the Greek sense—and more primordially than the λόγος just mentioned—is αἴσθησις, the simple sensory apprehension of something. Insofar as an αἴσθησις is in each case directed toward its ἴδια, toward the beings genuinely accessible solely through it and for it—for example, seeing toward colors—apprehension is always true. This means: seeing always uncovers colors, hearing always uncovers tones. “True” in the purest and most primordial sense—i.e., solely uncovering, so that it can never cover over—is pure νοεῖν, the apprehension that simply looks toward the simplest determinations of the Being of beings as such. This νοεῖν can never cover over, can never be false; at most it can remain a non-apprehension, ἀγνοεῖν, and fail to suffice for simple, adequate access.

What no longer has the enactment-form of pure letting-see, but in pointing out has recourse in each case to something else and thus lets something be seen as something, takes on, with this synthesis-structure, the possibility of covering over. “Judgment-truth,” however, is only the counter-case to this covering-over—that is, a multiply founded phenomenon of truth. Realism and Idealism miss with equal thoroughness the meaning of the Greek concept of truth, from which alone the possibility of anything like a “doctrine of Ideas” as philosophical cognition can be understood.

And because the function of λόγος lies in simply letting something be seen, in letting beings be apprehended, λόγος can mean reason. And because λόγος, in turn, is used not only in the meaning of λέγειν but at the same time in that of λεγόμενον, what has been shown as such, and because the latter is nothing other than the ὑποκείμενον, that which, for every address and discussion that approaches it, always already lies there as present-at-hand and serves as its ground, λόγος qua λεγόμενον means ground, ratio. And finally, because λόγος qua λεγόμενον can also mean what is addressed as something, what has become visible in its relation to something, in its “relatedness,” λόγος acquires the meaning of connection and relation.

This interpretation of “apophantic discourse” may suffice to clarify the primary function of λόγος.

C. The Preliminary Concept of Phenomenology

When what has been brought out in the interpretation of “phenomenon” and “logos” is concretely called to mind, an internal relation between what these designations mean leaps into view. The expression phenomenology can be formulated in Greek: λέγειν τὰ φαινόμενα; but λέγειν means ἀποφαίνεσθαι. Phenomenology then means: ἀποφαίνεσθαι τὰ φαινόμενα: to let what shows itself be seen from itself, just as it shows itself from itself. This is the formal meaning of the research that gives itself the name phenomenology. Yet this expresses nothing other than the maxim formulated above: “To the things themselves!”

The title phenomenology thus has a meaning different from designations such as theology and the like. These name the objects of the respective science in their particular substantive matter. “Phenomenology” neither names the object of its research nor does the title characterize that object’s substantive matter. The word gives information only about the How of the pointing out and the mode of treatment of what is to be treated in this science. Science “of” phenomena means: a grasping of its objects such that everything about them that comes up for discussion must be dealt with through direct pointing out and direct verification. The expression “descriptive phenomenology,” fundamentally tautological, has the same meaning. Description does not here mean a procedure modeled, for example, on botanical morphology—the title again has a prohibitive meaning: keeping at a distance all non-verifying determination. The character of description itself, the specific meaning of λόγος, can first be fixed from the “matterhood” of what is to be “described,” i.e., brought to scientific determinacy in the mode of encounter proper to phenomena. Formally, the meaning of the formal and ordinary concept of phenomenon warrants calling any pointing out of a being, just as it shows itself in itself, phenomenology.

In view of what must the formal concept of phenomenon now be de-formalized into the phenomenological concept, and how does the latter differ from the ordinary one? What is it that phenomenology is to “let be seen”? What is it that must be called “phenomenon” in a distinctive sense? What is necessarily, by its essence, the theme of an explicit pointing out? Evidently it is what in the first instance and for the most part precisely does not show itself, what is hidden over against what in the first instance and for the most part does show itself, yet at the same time is something that essentially belongs to what in the first instance and for the most part shows itself, in such a way that it constitutes its meaning and ground.

But what remains hidden in an exceptional sense, or falls back again into covering-over, or shows itself only “disguised,” is not this or that being but, as the preceding reflections have shown, the Being of beings. It can be covered over so extensively that it is forgotten and the question about it and its meaning fails to arise. What therefore, in a distinctive sense and by virtue of its ownmost substantive matter, demands to become phenomenon, phenomenology has thematically taken into its “grasp” as its object.

Phenomenology is the mode of access to what is to become the theme of ontology and the verifying mode of determining it. Ontology is possible only as phenomenology. In the phenomenological concept of phenomenon, what shows itself is the Being of beings, its meaning, its modifications, and its derivatives. And this self-showing is not just any kind of self-showing, still less anything like appearing. Least of all can the Being of beings ever be something “behind” which something else still stands “that does not appear.”

“Behind” the phenomena of phenomenology there is essentially nothing else, but what is to become phenomenon can indeed be hidden. And precisely because the phenomena are in the first instance and for the most part not given, phenomenology is needed. Coveredness is the counterconcept to “phenomenon.”

The possible ways in which phenomena can be covered are various. First, a phenomenon can be covered in the sense that it has not yet been uncovered at all. Of its subsistence there is neither knowledge nor ignorance. A phenomenon can also be buried. This means: it was once uncovered before, but fell back into covering-over. This can become total, or else, as is the rule, what was previously uncovered is still visible, though only as semblance. Yet however much semblance, just so much “Being.” This covering-over as “disguise” is the most frequent and the most dangerous, because here the possibilities of deception and misdirection are especially persistent. The available structures of Being and their concepts, while veiled as to the ground in which they are rooted, may perhaps claim their right within a “system.” On account of their constructive interlocking in a system, they present themselves as something that needs no further justification and is “clear,” and so can serve as the starting point for a progressive deduction.

Covering-over itself, whether understood as hiddenness, burial, or disguise, in turn has two possibilities. There are accidental forms of covering-over and necessary ones, i.e., those grounded in the mode of subsistence of what has been uncovered. Every phenomenological concept and proposition originally drawn is, as a communicated assertion, open to the possibility of degeneration. It is passed on with an empty understanding, loses its rootedness in the ground, and becomes a free-floating thesis. The possibility that what was originally “graspable” will harden and become ungraspable lies in the concrete work of phenomenology itself. And the difficulty of this research consists precisely in making it, in a positive sense, critical of itself.

The mode in which Being and the structures of Being are encountered in the mode of phenomenon must first be won from the objects of phenomenology. Therefore the starting point of the analysis, as well as access to the phenomenon and the passage through the prevailing coverings-over, require their own methodological safeguarding. In the idea of an “originary” and “intuitive” grasping and explication of phenomena lies the opposite of the naïveté of an accidental, “immediate,” and unconsidered “looking.”

On the ground of the preliminary concept of phenomenology just delimited, the terms “phenomenal” and “phenomenological” can now also be fixed in their meaning. “Phenomenal” names what is given and can be explicated in the mode of encounter of phenomenon; hence the talk of phenomenal structures. “Phenomenological” names everything that belongs to the mode of pointing out and explication and that constitutes the conceptuality required in this research.

Because, in the phenomenological understanding, phenomenon is always only what constitutes Being, while Being is always the Being of beings, aiming at a laying bare of Being first requires a proper bringing-forward of the being itself. This being must likewise show itself in the mode of access genuinely belonging to it. And so the ordinary concept of phenomenon becomes phenomenologically relevant. The preliminary task of a “phenomenological” securing of the exemplary being as the point of departure for the analytic proper is always already prefigured by the goal of that analytic.

Taken in terms of substantive matter, phenomenology is the science of the Being of beings—ontology. In the elucidation given of the tasks of ontology, there arose the need for a fundamental ontology that takes as its theme the ontologically and ontically distinctive being, Dasein, in such a way that it brings itself before the cardinal problem, the question about the meaning of Being in general. The investigation itself will show: the methodological meaning of phenomenological description is interpretation. The λόγος of the phenomenology of Dasein has the character of ἑρμηνεύειν, through which the authentic meaning of Being and the basic structures of Dasein’s own Being are made known to the understanding of Being that belongs to Dasein itself. The phenomenology of Dasein is hermeneutics in the primordial meaning of the word, according to which it designates the work of interpretation. But insofar as uncovering the meaning of Being and the basic structures of Dasein in general brings out the horizon for every further ontological research into beings that are not of Dasein’s kind, this hermeneutics is at the same time “hermeneutics” in the sense of working out the conditions for the possibility of every ontological investigation. And finally, insofar as Dasein has ontological priority over all beings—as a being in the possibility of existence—hermeneutics as an interpretation of the Being of Dasein acquires a specific third sense—the, philosophically understood, primary sense of an analytic of the existentiality of existence. Rooted in this hermeneutics, insofar as it works out Dasein’s historicity ontologically as the ontic condition for the possibility of historiography, is what can be called “hermeneutics” only derivatively: the methodology of the historiographical human sciences.

Being, as the basic theme of philosophy, is not a genus of beings, and yet it concerns every being. Its “universality” must be sought higher. Being and the structure of Being lie beyond every being and every possible ontic determinateness of a being. Being is the transcendens without qualification. The transcendence of Dasein’s Being is distinctive insofar as the possibility and necessity of the most radical individuation lie in it. Every disclosure of Being as the transcendens is transcendental cognition. Phenomenological truth (disclosedness of Being) is veritas transcendentalis.

Ontology and phenomenology are not two different disciplines, alongside others, that belong to philosophy. The two titles characterize philosophy itself in terms of its object and its mode of treatment. Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, proceeding from the hermeneutics of Dasein, which, as an analytic of existence, has secured the end of the guiding thread of all philosophical questioning at the place from which such questioning springs and to which it rebounds.

The following investigations have become possible only on the ground laid by E. Husserl, with whose “Logical Investigations” phenomenology achieved its breakthrough. The elucidations of the preliminary concept of phenomenology indicate that what is essential to it does not lie in its being actual as a philosophical “school of thought.” Possibility stands higher than actuality. Phenomenology is understood solely by grasping it as a possibility.

In view of the unwieldiness and “unloveliness” of the expression in the analyses that follow, this remark may be appended: it is one thing to report narratively about beings, another to grasp beings in their Being. For the latter task, not only are words usually lacking, but above all “grammar.” If it is permissible to point to earlier research analyzing Being, incomparable in its level, then one should compare ontological passages in Plato’s “Parmenides” or the fourth chapter of the seventh book of Aristotle’s “Metaphysics” with a narrative passage from Thucydides, and one will see how unheard-of were the formulations that their philosophers expected the Greeks to bear. And where the powers are substantially lesser and, moreover, the domain of Being to be disclosed is ontologically far more difficult than the one given to the Greeks, the cumbersomeness of concept formation and the harshness of expression will increase.

The question of the meaning of Being is the most universal and the emptiest; yet at the same time it contains the possibility of its own sharpest individualization to the Dasein in each case. Attaining the basic concept “Being” and preliminarily delineating the ontological conceptuality it requires, together with that conceptuality’s necessary modifications, call for a concrete guiding thread. The universality of the concept of Being does not conflict with the “specialized character” of the investigation—that is, with advancing toward it by way of a specific interpretation of a particular being, Dasein, in which the horizon for an understanding and possible interpretation of Being is to be gained. Yet this being is itself intrinsically “historical,” so that the ownmost ontological illumination of this being necessarily becomes a “historiographical” interpretation.

The working out of the question of Being thus forks into two tasks; corresponding to them, the treatise is divided into two parts:

First Part: The interpretation of Dasein in terms of temporality and the explication of time as the transcendental horizon of the question of Being.

Second Part: Basic features of a phenomenological destruction of the history of ontology, with the problematic of Temporality as its guiding thread.

The first part is divided into three sections: 1. The preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein. 2. Dasein and temporality. 3. Time and Being.

The second part is likewise divided threefold:

1. Kant’s doctrine of schematism and time as a preliminary stage of a problematic of Temporality.

2. The ontological foundation of Descartes’ “cogito sum” and the taking over of medieval ontology into the problematic of the “res cogitans.”

3. Aristotle’s treatise on time as the discrimen of the phenomenal basis and the limits of ancient ontology.

In each case, we ourselves are the being whose analysis is the task. The Being of this being is in each case mine. In its Being, this being itself relates to its Being. As a being of this Being, it is delivered over to its own Being. Being is what matters to this being itself in each case. Two things follow from this characterization of Dasein:

1. The “essence” of this being lies in its having-to-be. The what-being (essentia) of this being must, insofar as one can speak of it at all, be understood from its Being (existentia). Here it is precisely the ontological task to show that, when we choose the designation existence for the Being of this being, this title does not have and cannot have the ontological meaning of the traditional term existentia; ontologically, existentia amounts to being-present-at-hand, a way of Being that does not essentially belong to a being with the character of Dasein. Confusion is avoided by always using the interpretive expression presence-at-hand for the title existentia and assigning existence as a determination of Being to Dasein alone.

The “essence” of Dasein lies in its existence. The characteristics that can be brought out in this being are therefore not present-at-hand “properties” of a present-at-hand being that “looks” such-and-such a way, but possible ways for it to be in each case, and only that. All of this being’s being-so is primarily Being. Accordingly, the title “Dasein,” by which we designate this being, expresses not its What, as table, house, tree do, but Being.

2. The Being that matters to this being in its Being is in each case mine. Dasein is therefore never to be grasped ontologically as a case and exemplar of a genus of beings taken as present-at-hand. To this being, its Being is “indifferent” [gleichgültig]; looked at closely, it “is” in such a way that its Being can be neither indifferent nor non-indifferent to it. In addressing Dasein, in keeping with this being’s character of in-each-case-mineness, the personal pronoun must always be said along with it: “I am,” “you are.”

And Dasein, in turn, is mine in each case in this or that way of being. It has always already decided somehow in what way Dasein is mine in each case. The being for which, in its Being, this very Being matters comports itself toward its Being as its ownmost possibility. Dasein is its possibility in each case, and does not merely “have” it as a property in the manner of something present-at-hand. And because Dasein is essentially its possibility in each case, this being can, in its Being, “choose” itself, gain itself; it can lose itself, or never gain itself, or gain itself only “seemingly.” Only insofar as, in its essence, it is possibly its own—that is, is a being that belongs to itself—can it have lost itself, and only insofar as this is so can it not yet have gained itself. The two modes of Being, ownness and unownness—these expressions have been chosen as technical terms in the strict sense of the words—are grounded in the fact that Dasein as such is determined by in-each-case-mineness. Dasein’s unownness, however, does not mean a “less” Being or a “lower” degree of Being. Rather, unownness can determine Dasein in its fullest concretion, in its busyness, excitedness, interestedness, and capacity for enjoyment.

The two characteristics of Dasein just sketched—first, the priority of “existentia” over essentia, and then in-each-case-mineness—already indicate that an analytic of this being is confronted with a distinctive phenomenal domain. This being does not, and never does, have the way of Being of what is merely present-at-hand within the world. Accordingly, it is not to be presented in advance as a theme in the manner of finding what is present-at-hand. The right advance presentation of it is so far from self-evident that determining this presentation itself constitutes an essential part of the ontological analytic of this being. The possibility of making the Being of this being intelligible at all stands or falls with the secure accomplishment of the right advance presentation of this being. However provisional the analysis may be, it always already demands that the right point of departure be secured.

As a being, Dasein determines itself in each case from a possibility that it is and somehow understands in its Being. This is the formal sense of Dasein’s constitution of existence. Yet for the ontological interpretation of this being, this contains the directive to develop the problematic of its Being from the existentiality of its existence. This cannot, however, mean constructing Dasein from a concrete possible idea of existence. At the outset of the analysis, Dasein is precisely not to be interpreted in the difference of a determinate way of existing, but to be uncovered in its indifferent way of being in the first instance and for the most part. This indifference of Dasein’s everydayness is not nothing, but a positive phenomenal characteristic of this being. All existing is what it is by emerging from this way of Being and returning to it. We call this everyday indifference of Dasein averageness.

And since average everydayness constitutes what this being is ontically in the first instance, it has been and continues to be skipped over again and again in the explication of Dasein. What is ontically nearest and familiar is what is ontologically farthest, unrecognized, and constantly overlooked in its ontological significance. When Augustine asks: Quid autem propinquius meipso mihi? and must answer: ego certe laboro hic et laboro in meipso: factus sum mihi terra difficultatis et sudoris nimii, this holds true not only of the ontic and pre-ontological opacity of Dasein but, to an even greater degree, of the ontological task of not only not missing this being in its phenomenally nearest way of Being, but making it accessible through a positive characterization.

Dasein’s average everydayness, however, must not be taken as a mere “aspect.” Even in it, and even in the mode of unownness, the structure of existentiality is there a priori. Even in it, Dasein’s Being matters to Dasein in a determinate way, and Dasein relates to that Being in the mode of average everydayness, even if only in the mode of flight from that Being and of forgetting it.

The explication of Dasein in its average everydayness does not, however, yield merely average structures in the sense of a blurred indeterminacy. What ontically is in the mode of averageness can very well be grasped ontologically in sharply defined structures that structurally do not differ from ontological determinations, for example, of Dasein’s Being in ownness.

All the explicata that arise from the analytic of Dasein are obtained with a look toward its structure of existence. Since their determination comes from existentiality, we call Dasein’s characteristics of Being existentials. They must be sharply distinguished from the determinations of Being belonging to beings without the character of Dasein; these we call categories. In doing so, we take up and retain this expression in its primary ontological meaning. Ancient ontology takes the being encountered within the world as the exemplary ground of its interpretation of Being. The mode of access to it is held to be νοεῖν or, as the case may be, λόγος. Therein the being is encountered. The Being of this being, however, must become graspable in a distinctive λέγειν (letting see), so that this Being becomes intelligible in advance as what it is and already is in every being. The always already prior addressing of Being in speaking about (λόγος) the being is κατηγορεῖσθαι. This initially means: to accuse publicly, to tell someone something to their face before everyone. Used ontologically, the term means: to tell the being to its face, as it were, what it always already is as a being, that is, to let everyone see it in its Being. What is sighted and visible in such seeing are the κατηγορίαι. They encompass the a priori determinations of the being that can be addressed and spoken about in different ways in λόγος. Existentials and categories are the two fundamental possibilities for characteristics of Being. The being corresponding to them requires in each case a different way of primary interrogation: a being is a Who (existence) or a What (presence-at-hand in the broadest sense). The connection between the two modes of characteristics of Being can be discussed only from within the clarified horizon of the question of Being.

It was already indicated in the Introduction that the existential analytic of Dasein also advances a task whose urgency is scarcely less than that of the question of Being itself: the laying bare of the a priori that must be visible if philosophical discussion of the question “what the human being is” is to be possible. The existential analytic of Dasein is prior to all psychology and anthropology, and, all the more, to biology. By being set off against these possible investigations of Dasein, the theme of the analytic can acquire still sharper bounds. Its necessity can thereby at the same time be proved even more compellingly.

After an initial positive outline of the theme of an investigation, its prohibitive characterization always remains pertinent, although discussions of what is not to be done can easily become unfruitful. It is to be shown that the lines of questioning and investigations hitherto directed toward Dasein, notwithstanding their substantive fruitfulness, miss the genuine philosophical problem; hence, as long as they persist in this failure, they are not entitled to claim that they can accomplish at all what, at bottom, they seek. The delimitations of the existential analytic from anthropology, psychology, and biology concern only the foundational ontological question. “From the standpoint of the theory of science,” they are necessarily inadequate, if only because the scientific structure of the disciplines named—not, say, the “scientific character” of those working to advance them—is today questionable through and through and requires fresh impulses that must spring from the ontological problematic.

By way of historical orientation, then, the aim of the existential analytic can be clarified: Descartes, who is credited with the discovery of the cogito sum as the point of departure for modern philosophical questioning, investigated the cogitare of the ego—within certain limits. By contrast, he leaves the sum entirely unexamined, although it is posited just as primordially as the cogito. The analytic poses the ontological question of the Being of the sum. Only once this has been determined can the way of Being of the cogitationes be grasped.

Admittedly, this historical exemplification of the analytic’s aim is at the same time misleading. One of its first tasks will be to demonstrate that the positing of an I and subject as initially given misses the phenomenal content of Dasein from the ground up. Every idea of a “subject” still—unless purified by a prior basic ontological determination—carries forward, ontologically, the positing of the subjectum (ὑποκείμενον), however vigorously one may resist the “soul-substance” or the “reification of consciousness” ontically. Thinghood itself must first have its ontological provenance demonstrated before one can ask what, positively, is to be understood by the unreified Being of subject, soul, consciousness, spirit, and person. These labels all name determinate, “elaborable” domains of phenomena, but their use always goes hand in hand with a curious absence of any need to ask about the Being of the being so designated. It is therefore no terminological caprice when we avoid these labels, as well as the expressions “life” and “human being,” in designating the being that we ourselves are.

On the other hand, however, implicit in the properly understood tendency of every scientifically serious “philosophy of life”—a term that says about as much as “botany of plants”—is a tendency toward an understanding of the Being of Dasein. It remains striking, and this is its foundational defect, that “life” itself does not become an ontological problem as a way of Being.

W. Dilthey’s investigations are kept in motion by the constant question about “life.” He seeks to understand the “lived experiences” of this “life,” in their structural and developmental nexus, from the whole of this life itself. What is philosophically relevant in his “human-science psychology” is not that it no longer seeks to orient itself by psychic elements and atoms or to piece together the life of the soul, aiming instead at the “whole of life” and the “forms”—but that, throughout all this, he was above all on the way toward the question about “life.” To be sure, it is here that the limits of his problematic and of the conceptuality in which it had to articulate itself show themselves most strongly. These limits, however, are shared with Dilthey and Bergson by all currents of “personalism” shaped by them and all tendencies toward a philosophical anthropology. Even the phenomenological interpretation of personhood, which is more radical and more transparent at the level of foundations, does not enter the dimension of the question of the Being of Dasein. Despite all differences in questioning, execution, and worldview orientation, the interpretations of personhood in Husserl and Scheler agree in a negative respect. They no longer pose the question of “Being-a-person” itself. We choose Scheler’s interpretation as an example, not only because it is accessible in the literature, but because Scheler expressly emphasizes Being-a-person as such and seeks to determine it by delimiting the specific Being of acts from everything “psychic.” According to Scheler, a person must never be thought of as a thing or a substance; the person “is rather the immediately co-experienced unity of living-through—not a merely thought thing behind and outside what is immediately lived through.” A person is not a thing-like, substantial Being. Furthermore, the Being of the person cannot be exhausted by being a subject of acts of reason governed by a certain lawfulness.

The person is not a thing, not a substance, not an object. This emphasizes the same point that Husserl intimates when he requires for the unity of the person a constitution essentially different from that of natural things. What Scheler says of the person he also formulates for acts: “But an act is never also an object; for it belongs to the essence of the Being of acts to be experienced only in enactment itself and to be given in reflection.” Acts are something non-psychic. It belongs to the essence of the person that the person exists only in the enactment of intentional acts; the person is therefore essentially not an object. Every psychic objectification, that is, every construal of acts as something psychic, is identical with depersonalization. In any case, the person is given as the enactor of intentional acts that are connected through the unity of a sense. Psychic Being, therefore, has nothing to do with Being-a-person. Acts are enacted; the person is the act-enactor. But what is the ontological sense of “to enact”; how is the person’s way of Being to be determined positively in ontological terms? But the critical question cannot stop here. The question concerns the Being of the whole human being, customarily conceived as a unity of body, soul, and spirit. Body, soul, and spirit may in turn name domains of phenomena that, with a view to particular investigations, can be detached and made thematic in their own right; within certain limits, their ontological indeterminacy may not matter. In the question of the Being of the human being, however, this Being cannot be calculated by summing the ways of Being of body, soul, and spirit, which themselves, moreover, have yet in turn to be determined. And even an ontological attempt proceeding in this way would have to presuppose an idea of the Being of the whole. But what blocks or misdirects the foundational question of the Being of Dasein is the pervasive orientation toward ancient-Christian anthropology, whose inadequate ontological foundations are overlooked by personalism and philosophy of life as well. Traditional anthropology carries within itself:

1. The definition of the human being: ζῷον λόγον ἔχον, as interpreted: animal rationale, rational living being. Here, however, the way of Being of the ζῷον is understood in the sense of presence-at-hand and occurrence. The λόγος is a higher endowment, whose way of Being remains just as obscure as that of the being composed in this way.

2. The other guiding thread for determining the Being and essence of the human being is a theological one: καὶ εἶπεν ὁ θεός ποιήσωμεν ἄνθρωπον κατ᾽ εἰκόνα ἡμετέραν καὶ καθ᾽ ὁμοίωσιν, faciamus hominem ad imaginem nostram et similitudinem. On this basis, Christian-theological anthropology arrives at an explication of the being we call the human being while also incorporating the ancient definition. But just as the Being of God is interpreted ontologically with the resources of ancient ontology, so all the more is the Being of the ens finitum. In the course of the modern age, the Christian definition was de-theologized. But the idea of “transcendence,” that the human being is something that reaches out beyond itself, has its roots in Christian dogmatics, of which one would not wish to say that it had ever made the Being of the human being into an ontological problem. This idea of transcendence, according to which the human being is more than a being endowed with understanding, has made itself felt in various modifications. Its origin may be illustrated by the following quotations: “His praeclaris dotibus excelluit prima hominis conditio, ut ratio, intelligentia, prudentia, iudicium non modo ad terrenae vitae gubernationem suppeterent, sed quibus transcenderet usque ad Deum et aeternam felicitatem” “For the fact that the human being directs his gaze toward God and God’s word clearly shows that, by nature, he is born somewhat nearer to God, takes after God somewhat more, and has some attraction toward God; all this doubtless flows from his having been created in the image of God.”

The sources relevant to traditional anthropology—the Greek definition and the theological guiding thread—indicate that, in determining the essence of the being “human being,” the question of its Being remains forgotten; this Being is instead understood as “self-evident” in the sense of the presence-at-hand of the other created things. In modern anthropology, these two guiding threads become intertwined with the methodological point of departure from the res cogitans, consciousness, the nexus of lived experience. But insofar as the cogitationes also remain ontologically undetermined, or are once again tacitly taken “self-evidently” as something “given,” whose “Being” is subject to no question, the anthropological problematic remains undetermined in its decisive ontological foundations.

The same holds no less for “psychology,” whose anthropological tendencies are unmistakable today. Nor can the missing ontological foundation be replaced by incorporating anthropology and psychology into a general biology. In the order of possible apprehension and explication, biology as the “science of life” is founded in the ontology of Dasein, though not exclusively in it. Life is a way of Being of its own, but is essentially accessible only in Dasein. The ontology of life proceeds by way of a privative interpretation; it determines what must be if something like only-still-living is to be. Life is neither sheer presence-at-hand, nor is it Dasein. Dasein, in turn, can never be determined ontologically by positing it as life—(ontologically undetermined)—and as, over and above that, something else.

Pointing out that anthropology, psychology, and biology lack an unequivocal answer, adequately grounded ontologically, to the question of the way of Being of this being that we ourselves are passes no judgment on the positive work of these disciplines. On the other hand, however, it must repeatedly be brought to awareness that these ontological foundations can never be hypothetically inferred after the fact from empirical material; rather, they are always already “there” even when empirical material is merely being collected. The fact that positive research does not see these foundations and regards them as self-evident is no proof that they do not lie at the foundation of such research and are not problematic in a more radical sense than any thesis of positive science can ever be.

The interpretation of Dasein in its everydayness, however, is not identical with the description of a primitive stage of Dasein, knowledge of which may be empirically mediated by anthropology. Everydayness does not coincide with primitiveness. Rather, everydayness is a mode of Being of Dasein even—and precisely—when Dasein moves within a highly developed and differentiated culture. On the other hand, primitive Dasein too has its possibilities of non-everyday Being; it has its specific everydayness. Orienting the analysis of Dasein toward the “life of primitive peoples” can have positive methodological significance, insofar as “primitive phenomena” are often less covered over and less complicated by an already far-reaching self-interpretation of the Dasein concerned. Primitive Dasein often speaks more directly out of a primordial absorption in the “phenomena” (taken in the prephenomenological sense). The conceptuality that, from our point of view, may be awkward and crude can be positively conducive to a genuine bringing-out of the ontological structures of the phenomena.

But so far our knowledge of primitive peoples has been supplied by ethnology. And already in the initial “collection” of the material, as well as in its sifting and processing, ethnology moves within certain preliminary concepts and interpretations of human Dasein in general. It is not settled whether the everyday psychology—or even the scientific psychology and sociology—that the ethnologist brings along provides the scientific warrant for an adequate possibility of access to, interpretation of, and transmission of the phenomena to be investigated. Here too, the state of affairs is the same as with the disciplines mentioned earlier. Ethnology itself already presupposes a sufficient analytic of Dasein to serve as its guiding thread. But since the positive sciences neither “can” nor should wait for philosophy’s ontological work, research will go forward not as “progress,” but as a repetition and an ontologically more transparent purification of what has been discovered ontically.

However easy the formal demarcation of the ontological problematic from ontic research may be, carrying out an existential analytic of Dasein—and, above all, establishing its point of departure—is not without difficulties. Bound up with its task is a desideratum that has long troubled philosophy, yet philosophy has failed time and again to fulfill it: the elaboration of the idea of a “natural concept of world.” The wealth of knowledge available today about the most varied and most remote cultures and forms of Dasein appears conducive to taking up this task fruitfully. But this is mere appearance. At bottom, such overabundant knowledge is a temptation to misrecognize the real problem. Syncretistically comparing everything with everything and sorting it all into types does not by itself yield genuine knowledge of essences. That the manifold can be mastered in a table does not guarantee a real understanding of what lies there in ordered form. The genuine principle of order has a subject-matter content of its own, one that is never found through ordering but is already presupposed in it. Thus, ordering world-pictures requires an explicit idea of world in general. And if “world” is itself a constitutive element of Dasein, the conceptual elaboration of the phenomenon of world requires an insight into the basic structures of Dasein.

The positive characterizations and negative considerations of this chapter were intended to set the right course for understanding the tendency and questioning stance of the interpretation that follows. Ontology can contribute only indirectly to advancing the existing positive disciplines. It has, for itself, a self-standing purpose, if indeed, over and above a taking cognizance of beings, the question of Being is the spur to all scientific seeking.

Chapter Two: Being-in-the-world in General as the Basic Constitution of Dasein

In the preparatory discussions (§ 9), we already brought into relief characteristics of Being that are intended to cast a reliable light on the further investigation, but that at the same time will themselves receive their structural concretion in this investigation. Dasein is a being that, in its Being, comports itself understandingly toward this Being. This indicates the formal concept of existence. Dasein exists. Furthermore, Dasein is a being that I myself am in each case. In-each-case-mineness belongs to existing Dasein as the condition of the possibility of ownness and unownness. Dasein exists in each case in one of these modes, or in their modal indifference.

These determinations of Dasein’s Being must now, however, be seen and understood a priori on the basis of the constitution of Being that we call Being-in-the-world. The proper starting point for the analytic of Dasein lies in the interpretation of this constitution.

The compound expression “Being-in-the-world” already indicates in its very coinage that it means a unitary phenomenon. This primary finding must be seen as a whole. Its inability to be dissolved into components that could be pieced together does not exclude a multiplicity of structural moments constitutive of this constitution. The phenomenal finding indicated by this expression does in fact afford a threefold look toward it. If we pursue it while maintaining our prior hold on the phenomenon as a whole, the following can be brought out:

1. The “in the world”; with respect to this moment, the task arises of inquiring into the ontological structure of “world” and determining the idea of worldhood as such (cf. Chapter 3 of this division).

2. The being that in each case is in the manner of Being-in-the-world. Along with this being, what is sought is that which we inquire after in asking “Who?” In a phenomenological demonstration, it is to be determined who it is that is in the mode of Dasein’s average everydayness (cf. Chapter 4 of this division).

3. Being-in as such; the ontological constitution of inhood itself must be brought out (cf. Chapter 5 of this division). Every bringing into relief of one of these constitutive moments also brings the others into relief; that is to say, each time this involves seeing the whole phenomenon. Being-in-the-world is indeed an a priori necessary constitution of Dasein, but it is nowhere near sufficient to determine its Being fully. Before the separate thematic analysis of the three phenomena brought into relief, an orienting characterization of the last-mentioned constitutive moment is to be attempted.

What does Being-in mean? We first complete the expression by adding “in the world” and are inclined to understand this Being-in as “being in …” This term names the way of Being of a being that is “in” another, as the water is “in” the glass and the garment “in” the wardrobe. We mean by “in” the relation of Being between two beings extended “in” space, with respect to their location in this space. Water and glass, garment and wardrobe, are alike “in” space “at” a location. This relation of Being can be extended, for example: the bench in the lecture hall, the lecture hall in the university, the university in the city, and so on, all the way to: the bench “in outer space.” These beings, whose Being “in” one another can be determined in this way, all have the same way of Being: presence-at-hand as things that occur “within” the world. Presence-at-hand “in” something present-at-hand, and being present-at-hand along with something of the same way of Being in the sense of a determinate locational relation, are ontological characteristics that we call categorial—characteristics that belong to beings with a non-Dasein way of Being.

Being-in, by contrast, means a constitution of Dasein’s Being and is an existential. It therefore cannot mean the presence-at-hand of a body-thing (the human body) “in” a present-at-hand being. Being-in no more means a spatial “inside-one-another” of present-at-hand things than “in” originally means a spatial relation of the kind just named; “in” derives from innan-, to dwell, habitare, to stay; “an” means: I am accustomed to it, familiar with it; I tend something; it has the meaning of colo in the sense of habito and diligo. This being, to which Being-in belongs in this meaning, we characterized as the being that I myself am in each case. The expression “bin” (“am”) is related to “bei” (“by,” “alongside”); “ich bin” (“I am”) in turn says: I dwell, I stay alongside … the world, as that which is familiar to me in this or that way. Being, as the infinitive of “I am”—that is, understood as an existential—means dwelling alongside …, being familiar with … Being-in is accordingly the formal existential expression of the Being of Dasein, which has the essential constitution of Being-in-the-world.

The “Being alongside” the world, in the sense of absorption in the world that remains to be interpreted more closely, is an existential grounded in Being-in. Because these analyses are concerned with seeing an originary structure of Dasein’s Being, in accordance with whose phenomenal content the concepts of Being must be articulated, and because this structure cannot in principle be grasped through inherited ontological categories, this “Being alongside” too must be brought into closer view. We again proceed by setting it off against a relation of Being that is ontologically different in essence—that is, categorial—and that we express with the same linguistic resources. Such phenomenal bringings-into-view of fundamental ontological differences that are easily blurred must be carried out explicitly, even at the risk of discussing “what is self-evident.” The present state of the ontological analytic shows, however, that we are far from having these self-evident matters adequately “in our grasp”; still more rarely have we interpreted them in their sense of Being, and less still do we possess the appropriate structural concepts in a securely coined form.

The “Being alongside” the world as an existential never means anything like the joint presence-at-hand of things that occur. There is no such thing as the “side-by-side” of a being called “Dasein” with another being called “world.” We do, of course, sometimes express linguistically the togetherness of two present-at-hand things, for example, as follows: “The table stands “by” the door,” “the chair “touches” the wall.” Strictly speaking, there can never be any question of “touching”—not because, in the end, close examination can always establish a gap between chair and wall, but because in principle the chair cannot touch the wall, even if the gap were zero. That would presuppose that the wall could show itself—could be something encountered—“for” the chair. A being can touch a being present-at-hand within the world only if it inherently has the way of Being of Being-in—if, along with its Da-sein, something like world is already discovered for it, from out of which a being can reveal itself in touching and thereby become accessible in its presence-at-hand. Two beings that are present-at-hand within the world and that, moreover, are worldless in themselves can never “touch” one another; neither can “be” “alongside” the other. The qualification “which, moreover, are worldless” must not be omitted, because even a being that is not worldless—for example, Dasein itself—is present-at-hand “in” the world; more precisely, it can, with a certain justification and within certain limits, be conceived as merely present-at-hand. This requires a complete looking-away from, or failure to see, the existential constitution of Being-in. But this possible conception of “Dasein” as something present-at-hand and now nothing but present-at-hand must not be conflated with a mode of “presence-at-hand” proper to Dasein. This presence-at-hand becomes accessible not by looking away from the specific structures of Dasein, but only through a prior understanding of them. Dasein understands its ownmost Being in the sense of a certain “factual presence-at-hand.” And yet the “factuality” of the fact of one’s own Dasein is ontologically fundamentally different from the factual occurrence of a kind of rock. We call the factuality of the factum Dasein, which every Dasein is in each case, its facticity. The intricate structure of this determination of Being can itself begin to be grasped as a problem only in the light of the basic existential constitutions of Dasein already worked out. The concept of facticity contains within itself: the Being-in-the-world of an “innerworldly” being, such that this being can understand itself as bound up, in its “destiny,” with the Being of the being that encounters it within its own world.

For now, it is only a matter of seeing the ontological difference between Being-in as an existential and the “insideness” of present-at-hand things among one another as a category. When we delimit Being-in in this way, we do not thereby deny Dasein every kind of “spatiality.” On the contrary, Dasein itself has its own “Being-in-space,” which in turn is possible only on the basis of Being-in-the-world as such. Being-in therefore cannot be clarified ontologically by an ontic characterization either—for example, by saying: Being-in in a world is a spiritual property, and the human being’s “spatiality” is a feature of its bodiliness, which is always at the same time “founded” by corporeality. One is then once again left with the joint presence-at-hand of a spirit-thing constituted in this way with a body-thing, while the Being of the being thus composed as such remains all the more obscure. Only an understanding of Being-in-the-world as the essential structure of Dasein makes insight into Dasein’s existential spatiality possible. This insight guards against a failure to see this structure, or against crossing it out in advance; such crossing-out is motivated not ontologically but “metaphysically” by the naive view that the human being is initially a spiritual thing that is then subsequently placed “in” a space.

In its facticity, Dasein’s Being-in-the-world has always already dispersed, or even splintered, into determinate ways of Being-in. The multiplicity of such ways of Being-in can be indicated by the following illustrative list: having to do with something, producing something, cultivating and tending something, using something, giving something up and letting it be lost, undertaking, carrying through, exploring, interrogating, observing, discussing, determining ... These ways of Being-in have the way of Being of concern, which has yet to be characterized in detail. Deficient modes of concern also include leaving undone, neglecting, forgoing, resting—all modes of “only still” in relation to possibilities of concern. The title “concern” initially bears its prescientific meaning and can signify: carrying something out, completing it, “putting it in order.” The expression can also mean obtaining something for oneself, in the sense of “procuring something for oneself.” Furthermore, we also use the expression in a characteristic turn of phrase: I am concerned that the undertaking will fail. Here “concern” means something like fearing. In contrast to these prescientific, ontic meanings, the expression “concern” is used in the present investigation as an ontological term (an existential), designating the Being of a possible Being-in-the-world. The title has not been chosen because Dasein is, for instance, initially and to a large extent economic and “practical,” but because Dasein’s Being itself is to be made visible as care. This expression, in turn, is to be grasped as an ontological structural concept (cf. Chapter 6 of this division). The expression has nothing to do with “toil,” “melancholy,” and “worry about life,” which can be found ontically in every Dasein. Things of this sort, just like “carefreeness” and “cheerfulness,” are ontically possible only because Dasein, understood ontologically, is care. Because Being-in-the-world belongs essentially to Dasein, its Being toward the world is essentially concern.

According to what has been said, Being-in is not a “property” that Dasein sometimes has and sometimes does not, without which it could be just as well as with it. It is not the case that the human being “is” and, in addition, has a relation of Being to the “world” that it occasionally acquires. Dasein is never “initially” a being that is, as it were, free of Being-in and that sometimes has the whim to take up a “relation” to the world. Taking up relations to the world in this way is possible only because Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is as it is. This constitution of Being does not first come about because, besides the being with the character of Dasein, another being is present-at-hand and comes together with it. This other being can “meet” “with” Dasein only insofar as it can show itself from itself at all within a world.

The phrase much used today, “the human being has its environment,” says nothing ontologically so long as this “having” remains indeterminate. The very possibility of this “having” is founded in the existential constitution of Being-in. Because it is essentially a being in this way, Dasein can explicitly discover the being it encounters in its environment, know about it, have it at its disposal, and “have” the “world.” Ontically trivial talk of “having an environment” is ontologically a problem. Solving it requires nothing other than first determining Dasein’s Being in an ontologically adequate way. If biology—especially once again since K. E. v. Baer—makes use of this constitution of Being, one must not conclude that its philosophical use is “biologism.” For biology too, as a positive science, can never find and determine this structure—it must presuppose it and constantly make use of it. The structure itself, however, even as the a priori of biology’s thematic object, can be explicated philosophically only if it has first been grasped as a structure of Dasein. Only from an orientation toward the ontological structure understood in this way can the constitution of the Being of “life” be delimited a priori by way of privation. Both ontically and ontologically, Being-in-the-world as concern has priority. In the analytic of Dasein, this structure receives its fundamental interpretation.

But has the determination of this constitution of Being given so far not moved exclusively within negative statements? We hear only what this supposedly so fundamental Being-in is not. Indeed. Yet this predominance of negative characterization is no accident. Rather, it itself attests the peculiarity of the phenomenon and is thereby positive in a genuine sense appropriate to the phenomenon itself. The phenomenological showing of Being-in-the-world has the character of rejecting dissemblings and coverings-over, because this phenomenon is always already itself “seen” in some way in every Dasein. And this is so because it constitutes a basic constitution of Dasein and, together with Dasein’s Being, is always already disclosed to Dasein’s understanding of Being. Yet the phenomenon has also, for the most part, always already been just as thoroughly misinterpreted or interpreted in an ontologically inadequate way. But this “seeing in a certain way and yet mostly misinterpreting” is itself grounded in nothing other than this very constitution of Dasein’s Being, in accordance with which Dasein initially understands itself ontologically—and that means its Being-in-the-world as well—in terms of beings that Dasein itself is not but that encounter it “within” its world, and in terms of their Being.

In Dasein itself and for it, this constitution of Being is always already familiar in some way. If it is now to be known, then the knowing that is explicit in such a task takes precisely itself—as knowing the world—to be the exemplary relation of the “soul” to the world. Knowing the world (νοεῖν), or addressing and speaking about “world” (λόγος), therefore functions as the primary mode of Being-in-the-world, without Being-in-the-world being grasped as such. But because this structure of Being remains ontologically inaccessible, yet is nevertheless ontically experienced as a “relation” between a being (world) and a being (soul), and because Being is initially understood by taking its ontological bearings from beings as innerworldly beings, an attempt is made to grasp this relation between the beings named on the basis of these beings and in terms of their Being, that is, as presence-at-hand. Being-in-the-world—although experienced and acquainted with prephenomenologically—becomes invisible by way of an ontologically inappropriate interpretation. One is now acquainted with the constitution of Dasein only—and indeed as something self-evident—in the form imposed on it by the inappropriate interpretation. In this form, it then becomes the “evident” point of departure for the problems of the theory of knowledge or the “metaphysics of knowledge.” For what is more self-evident than that a “subject” relates itself to an “object,” and vice versa? This “subject-object relation” must be presupposed. Yet this remains a presupposition—although unassailable in its facticity, nevertheless precisely for that reason quite disastrous—if its ontological necessity and, above all, its ontological sense are left in the dark.

Because knowing the world for the most part and exclusively serves as the exemplar of the phenomenon of Being-in, and not only for the theory of knowledge—for practical comportment is understood as the “non-” and “atheoretical” comportment—and because this priority of knowing misdirects the understanding of knowing’s ownmost way of Being, Being-in-the-world is to be brought out still more sharply with a look toward knowing the world, and knowing the world itself is to be made visible as an existential “modality” of Being-in.

If Being-in-the-world is a basic constitution of Dasein in which it moves not only in general but pre-eminently in the mode of everydayness, then it must also always already have been experienced ontically. For it to remain totally veiled would be unintelligible, especially since Dasein has at its disposal an understanding of its own Being, however indefinitely this understanding may function. But as soon as the “phenomenon of knowing the world” was itself grasped, it at once fell into an “external,” formal interpretation. The index of this is the still customary way of positing knowing as a “relation between subject and object,” which harbors as much “truth” as emptiness. But subject and object do not coincide with Dasein and world.

Even if it were feasible to determine Being-in ontologically in a primary way from Being-in-the-world that knows, the first task this would demand would still be a phenomenal characterization of knowing as a Being in and toward the world. When this relation of Being is reflected upon, what is given in the first instance is a being called nature, as that which is known. Knowing itself is not to be found in this being. If it “is” at all, then it belongs solely to the being that knows. But even in this being, the human thing, knowing is not present-at-hand. At any rate it cannot be ascertained externally in the way that, say, bodily properties can. Now since knowing belongs to this being but is not an external quality, it must be “inside.”

In this approach one remains blind to what is already tacitly said along with even the most provisional thematization of the phenomenon of knowledge: knowing is a mode of Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world; it has its ontic foundation in this constitution of Being. To this pointer to the phenomenal findings—knowing is a way of Being of Being-in-the-world—one might object: but surely such an interpretation of knowing annihilates the problem of knowledge; what is left to ask if one presupposes that knowing is already alongside its world, which it is supposed to reach only by the subject’s transcending?

If we now ask what shows itself in the phenomenal findings of knowing itself, then we must hold fast to this: knowing itself is grounded beforehand in a Being-already-alongside-the-world, which essentially constitutes the Being of Dasein. This Being-already-alongside is in the first instance not merely a fixed staring at something purely present-at-hand. Being-in-the-world, as concern, is captivated by the world it is concerned with. For knowing to be possible as the observational determining of what is present-at-hand, there must first be a deficiency in our concernful having-to-do-with the world. In refraining from all producing, manipulating, and the like, concern settles into the only mode of Being-in that now still remains: into just-tarrying-alongside…

In directing itself toward… and in grasping, Dasein does not first go out of an inner sphere in which it is initially encapsulated; rather, by its primary way of Being it is always already “outside,” alongside beings it encounters in the world that has in each case already been uncovered. And the determining dwelling alongside the beings to be known is not a leaving of the inner sphere; rather, even in this “Being-outside” alongside the object, Dasein is “inside” in the correctly understood sense; that is, it is Dasein itself, as Being-in-the-world, that knows.

The nexus of foundation we have pointed out among the modes of Being-in-the-world that are constitutive for knowing the world makes plain that in knowing, Dasein gains a new standing in Being toward the world that has in each case already been uncovered in Dasein. This new possibility of Being can develop independently, become a task, and, as science, take over the guidance of Being-in-the-world. But knowing neither first creates a “commercium” [interchange] of the subject with a world, nor does this commercium arise from an action of the world upon a subject. Knowing is a mode of Dasein founded in Being-in-the-world. Therefore Being-in-the-world, as basic constitution, demands a prior interpretation.

Being-in-the-world is first to be made visible with regard to the structural moment “world.” Accomplishing this task seems easy, and so trivial that one still believes one may dispense with it. What can it mean to describe “the world” as a phenomenon? To let what shows itself of “beings” within the world be seen. The first step here is an enumeration of what there is “in” the world: houses, trees, human beings, mountains, stars. We can depict the “outward look” of these beings and recount what happens in and with them. But this clearly remains a pre-phenomenological “business,” which cannot be phenomenologically relevant at all. The description stays stuck to beings. It is ontic. But what is sought, surely, is Being.

To describe the “world” phenomenologically will accordingly mean: to demonstrate the Being of the beings present-at-hand within the world and to fix it conceptually and categorially. The beings within the world are things: natural things and “value-laden” things. Their thinghood becomes a problem; and insofar as the thinghood of the latter is built upon the thinghood of nature, the Being of natural things, nature as such, is the primary theme. The character of Being of natural things, of substances, which founds everything else, is substantiality. What makes up its ontological meaning? With this we have given the investigation an unequivocal direction of questioning.

But are we asking ontologically about the “world” here? The problematic we have characterized is undoubtedly ontological. But even if it succeeds in the purest explication of the Being of nature, in conformity with the basic assertions that mathematical natural science makes about these beings, this ontology never hits upon the phenomenon “world.” Nature is itself a being that is encountered within the world and becomes uncoverable along various paths and at various stages.

Should we, then, hold first to the beings alongside which Dasein dwells in the first instance and for the most part, the “value-laden” things? Do they not “properly” show the world in which we live? Perhaps they do in fact show something like “world” more penetratingly. But these things too are, after all, beings “within” the world.

Neither the ontic depiction of innerworldly beings nor the ontological interpretation of the Being of these beings hits, as such, upon the phenomenon “world.” In both kinds of access to “objective Being,” “world” is already “presupposed,” and in different ways.

Can “world” perhaps, in the end, not be addressed at all as a determination of the beings we have named? Yet we do call these beings innerworldly. Is “world” perhaps a character of Being of Dasein? And does every Dasein then “initially” have its own world? Does “world” not thereby become something “subjective”? How, then, is a “common” world still to be possible, “in” which we after all are? And when the question of the “world” is posed, which world is meant? Neither this one nor that one, but the worldhood of world in general. By what path do we encounter this phenomenon?

“Worldhood” is an ontological concept and means the structure of a constitutive moment of Being-in-the-world. But Being-in-the-world we know as an existential determination of Dasein. Worldhood is accordingly itself an existential. When we ask ontologically about the “world,” we by no means leave the thematic field of the analytic of Dasein. Ontologically, “world” is not a determination of those beings that Dasein essentially is not, but a character of Dasein itself. This does not rule out that the investigation of the phenomenon “world” must take its path by way of innerworldly beings and their Being. The task of a phenomenological “description” of the world is so far from obvious that even determining it adequately calls for essential ontological clarifications.

From the reflections we have carried out, and from the frequent use of the word “world,” its ambiguity leaps to the eye. Disentangling this ambiguity can give an indication of the phenomena meant in the various meanings and of how they are interconnected.

1. World is used as an ontic concept and then means the totality of beings that can be present-at-hand within the world.

2. World functions as an ontological term and means the Being of the beings named under no. 1. And indeed “world” can become the title for the region that in each case embraces a manifold of beings; for example, when we speak of the “world” of the mathematician, world means the region of the possible objects of mathematics.

3. World can again be understood in an ontic sense, but now not as the beings that Dasein essentially is not and that can be encountered within the world, but as that “wherein” a factical Dasein, as this Dasein, “lives.” World here has a pre-ontological, existentiell meaning. Here again there are various possibilities: world means the “public” we-world, or one’s “own” and nearest (domestic) environment.

4. Finally, world designates the ontological-existential concept of worldhood. Worldhood itself can be modified into the structural whole of any particular “worlds,” but it contains within itself the a priori of worldhood in general. We use the expression world as a technical term for the meaning fixed under no. 3. If it is sometimes used in the first sense, this meaning is marked with quotation marks.

The variant “worldly” then terminologically means a way of Being of Dasein, and never a way of Being of the beings present-at-hand “in” the world. These we call belonging to the world, or innerworldly.

A glance at ontology up to now shows that the failure to grasp Being-in-the-world as a constitution of Dasein goes together with skipping over the phenomenon of worldhood. Instead, one tries to interpret the world in terms of the Being of the beings that are present-at-hand within the world but that, moreover, are initially not uncovered at all: in terms of nature. Nature, understood ontologically and categorially, is a limit case of the Being of possible innerworldly beings. Dasein can uncover beings as nature only in a definite mode of its Being-in-the-world. This knowing has the character of a certain deworlding of the world. “Nature,” as the categorial sum of the structures of Being of definite beings encountered within the world, can never make worldhood intelligible. But even the phenomenon “nature,” in the sense, say, of the Romantic concept of nature, can be grasped ontologically only in terms of the concept of world, that is,

With regard to the problem of an ontological analysis of the worldhood of the world, the ontology that has been handed down—if it sees the problem at all—is moving in a blind alley. On the other hand, an interpretation of the worldhood of Dasein, and of the possibilities and kinds of its becoming worldly, will have to show why Dasein, in the way of Being of knowing the world, skips over the phenomenon of worldhood both ontically and ontologically. But the very fact of this skipping over also indicates that special precautions are needed in order to gain, for access to the phenomenon of worldhood, the right phenomenal point of departure, one that prevents such skipping over.

The methodological directive for this has already been given. Being-in-the-world, and accordingly the world as well, are to become the theme of the analytic within the horizon of average everydayness, as the nearest way of Being of Dasein. We must follow up everyday Being-in-the-world, and, by keeping phenomenally to it, something like world must come into view.

The nearest world of everyday Dasein is the environment. The investigation takes its course from this existential character of average Being-in-the-world to the idea of worldhood in general. We seek the worldhood of the environment (environmentality) by way of an ontological interpretation of the inner-environmental beings encountered nearest. The expression Umwelt [environment] contains, in its “Um” [around], a reference to spatiality. The “round about,” which is constitutive for the environment, does not, however, have a primarily “spatial” meaning. Rather, the spatial character that indisputably belongs to an environment can be clarified only in terms of the structure of worldhood. From here, the spatiality of Dasein indicated in § 12 becomes phenomenally visible. But ontology has tried precisely to interpret the Being of the “world” as res extensa [extended thing] on the basis of spatiality.note

The phenomenological demonstration of the Being of the beings encountered nearest is carried out following the guiding thread of everyday Being-in-the-world, which we also call our dealings in the world and with innerworldly beings. These dealings have already dispersed themselves into a manifold of ways of concern. But the nearest kind of dealings is, as has been shown, not a knowing that just perceives, but a concern that manipulates and uses things and has its own “knowledge.” The phenomenological question concerns in the first instance the Being of the beings encountered in such concern. To secure the kind of seeing required here, a methodological preliminary remark is needed.

In the disclosure and explication of Being, beings are in each case what is pre-thematic and co-thematic; Being is what properly stands as the theme. Within the domain of the present analysis, the pre-thematic beings we posit are those that show themselves in environmental concern. These beings are not, here, the object of a theoretical knowing of the “world”; they are what is used, what is produced, and the like. As beings encountered in this way, they come pre-thematically into the view of a “knowing” which, as phenomenological, looks primarily at Being and, on the basis of this thematizing of Being, co-thematizes the beings in question in each case. This phenomenological interpreting is accordingly not a knowing of the qualities that beings have as beings, but a determining of the structure of their Being.

One answers: things. But with this self-evident answer, the pre-phenomenal ground we are seeking has perhaps already been missed. For in addressing beings as “things” (res) there lies a tacitly anticipatory ontological characterization. An analysis that goes on from such beings to ask about Being comes upon thinghood and reality. Ontological explication thus progressively finds characters of Being such as substantiality, materiality, extendedness, side-by-side-ness… But the beings encountered in concern are, in this Being, initially hidden even pre-ontologically. In naming things as the beings “initially given,” one goes astray ontologically, although ontically one means something else. What one actually means remains undetermined. Or else one characterizes these “things” as “value-laden” things. What does value mean ontologically? How are this “adhering” and this Being-laden to be grasped categorially?

The Greeks had an appropriate term for “things”: πράγματα, that is, that with which one has to do in concernful dealings (πρᾶξις). But ontologically they left precisely the specifically “pragmatic” character of the πράγματα in the dark and determined them “initially” as “mere things.” We call the beings encountered in concern equipment. In our dealings we come across equipment for writing, for sewing, for working, for traveling, for measuring. The way of Being of equipment must be brought out. This is done by following the guiding thread of a prior delimitation of what makes an item of equipment equipment: equipmentality.note

Strictly speaking, there never “is” an item of equipment. To the Being of equipment there always belongs, in each case, a totality of equipment in which it can be this equipment that it is. Equipment is essentially “something in order to….” The various ways of the “in-order-to,” such as serviceability, conduciveness, usability, handiness, constitute a totality of equipment. In the structure “in-order-to” there lies a reference of something to something. The phenomenon indicated by this term can be made visible in its ontological genesis only in the analyses that follow. For the present, the task is to get a manifold of references phenomenally into view. Equipment, in keeping with its equipmentality, always is in terms of its belonging to other equipment: writing equipment, pen, ink, paper, desk pad, table, lamp, furniture, windows, doors, room. These “things” never show themselves initially on their own, so as then to fill a room as a sum of real things.

“Practical” comportment is not “atheoretical” in the sense of being sightless, and its difference from theoretical comportment does not lie only in the fact that in the one case we observe and in the other we act, and that acting, so as not to remain blind, applies theoretical knowledge; rather, observing is just as primordially a concern as acting has its sight. Theoretical comportment is just-looking, without circumspection. Because it is without circumspection, this looking is not therefore without rules; it forms its canon in method.

What is ready-to-hand is neither grasped theoretically at all, nor is it itself initially thematic for circumspection in a circumspective way. What is peculiar to what is initially ready-to-hand is that, in its readiness-to-hand, it withdraws, as it were, precisely in order to be properly ready-to-hand. Nor is that alongside which our everyday dealings initially dwell the tools themselves; rather, the work, what is to be produced in each case, is what is primarily concerned with and therefore also what is ready-to-hand. The work bears the referential totality within which equipment is encountered.

The work to be produced, as the what-for of hammer, plane, needle, has for its part the way of Being of equipment. The shoe to be produced is for wearing (footwear); the clock that has been made is for telling the time. The work chiefly encountered in concernful dealings—the one being worked on—lets the what-for of its usability, a usability that belongs essentially to it, always already be encountered along with it. The work that has been ordered, for its part, is only on the basis of its use and of the referential nexus of beings uncovered in that use.

But the work to be produced is not only usable for…; producing is itself in each case a using of something for something. In the work there lies at the same time a reference to “materials.” It depends on leather, thread, nails, and the like. Leather in turn is produced from hides. These are taken from animals that are bred by others. Animals also occur within the world without being bred, and even when they are bred, these beings in a certain way produce themselves. In the environment, therefore, beings also become accessible that in themselves need no producing and are always already ready-to-hand. Hammer, tongs, nail refer in themselves to—they consist of—steel, iron, ore, stone, wood. In equipment that is used, “nature” is also uncovered through the use: “nature” in the light of natural products.

But nature must not be understood here as what is merely present-at-hand—nor as the power of nature either. The forest is timberland, the mountain a quarry, the river water power, the wind is wind “in the sails.” Along with the uncovered “environment,” the “nature” uncovered in this way is encountered. Its way of Being as ready-to-hand can be disregarded, and nature itself can be uncovered and determined solely in its pure presence-at-hand. But to this uncovering of nature, nature as what “stirs and strives,” what assails us, what takes us captive as landscape, remains hidden. The botanist’s plants are not the flowers along the field’s edge; the geographically fixed “rising” of a river is not the “spring in the dell.”

The work that has been produced refers not only to the what-for of its usability and the whereof of its consisting; under simple conditions of craft, there lies in it at the same time the reference to the one who wears and uses it. The work is cut to fit his body; he “is” there too as the work comes into being. In the production of mass-produced goods this constitutive reference is by no means missing; it is merely indeterminate, pointing to anyone at all, to the average. Along with the work, therefore, we encounter not only beings that are ready-to-hand but also beings with the way of Being of Dasein, for whom what is produced becomes ready-to-hand in their concern; and together with this we encounter the world in which the wearers and consumers live, a world that is at the same time ours.

The way of Being of these beings is readiness-to-hand. It must not, however, be understood as a mere character of how they are taken, as if such “aspects” were talked into the “beings” initially encountered, as if a world-stuff initially present-at-hand in itself were in this way “subjectively colored.” An interpretation headed in this direction overlooks the fact that, for this to be so, beings would first have to be understood and uncovered as purely present-at-hand, and would have to have priority and take the lead in the course of our uncovering and appropriating dealings with the “world.” But this already runs counter to the ontological meaning of knowing, which we have shown to be a founded mode of Being-in-the-world. Knowing presses forward to exposing what is merely present-at-hand only by way of what is ready-to-hand in concern.

But even if, in further ontological interpretation, readiness-to-hand should prove itself to be the way of Being of the beings initially uncovered within the world, and even if its primordiality over against pure presence-at-hand could be demonstrated—has what we have explicated so far gained the slightest thing for the ontological understanding of the phenomenon of world? After all, in interpreting these innerworldly beings we have always already “presupposed” world. Putting these beings together does not, surely, yield something like “world” as their sum. Does any path at all lead from the Being of these beings to the demonstration of the phenomenon of world?

World is itself not an innerworldly being, and yet it determines these beings so thoroughly that they can be encountered, and beings once uncovered can show themselves in their Being, only insofar as “there is” world. But how “is there” world? If Dasein is ontically constituted by Being-in-the-world, and if an understanding of the Being of its self belongs just as essentially to its Being, however indeterminate that understanding may be, does it not then have an understanding of world, a pre-ontological understanding, which admittedly lacks, and can lack, explicit ontological insights? Does not something like world show itself to concernful Being-in-the-world along with the beings encountered within the world, that is, along with their innerworldliness?

If such possibilities of Being of Dasein can be pointed out within concernful dealings, then a path opens up for pursuing the phenomenon that lights up in this way, and for trying, as it were, to “corner” it and to question it about the structures that show themselves in it.

To the everydayness of Being-in-the-world belong modes of concern that let the beings concerned with be encountered in such a way that the worldly character of what is innerworldly comes to the fore. The nearest ready-to-hand beings can be come across in concern as unusable, as not fitted for their definite use. A tool turns out to be damaged, the material unsuitable. In each case equipment is here ready-to-hand. But what uncovers the unusability is not the ascertaining of properties by looking at them, but the circumspection of using dealings. In such uncovering of unusability, the equipment becomes conspicuous. Conspicuousness presents the ready-to-hand equipment in a certain unreadiness-to-hand. But this implies: what cannot be used just lies there—it shows itself as an equipment-thing that looks thus and so and that, in its readiness-to-hand, as looking thus, was constantly present-at-hand as well.

But concernful dealings come up not only against something unusable within what is already ready-to-hand in each case; they also find something that is missing, something that is not only not “handy” but not “to hand” at all. Missing something in this way, as coming across something unready-to-hand, again uncovers what is ready-to-hand in a certain just-Being-present-at-hand. In noticing what is unready-to-hand, what is ready-to-hand enters the mode of obtrusiveness. The more urgently what is missing is needed, and the more properly it is encountered in its unreadiness-to-hand, the more obtrusive what is ready-to-hand becomes, so much so that it seems to lose the character of readiness-to-hand. It reveals itself as something just present-at-hand that cannot be budged without what is missing. Standing before it at a loss, as a deficient mode of concern, uncovers the just-Being-present-at-hand of something ready-to-hand.

In dealings with the “world” we are concerned with, what is unready-to-hand can be encountered not only in the sense of what is unusable or simply missing, but as something unready-to-hand that is precisely not missing and not unusable, but that “lies in the way” of concern. That to which concern cannot turn, for which it has “no time,” is unready-to-hand in the manner of what does not belong here, of what has not been attended to. This unready-to-hand thing disturbs us and makes visible the obstinacy of what is to be concerned with in the first instance and beforehand. With this obstinacy, the presence-at-hand of what is ready-to-hand announces itself in a new way, as the Being of what still lies before us and calls to be attended to.

The modes of conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy have the function of bringing to the fore, in what is present-at-hand, the character of presence-at-hand. But in this, what is ready-to-hand is not yet merely observed and stared at as something present-at-hand; the presence-at-hand that makes itself known is still bound up in the readiness-to-hand of the equipment. The equipment does not yet veil itself into mere things. The equipment becomes “stuff” in the sense of something one would like to thrust away; but in such a tendency to thrust away, what is ready-to-hand shows itself as still ready-to-hand, in its unrelenting presence-at-hand.note

But what is this pointer to the modified way of encountering what is ready-to-hand, in which its presence-at-hand is revealed, supposed to accomplish for clarifying the phenomenon of world? Even with the analysis of this modification we are still standing at the Being of what is innerworldly; we have not yet come any closer to the phenomenon of world. It has not yet been grasped, but we have now put ourselves in a position to bring the phenomenon into view.

In conspicuousness, obtrusiveness, and obstinacy, what is ready-to-hand in a certain way loses its readiness-to-hand. But this readiness-to-hand is itself understood, although unthematically, in dealings with what is ready-to-hand. It does not simply vanish; rather, in the conspicuousness of the unusable it takes its leave, as it were. Readiness-to-hand shows itself once more, and precisely in doing so the worldly character of what is ready-to-hand also shows itself.

The structure of the Being of what is ready-to-hand as equipment is determined by references. The peculiar and self-evident “in-itself” of the nearest “things” is encountered in the concern that uses them without explicitly heeding them, a concern that can come up against something unusable. An item of equipment is unusable: this implies that the constitutive reference of the in-order-to to a for-that has been disturbed. The references themselves are not observed; rather, they are “there” in concern’s placing itself under them. But in a disturbance of reference—in unusability for…—the reference becomes explicit. Not yet, even now, as an ontological structure, but ontically, for the circumspection that is brought up short by the damage to the tool.

Likewise, the missing of something ready-to-hand, whose everyday Being-around was so self-evident that we never even took notice of it, is a break in the referential nexuses uncovered in circumspection. Circumspection comes up against emptiness and only now sees for what and with what the missing item was ready-to-hand. Once again the environment announces itself. What lights up in this way is itself not one ready-to-hand thing among others, and still less something present-at-hand that, say, founds the ready-to-hand equipment. It is in the “there” before any ascertaining or observing. It is itself inaccessible to circumspection, insofar as circumspection always goes toward beings; but it has in each case already been disclosed for circumspection. “Disclose” and “disclosedness” are used as technical terms in what follows and mean “unlock”—“unlockedness.”

That the world does not “consist” of what is ready-to-hand is shown, among other things, by the fact that the lighting up of the world in the modes of concern we have interpreted goes together with a deworlding of what is ready-to-hand, so that its just-Being-present-at-hand comes to the fore. If, in the everyday concern with the “environment,” the ready-to-hand equipment is to be able to be encountered in its “Being-in-itself,” then the references and referential totalities in which circumspection is “absorbed” must remain unthematic for circumspection, and all the more so for a grasping that is non-circumspective and “thematic.” The world’s not announcing itself is the condition of the possibility of what is ready-to-hand not stepping out of its inconspicuousness. And in this the phenomenal structure of the Being-in-itself of these beings is constituted.

Privative expressions such as inconspicuousness, unobtrusiveness, unobstinacy mean a positive phenomenal character of the Being of what is initially ready-to-hand. These “un-”s mean the character of what is ready-to-hand holding itself in, that which we have in view with Being-in-itself, which, characteristically, we “initially” ascribe to what is present-at-hand, as what can be thematically ascertained. With a primary and exclusive orientation toward what is present-at-hand, the “in-itself” cannot be clarified ontologically at all. Yet an interpretation must be demanded if talk of the “in-itself” is to be ontologically significant. One usually appeals to this in-itself of Being ontically and emphatically, and with phenomenal justification. But this ontic appeal does not already fulfill the claim of the ontological assertion supposedly given with such an appeal.

But if the world can light up in a certain way, it must be disclosed at all. With the accessibility of innerworldly ready-to-hand things for circumspective concern, world has in each case already been predisclosed. It is accordingly something “wherein” Dasein as a being in each case already was, something to which, in any arriving at something, however explicit, it can only ever come back.

According to our interpretation so far, Being-in-the-world means: unthematic, circumspective absorption in the references constitutive for the readiness-to-hand of the totality of equipment. Concern always already is as it is on the basis of a familiarity with world. In this familiarity Dasein can lose itself in what is encountered within the world and be captivated by it. What is it with which Dasein is familiar? Why can the worldly character of what is innerworldly light up? How, more precisely, is the referential totality to be understood within which circumspection “moves,” and whose possible breaks push the readiness-to-hand of beings to the fore?

To answer these questions, which aim at working out the phenomenon and problem of worldhood, a more concrete analysis is required of the structures into whose nexus of construction the questions we have raised are inquiring.

In our provisional interpretation of the structure of Being of the ready-to-hand (of “equipment”), the phenomenon of reference became visible. It did so only in rough outline, however, and so we stressed at the same time that this phenomenon, so far merely indicated, needed to be uncovered with regard to its ontological provenance. It also became clear that reference and the totality of references will in some sense be constitutive for worldhood itself. So far we have seen the world light up only in and for certain ways of environmental concern with what is ready-to-hand, and indeed together with its readiness-to-hand. The further we advance in understanding the Being of innerworldly beings, therefore, the broader and more secure the phenomenal ground for laying bare the phenomenon of the world will become.

We again take our start from the Being of the ready-to-hand, this time with the aim of grasping the phenomenon of reference itself more sharply. To this end we attempt an ontological analysis of an item of equipment in which “references” can be found in more than one sense. We find “equipment” of this kind in signs. This word names many things. It covers not only different kinds of sign; Being-a-sign-for … can itself be formalized into a universal kind of relation, so that the sign-structure itself provides an ontological guideline for a “characterization” of all beings whatsoever.

In the first instance, however, signs are themselves items of equipment, and their specific character as equipment consists in showing. Signs of this kind are signposts, boundary stones, the storm-warning ball for shipping, signals, flags, signs of mourning, and the like. Showing can be defined as a “kind” of referring. Referring, taken in an extremely formal way, is relating. But relation does not function as the genus for “kinds” of reference that might be differentiated into, say, sign, symbol, expression, and meaning. Relation is a formal determination. By way of “formalization” it can be read off directly from every kind of connection, whatever its content and way of Being.

Every reference is a relation, but not every relation is a reference. Every “showing” is a reference, but not every referring is a showing. This implies at the same time that every “showing” is a relation, but not every relating is a showing. The formally general character of relation thus comes to light. Nothing is gained for investigating the phenomena of reference, sign or even meaning by characterizing them as relation. In the end it must even be shown that “relation” itself, because of its formally general character, has its ontological origin in a reference.

Even if the present analysis confines itself to interpreting the sign as distinct from the phenomenon of reference, the closed multiplicity of possible signs cannot be adequately investigated within this limit either. Among signs there are indications, portents and retrospective signs, reminders, and identifying marks. The showing of each differs, quite apart from what in each case serves as such a sign. From these “signs” we must distinguish trace, remnant, monument, document, testimony, symbol, expression, appearance, and meaning. These phenomena are easily formalized on the basis of their formal character of relation. Today we are especially quick, guided by such a “relation,” to subject all beings to an “interpretation” that always “fits” because at bottom it says nothing—no more than the handy schema of form and content does.

As our example of a sign we choose one that is to serve as an example in another respect in a later analysis. Motor cars have recently been fitted with a red, rotatable arrow. Its position at any given time—at a crossroads, for example—shows which way the car will take. The position of the arrow is controlled by the driver. This sign is an item of equipment that is ready-to-hand not only in the driver’s concern (steering). Those who are not riding in the car—and they in particular—also make use of this equipment, namely by giving way to the appropriate side or by stopping. This sign is ready-to-hand within the world in the whole of the nexus of equipment made up of means of transport and traffic regulations. As an item of equipment, this equipment for showing is constituted by reference.note

Rather, “referring” as showing is grounded in the structure of Being of equipment, in serviceability for. Serviceability does not by itself make a being a sign. The equipment “hammer” is also constituted by a serviceability, but that does not make the hammer a sign. The “reference” showing is the ontic concretion of the what-for of a serviceability, and it determines an item of equipment for this what-for. The reference “serviceability for,” by contrast, is an ontological-categorial determinateness of equipment as equipment. That the what-for of the serviceability receives its concretion in showing is accidental to the constitution of equipment as such. Even this example of the sign roughly shows the difference between reference as serviceability and reference as showing. The two coincide so little that only in their unity do they make possible the concretion of a particular kind of equipment.

What does the showing of a sign mean? We can answer this only if we define the kind of dealings appropriate to equipment for showing. In these dealings its readiness-to-hand must also become genuinely graspable. What is the appropriate having-to-do-with signs? Taking our orientation from the example mentioned (the arrow), we must say: the corresponding comportment (Being) toward the sign we encounter is “giving way” or “stopping” in the face of the approaching car that carries the arrow. Giving way, as taking a direction, belongs essentially to Dasein’s Being-in-the-world. Dasein is always somehow directed and under way; standing and staying are only limiting cases of this directed “being-under-way.” The sign addresses itself to a specifically “spatial” Being-in-the-world. The sign is properly “grasped” precisely not when we stare at it and register it as a thing for showing that occurs before us.

Signs of the kind described let the ready-to-hand be encountered. More precisely, they let a nexus of it become accessible in such a way that concernful dealings give themselves an orientation and secure it. A sign is not a thing that stands in a showing relation to another thing; it is an item of equipment that explicitly raises a totality of equipment into circumspection, so that together with this the worldly character of the ready-to-hand announces itself. In indications and portents, “what is coming” “shows itself,” but not in the sense of something merely occurring that is added to what is already present-at-hand. “What is coming” is something we get ready for, or “were not ready for” insofar as we were busy with something else. In retrospective signs, what has taken place and run its course becomes circumspectively accessible. The reminder shows “where” one stands in each case.

The peculiar equipmental character of signs becomes especially clear in the “instituting of signs.” This takes place in and out of a circumspective fore-sight that needs the ready-to-hand possibility of letting the particular environment announce itself for circumspection at any time through something ready-to-hand. But to the Being of what is closest ready-to-hand within the world belongs the character, already described, of holding itself in and not stepping forward. Circumspective dealings in the environment therefore need an item of equipment ready-to-hand that, in its equipmental character, takes over the “work” of letting what is ready-to-hand become conspicuous. That is why the production of such equipment (signs) must pay heed to its conspicuousness. But even as so conspicuous, signs are not left to be present-at-hand just anywhere; they are “put up” in a definite way with a view to easy accessibility.

The instituting of signs, however, need not necessarily take place by producing an item of equipment that is not yet ready-to-hand at all. Signs also arise in the taking-as-a-sign of something already ready-to-hand. In this mode the instituting of signs reveals a still more primordial meaning. Showing does not merely provide the circumspectively oriented availability of a ready-to-hand totality of equipment and of the environment in general; the instituting of signs can even uncover for the first time. What is taken as a sign first becomes accessible through its readiness-to-hand. Suppose, for example, that in farming the south wind “counts” as a sign of rain. Then this “counting,” or the “value attaching” to this being, is not an extra added to something already present-at-hand in itself—the current of air and a definite geographical direction.

But, it will be objected, what is taken as a sign must surely first have become accessible in itself and been grasped before the sign is instituted. Certainly, it must already be there to be found in some way or other. The only question is how the being is uncovered in this prior encounter: as a pure thing that occurs, or rather as equipment not understood, as something ready-to-hand with which one had so far not known “what to do,” and which therefore still veiled itself from circumspection. Here again, one must not interpret the equipmental characters of the ready-to-hand that circumspection has not yet uncovered as mere thinghood, pregiven for a grasping of what is merely present-at-hand.

The readiness-to-hand of signs in everyday dealings, and the conspicuousness that belongs to signs and can be produced with various aims and in various ways, do not merely document the inconspicuousness constitutive of what is closest ready-to-hand. The sign itself takes its conspicuousness from the inconspicuousness of the totality of equipment ready-to-hand that is “self-evident” in everydayness—for example, the familiar “knot in the handkerchief” as a reminder. What it is to show is in each case something to be concerned with in the circumspection of everydayness. This sign can show many things, and things of the most diverse kinds. The breadth of what can be shown in such a sign is matched by the narrowness of its intelligibility and use. Not only is it, as a sign, mostly ready-to-hand only for its “institutor”; it can become inaccessible even to the institutor, so that a second sign is needed for the possible circumspective usability of the first.

One might be tempted to illustrate the preeminent role of signs in everyday concern for the understanding of the world itself by the abundant use of “signs” in primitive Dasein, for instance in fetish and magic. Certainly the instituting of signs that underlies such use of signs does not take place with a theoretical aim or by way of theoretical speculation. The use of signs remains entirely within an “immediate” Being-in-the-world. On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that interpreting fetish and magic by the guideline of the idea of the sign in general is not sufficient to grasp the kind of “readiness-to-hand” of the beings encountered in the primitive world. With regard to the phenomenon of the sign, the following interpretation might be given: for primitive humans, the sign coincides with what is shown.

The foregoing interpretation of the sign was meant only to provide a phenomenal foothold for characterizing reference. The relation between sign and reference is threefold:

1. Showing, as a possible concretion of the what-for of a serviceability, is founded in the structure of equipment in general, in the in-order-to (reference).

2. The showing of the sign, as the equipmental character of something ready-to-hand, belongs to a totality of equipment, to a referential nexus.

3. The sign is not only ready-to-hand along with other equipment; in its readiness-to-hand the environment becomes in each case explicitly accessible for circumspection. A sign is something ontically ready-to-hand that, as this definite item of equipment, at the same time functions as something that indicates the ontological structure of readiness-to-hand, of the totality of references, and of worldhood. This is the root of the preeminence of this ready-to-hand within the environment with which circumspection is concerned. If reference is to be the ontological foundation for signs, therefore, it cannot itself be conceived as a sign. Reference is not the ontic determinateness of something ready-to-hand, since it constitutes readiness-to-hand itself. In what sense is reference the ontological “presupposition” of the ready-to-hand, and to what extent is it, as this ontological foundation, at the same time a constituent of worldhood in general?

The ready-to-hand is encountered within the world. The Being of this being, readiness-to-hand, therefore stands in some ontological relation to the world and to worldhood. In everything ready-to-hand the world is always already “there.” The world is already uncovered beforehand together with everything encountered, though unthematically. But it can also light up in certain ways of environmental dealings. It is the world from out of which the ready-to-hand is ready-to-hand. How can the world let the ready-to-hand be encountered? Our analysis so far has shown that what is encountered within the world is freed in its Being for concernful circumspection, for taking account. What does this prior freeing mean, and how is it to be understood as an ontological distinction of the world? What problems does the question of the worldhood of the world lead us to face?

The equipmental constitution of the ready-to-hand was indicated as reference. How can the world free beings of this way of Being with regard to their Being, and why are these beings the first to be encountered? As definite references we named serviceability for, detrimentality, usability, and the like. The what-for of a serviceability and the for-which of a usability each prefigure the possible concretion of the reference. But the “showing” of the sign and the “hammering” of the hammer are not properties of the being. They are not properties at all, if this term is to designate the ontological structure of a possible determinateness of things. The ready-to-hand has at most suitabilities and unsuitabilities, and its “properties” are, as it were, still bound up in these—just as presence-at-hand, as a possible way of Being of something ready-to-hand, is bound up in readiness-to-hand.

Involvement is the Being of innerworldly beings, the Being toward which such a being is always already, in the first instance, freed. With it, as a being, there is in each case an involvement. That it has an involvement is the ontological determination of the Being of this being, not an ontic assertion about the being. The with-which of the involvement is the what-for of serviceability, the for-which of usability. With the what-for of serviceability there can in turn be an involvement. For example, with this ready-to-hand thing, which we therefore call a hammer, the involvement lies in hammering; with hammering, the involvement lies in making something fast; with making fast, in protection against bad weather; and this protection “is” for the sake of Dasein’s finding shelter, that is, for the sake of a possibility of its Being.

Ontically, letting be involved means: within a factical concern, letting something ready-to-hand be so and so, as it now is, and so that it is so. We take this ontic meaning of “letting be” in a fundamentally ontological way. In doing so we interpret the meaning of the prior freeing of what is initially ready-to-hand within the world. Letting something “be” beforehand does not mean first bringing it into its Being and producing it. It means uncovering something that is always already a “being” in its readiness-to-hand, and so letting the being that has this Being be encountered. This “a priori” letting be involved is the condition of the possibility that the ready-to-hand is encountered, so that Dasein, in its ontic dealings with beings so encountered, can let them be involved in the ontic sense.

The always-already-having-let-be-involved that frees toward involvement is an a priori perfect that characterizes the way of Being of Dasein itself. Letting be involved, understood ontologically, is the prior freeing of beings for their readiness-to-hand within the environment. From the with-which of letting be involved, the by-which of the involvement is freed. Concern encounters it as this ready-to-hand thing. Insofar as a being shows itself to concern at all, that is, insofar as it is uncovered in its Being, it is always already something ready-to-hand in the environment, and precisely not “initially” just “world-stuff” that is present-at-hand.note

Involvement itself, as the Being of the ready-to-hand, is in each case uncovered only on the basis of the prior uncoveredness of a totality of involvements. In uncovered involvement, that is, in the ready-to-hand we encounter, there accordingly lies, uncovered beforehand, what we called the worldly character of the ready-to-hand. This totality of involvements, uncovered beforehand, harbors within itself an ontological relation to the world. Letting be involved, which frees beings toward a totality of involvements, must itself already have somehow disclosed that toward which it frees them. That toward which what is ready-to-hand in the environment is freed—in such a way that it first becomes accessible as an innerworldly being—cannot itself be conceived as a being of this uncovered way of Being. It is essentially not uncoverable, if from now on we hold to uncoveredness as the term for a possibility of Being of all beings not of the kind of Dasein.

But what does it mean to say that that toward which innerworldly beings are initially freed must be disclosed beforehand? An understanding of Being belongs to Dasein’s Being. An understanding has its Being in understanding. If the way of Being of Being-in-the-world belongs to Dasein essentially, then the understanding of Being-in-the-world belongs to the essential content of its understanding of Being. The prior disclosing of that toward which what is encountered within the world is freed is nothing other than the understanding of the world toward which Dasein, as a being, always already comports itself.

The prior letting be involved in … with … is grounded in an understanding of such things as letting be involved, the with-which of the involvement and the by-which of the involvement. Such things, and what further underlies them—such as the for-that, as that in which there is involvement, and the for-the-sake-of-which to which every what-for ultimately goes back—all this must be disclosed beforehand in a certain intelligibility. And what is that in which Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, understands itself pre-ontologically? In understanding the relational nexus just mentioned, Dasein has referred itself to an in-order-to. It has done so from out of a potentiality-for-Being for the sake of which it itself is, and which it has seized explicitly or inexplicitly, in an owned or an unowned way. This in-order-to prefigures a for-that, as a possible with-which of a letting be involved, which structurally lets something be involved with something. Dasein always already refers itself, from out of a for-the-sake-of-which, to the by-which of an involvement; that is,

That in which Dasein always already understands itself in this way is something with which it is primordially familiar. This familiarity with the world does not necessarily require a theoretical transparency of the relations that constitute the world as world. But the possibility of an explicit ontological-existential interpretation of these relations is indeed grounded in the familiarity with the world that is constitutive for Dasein, and that in turn helps make up Dasein’s understanding of Being. This possibility can be explicitly seized insofar as Dasein has set itself the task of a primordial interpretation of its Being and its possibilities, or even of the meaning of Being in general.

The analyses so far, however, have only laid bare the horizon within which something like world and worldhood is to be sought. For our further consideration, it must first be made clearer as what the nexus of Dasein’s referring itself is to be grasped ontologically.

Understanding, which will be analyzed more thoroughly below (cf. § 31), holds the relations indicated in a prior disclosedness. In familiarly holding itself in them, it holds them before itself as that within which its referring moves. Understanding lets itself be referred in and by these relations themselves. We take the relational character of these relations of referring as signifying. In its familiarity with these relations, Dasein “signifies” to itself: it primordially gives itself to understand its Being and potentiality-for-Being with regard to its Being-in-the-world. The for-the-sake-of-which signifies an in-order-to; this in-order-to, a for-that; this for-that, a with-which of letting be involved; and this, a by-which of the involvement.

But significance itself, with which Dasein is always already familiar, harbors within itself the ontological condition of the possibility that Dasein, understanding and interpreting, can disclose such things as “meanings”; and these in turn found the possible Being of word and language.

Disclosed significance, as the existential constitution of Dasein, of its Being-in-the-world, is the ontic condition of the possibility of the uncoverability of a totality of involvements.

If we thus determine the Being of the ready-to-hand (involvement), and even worldhood itself, as a referential nexus, are we not volatilizing the “substantial Being” of innerworldly beings into a system of relations? And since relations are always something “thought,” are we not dissolving the Being of innerworldly beings into “pure thinking”?

Within the present field of investigation, the differences of structure and dimension in the ontological problematic, which we have repeatedly marked, must be kept apart in principle. 1. The Being of the innerworldly beings initially encountered (readiness-to-hand). 2. The Being of the beings (presence-at-hand) that can be found and determined by passing through the beings initially encountered in a way that uncovers independently. 3. The Being of the ontic condition of the possibility of the uncoverability of innerworldly beings in general, the worldhood of the world. The last-named Being is an existential determination of Being-in-the-world, that is, of Dasein. The two concepts of Being named before it are categories and concern beings whose Being is not of the kind of Dasein. The referential nexus that, as significance, constitutes worldhood can be grasped formally in the sense of a system of relations.

So that the specifically ontological problematic of worldhood may stand out still more sharply, the interpretation of worldhood will be clarified, before the analysis is carried further, by an extreme counter-case.

The investigation will be able to secure the concept of worldhood, and of the structures contained in this phenomenon, only step by step. The interpretation of the world initially starts from an innerworldly being, only then to lose sight of the phenomenon of world altogether. Because of this, we attempt to clarify this approach ontologically in what is perhaps its most extreme execution. We not only give a brief account of the basic features of the ontology of the “world” in Descartes, but ask about its presuppositions and try to characterize them in the light of what we have gained so far. This discussion is meant to let us see on what fundamentally undiscussed ontological “foundations” the interpretations of the world that come after Descartes—and all the more those that precede him—move.

Descartes sees the basic ontological determination of the world in extensio [extension]. Extension helps constitute spatiality—according to Descartes it is even identical with it—and spatiality remains in some sense constitutive for the world. To this extent, the discussion of the Cartesian ontology of the “world” at the same time offers a negative foothold for the positive explication of the spatiality of the environment and of Dasein itself. With regard to Descartes’ ontology we shall treat three things: 1. The determination of the “world” as res extensa [extended thing] (§ 19). 2. The foundations of this ontological determination (§ 20). 3. The hermeneutical discussion of the Cartesian ontology of the “world” (§ 21). The following consideration will receive its detailed grounding only through the phenomenological destruction of the “cogito sum” [I think, I am] (cf. Part Two, Division 2).

Descartes distinguishes the “ego cogito” [I think] from the “res corporea” [corporeal thing]. From then on this distinction determines, ontologically, the distinction between “nature and spirit.” However many variations of content this opposition may be fixed in ontically, the unclarity of its ontological foundations, and of the terms of the opposition themselves, has its nearest root in the distinction Descartes drew. Within what understanding of Being did he determine the Being of these beings? The term for the Being of a being that is in its own right is substantia. The expression means sometimes the Being of a being as substance, substantiality, sometimes the being itself, a substance. This ambiguity of substantia, which the ancient concept of οὐσία [substance, beingness] already carries with it, is not accidental.

The ontological determination of the res corporea requires the explication of substance, that is, of the substantiality of this being as a substance. What makes up the proper Being-in-itself of the res corporea? How can a substance as such, that is, its substantiality, be grasped at all? Et quidem ex quolibet attributo substantia cognoscitur; sed una tamen est cuiusque substantiae praecipua proprietas, quae ipsius naturam essentiamque constituit, et ad quam aliae omnes referuntur. Substances become accessible in their “attributes,” and each substance has a distinctive property from which the essence of the substantiality of a particular substance can be read off. What is this property in the case of the res corporea? Nempe extensio in longum, latum, profundum substantiae corporeae naturam constituit.note

Thus a corporeal thing, while preserving its total extension, can nevertheless change the distribution of that extension along the various dimensions in many ways, and present itself in manifold shapes as one and the same thing. Atque unum et idem corpus, retinendo suam et eandem quantitatem, diversis modis potest extendi: nunc scilicet magis secundum longitudinem minusque secundum latitudinem vel profunditatem ac paulo post e contra magis secundum latitudinem et minus secundum longitudinem.

Shape is a modus of extensio, and so, no less, is motion; for motus is grasped only si de nullo nisi locali cogitemus ac de vi a qua excitatur non inquiramus [if we think of none but local motion and do not inquire into the force by which it is produced]. If motion is a property of the res corporea that has being, then, in order to be experienceable in its Being, it must be conceived from the Being of this being itself, from extensio, that is, as pure change of place. Something like “force” contributes nothing to the determination of the Being of this being. Determinations such as durities (hardness), pondus (weight) and color can be taken away from matter, and it still remains what it is. These determinations do not make up its proper Being, and insofar as they are, they prove to be modes of extensio.

The idea of Being to which the ontological characterization of the res extensa goes back is substantiality. Per substantiam nihil aliud intelligere possumus, quam rem quae ita existit, ut nulla alia re indigeat ad existendum. By substance we can understand nothing other than a being that is in such a way that it needs no other being in order to be. The Being of a “substance” is characterized by a not-needing. That which in its Being has no need whatsoever of any other being satisfies the idea of substance in the proper sense—this being is the ens perfectissimum [most perfect being]. Substantia quae nulla plane re indigeat, unica tantum potest intelligi, nempe Deus [Only one substance can be understood that needs nothing at all, namely God]. “God” is here a purely ontological term, when it is understood as ens perfectissimum.

The Being of the substance whose distinguishing proprietas [property] is extensio thus becomes ontologically determinable in principle once the meaning of Being “common” to the three substances—the one infinite and the two finite—has been clarified. But nomen substantiae non convenit Deo et illis univoce, ut dici solet in Scholis, hoc est quod Deo et creaturae sit communis [the name “substance” does not apply to God and to them univocally, as they say in the Schools, that is, as a meaning common to God and creatures]. Here Descartes touches on a problem that often occupied medieval ontology: the question of the way in which the meaning of Being means the being addressed in each case. In the assertions “God is” and “the world is,” we assert Being.

Descartes not only evades the ontological question of substantiality altogether; he explicitly stresses that substance as such, that is, its substantiality, is in advance, in and of itself, inaccessible. Verumtamen non potest substantia primum animadverti ex hoc solo, quod sit existens, quia hoc solum per se nos non afficit [Yet substance cannot first be noticed merely from the fact that it is an existing thing, because this alone does not of itself affect us]. “Being” itself does not “affect” us, and therefore it cannot be apprehended. “Being is not a real predicate,” according to Kant’s dictum, which merely reproduces Descartes’ proposition. With this, the possibility of a pure problematic of Being is renounced in principle, and a way out is sought by which the determinations of substances characterized above are then obtained. Because “Being” is in fact not accessible as a being, Being is expressed through determinatenesses of the being in question that themselves are, through attributes.note

The ontological foundations of the determination of the “world” as res extensa have thus become clear. They consist in the idea of substantiality—an idea whose meaning-of-Being is not only unclarified but passed off as unclarifiable—presented by the detour through the most preeminent substantial property of the substance in each case. The determination of substance through a substantial being is also the reason for the ambiguity of the term. What is intended is substantiality, and it is understood from a characteristic of substance that is in being. Because the ontic is slipped underneath the ontological, the expression substantia functions sometimes in an ontological meaning, sometimes in an ontic one, but mostly in a blurred ontic-ontological meaning. Behind this slight difference of meaning, however, lies concealed a failure to master the fundamental problem of Being.

The critical question arises: does this ontology of the “world” seek the phenomenon of the world at all, and if not, does it at least determine some innerworldly being far enough that its worldly character can be made visible in it? Both questions must be answered in the negative. The being that Descartes tries to grasp ontologically, in principle, by means of extensio is rather one that becomes uncoverable only by passing through an innerworldly being that is ready-to-hand in the first instance.

In the exposition of the problem of worldhood (§ 14), we pointed out how much depends on gaining an appropriate access to this phenomenon. In the critical discussion of the Cartesian approach we shall accordingly have to ask: which way of Being of Dasein is fixed as the appropriate kind of access to the being with whose Being, as extensio, Descartes equates the Being of the “world”? The sole and genuine access to this being is knowing, intellectio, and indeed in the sense of mathematical-physical knowledge. Mathematical knowledge counts as the kind of grasping of beings that can at all times be certain of securely possessing the Being of the beings grasped in it. Whatever, by its way of Being, is such that it satisfies the Being that becomes accessible in mathematical knowledge is in the proper sense.

Descartes has no need to pose the problem of the appropriate access to innerworldly beings. Under the unbroken dominance of traditional ontology, the genuine way of grasping what properly is has been decided in advance. It lies in νοεῖν, “intuition” in the broadest sense, of which διανοεῖν, “thinking,” is only a founded form of enactment. And it is from this basic ontological orientation that Descartes gives his “critique” of the other still possible kind of access to beings, one that apprehends by intuiting: sensatio (αἴσθησις), as against intellectio.

Descartes knows very well that beings do not initially show themselves in their proper Being. What is “initially” given is this particular piece of wax—a thing of definite color, taste, hardness, coldness, and sound. But this, and whatever the senses give in general, remains ontologically without importance. Satis erit, si advertamus sensuum perceptiones non referri, nisi ad istam corporis humani cum mente coniunctionem, et nobis quidem ordinarie exhibere, quid ad illam externa corpora prodesse possint aut nocere [It will be enough if we notice that the perceptions of the senses refer only to this union of the human body with the mind, and that they ordinarily show us what external bodies can benefit or harm it]. The senses do not let beings be known in their Being at all. They merely report the usefulness and harmfulness of “external” innerworldly things for the human being, who is burdened with a body. Nos non docent, qualia (corpora) in seipsis existant [They do not teach us what (bodies) are like as they exist in themselves]; through the senses we gain no information at all about beings in their Being.note

How little Descartes is able to let what shows itself in sensibility present itself in its own way of Being, let alone determine that way of Being, becomes clear from a critical analysis of the interpretation he gives of the experience of hardness and resistance (cf. § 19).

Hardness is taken as resistance. But resistance, no more than hardness, is understood in a phenomenal sense, as something experienced in itself and determinable in such experience. For Descartes, resistance amounts to not giving way from one’s place, that is, not undergoing any change of location. A thing’s resisting then means remaining at a definite location relative to another thing that is changing its location, or else changing location at such a speed that it can be “caught up with” by that other thing. With this interpretation of the experience of hardness, the way of Being of sensory apprehending is obliterated, and with it the possibility of grasping in their Being the beings encountered in such apprehending.

Thus for Descartes the discussion of the possible ways of access to innerworldly beings comes under the dominance of an idea of Being that has been read off from one particular region of these beings themselves.

The idea of Being as persistent presence-at-hand not only motivates an extreme determination of the Being of innerworldly beings and their identification with the world as such. At the same time, it prevents the comportments of Dasein from being brought into view in an ontologically appropriate way. But with that the way is completely blocked to seeing, in addition, the founded character of all sensory and intellectual apprehending, and to understanding these as a possibility of Being-in-the-world. The Being of “Dasein,” however, to whose basic constitution Being-in-the-world belongs, Descartes conceives in the same way as the Being of the res extensa: as substance.

But do these critical discussions not foist upon Descartes a task that lay entirely outside his horizon, and then “demonstrate” that he failed to solve it? How is Descartes supposed to identify a particular innerworldly being and its Being with the world, if he does not know the phenomenon of the world at all, and so does not know anything like innerworldliness?

Where the confrontation concerns fundamentals, it must not keep only to theses that can be grasped doxographically. It must take its orientation from the substantive tendency of the problematic, even if that tendency does not get beyond an ordinary formulation. That Descartes, with the res cogitans and the res extensa, not only wanted to pose the problem of “I and world” but claimed a radical solution to it, is clear from his Meditations (cf. esp. I and VI). His basic ontological orientation toward the tradition lacked all positive critique. That this made it impossible for him to lay free a primordial ontological problematic of Dasein, necessarily obstructed his view of the phenomenon of the world, and could force the ontology of the “world” into the ontology of a particular innerworldly being—this is what the foregoing discussions were meant to prove.

But, it will be objected, even if the problem of the world, and also the Being of the beings encountered nearest in the environment, do in fact remain covered over, Descartes nonetheless laid the foundation for the ontological characterization of that innerworldly being which founds every other being in its Being: material nature. On it, the fundamental stratum, the remaining strata of innerworldly actuality are built up. In the extended thing as such are grounded, first of all, those determinations that show themselves as qualities but are “at bottom” quantitative modifications of the modes of extensio itself.

But, leaving aside the specific problem of the world, can the Being of what is encountered in the first instance within the world be reached ontologically in this way? With material thinghood, is not a Being tacitly posited—the constant presence-at-hand of things—which receives so little ontological supplementation from the subsequent furnishing of beings with value-predicates that, on the contrary, these value-characters themselves remain merely ontic determinations of a being that has the way of Being of a thing? The addition of value-predicates cannot give the slightest new information about the Being of goods; it merely presupposes for them, once again, the way of Being of pure presence-at-hand. Values are present-at-hand determinations of a thing. In the end, values have their ontological origin solely in the prior positing of the actuality of things as the fundamental stratum.

Descartes sharpened the narrowing of the question of the world to the question of the thinghood of nature, as the innerworldly being that is accessible in the first instance. He entrenched the opinion that the supposedly most rigorous ontic knowing of a being is also the possible access to the primary Being of the beings uncovered in such knowledge. But at the same time we must see that the “supplementations” of the ontology of things, too, move in principle on the same dogmatic basis as Descartes.

We have already indicated (§ 14) that the skipping-over of the world and of the beings encountered in the first instance is not accidental, not an oversight that could simply be made good, but is grounded in an essential way of Being of Dasein itself. The analytic of Dasein must first have made transparent those main structures of Dasein that are most important within the framework of this problematic. The concept of Being as such must have been assigned the horizon of its possible intelligibility, so that readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand, too, first become ontologically intelligible in a primordial way. Only then can the critique just carried out of the Cartesian ontology of the world—which is in principle still customary today—be given its philosophical justification.

For this it must be shown (cf. Part One, Division 3):

1. Why, at the beginning of the ontological tradition that is decisive for us—explicitly in Parmenides—was the phenomenon of the world skipped over? Where does the constant recurrence of this skipping-over come from?note

2. Why do innerworldly beings step in as the ontological theme in place of the phenomenon that has been skipped over?

3. Why are these beings found in the first instance in “nature”?

4. Why is the supplementation of such an ontology of the world, which is experienced as necessary, carried out with the help of the phenomenon of value?

Only in the answers to these questions will a positive understanding of the problematic of the world be reached, the origin of its being missed be shown, and the legitimate ground for rejecting the traditional ontology of the world be demonstrated.

The observations on Descartes were meant to bring us to see the following. The seemingly self-evident starting point in the things of the world, no more than the orientation toward the supposedly most rigorous knowledge of beings, guarantees that we gain the ground on which the nearest ontological constitutions of the world, of Dasein, and of innerworldly beings can be encountered phenomenally.

But if we recall that spatiality evidently co-constitutes innerworldly beings, then a “rescue” of the Cartesian analysis of the “world” does become possible after all. By radically bringing out extensio as the praesuppositum [presupposition] for every determination of the res corporea, Descartes prepared the way for the understanding of an a priori whose content Kant then fixed more penetratingly. Within certain limits, the analysis of extensio remains independent of the failure to give an explicit interpretation of the Being of extended beings. Positing extensio as the basic determination of the “world” has its phenomenal justification. By going back to it, however, neither the spatiality of the world, nor the spatiality, uncovered in the first instance, of the beings encountered in the environment, let alone the spatiality of Dasein itself, can be ontologically conceived.

In the context of the first sketch of Being-in (cf. § 12), Dasein had to be marked off from a way of Being in space that we call insideness. This means: a being that is itself extended is enclosed by the extended boundaries of something extended. The being that is inside and what encloses it are both present-at-hand in space. Rejecting such an insideness of Dasein in a spatial container was not meant, however, to exclude in principle every spatiality of Dasein. It was meant only to keep the way clear for seeing the spatiality that is constitutive of Dasein. This spatiality must now be brought out. But insofar as innerworldly beings are likewise in space, their spatiality will stand in an ontological connection with the world.

If space constitutes the world in a sense yet to be determined, it cannot be surprising that, already in the preceding ontological characterization of the Being of what is innerworldly, we had to keep it in view as something inner-spatial as well. So far, this spatiality of the ready-to-hand has not been explicitly grasped phenomenally, nor has it been shown how it is interlocked with the structure of Being of the ready-to-hand. That is now the task.

To what extent have we already come upon the spatiality of the ready-to-hand in characterizing it? We spoke of what is ready-to-hand in the first instance. This means not only the being that in each case is encountered first, before others, but at the same time the being that is “nearby.” What is ready-to-hand in everyday dealings has the character of nearness. Looked at closely, this nearness of equipment is already intimated in the term that expresses its Being: “readiness-to-hand.” What is “to hand” has in each case a different nearness, which is not settled by measuring intervals. This nearness regulates itself from the circumspectively “calculating” manipulating and using. The circumspection of concern at the same time fixes what is near in this way with regard to the direction in which the equipment is accessible at any time.

“In the region of” means not only “in the direction of,” but at the same time in the surroundings of something that lies in that direction. The place, constituted by direction and remoteness—nearness is only a mode of remoteness—is already oriented toward a region and within it. Something like a region must first be uncovered if the assigning and finding of places for a totality of equipment circumspectively at one’s disposal is to become possible. This regional orientation of the multiplicity of places of the ready-to-hand makes up the aroundness, the around-us, of the beings encountered nearest in the environment. What is given in the first instance is never a three-dimensional multiplicity of possible positions filled up with things present-at-hand. This dimensionality of space is still veiled in the spatiality of the ready-to-hand.

Regions are not first formed by things present-at-hand together; they are in each case already ready-to-hand in the individual places. The places themselves are either assigned to the ready-to-hand in the circumspection of concern, or else found. What is constantly ready-to-hand, which circumspective Being-in-the-world takes into account from the outset, therefore has its place. The where of its readiness-to-hand is taken into account for concern and oriented toward the rest of what is ready-to-hand. Thus the sun, whose light and warmth are in everyday use, has its distinctive places, uncovered by circumspection according to the varying usability of what it bestows: sunrise, midday, sunset, midnight. The places of this something that is ready-to-hand in varying ways and yet uniformly and constantly become emphatic “indications” of the regions that lie in them.note

The prior readiness-to-hand of the region in each case has, in an even more primordial sense than the Being of the ready-to-hand, the character of inconspicuous familiarity. It itself becomes visible only by becoming conspicuous when the ready-to-hand is uncovered circumspectively, and indeed in the deficient modes of concern. When we fail to find something in its place, the region of the place often becomes explicitly accessible as such for the first time. Space, which in circumspective Being-in-the-world is uncovered as the spatiality of the totality of equipment, belongs in each case to the beings themselves as their place. Bare space is still veiled. Space is split up into places. But this spatiality has its own unity through the worldly totality of involvements of what is spatially ready-to-hand.

If we ascribe spatiality to Dasein, then this “Being in space” must evidently be conceived in terms of the way of Being of this being. The spatiality of Dasein, which is essentially not a presence-at-hand, can mean neither anything like occurring at a position in “world-space,” nor Being-ready-to-hand at a place. Both are ways of Being of beings encountered within the world. Dasein, however, is “in” the world in the sense of concernful, familiar dealings with the beings encountered within the world. So if spatiality belongs to it in any way, this is possible only on the basis of this Being-in. But the spatiality of Being-in shows the characters of de-severance and directionality.note

By de-severance, as a way of Being of Dasein with regard to its Being-in-the-world, we do not understand anything like remoteness (nearness), let alone interval. We use the expression de-severance in an active and transitive meaning. It means a constitution of Being of Dasein, with regard to which removing something, putting it away, is only one particular, factical mode. De-severing means making the farness vanish, that is, the remoteness of something: bringing-near. Dasein is essentially de-severing; as the being that it is, it lets beings in each case be encountered in nearness. De-severance uncovers remoteness. Remoteness, like interval, is a categorial determination of beings that are not of the kind of Dasein. De-severance, by contrast, must be held fast as an existential.

De-severing is, in the first instance and for the most part, circumspective bringing-near: bringing into nearness as procuring, making ready, having to hand. But certain kinds of purely cognitive uncovering of beings also have the character of bringing-near. In Dasein there lies an essential tendency toward nearness. All the kinds of increase in speed that we are more or less compelled to go along with today push toward overcoming remoteness. With “radio,” for example, Dasein today carries out a de-severance of the “world”—one whose meaning for Dasein cannot yet be surveyed—by way of an expansion of the everyday environment.

De-severing does not necessarily involve an explicit estimate of how far something ready-to-hand is from Dasein. Above all, remoteness is never grasped as an interval. If farness is to be estimated, this is done relative to distances in which everyday Dasein keeps itself. Taken computationally, these estimates may be imprecise and fluctuating; in the everydayness of Dasein they have their own and thoroughly intelligible determinateness. We say: it is a stroll to there, a stone’s throw, “a pipeful away.” These measures express not only that they do not intend to “measure,” but also that the estimated remoteness belongs to a being toward which one goes in concernful circumspection.

Starting from a prior orientation toward “nature” and the “objectively” measured intervals between things, one is inclined to pass off such interpretation and estimation of distance as “subjective.” But this is a “subjectivity” that perhaps uncovers what is most real in the “reality” of the world—a “subjectivity” that has nothing to do with “subjective” arbitrariness or with subjectivistic “views” of a being that is “in itself” otherwise. The circumspective de-severing of Dasein’s everydayness uncovers the Being-in-itself of the “true world,” of the beings alongside which Dasein, as existing, always already is.

The primary, and even exclusive, orientation toward remotenesses as measured intervals covers over the primordial spatiality of Being-in. What is supposedly “nearest” is by no means what has the smallest interval “from us.” What is “nearest” lies in what is de-severed within an average range of reach, grasp, and sight. Because Dasein is essentially spatial in the manner of de-severance, its dealings always keep to an “environment” that it has in each case de-severed within a certain leeway. Hence we initially always hear and see past what is “nearest” in terms of interval. Seeing and hearing are distance senses not because of their range, but because Dasein, as de-severing, predominantly dwells in them. For someone who, for example,

When Dasein, in concern, brings something into its nearness, this does not mean fixing something at a spatial position that has the smallest interval from some point of the body. “Nearby” means: in the surroundings of what is circumspectively ready-to-hand in the first instance. Bringing-near is not oriented toward the I-thing encumbered with a body, but toward concernful Being-in-the-world, that is, toward what is in each case encountered first in it. The spatiality of Dasein is therefore also not determined by stating the position at which a corporeal thing is present-at-hand. It is true that we also say of Dasein that it in each case occupies a place. But this “occupying” must be distinguished in principle from Being-ready-to-hand at a place from out of a region.

As Being-in-the-world, Dasein essentially keeps itself in a de-severing. This de-severance, the farness of the ready-to-hand from Dasein itself, is something Dasein can never cross. The remoteness of something ready-to-hand from Dasein can indeed itself be found by Dasein as an interval, if it is determined in relation to a thing thought of as present-at-hand at the place that Dasein previously occupied. Dasein can subsequently traverse this between of the interval, but only in such a way that the interval itself becomes a de-severed one. So little has Dasein crossed its de-severance that it has rather taken it along and constantly takes it along, because Dasein is essentially de-severance, that is, spatial. Dasein cannot wander about within the current range of its de-severances; it can only ever change them.

As de-severing Being-in, Dasein at the same time has the character of directionality. Every bringing-near has already taken up in advance a direction into a region, from which what is de-severed approaches, so as to be found with regard to its place. Circumspective concern is directing de-severing. In this concern, that is, in Dasein’s Being-in-the-world itself, the need for “signs” is given in advance; this equipment takes over the explicit and easily handled indication of directions. It explicitly holds open the regions used circumspectively, the whither, in each case, of belonging, going, bringing, and fetching. If Dasein is, then, as directing-de-severing, it always already has its uncovered region. Directionality, like de-severance, as modes of Being of Being-in-the-world, is guided beforehand by the circumspection of concern.

From this directionality arise the fixed directions of right and left. Just as it does its de-severances, Dasein constantly takes these directions along with it. The spatialization of Dasein in its “bodiliness,” which harbors a problematic of its own not to be treated here, is marked out along these directions too. Hence what is ready-to-hand and used for the body—gloves, for example, which are to go along with the movements of the hands—must be directed toward right and left. A hand tool, by contrast, which is held in the hand and moved with it, does not go along with the specifically “handy” movement of the hand. Hence, although they are handled with the hand, there are no right-handed and left-handed hammers.

It must be noted, however, that the directionality that belongs to de-severance is founded by Being-in-the-world. Left and right are not something “subjective” for which the subject has a feeling; they are directions of directedness into a world that is always already ready-to-hand. “By the mere feeling of a difference between my two sides,” I could never find my way about in a world. The subject with the “mere feeling” of this difference is a constructed posit that disregards the true constitution of the subject: that Dasein, with this “mere feeling,” always already is in a world, and must be, in order to be able to orient itself. This becomes clear from the example with which Kant tries to clarify the phenomenon of orientation.note

Suppose I step into a familiar but dark room which, during my absence, has been rearranged so that everything that stood on the right now stands on the left. If I am to orient myself, the “mere feeling of the difference” between my two sides is of no help at all, as long as some definite object has not been grasped—one of which Kant remarks in passing, “whose position I have in my memory.” But what does that mean other than: I necessarily orient myself in and from a Being always already alongside a “known” world? The nexus of equipment of a world must already be given to Dasein beforehand. That I am always already in a world is no less constitutive for the possibility of orientation than the feeling for right and left.

As constitutive characters of Being-in, de-severance and directionality determine the spatiality of Dasein: its Being, concernfully and circumspectively, in the uncovered, innerworldly space. The foregoing explication of the spatiality of what is ready-to-hand within the world and of the spatiality of Being-in-the-world first provides the presuppositions for working out the phenomenon of the spatiality of the world and for posing the ontological problem of space.

As Being-in-the-world, Dasein has in each case already uncovered a “world.” This uncovering, founded in the worldhood of the world, was characterized as freeing beings for a totality of involvements. Freeing letting-be-involved takes place in the manner of circumspective self-referring, which is grounded in a prior understanding of significance. It has now been shown that circumspective Being-in-the-world is spatial. And only because Dasein is spatial in the manner of de-severance and directionality can what is ready-to-hand in the environment be encountered in its spatiality. The freeing of a totality of involvements is, equiprimordially, a de-severing-directing letting-be-involved in a region, that is, a freeing of the spatial belonging-somewhere of the ready-to-hand. In the significance with which Dasein, as concernful Being-in, is familiar lies the essential co-disclosedness of space.

The space thus disclosed with the worldhood of the world still has nothing of the pure multiplicity of the three dimensions. In this nearest disclosedness, space still remains hidden as the pure wherein of a metrical ordering of positions and determination of locations. That toward which space is uncovered beforehand in Dasein we have already indicated with the phenomenon of the region. We understand the region as the whither of the possible belonging of the nexus of equipment ready-to-hand, which is to be able to be encountered as directionally de-severed, that is, as placed. Belonging is determined from the significance that is constitutive for the world, and it articulates, within the possible whither, the hither and thither. The whither as such is prefigured by the whole of references anchored in a for-the-sake-of-which of concern, within which freeing letting-be-involved refers itself.

Letting innerworldly beings be encountered, which is constitutive for Being-in-the-world, is a “giving-space.” This “giving space,” which we also call making room, is freeing the ready-to-hand for its spatiality. As the uncovering pregiving of a possible totality of places determined by involvement, this making room makes possible the factical orientation in each case. Dasein, as circumspective concern with the world, can rearrange, clear away, and “make room for” things only because making room—understood as an existential—belongs to its Being-in-the-world. But neither the region uncovered beforehand in each case nor, in general, the spatiality in each case is explicitly in view. In itself it is present for circumspection in the inconspicuousness of the ready-to-hand, in concern with which circumspection is absorbed. With Being-in-the-world, space is uncovered in the first instance in this spatiality.note

Space is not in the subject, nor is the world in space. Rather, space is “in” the world insofar as Being-in-the-world, which is constitutive for Dasein, has disclosed space. Space is not found in the subject, nor does the subject regard the world “as if” it were in a space. Rather, the “subject,” ontologically well understood—Dasein—is spatial. And because Dasein is spatial in the way described, space shows itself as an a priori. This title does not mean anything like a prior belonging to a subject that is initially still worldless and throws a space out of itself. Apriority here means: the precedence of encountering space (as region) in the environmental encountering of the ready-to-hand in each case.

The spatiality of what is circumspectively encountered in the first instance can become thematic for circumspection itself, and a task for calculation and measurement—for example, in building a house or in surveying land. With this still predominantly circumspective thematization of the spatiality of the environment, space itself already comes into view in a certain way. Pure looking-at can then pursue the space that shows itself in this way, giving up what was previously the only possible access to space: circumspective calculation. The “formal intuition” of space uncovers the pure possibilities of spatial relations. Here there is a sequence of stages in laying free pure, homogeneous space, from the pure morphology of spatial shapes, to Analysis Situs [analysis of position, i.e., topology], to the purely metrical science of space. The consideration of these connections does not belong in this investigation.

The uncovering of space that is free of circumspection and now only looks at neutralizes the environmental regions into the pure dimensions. The places, and the circumspectively oriented totality of places of the equipment ready-to-hand, collapse into a multiplicity of positions for arbitrary things. With this, the spatiality of what is ready-to-hand within the world loses its character of involvement. The world loses its specific aroundness; the environment becomes the natural world. The “world” as a totality of equipment ready-to-hand is spatialized into a nexus of extended things that are now only present-at-hand. Homogeneous natural space shows itself only by way of a kind of uncovering of the beings encountered that has the character of a specific deworlding of the worldly character of the ready-to-hand.

In accordance with its Being-in-the-world, Dasein is always already given uncovered space, though unthematically. Space in itself, by contrast, initially still remains covered over with regard to the pure possibilities it contains of the mere Being-spatial of something. That space essentially shows itself in a world does not yet decide the kind of its Being. It need not have the way of Being of something that is itself spatially ready-to-hand or present-at-hand. Nor does the Being of space have the way of Being of Dasein.

The perplexity about how to interpret the Being of space, which persists to this day, is grounded not so much in an inadequate knowledge of the subject matter of space itself as in the lack of a fundamental transparency about the possibilities of Being in general and about their ontological-conceptual interpretation. What is decisive for understanding the ontological problem of space is to free the question of the Being of space from the narrowness of the concepts of Being that happen to be available and are, moreover, mostly crude. It is also to steer the problematic of the Being of space, with a view to the phenomenon itself and to the various phenomenal spatialities, in the direction of clarifying the possibilities of Being in general.

In the phenomenon of space we can find neither the only ontological determinateness of the Being of innerworldly beings nor even the one that is primary among others. Still less does space constitute the phenomenon of world. Space can be grasped only by going back to the world. Not only does space first become accessible through the deworlding of the environment. Spatiality can be uncovered at all only on the basis of world, and in such a way that space nevertheless co-constitutes the world, in keeping with the essential spatiality of Dasein itself with regard to its basic constitution of Being-in-the-world.

The analysis of the worldhood of the world constantly brought the whole phenomenon of Being-in-the-world into view. Yet not all of its constitutive moments stood out with the same phenomenal distinctness as the phenomenon of world itself. The ontological interpretation of the world by way of what is ready-to-hand within the world has been put first for a reason. Dasein in its everydayness, which remains a constant theme, not only is in a world at all but comports itself toward the world in one predominant way of Being. In the first instance and for the most part Dasein is captivated by its world. This way of Being, absorption in the world, and with it the Being-in that underlies it in general, essentially determine the phenomenon we are now to pursue with the question: who is it that is Dasein in everydayness?

The answer to the question of who this being (Dasein) is in each case was seemingly already given in the formal indication of Dasein’s basic determinations (cf. § 9). Dasein is a being that I myself am in each case; its Being is in each case mine. This determination indicates an ontological constitution, but no more than that. At the same time it contains the ontic—though crude—statement that in each case an I is this being, and not Others. The who is answered in terms of the I itself, the “subject,” the “self.” The who is what maintains itself as something identical through the change of comportments and lived experiences, and in doing so relates itself to this manifold.

The ontic obviousness of the assertion that it is I who am Dasein in each case must not mislead us into thinking that it unmistakably marks out the path for an ontological interpretation of what is thus “given.” It even remains questionable whether the ontic content of that assertion adequately renders the phenomenal content of everyday Dasein. It could be that the who of everyday Dasein is precisely not I myself in each case.

In arriving at ontic-ontological assertions, the phenomenal demonstration drawn from the way of Being of the being itself is to keep priority even over the most obvious answers, those that have always been customary, and over the formulations of problems drawn from them. If it is to do so, then the phenomenological interpretation of Dasein must be protected, with regard to the question now to be asked, against an inversion of the problematic.

But does it not go against the rules of all sound method if the approach to a problematic does not keep to the evident givens of its thematic field? And what is more indubitable than the givenness of the I? And does this givenness not instruct us to disregard everything else that is “given,” so that the I can be worked out primordially? We would disregard not only a “world” that is, but also the Being of other “I”s. Perhaps what this kind of giving gives—the simple, formal, reflective perceiving of the I—is indeed evident. This insight even opens access to an independent phenomenological problematic, which has its fundamental importance, as a framework, as a “formal phenomenology of consciousness.”

In the present context of an existential analytic of factical Dasein, the question arises whether this way of giving the I discloses Dasein in its everydayness, if it discloses it at all. Is it self-evident a priori that access to Dasein must be a simply perceiving reflection on the I of acts? What if this kind of “self-giving” on Dasein’s part led the existential analytic astray, and did so in a way grounded in the Being of Dasein itself? Perhaps, in addressing itself most immediately, Dasein always says: I am it—and in the end says so most loudly when it is “not” this being.

But the positive interpretation of Dasein given so far already rules out starting from the formal givenness of the I if we aim at a phenomenally adequate answer to the who-question. The clarification of Being-in-the-world showed that there “is” not in the first instance, and there is never given, a bare subject without world. And so, in the end, an isolated I without the Others is just as little given in the first instance. But if “the Others” are always already there with Dasein in Being-in-the-world, then even this phenomenal finding must not mislead us. We must not take the ontological structure of what is thus “given” as self-evident and in no need of investigation. The task is to make the kind of this Dasein-with in most immediate everydayness phenomenally visible and to interpret it in an ontologically appropriate way.

The ontic obviousness of the Being-in-itself of innerworldly beings leads us to the conviction that the meaning of this Being is ontologically self-evident, and it lets the phenomenon of the world be overlooked. In the same way the ontic obviousness that Dasein is mine in each case harbors a possible way of leading the corresponding ontological problematic astray. In the first instance the who of Dasein is not only a problem ontologically; it also remains covered over ontically.

But is the existential-analytical answer to the who-question then without any guideline at all? By no means. Admittedly, among the formal indications of Dasein’s constitution of Being given above (§§ 9 and 12), the guideline is not so much the one discussed so far. It is rather the indication according to which the “essence” of Dasein is grounded in its existence. If the “I” is an essential determinateness of Dasein, then it must be interpreted existentially. The who can then be answered only by phenomenally demonstrating a definite way of Being of Dasein. If Dasein is its self in each case only in existing, then the constancy of the self, just as much as its possible “non-self-constancy,” demands an existential-ontological way of posing the question as the only appropriate access to its problematic.

But if the self is to be conceived “only” as a way of the Being of this being, then that seems tantamount to making the actual “core” of Dasein evaporate. Such fears, however, feed on the wrongheaded preconception that the being in question does, at bottom, have the way of Being of something present-at-hand. They hold to it even if one keeps away from this being the massiveness of a corporeal thing that simply occurs. Yet the “substance” of the human being is not spirit as the synthesis of soul and body but existence.

The answer to the question of the who of everyday Dasein is to be obtained by analyzing that way of Being in which Dasein maintains itself in the first instance and for the most part. The investigation takes its orientation from Being-in-the-world, the basic constitution of Dasein by which every mode of its Being is co-determined. We said that the preceding explication of the world had also already brought the remaining structural moments of Being-in-the-world into view. If we were right, then that explication must also in a certain way have prepared the answer to the who-question.

The “description” of the most immediate environment, for example the work-world of the craftsman, showed that the others for whom the “work” is destined are “encountered along with” the equipment being worked on. In the way of Being of what is ready-to-hand here, that is, in its involvement, there lies an essential reference to possible wearers, for whom it is supposed to be “cut to fit the body.” Likewise, in the material used, its producer or “supplier” is encountered as the one who “serves” well or badly. The field, for example, along which we walk “outside,” shows itself as belonging to so-and-so and kept in good order by him. The book we use was bought at …, given by …, and the like.

Yet the characterization of the encounter with Others is, after all, again oriented toward one’s own Dasein in each case. Does it not also start out by singling out and isolating the “I,” so that a transition from this isolated subject to the Others must then be sought? To avoid this misunderstanding, we must note in what sense “the Others” are spoken of here. “The Others” does not mean the whole remainder of everyone besides me, from which the I stands out. The Others are rather those from whom, for the most part, one does not distinguish oneself, those among whom one is too. This Being-there-too with them does not have the ontological character of a “with”-presence-at-hand within a world.

The Others are not encountered by first grasping one’s own subject, initially present-at-hand, and distinguishing it from the other subjects that also occur. Nor are they encountered in a primary looking at oneself, in which the against-which of a distinction would first be fixed. They are encountered from out of the world, in which Dasein, concerned and circumspective, essentially dwells. Theoretically concocted “explanations” of the presence-at-hand of Others readily force themselves on us. Against them we must hold fast to the phenomenal fact we have pointed out: that Others are encountered environmentally. This most immediate and elementary worldly way in which Dasein is encountered goes so far that even one’s own Dasein becomes “findable” for itself in the first instance by looking away from “lived experiences” and the “center of acts,” or by not yet “seeing” them at all. Dasein finds “itself” in the first instance in what it pursues, uses, expects, averts—in what is ready-to-hand in the environment, with which it is in the first instance concerned.

And even when Dasein explicitly addresses itself as: I-here, this locative determination of the person must be understood in terms of Dasein’s existential spatiality. In interpreting that spatiality (§ 23) we already intimated that this I-here does not mean an eminent point of the I-thing. It understands itself as Being-in in terms of the over-there of the ready-to-hand world, where Dasein dwells as concern.

W. von Humboldt drew attention to languages that express the “I” by “here,” the “you” by “there,” the “he” by “over there,” and that thus—to put it grammatically—render the personal pronouns by adverbs of place. It is disputed which is the original meaning of expressions of place, the adverbial or the pronominal. The dispute loses its footing once we note that the adverbs of place relate to the I qua Dasein. The “here,” “over there,” and “there” are not primarily pure determinations of the location of innerworldly beings present-at-hand at positions in space; they are characteristics of Dasein’s primordial spatiality. The supposed adverbs of place are determinations of Dasein; their meaning is primarily existential and not categorial.note

Dasein understands itself in the first instance and for the most part in terms of its world, and the Dasein-with of Others is often encountered from out of what is ready-to-hand within the world. But even when Others become, as it were, thematic in their Dasein, they are not encountered as present-at-hand person-things. We meet them “at work,” that is, primarily in their Being-in-the-world. Even when we see the Other “just standing around,” the Other is never grasped as a present-at-hand human-thing. Rather, “standing around” is an existential mode of Being: an unconcerned, uncircumspective lingering alongside everything and nothing. The Other is encountered in his Dasein-with in the world.

But surely the expression “Dasein” shows clearly that this being “in the first instance” is unrelated to Others, and that it can of course afterward also be “with” others. It must not be overlooked, however, that we use the term Dasein-with to designate that Being in terms of which the Others, who are, are freed within the world. This Dasein-with of the Others is disclosed within the world for a Dasein, and so also for those who are there-with, only because Dasein is essentially, in itself, Being-with. The phenomenological assertion “Dasein is essentially Being-with” has an existential-ontological meaning. It does not mean to establish ontically that I am factically not present-at-hand alone, and that others of my kind occur as well.

Suppose Dasein-with remains existentially constitutive for Being-in-the-world. Then it must be interpreted in terms of the phenomenon of care, as which the Being of Dasein in general is determined (cf. Chapter 6 of this division). The same holds for circumspective dealings with what is ready-to-hand within the world, which we characterized by anticipation as concern. The character of Being of concern cannot belong to Being-with, even though this way of Being, like concern, is a Being toward beings encountered within the world. But the being toward which Dasein comports itself as Being-with does not have the way of Being of ready-to-hand equipment; it is itself Dasein. This being is not concerned with; it falls within solicitude.note

Even “concern” with food and clothing, and the nursing of the sick body, is solicitude. But we understand this expression, in keeping with our use of concern, as a term for an existential. “Solicitude” as a factical social institution, for example, is grounded in Dasein’s constitution of Being as Being-with. Its factical urgency is motivated by the fact that Dasein maintains itself in the first instance and for the most part in the deficient modes of solicitude. Being-for-, Being-against-, and Being-without-one-another, passing one another by, not-mattering-to-one-another: these are possible ways of solicitude. And it is precisely the modes last named, those of deficiency and indifference, that characterize everyday and average Being-with-one-another. These modes of Being again show the character of inconspicuousness and obviousness, which belongs to the everyday innerworldly Dasein-with of Others just as much as to the readiness-to-hand of the equipment concerned with daily.

With regard to its positive modes, solicitude has two extreme possibilities. It can, as it were, take “care” away from the Other and put itself in his place in concern: it can leap in for him. This solicitude takes over for the Other what is to be concerned with. The Other is thereby thrown out of his place. He steps back, so as afterward to take over what is concerned with as something finished and at his disposal, or else to disburden himself of it entirely. In such solicitude the Other can become the dependent and the dominated, even if this domination is a tacit one and remains hidden from the one dominated. This solicitude that leaps in and takes away “care” determines Being-with-one-another to a large extent, and for the most part it pertains to concern with the ready-to-hand.

Opposed to it there is the possibility of a solicitude that does not so much leap in for the Other as leap ahead of him in his existentiell potentiality-for-Being. It does so not in order to take “care” away from him, but in order, for the first time, to give it back to him properly as such. This solicitude essentially pertains to owned care—that is, to the existence of the Other—and not to a what with which he is concerned. It helps the Other to become transparent to himself in his care and to become free for it.

Solicitude proves to be a constitution of Dasein’s Being which, in its various possibilities, is bound up both with Dasein’s Being toward the world it is concerned with and with its owned Being toward itself. Being-with-one-another is grounded in the first instance, and often exclusively, in what is concerned with in common in such Being. A Being-with-one-another that arises from one’s doing the same thing mostly not only keeps within outward limits but enters the mode of distance and reserve. The Being-with-one-another of those employed in the same affair often feeds only on mistrust. Conversely, joint commitment to the same cause is determined by Dasein that has in each case been expressly taken hold of. Only this owned bond makes possible the right kind of objectivity, which frees the other in his freedom for himself.

Everyday Being-with-one-another maintains itself between the two extremes of positive solicitude—the one that leaps in and dominates and the one that leaps ahead and liberates. It brings forth manifold mixed forms, whose description and classification lie outside the limits of this investigation.

Just as circumspection belongs to concern as a way of uncovering the ready-to-hand, so solicitude is guided by considerateness and forbearance. Along with solicitude, both can run through the corresponding deficient and indifferent modes, down to inconsiderateness and the looking-past that guides indifference.note

The world frees not only the ready-to-hand as beings encountered within the world, but also Dasein, the Others in their Dasein-with. But in keeping with its ownmost meaning of Being, this being freed in the environment is Being-in in the same world in which, as encountered for others, it is there with. Worldhood was interpreted (§ 18) as the referential whole of significance. In its prior, understanding familiarity with significance, Dasein lets the ready-to-hand be encountered as something uncovered in its involvement. The referential nexus of significance is anchored in Dasein’s Being toward its ownmost Being. With this Being there can essentially be no involvement; it is rather the Being for the sake of which Dasein itself is as it is.

According to the analysis just carried out, however, Being-with Others belongs to the Being of Dasein, the Being that matters to Dasein in its very Being. As Being-with, therefore, Dasein essentially “is” for the sake of Others. This must be understood as an existential assertion about essence. Even when a particular factical Dasein does not turn to Others, believes it has no need of them, or else misses them, it is in the mode of Being-with. In Being-with as the existential for-the-sake-of Others, these Others are already disclosed in their Dasein. This disclosedness of Others, constituted beforehand with Being-with, accordingly also helps make up significance, that is, worldhood, which is anchored in the existential for-the-sake-of-which.

The disclosedness of the Dasein-with of Others that belongs to Being-with means this: because Dasein’s Being is Being-with, its understanding of Being already contains the understanding of Others. Like understanding in general, this understanding is not an acquaintance that has grown out of knowing. It is a primordially existential way of Being that first makes knowing and acquaintance possible at all. Knowing oneself is grounded in primordially understanding Being-with. In the first instance, it moves in keeping with the most immediate way of Being of Being-in-the-world as Being-with. It moves in an understanding acquaintance with what Dasein, along with the Others, circumspectively finds in the environment and is concerned with. Solicitous concern is understood from out of what is concerned with and along with the understanding of it. Thus the Other is in the first instance disclosed in concernful solicitude.

But in the first instance and for the most part solicitude dwells in the deficient or at least indifferent modes—in the indifference of passing one another by. Because of this, the most immediate and essential knowing of oneself requires getting to know oneself. And when knowing oneself even loses itself in the ways of reserve, of hiding oneself and of disguising oneself, Being-with-one-another needs special paths in order to come close to the Others, or to get “behind” them.

But opening oneself up or closing oneself off is grounded in the particular way of Being of Being-with-one-another; indeed, it is nothing other than this way of Being itself. In the same way, the explicit solicitous disclosure of the Other in each case arises only from primary Being-with him. Such a disclosure of the Other is thematic, but not theoretical-psychological. It now easily becomes the phenomenon that first comes into view for the theoretical problematic of understanding “the psychical life of others.” What thus, phenomenally, represents “in the first instance” a way of Being-with-one-another that understands is, however, at the same time taken as what “in the beginning” and primordially makes possible and constitutes Being toward Others at all. This phenomenon, not very felicitously called “empathy,” is then supposed, ontologically, to build the bridge, as it were, from one’s own subject, initially given alone, to the other subject, initially closed off altogether.note

Being toward Others is, to be sure, ontologically different from Being toward present-at-hand things. The “other” being itself has the way of Being of Dasein. In Being with and toward Others there thus lies a relationship of Being from Dasein to Dasein. But this relationship, one would like to say, is surely already constitutive for one’s own Dasein in each case, which has an understanding of Being of itself and so comports itself toward Dasein. The relationship of Being toward Others then becomes a projection of one’s own Being toward oneself “into another.” The Other is a duplicate of the self.

But it is easy to see that this seemingly obvious consideration rests on weak ground. The presupposition this argument relies on—that Dasein’s Being toward itself is Being toward an Other—does not hold. As long as this presupposition has not evidently been shown to be legitimate, it remains puzzling how it is supposed to disclose Dasein’s relationship to itself to the Other as Other.

Being toward Others is not only an independent, irreducible relation of Being; as Being-with, it already is, together with the Being of Dasein. Admittedly, it cannot be disputed that the mutual knowing of one another that is alive on the basis of Being-with often depends on how far one’s own Dasein has understood itself in each case. But that means only: how far it has not made its essential Being-with others opaque to itself and disguised it. This is possible only if Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is always already with Others. “Empathy” does not first constitute Being-with. It is possible only on the basis of Being-with, and it is motivated in its unavoidability by the predominant deficient modes of Being-with.

That “empathy” is not a primordial existential phenomenon, any more than knowing in general is, does not mean, however, that there is no problem regarding it. Its special hermeneutics will have to show how Dasein’s own various possibilities of Being mislead and obstruct Being-with-one-another and its knowing of oneself, so that genuine “understanding” is suppressed and Dasein takes refuge in surrogates. It will also have to show what positive existential condition a right understanding of others presupposes for its possibility. The analysis has shown: Being-with is an existential constituent of Being-in-the-world. Dasein-with proves to be a way of Being in its own right of beings encountered within the world. Insofar as Dasein is at all, it has the way of Being of Being-with-one-another. This cannot be conceived as the summative result of the occurrence of several “subjects.”

One’s own Dasein, like the Dasein-with of Others, is encountered in the first instance and for the most part from out of the with-world concerned with in the environment. In being absorbed in the world concerned with—and that means, at the same time, in Being-with toward the Others—Dasein is not itself. Who is it, then, that has taken over Being as everyday Being-with-one-another?

The ontologically relevant result of the preceding analysis of Being-with lies in an insight: the “subject character” of one’s own Dasein and of the Others is determined existentially, that is, in terms of certain ways to be. In what is concerned with in the environment, the Others are encountered as what they are; they are what they pursue.

In concern with what one has taken hold of with, for, and against the Others, there constantly rests the care about a difference from the Others. It may be only a matter of evening out the difference from them. Or one’s own Dasein, lagging behind the Others, may want to catch up with them. Or Dasein, having priority over the Others, may be intent on keeping them down. Being-with-one-another is disquieted—hidden from itself—by the care about this distance. Expressed existentially, it has the character of distantiality. The more inconspicuous this way of Being is to everyday Dasein itself, the more stubbornly and primordially it takes effect.note

But this distantiality, which belongs to Being-with, implies that Dasein, as everyday Being-with-one-another, stands in subjection to the Others. It is not Dasein itself that is; the Others have taken its Being away from it. The Others dispose, as they please, of Dasein’s everyday possibilities of Being. These Others, moreover, are not definite Others. On the contrary, any Other can stand in for them. What is decisive is only the inconspicuous domination by the Others, which Dasein as Being-with has already taken over unawares. One belongs to the Others oneself and consolidates their power. “The Others,” as one calls them in order to cover up one’s own essential belonging to them, are those who in the first instance and for the most part “are there” in everyday Being-with-one-another. The who is not this one and not that one, not oneself and not some and not the sum of all.

It was shown earlier how the public “environment” is always already ready-to-hand and concerned with in the most immediate environment. In using public transportation, in making use of news services (the newspaper), every Other is like the next. This Being-with-one-another dissolves one’s own Dasein completely into the way of Being of “the Others,” in such a way, indeed, that the Others vanish still further in their distinctiveness and explicitness. In this inconspicuousness and unascertainability the they unfolds its real dictatorship. We take pleasure and enjoy ourselves as they take pleasure; we read, see, and judge literature and art as they see and judge; but we also withdraw from “the crowd” as they withdraw; we find “shocking” what they find shocking.

The they itself has ways of its own to be. The tendency of Being-with that we called distantiality is grounded in the fact that Being-with-one-another as such concerns itself with averageness. Averageness is an existential character of the they. In its Being, averageness is essentially what matters to the they. That is why the they factically maintains itself in the averageness of what is proper, of what one accepts as valid and what not, of what one grants success and what one denies it. This averageness, in marking out in advance what can and may be ventured, keeps watch over every exception that thrusts itself forward. Every priority is silently kept down. Everything primordial is smoothed over overnight as long familiar. Everything won by struggle becomes easy to handle. Every secret loses its force.

Distantiality, averageness, and leveling down, as modes of Being of the they, constitute what we know as “publicness.” Publicness in the first instance regulates every interpretation of the world and of Dasein, and it is right in everything. It is so not on the basis of an eminent and primary relationship of Being to “things,” and not because it has at its disposal a transparency of Dasein that it has explicitly appropriated. It is so on the basis of not going into “the matters,” because it is insensitive to all differences of level and of genuineness. Publicness obscures everything and passes off what has thus been covered over as what is familiar and accessible to everyone.

The they is present everywhere, but in such a way that it has also always already slipped away wherever Dasein presses for a decision. Because the they, however, provides every judgment and decision in advance, it takes responsibility away from Dasein in each case. The they can, as it were, afford to have “one” constantly appeal to it. It can most easily answer for everything, because it is no one who needs to vouch for anything. It always “was” the they, and yet it can be said that it was “no one.” In the everydayness of Dasein, most things are brought about by that of which we must say: it was no one.

In this way the they disburdens Dasein in each case in its everydayness. Not only that: with this disburdening of Being, the they accommodates Dasein, insofar as Dasein has a tendency to take things lightly and make them easy. And because the they constantly accommodates Dasein in each case with this disburdening of Being, it retains and consolidates its stubborn domination.

Everyone is the other, and no one is himself. The they, with which the question of the who of everyday Dasein is answered, is the nobody to whom every Dasein has always already surrendered itself in Being-among-one-another.

The characters of Being of everyday Being-among-one-another that we have set out are distantiality, averageness, leveling down, publicness, disburdening of Being, and accommodation. In them lies Dasein’s most immediate “constancy.” This constancy concerns not the continuing presence-at-hand of something but the way of Being of Dasein as Being-with. In being in the modes named, the self of one’s own Dasein and the self of the Other have not yet found themselves, or have lost themselves. One is in the manner of non-self-constancy and unownness. This way of Being does not signify any lessening of Dasein’s facticity, any more than the they, as the nobody, is a nothing. On the contrary, in this way of Being Dasein is an ens realissimum [a most real being], if “reality” is understood as Being of the character of Dasein.

To be sure, the they is as little present-at-hand as Dasein in general. The more openly the they carries on, the more elusive and hidden it is—but also the less it is nothing. To unprejudiced ontic-ontological “seeing,” it reveals itself as the “most real subject” of everydayness. And if it is not accessible in the way a present-at-hand stone is, that does not decide in the least about its way of Being. We may not decree prematurely that this they is “really” nothing. Nor may we pay homage to the opinion that the phenomenon has been ontologically interpreted if we “explain” it, say, as the result, joined together after the fact, of several subjects being present-at-hand together. Rather, conversely, the working out of the concepts of Being must be guided by these undeniable phenomena.

Nor is the they something like a “universal subject” hovering over several subjects. One can arrive at this conception only if the Being of “subjects” is not understood in a way appropriate to Dasein, and if subjects are posited as factually present-at-hand cases of a genus that occurs. Given this approach, the only possibility left ontologically is to understand everything that is not a case in the sense of species and genus. The they is not the genus of Dasein in each case, nor can it be found in this being as a lasting property. That traditional logic also fails in the face of these phenomena cannot be surprising, if we consider that it has its foundation in an ontology of the present-at-hand—and a crude one at that.

The they is an existential and belongs, as a primordial phenomenon, to the positive constitution of Dasein. It in turn has various possibilities of becoming concrete in a way appropriate to Dasein. The insistence and explicitness of its domination can change historically.

The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self, which we distinguish from the owned self—that is, from the self that has been expressly taken hold of. As they-self, Dasein in each case is dispersed into the they and must first find itself. This dispersal characterizes the “subject” of the way of Being we know as concerned absorption in the world encountered most immediately. If Dasein is familiar to itself as they-self, this means at the same time that the they marks out in advance the most immediate interpretation of the world and of Being-in-the-world. The they itself, for the sake of which Dasein is in an everyday way, articulates the referential nexus of significance. Dasein’s world frees the beings encountered for a totality of involvements that is familiar to the they, and within the limits fixed by the averageness of the they.

With the interpretation of Being-with and of Being-a-self in the they, the question of the who of the everydayness of Being-with-one-another has been answered. At the same time these considerations have yielded a concrete understanding of Dasein’s basic constitution. Being-in-the-world has become visible in its everydayness and averageness.

Everyday Dasein draws the pre-ontological interpretation of its Being from the most immediate way of Being of the they. Ontological interpretation initially follows this tendency of interpretation: it understands Dasein in terms of the world and comes across it as an innerworldly being. Not only that: the “most immediate” ontology of Dasein also lets the “world” supply it with the meaning of Being in terms of which these “subjects” that are are understood. But because in this absorption in the world the phenomenon of world itself is passed over, its place is taken by what is present-at-hand within the world, by things. The Being of the being that is there-with is conceived as presence-at-hand. Thus the demonstration of the positive phenomenon of Being-in-the-world in its most immediate everydayness makes possible an insight into the root of the ontological interpretation’s failure to grasp this constitution of Being.

If the Being of everyday Being-with-one-another, which ontologically seems to approach pure presence-at-hand, is already fundamentally different from it, then the Being of the owned self can be conceived as presence-at-hand even less. Owned Being-a-self does not rest on an exceptional condition of the subject, detached from the they. It is an existentiell modification of the they as an essential existential.

But then the sameness of the self that exists in an owned way is separated ontologically by a chasm from the identity of the I that persists throughout the manifold of lived experiences.

In its preparatory stage the existential analytic of Dasein has as its guiding theme the basic constitution of this being, Being-in-the-world. Its next goal is to bring out phenomenally the unified, primordial structure of Dasein’s Being, from which its possibilities and ways “to be” are ontologically determined. Up to now, the phenomenal characterization of Being-in-the-world has been directed toward the world as a structural moment and toward answering the question of the who of this being in its everydayness. But already when we first marked out the tasks of a preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein, an orientation about Being-in as such was sent on ahead and demonstrated in the concrete mode of knowing the world.

Taking up this supporting structural moment in advance arose from the intention of keeping the analysis of the individual moments encircled, from the outset, by a sustained preview of the structural whole, and of preventing any disruption and splintering of the unified phenomenon. Now the task is to steer the interpretation back to the phenomenon of Being-in, while preserving what was gained in the concrete analysis of world and who. A more penetrating consideration of this phenomenon should, however, not only force the structural wholeness of Being-in-the-world once again, and more securely, before the phenomenological gaze. It should also pave the way for grasping the primordial Being of Dasein itself: care.

But what more can be pointed out in Being-in-the-world, beyond the essential relations of Being alongside the world (concern), Being-with (solicitude), and Being-a-self (who)? At most there remains the possibility of broadening the analysis by a comparative characterization of the variations of concern and its circumspection, of solicitude and its considerateness, and of setting Dasein off from beings not of the kind of Dasein by a sharper explication of the Being of all possible innerworldly beings. Without question there are unfinished tasks in this direction. What has been set out so far needs supplementing in many ways with a view to a self-contained working-out of the existential a priori of philosophical anthropology. But that is not what the present investigation aims at.

In what direction must we look for the phenomenal characterization of Being-in as such? We get the answer by recalling what was entrusted to the phenomenologically retaining gaze when the phenomenon was indicated: Being-in as distinct from the present-at-hand insideness of something present-at-hand “in” something else; Being-in not as a property of a present-at-hand subject, effected or even merely triggered by the presence-at-hand of a “world”; Being-in, rather, as the essential way of Being of this being itself. But then what else presents itself with this phenomenon than the present-at-hand commercium [interchange] between a present-at-hand subject and a present-at-hand object? This interpretation would come closer to the phenomenal content if it said: Dasein is the Being of this “between.” Even so, orientation by the “between” would remain misleading.

The being that is essentially constituted by Being-in-the-world is itself in each case its “there.” In the familiar meaning of the word, the “there” points to “here” and “over there.” The “here” of an “I-here” is always understood in terms of a ready-to-hand “over there,” in the sense of a de-severing, directing, concernful Being toward it. The existential spatiality of Dasein, which in this way determines its “location,” is itself grounded in Being-in-the-world. The over there is the determinateness of something encountered within the world. “Here” and “over there” are possible only in a “there,” that is, only if there is a being which, as the Being of the “there,” has disclosed spatiality. This being bears in its ownmost Being the character of not being closed off. The expression “there” means this essential disclosedness.

The ontically figurative talk of the lumen naturale [natural light] in human beings means nothing other than the existential-ontological structure of this being: that it is in such a way as to be its “there.” To say that it is “illuminated” means: it is cleared in itself as Being-in-the-world—not by another being, but in such a way that it is itself the clearing. Only for a being existentially cleared in this way does what is present-at-hand become accessible in the light, or hidden in the dark. Dasein brings its “there” along with it from the very start. Lacking it, it not only factically is not, but is not at all the being with this essence. Dasein is its disclosedness.note

The constitution of this Being is to be set out. But insofar as the essence of this being is existence, the existential proposition “Dasein is its disclosedness” means at the same time: the Being that matters to this being in its Being is to be its “there.” Besides characterizing the primary constitution of the Being of disclosedness, the course of the analysis requires an interpretation of the way of Being in which this being is its “there” in an everyday way.

The chapter that undertakes the explication of Being-in as such, that is, of the Being of the “there,” falls into two parts: A. The existential constitution of the “there.” B. The everyday Being of the “there” and the falling of Dasein.

We see the two equiprimordial constitutive ways of being the “there” in attunement and in understanding. In each case their analysis receives the necessary phenomenal confirmation through the interpretation of a concrete mode that is important for the problematic to follow. Attunement and understanding are equiprimordially determined by discourse.

Under A (the existential constitution of the “there”) we shall accordingly treat: Da-sein as attunement (§ 29), fear as a mode of attunement (§ 30), Da-sein as understanding (§ 31), understanding and interpretation (§ 32), assertion as a derivative mode of interpretation (§ 33), Da-sein, discourse, and language (§ 34).

The analysis of the characters of Being of Da-sein is an existential one. This means: the characters are not properties of something present-at-hand, but essentially existential ways to be. Their way of Being in everydayness must therefore be set out.

Under B (the everyday Being of the “there” and the falling of Dasein), the following are analyzed as existential modes of the everyday Being of the “there,” corresponding to the constitutive phenomenon of discourse, to the sight that lies in understanding, and to the interpretation (construal) that belongs to understanding: idle talk (§ 35), curiosity (§ 36), ambiguity (§ 37). In these phenomena a basic way of the Being of the “there” becomes visible, which we interpret as falling—a “falling” that shows a kind of movedness existentially its own (§ 38).

What we indicate ontologically by the term attunement is ontically the most familiar and most everyday thing there is: mood, Being-attuned. Prior to any psychology of moods—a field that, moreover, still lies completely fallow—this phenomenon must be seen as a fundamental existential and outlined in its structure.note

The undisturbed equanimity and the inhibited ill humor of everyday concern, the slipping over from the one into the other and back, the sliding off into bad moods, are ontologically not nothing, even if these phenomena go unnoticed as supposedly the most indifferent and fleeting things in Dasein. That moods can be spoiled and can change over means only that Dasein is always already attuned. The often persistent, even, and pallid lack of mood, which must not be confused with a bad mood, is so far from being nothing that it is precisely in it that Dasein becomes weary of itself. Being has become manifest as a burden. Why, one does not know.

In attunedness Dasein is always already disclosed, in the manner of mood, as the being to which Dasein has been delivered over in its Being, as the Being which, existing, it has to be. Disclosed does not mean known as such. And precisely in the most indifferent and harmless everydayness, the Being of Dasein can break forth as the naked “that it is and has to be.” The pure “that it is” shows itself; the where-from and the where-to remain in the dark. That Dasein, just as much in its everyday way, does not “give in” to such moods—that is, does not follow up their disclosing and does not let itself be brought before what is disclosed—is no proof against the phenomenal fact of the disclosedness, in the manner of mood, of the Being of the “there” in its “that.” It is evidence for it.

A being with the character of Dasein is its “there” in such a way that, whether explicitly or not, it finds itself in its thrownness. In attunement Dasein is always already brought before itself. It has always already found itself—not as a perceiving finding-itself-before-itself, but as an attuned finding-itself. As a being delivered over to its Being, it also remains delivered over to the fact that it must always already have found itself—found in a finding that springs not so much from a direct seeking as from a fleeing. Mood does not disclose by looking at thrownness, but as a turning toward and turning away. For the most part mood does not turn toward the burdensome character of Dasein that is manifest in it, least of all as Being-relieved in an elated mood.

One would completely misconstrue, phenomenally, what mood discloses and how it discloses, if one sought to set alongside what is disclosed that which the attuned Dasein “at the same time” is acquainted with, knows, and believes. Even if Dasein is “sure” of its “where-to” in faith, or thinks it knows about its where-from through rational enlightenment, all this counts for nothing against the phenomenal fact that mood brings Dasein before the “that” of its “there,” which, as such, stares it in the face in inexorable enigmaticalness. Existential-ontologically there is not the slightest justification for disparaging the “evidence” of attunement by measuring it against the apodictic certainty of a theoretical cognition of what is purely present-at-hand. But no less a falsification of the phenomena is the one that shunts them off into the refuge of the irrational.

That a Dasein factically can, should, and must master its mood with knowledge and will may signify, in certain possibilities of existing, a priority of willing and cognition. Only this must not mislead us into denying, ontologically, that mood is a primordial way of Being of Dasein, in which it is disclosed to itself prior to all cognition and willing and beyond the range of their disclosing. And moreover, we never master a mood free of mood, but always from a counter-mood. As the first essential ontological character of attunement, we obtain: Attunement discloses Dasein in its thrownness, and in the first instance and for the most part in the manner of an evasive turning away.

Already here it becomes visible that attunement is far removed from anything like finding a psychical state. So little does it have the character of a grasping that first turns around and back that all immanent reflection can find “lived experiences” only because the “there” is already disclosed in attunement. “Mere mood” discloses the “there” more primordially; but it also closes it off correspondingly more stubbornly than any not-perceiving.

This is shown by bad mood. In it Dasein becomes blind to itself, the environment it is concerned with veils itself, the circumspection of concern is misled. Attunement is so little reflected that it assails Dasein precisely in its unreflecting devotion and surrender to the “world” it is concerned with. Mood assails us. It comes neither from “outside” nor from “inside,” but rises, as a way of Being-in-the-world, out of Being-in-the-world itself. With this, however, we move beyond a negative demarcation of attunement from the reflective grasping of the “inner” to a positive insight into its disclosive character. Mood has always already disclosed Being-in-the-world as a whole, and makes a directing-oneself-toward…

Besides these two essential determinations of attunement that have been explicated—the disclosing of thrownness and the disclosing, in each case, of Being-in-the-world as a whole—a third must be noted, which contributes above all to a more penetrating understanding of the worldhood of the world. We said earlier: the world, already disclosed beforehand, lets what is innerworldly be encountered. This prior disclosedness of the world, which belongs to Being-in, is co-constituted by attunement. Letting-be-encountered is primarily circumspective, not merely a sensing or a staring. Letting-be-encountered in circumspective concern has—as we can now see more sharply from attunement—the character of being affected.

And only because the “senses” belong ontologically to a being that has the way of Being of attuned Being-in-the-world can they be “stirred” and “have a sense for” something, so that what stirs them shows itself in affection. Something like affection would not come about even under the strongest pressure and resistance; resistance would essentially never be uncovered, if attuned Being-in-the-world had not already made itself dependent on a susceptibility, prefigured by moods, to being touched by innerworldly beings. Existentially, attunement implies a disclosive dependence on world, out of which what touches us can be encountered. Indeed, ontologically we must, as a matter of principle, leave the primary uncovering of the world to “mere mood.” A pure intuition, even if it were to penetrate into the innermost veins of the Being of something present-at-hand, could never uncover anything like the threatening.

That everyday circumspection, on the basis of the primarily disclosive attunement, makes mistakes and is to a large extent subject to deception is, measured against the idea of an absolute knowledge of the “world,” a μὴ ὄν [non-being]. But such ontologically unjustified evaluations completely misconstrue the existential positivity of deceivability. Precisely in the unsteady seeing of the “world,” flickering with mood, does what is ready-to-hand show itself in its specific worldhood, which is never the same from one day to the next. Theoretical looking-at has always already dimmed the world down to the uniformity of what is purely present-at-hand—though within this uniformity, admittedly, lies enclosed a new wealth of what can be uncovered in pure determining.

Within the problematic of this investigation, the various modes of attunement and the interconnections of their founding cannot be interpreted. These phenomena have long been known ontically under the heading of the affects and feelings, and have always been considered in philosophy. It is no accident that the first interpretation of the affects to be handed down and carried out systematically is not treated within the framework of “psychology.” Aristotle investigates the πάθη [affects] in the second book of his Rhetoric. Contrary to the traditional orientation of the concept of rhetoric toward something like a “school subject,” this work must be understood as the first systematic hermeneutic of the everydayness of Being-with-one-another. Publicness, as the way of Being of the they (cf. § 27), not only has its attunedness in general; it needs mood and “makes” it for itself.

The further development of the interpretation of the affects in the Stoa, and likewise its handing down to the modern age by patristic and scholastic theology, are well known. What goes unnoticed is that the basic ontological interpretation of the affective in general has hardly been able to take a single step forward worth mentioning since Aristotle. On the contrary: thematically, the affects and feelings come under the psychical phenomena, of which they usually function as the third class, alongside representing and willing. They sink to the level of accompanying phenomena.

It is to the credit of phenomenological research that it has again created a freer view of these phenomena. Not only that: Scheler, taking up impulses above all from Augustine and Pascal, has directed the problematic toward the interconnections of founding between the “representing” acts and the acts that “take an interest.” Admittedly, here too the existential-ontological foundations of the phenomenon of the act in general still remain in the dark.

Attunement not only discloses Dasein in its thrownness and in its dependence on the world always already disclosed with its Being. It is itself the existential way of Being in which Dasein constantly surrenders itself to the “world” and lets itself be touched by it in such a way that, in a certain manner, it evades itself. The existential constitution of this evasion will become clear in the phenomenon of falling.

Attunement is a basic existential way in which Dasein is its “there.” It not only characterizes Dasein ontologically but, because of its disclosing, is at the same time of fundamental methodological significance for the existential analytic. Like every ontological interpretation in general, the analytic can only, as it were, sound out beings already disclosed beforehand with regard to their Being. And it will keep to Dasein’s distinctive and most far-reaching possibilities of disclosure, in order to receive from them the elucidation of this being. Phenomenological interpretation must give Dasein itself the possibility of primordial disclosing and, as it were, let it interpret itself. It only goes along with this disclosing, in order to raise the phenomenal content of what is disclosed existentially into a concept.

With a view to the interpretation, to follow later, of one such existential-ontologically significant basic attunement of Dasein, anxiety (cf. § 40), the phenomenon of attunement is to be demonstrated still more concretely in the determinate mode of fear.

The phenomenon of fear can be considered in three respects: we shall analyze the in-the-face-of-which of fear, fearing, and the about-which of fear. These possible and mutually belonging perspectives are not accidental. With them the structure of attunement in general comes to light. The analysis is completed by pointing to the possible modifications of fear, each of which concerns different structural moments in it.

The in-the-face-of-which of fear, the “fearsome,” is in each case something encountered within the world, with the way of Being of the ready-to-hand, of the present-at-hand, or of Dasein-with. We are not to give an ontic report on the beings that can often and for the most part be “fearsome”; rather, the fearsome is to be determined phenomenally in its fearsomeness. What belongs to the fearsome as such, as encountered in fearing? That in the face of which we fear has the character of threateningness. Several things belong to this: 1. What is encountered has detrimentality as its kind of involvement. It shows itself within a nexus of involvements. 2. This detrimentality aims at a determinate range of what can be affected by it. As thus determinate, it itself comes from a determinate region. 3. The region itself, and what comes from it, is known as something about which there is something not quite “right.”

Fearing itself is the freeing, which lets itself be touched, of the threatening as thus characterized. It is not that a future evil (malum futurum) is first established and then feared. But neither does fearing first ascertain what is approaching; rather, it uncovers it beforehand in its fearsomeness. And in fearing, fear can then, looking explicitly, “make clear” to itself what is fearsome. Circumspection sees the fearsome because it is in the attunement of fear. Fearing as a slumbering possibility of attuned Being-in-the-world—“fearfulness”—has already disclosed the world in such a way that something like the fearsome can draw near from it. The being-able-to-draw-near is itself freed by the essential existential spatiality of Being-in-the-world.

That about which fear fears is the very being that is afraid: Dasein. Only a being to which, in its Being, this very Being matters can be afraid. Fearing discloses this being in its endangerment, in its being left to itself. Fear always unveils Dasein in the Being of its “there,” even if with varying explicitness. If we fear about our house and home, this is no counterinstance to the above determination of the about-which of fear. For Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is in each case a concernful Being alongside. For the most part and in the first instance, Dasein is in terms of what it is concerned with. The endangering of this is a threat to Being alongside. Fear discloses Dasein predominantly in a privative way. It bewilders us and makes us “lose our heads.”

Fearing about, as being afraid in the face of, always—whether privatively or positively—equiprimordially discloses innerworldly beings in their threateningness and Being-in with regard to its being threatened. Fear is a mode of attunement.

But fearing about can also concern others, and we then speak of fearing for them. This fearing for… does not take the fear away from the Other. That is ruled out if only because the Other for whom we fear need not be afraid at all. We fear for the Other most of all precisely when the Other is not afraid and rushes recklessly toward what threatens. Fearing for… is a way of co-attunement with Others, but not necessarily a being-afraid-along-with or even a fearing-with-one-another. One can fear about… without being afraid. Yet, looked at precisely, fearing about… is still a being afraid oneself. What is “feared for” here is Being-with the Other, who could be torn away from one. The fearsome does not aim directly at the one who fears along with the Other.

The constitutive moments of the full phenomenon of fear can vary. Different possibilities of Being of fearing arise accordingly. To the structure of encounter of the threatening belongs drawing close in nearness. Insofar as something threatening, in its “not yet, but at any moment,” suddenly strikes into concernful Being-in-the-world, fear becomes alarm. In the threatening we must therefore distinguish: the closest drawing-close of what threatens, and the way the drawing-close itself is encountered, its suddenness. That in the face of which we are alarmed is in the first instance something known and familiar.

Attunement is one of the existential structures in which the Being of the “there” holds itself. Equiprimordially with it, this Being is constituted by understanding. Attunement in each case has its understanding, even if only by keeping it down. Understanding is always attuned. If we interpret understanding as a fundamental existential, this indicates that the phenomenon is conceived as a basic mode of Dasein’s Being. By contrast, “understanding” in the sense of one possible kind of cognition among others, distinguished, say, from “explaining,” must, together with explaining, be interpreted as an existential derivative of the primary understanding, which co-constitutes the Being of the “there” in general.

Our investigation so far has in fact already come upon this primordial understanding, without explicitly letting it enter the theme. To say that Dasein, existing, is its “there” means, first: world is “there”; its Da-sein is Being-in. And Being-in is likewise “there,” namely as that for the sake of which Dasein is. In the for-the-sake-of-which, existing Being-in-the-world as such is disclosed, and this disclosedness was called understanding. In understanding the for-the-sake-of-which, the significance grounded in it is co-disclosed. The disclosedness of understanding, as that of the for-the-sake-of-which and of significance, equiprimordially concerns the full Being-in-the-world. Significance is that upon which world as such is disclosed. To say that the for-the-sake-of-which and significance are disclosed in Dasein means: Dasein is a being to which, as Being-in-the-world, it itself matters.

In ontic talk we sometimes use the expression “to understand something” in the sense of “being able to manage a matter,” “being up to it,” “being able to do something.” What one is able to do in understanding as an existential is not a what, but Being as existing. Existentially, understanding contains Dasein’s way of Being as potentiality-for-Being. Dasein is not something present-at-hand that also possesses, as an extra, the ability to do something; it is primarily Being-possible. Dasein is in each case what it can be, and how it is its possibility. The essential Being-possible of Dasein concerns the ways we have characterized—concern with the “world,” solicitude for others—and, in all this and always already, the potentiality-for-Being toward itself, for its own sake.note

Possibility as an existential does not mean a free-floating potentiality-for-Being in the sense of the “indifference of arbitrary choice” (libertas indifferentiae). As essentially attuned, Dasein has always already got itself into determinate possibilities. As the potentiality-for-Being that it is, it has let some of them go by; it constantly waives the possibilities of its Being, seizes them, and grasps wrongly. But this means: Dasein is Being-possible delivered over to itself, thrown possibility through and through. Dasein is the possibility of Being-free for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being. Being-possible is transparent to Dasein itself in various possible ways and degrees.

Understanding is the Being of such potentiality-for-Being, which is never outstanding as something not yet present-at-hand, but, as something essentially never present-at-hand, “is” with the Being of Dasein in the sense of existence. Dasein is in such a way that it has in each case understood, or not understood, to be in this way or that. As such understanding it “knows” where it stands with itself, that is, with its potentiality-for-Being. This “knowing” has not first grown out of an immanent self-perception; it belongs to the Being of the “there,” which is essentially understanding. And only because Dasein, understanding, is its “there” can it lose its way and misjudge itself. And insofar as understanding is attuned, and as such is existentially surrendered to thrownness, Dasein has always already lost its way and misjudged itself.

Understanding is the existential Being of Dasein’s own potentiality-for-Being, in such a way that this Being, in itself, discloses the “where it stands” of its Being with itself. The structure of this existential must be grasped still more sharply.

As disclosing, understanding always concerns the whole basic constitution of Being-in-the-world. As potentiality-for-Being, Being-in is in each case potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Not only is the world, qua world, disclosed as possible significance; the freeing of the innerworldly itself frees these beings for their possibilities. What is ready-to-hand is uncovered as such in its serviceability, usability, detrimentality. The totality of involvements reveals itself as the categorial whole of a possibility of the nexus of what is ready-to-hand. But the “unity” of the manifold present-at-hand, nature, likewise becomes uncoverable only on the basis of the disclosedness of a possibility of it. Is it an accident that the question of the Being of nature aims at the “conditions of its possibility”? In what is such questioning grounded?

Why does understanding, in all the essential dimensions of what can be disclosed in it, always press into possibilities? Because understanding in itself has the existential structure we call projection. It projects the Being of Dasein upon its for-the-sake-of-which just as primordially as upon significance, as the worldhood of its world in each case. The projective character of understanding constitutes Being-in-the-world with regard to the disclosedness of its “there” as the “there” of a potentiality-for-Being. Projection is the existential constitution of Being of the leeway of factical potentiality-for-Being. And as thrown, Dasein is thrown into the way of Being of projecting.note

On the basis of the way of Being constituted by the existential of projection, Dasein is constantly “more” than it factually is—if one wanted to register it, and could register it, as something present-at-hand in its stock of Being. But it is never more than it factically is, because potentiality-for-Being belongs essentially to its facticity. Yet as Being-possible, Dasein is also never less; that is, what it is not yet in its potentiality-for-Being, it is existentially. And only because the Being of the “there” receives its constitution through understanding and its projective character, because it is what it becomes or does not become, can it, understanding, say to itself: “Become what you are!”note

Projection always concerns the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. As potentiality-for-Being, understanding itself has possibilities, prefigured by the range of what can essentially be disclosed in it. Understanding can place itself primarily in the disclosedness of the world; that is, Dasein can understand itself in the first instance and for the most part in terms of its world. Or else understanding throws itself primarily into the for-the-sake-of-which; that is, Dasein exists as itself. Understanding is either owned, springing from one’s own self as such, or unowned. The “un-” does not mean that Dasein cuts itself off from its self and understands “only” the world. World belongs to its Being-a-self as Being-in-the-world. Owned and unowned understanding alike can, in turn, be genuine or ungenuine.

As factical Dasein, it has always already shifted its potentiality-for-Being into one possibility of understanding.

In its projective character, understanding existentially makes up what we call Dasein’s sight. Dasein is this sight, which existentially is along with the disclosedness of the “there,” and it is it equiprimordially according to the basic ways of its Being already marked out: as the circumspection of concern, as the considerateness of solicitude, as sight directed at Being as such, for the sake of which Dasein in each case is as it is. The sight that relates primarily and as a whole to existence we call transparency. We choose this term to designate “self-knowledge” rightly understood, in order to indicate that what is at issue is not the perceptual tracking down and inspecting of a point called the self, but an understanding grasp of the full disclosedness of Being-in-the-world all the way through its essential constitutive moments.

Conversely, Dasein’s opacity is rooted not solely and primarily in “egocentric” self-deceptions, but just as much in ignorance of the world.

The expression “sight” must, of course, be guarded against a misunderstanding. It corresponds to the clearedness as which we characterized the disclosedness of the “there.” “Seeing” not only does not mean perceiving with the bodily eyes; it does not mean the pure non-sensory apprehending of something present-at-hand in its presence-at-hand either. For the existential meaning of sight, only that peculiarity of seeing is claimed which lets the beings accessible to it be encountered in themselves without being covered over. Every “sense,” of course, achieves this within its genuine domain of uncovering. But from the beginning the tradition of philosophy has been oriented primarily to “seeing” as the mode of access to beings and to Being.

By showing how all sight is grounded primarily in understanding—the circumspection of concern is understanding as common sense—pure intuition is deprived of its priority, which corresponds noetically to the traditional ontological priority of the present-at-hand. “Intuition” and “thinking” are both already remote derivatives of understanding. Even the phenomenological “seeing of essences” is grounded in existential understanding. This kind of seeing may be decided upon only when the explicit concepts of Being and of the structure of Being have been obtained, which alone can become phenomena in the phenomenological sense.note

The disclosedness of the “there” in understanding is itself a way of Dasein’s potentiality-for-Being. In the projectedness of its Being upon the for-the-sake-of-which, together with its projectedness upon significance (world), lies the disclosedness of Being in general. In projecting upon possibilities, an understanding of Being is already taken up in advance. Being is understood in projection, not ontologically conceived. A being that has the way of Being of essential projection of Being-in-the-world has the understanding of Being as a constitutive element of its Being. What was earlier posited dogmatically now receives its demonstration from the constitution of the Being in which Dasein, as understanding, is its “there.” A clarification of the existential meaning of this understanding of Being that is satisfactory within the limits of this whole investigation can be reached only on the basis of the Temporal interpretation of Being.

As existentials, attunement and understanding characterize the primordial disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. In the manner of attunedness Dasein “sees” possibilities in terms of which it is. In projectively disclosing such possibilities, it is always already attuned. The projection of its ownmost potentiality-for-Being is delivered over to the fact of thrownness into the “there.” Does not the explication of the existential constitution of the Being of the “there,” in the sense of thrown projection, make the Being of Dasein more enigmatic? Indeed it does. We must first let the full enigmatic character of this Being emerge, even if only in order to be able to fail in a genuine way at its “solution” and to pose anew the question of the Being of thrown-projecting Being-in-the-world.

In order even just to bring into view, initially, in a phenomenally adequate way the everyday way of Being of attuned understanding, of the full disclosedness of the “there,” a more concrete working-out of these existentials is needed.

As understanding, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities. This understanding Being toward possibilities is itself a potentiality-for-Being, because these possibilities, as disclosed, recoil upon Dasein. The projecting of understanding has its own possibility of developing itself. We call the development of understanding interpretation. In interpretation, understanding appropriates what it has understood, and does so understandingly. In interpretation, understanding does not become something different; it becomes itself. Existentially, interpretation is grounded in understanding; understanding does not arise from interpretation. Interpretation is not the taking-cognizance of what has been understood, but the working-out of the possibilities projected in understanding. In keeping with the course of these preparatory analyses of everyday Dasein, we shall pursue the phenomenon of interpretation in the understanding of the world—that is, in unowned understanding, and indeed in the mode of its genuineness.

Out of the significance disclosed in understanding the world, concernful Being alongside what is ready-to-hand gives itself to understand what involvement there can in each case be with what it encounters. Circumspection uncovers; this means that the “world” already understood is interpreted. What is ready-to-hand comes explicitly into the sight that understands. All preparing, putting to rights, repairing, improving, supplementing, is carried out in such a way that what is circumspectively ready-to-hand is laid out in its in-order-to and is concerned with in accordance with its laid-outness, which has now become visible. What has been circumspectively laid out with regard to its in-order-to as such, what is explicitly understood, has the structure of something as something. To the circumspective question of what this particular ready-to-hand thing is, the circumspectively interpretive answer runs: it is for…

But if every perceiving of ready-to-hand equipment is already understanding and interpreting, and lets something be encountered circumspectively as something, does this not mean precisely that initially something purely present-at-hand is experienced, which is then taken as a door, as a house? That would be a misunderstanding of the specific disclosive function of interpretation. Interpretation does not, as it were, throw a “meaning” over the naked present-at-hand, nor does it stick a value onto it. Rather, with what is encountered within the world as such there is in each case already an involvement, disclosed in understanding the world, and interpretation lays this involvement out.

What is ready-to-hand is always already understood from out of the totality of involvements. This totality need not be explicitly grasped by a thematic interpretation. Even when it has passed through such an interpretation, it recedes again into an understanding that does not set it off. And precisely in this mode it is the essential foundation of everyday, circumspective interpretation. Such interpretation is in each case grounded in a fore-having. As the appropriation of understanding, it moves in understanding Being toward a totality of involvements that is already understood. The appropriation of what is understood but still veiled always carries out the unveiling under the guidance of a point of view, which fixes that with regard to which what is understood is to be interpreted. Interpretation is in each case grounded in a fore-sight, which “cuts into” what has been taken into fore-having with a view to a particular interpretability.note

The interpretation of something as something is essentially founded by fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Interpretation is never a presuppositionless grasping of something given in advance. When the particular concretion of interpretation in the sense of exact textual interpretation likes to appeal to what “stands there,” then what initially “stands there” is nothing other than the self-evident, undiscussed preconception of the interpreter. This preconception necessarily lies in every starting point of interpretation, as what is already “posited” with interpretation as such—that is, what is given in advance in fore-having, fore-sight, fore-conception.

How is the character of this “fore-” to be conceived? Is the matter settled if one says, formally, “a priori”? Why does this structure belong to understanding, which we have identified as a fundamental existential of Dasein? How is the structure of the “as,” which belongs to what is interpreted as such, related to it? This phenomenon evidently cannot be broken up “into pieces.” But does that rule out a primordial analytic? Are we to accept such phenomena as “ultimates”? Then the question would still remain: why? Or do the fore-structure of understanding and the as-structure of interpretation show an existential-ontological connection with the phenomenon of projection? And does this phenomenon point back to a primordial constitution of Being of Dasein?

Before these questions are answered—and the preparation so far is far from sufficient for that—we must examine whether what becomes visible as the fore-structure of understanding and qua as-structure of interpretation does not itself already represent a unitary phenomenon. Extensive use is indeed made of this phenomenon in philosophical problematics, without the primordiality of the ontological explication measuring up to what is so universally used.

In the projecting of understanding, beings are disclosed in their possibility. The character of possibility corresponds in each case to the way of Being of the being understood. Innerworldly beings in general are projected upon world—that is, upon a whole of significance in whose referential relations concern, as Being-in-the-world, has made itself fast in advance. When an innerworldly being has been uncovered along with the Being of Dasein—that is, has come to be understood—we say that it has meaning. Strictly speaking, however, what is understood is not the meaning but the being, or rather Being. Meaning is that wherein the intelligibility of something maintains itself. What can be articulated in understanding disclosure we call meaning. The concept of meaning comprises the formal framework of what necessarily belongs to what understanding interpretation articulates.

If we hold fast to this fundamentally ontological-existential interpretation of the concept of “meaning,” then all beings whose way of Being is not that of Dasein must be conceived as unmeaning, as essentially devoid of meaning as such. “Unmeaning” here signifies no evaluation; it gives expression to an ontological determination. And only what is unmeaning can run counter to meaning. What is present-at-hand, as something encountered in Dasein, can, as it were, run up against Dasein’s Being—for example, natural events that break in upon us and destroy.note

And if we ask about the meaning of Being, the investigation does not become profound and does not brood over anything that stands behind Being; rather, it asks about Being itself, insofar as Being stands within the intelligibility of Dasein. The meaning of Being can never be set in opposition to beings, or to Being as the supporting “ground” of beings, because “ground” becomes accessible only as meaning, even if it is itself the abyss of meaninglessness.

As the disclosedness of the “there,” understanding always concerns the whole of Being-in-the-world. In every understanding of world, existence is understood along with it, and vice versa. Further, all interpretation moves within the fore-structure we have characterized. Any interpretation that is to contribute understanding must already have understood what is to be interpreted. This fact has always been noticed, even if only in the domain of derivative ways of understanding and interpretation—in philological interpretation. Philological interpretation belongs within the compass of scientific knowing. Knowledge of this kind demands the rigor of a demonstration that grounds. Scientific proof must not already presuppose what it is its task to ground.

The “circle” in understanding belongs to the structure of meaning, a phenomenon rooted in the existential constitution of Dasein, in interpretive understanding. A being to which, as Being-in-the-world, its Being itself matters has an ontological circular structure. If, however, we note that “circle” belongs ontologically to a way of Being of presence-at-hand (subsistence), we shall have to avoid altogether using this phenomenon to characterize anything like Dasein ontologically.

All interpretation is grounded in understanding. What is articulated as such in interpretation, and what is prefigured as articulable in understanding in general, is meaning. Insofar as assertion (the “judgment”) is grounded in understanding and represents a derivative form in which interpretation is carried out, it too “has” a meaning. This meaning, however, cannot be defined as what occurs “in” a judgment alongside the act of judging. The explicit analysis of assertion in the present context has several aims.

First, assertion can be used to demonstrate in what way the structure of the “as,” which is constitutive for understanding and interpretation, can be modified. Understanding and interpretation are thereby brought into an even sharper light. Second, the analysis of assertion has a distinctive place within the problematic of fundamental ontology, because in the decisive beginnings of ancient ontology the λόγος functioned as the sole guideline for access to what properly is and for determining the Being of these beings. Finally, assertion has from ancient times been regarded as the primary and proper “locus” of truth. This phenomenon is so closely coupled with the problem of Being that the present investigation, as it proceeds, necessarily comes up against the problem of truth; indeed, even now, though inexplicitly, it already stands within its dimension.

In what follows we assign three meanings to the term assertion. They are drawn from the phenomenon the term designates, are connected with one another, and in their unity delimit the full structure of assertion.

1. Assertion means primarily pointing out. With this we hold fast to the primordial meaning of λόγος as ἀπόφανσις: letting beings be seen from themselves. In the assertion “The hammer is too heavy,” what is uncovered for sight is not a “meaning” but a being in the mode of its readiness-to-hand. Even if this being is not near enough to be grasped and “seen,” the pointing out means the being itself and not, say, a mere representation of it—neither something “merely represented” nor, still less, a psychical state of the one asserting, the asserter’s representing of this being.

2. Assertion amounts to predication. A “predicate” is “asserted” of a “subject”; the subject is determined by the predicate. What is asserted in this meaning of assertion is not, say, the predicate, but “the hammer itself.” What does the asserting—that is, the determining—lies, on the other hand, in the “too heavy.” What is asserted in the second meaning of assertion, what is determined as such, has undergone a narrowing of content compared with what is asserted in the first meaning of the term. Every predication is what it is only as pointing out. The second meaning of assertion has its foundation in the first. The members of predicative articulation, subject—predicate, arise within pointing out.

3. Assertion means communication, speaking forth. As such it has a direct relation to assertion in the first and second meanings. It is letting someone see with us what has been pointed out in the manner of determining. Letting someone see with us shares with the other the being pointed out in its determinateness. What is “shared” is the common seeing Being toward what is pointed out—a Being toward it that must be held fast as Being-in-the-world, namely in that world from out of which what is pointed out is encountered. To assertion as communication understood existentially in this way, as sharing-with, belongs being spoken out. What is asserted, as something communicated, can be “shared” by others with the one asserting, without their having the being pointed out and determined near enough to grasp and see. What is asserted can be “passed on.” The range of sharing with one another in seeing widens.note

The theory of “judgment” prevailing today, oriented predominantly to the phenomenon of “validity,” will not be discussed at length here. Let it suffice to point out how questionable, in many ways, this phenomenon of “validity” is—a phenomenon that since Lotze has readily been passed off as a “primal phenomenon” that cannot be traced back any further. It owes this role only to its not having been clarified ontologically. The “problematic” that has settled around this verbal idol is no less opaque. Validity means, first, the “form” of actuality that belongs to the content of judgment insofar as this content subsists unchangingly over against the changing “psychical” process of judging. Given the state of the question of Being in general, as characterized in the introduction to this treatise, it can hardly be expected that “validity,” as “ideal Being,” should be distinguished by any special ontological clarity.

If we take together the three meanings of “assertion” we have analyzed, in a unified view of the full phenomenon, the definition runs: Assertion is a pointing out that communicates and determines. It remains to ask: by what right do we take assertion at all as a mode of interpretation? If it is something of the kind, then the essential structures of interpretation must recur in it. The pointing out of assertion is carried out on the basis of what is already disclosed in understanding, or circumspectively uncovered. Assertion is not a free-floating comportment that could of itself primarily disclose beings in general; it always already maintains itself on the basis of Being-in-the-world. What was shown earlier with regard to knowing the world holds no less of assertion. It needs a fore-having of something disclosed at all, which it points out in the manner of determining.

But in what respect does assertion become a derivative mode of interpretation? What has been modified in it? We can point out the modification if we keep to limiting cases of assertion that function in logic as normal cases and as examples of the “simplest” phenomena of assertion. What logic takes as its theme with the categorical assertoric sentence—for example, “the hammer is heavy”—it has also always already understood “logically,” before any analysis. Without further scrutiny, it is already presupposed as the “meaning” of the sentence that the hammer-thing has the property of heaviness. In concernful circumspection there are “initially” no such assertions.

The being held in fore-having—the hammer, for example—is initially ready-to-hand as equipment. If this being becomes the “object” of an assertion, then, as soon as we set out to make the assertion, a change-over in the fore-having takes place in advance. The ready-to-hand by-which of having-to-do-with, of performing a task, becomes the “about-which” of the assertion that points out. The fore-sight aims at something present-at-hand in what is ready-to-hand. Through the view-point, and for it, the ready-to-hand becomes veiled as ready-to-hand. Within this uncovering of presence-at-hand, which covers over readiness-to-hand, what is encountered as present-at-hand is determined in its Being-present-at-hand-in-such-and-such-a-way. Only now is access opened to something like properties. The what as which assertion determines the present-at-hand is drawn from the present-at-hand as such. The as-structure of interpretation has undergone a modification.

Thus assertion cannot disavow its ontological provenance from understanding interpretation. The primordial “as” of circumspectively understanding interpretation (ἑρμηνεία) we call the existential-hermeneutical “as,” as distinct from the apophantical “as” of assertion.

Between interpretation still wholly veiled in concernful understanding and the extreme opposite case of a theoretical assertion about something present-at-hand, there are manifold intermediate stages: assertions about events in the environment, depictions of what is ready-to-hand, “situation reports,” the recording and fixing of the “facts of the case,” the description of how matters stand, the narration of what has occurred. These “sentences” cannot be traced back to theoretical assertoric sentences without essentially distorting their meaning. Like theoretical assertions themselves, they have their “origin” in circumspective interpretation.

As knowledge of the structure of the λόγος advanced, it was inevitable that this phenomenon of the apophantical “as” should come into view in some form. The way it was initially seen is not accidental, and it has not failed to have its effect on the subsequent history of logic.

For philosophical consideration the λόγος itself is a being and, in keeping with the orientation of ancient ontology, something present-at-hand. Initially present-at-hand—that is, to be found like things—are the words and the sequence of words in which the λόγος expresses itself. This first search for the structure of the λόγος thus present-at-hand finds a Being-present-at-hand-together of several words. What establishes the unity of this together? It lies, as Plato recognized, in the fact that the λόγος is always λόγος τινός [discourse about something]. With a view to the being manifest in the λόγος, the words are put together into one verbal whole. Aristotle saw more radically: every λόγος is at once σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις [putting together and taking apart], not either the one—say, as a “positive judgment”—or the other—as a “negative judgment.”note

What was supposed to be phenomenally hit upon with the formal structures of “combining” and “separating”—more precisely, with their unity—is the phenomenon of “something as something.” In accordance with this structure, something is understood with regard to something—in being taken together with it, in such a way that this understanding confrontation, articulating interpretively, at the same time takes apart what has been taken together. If the phenomenon of the “as” remains covered over and, above all, veiled in its existential origin from the hermeneutical “as,” then Aristotle’s phenomenological approach to the analysis of the λόγος disintegrates into an external “theory of judgment,” according to which judging is a combining or separating of representations and concepts.

Combining and separating can then be further formalized into a “relating.” In symbolic logic, judgment is dissolved into a system of “coordinations”; it becomes the object of a “calculation,” but not the theme of ontological interpretation. The possibility and impossibility of an analytic understanding of σύνθεσις and διαίρεσις, of “relation” in judgment in general, is closely bound up with the state, at any given time, of the basic ontological problematic.

How far this problematic affects the interpretation of the λόγος, and how far, conversely, the concept of “judgment,” by a strange repercussion, affects the ontological problematic, is shown by the phenomenon of the copula. This “bond” brings to light that the structure of synthesis is initially posited as self-evident, and that it has also retained its authoritative interpretive function. But if the formal characters of “relation” and “combination” can contribute nothing phenomenally to the substantive structural analysis of the λόγος, then in the end the phenomenon meant by the term copula has nothing to do with bond and combination. The “is” and its interpretation—whether it is expressed linguistically in a word of its own or indicated in the verb ending—then move, however, into the problem-context of the existential analytic, if assertion and understanding of Being are existential possibilities of Being of Dasein itself.

For the time being, the only point was to make clear, by showing that assertion is derived from interpretation and understanding, that the “logic” of the λόγος is rooted in the existential analytic of Dasein. Recognizing the ontologically inadequate interpretation of the λόγος at the same time sharpens our insight into the non-primordiality of the methodological basis on which ancient ontology grew up. The λόγος is experienced as something present-at-hand and interpreted as such; likewise, the beings it points out have the meaning of presence-at-hand. This meaning of Being itself remains undifferentiated, not set off against other possibilities of Being, so that Being in the sense of formal Being-something is at the same time fused with it, without even a pure regional separation of the two having been achievable.

The fundamental existentials that constitute the Being of the “there,” the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, are attunement and understanding. Understanding harbors within itself the possibility of interpretation, that is, of appropriating what is understood. Insofar as attunement is equiprimordial with understanding, it maintains itself in a certain understanding. A certain interpretability likewise corresponds to it. With assertion, an extreme derivative of interpretation was made visible. Clarifying the third meaning of assertion as communication (speaking forth) led to the concept of saying and speaking, which has so far been left unconsidered—and intentionally so. That language becomes a theme only now is meant to indicate that this phenomenon has its roots in the existential constitution of Dasein’s disclosedness.

Discourse is existentially equiprimordial with attunement and understanding. Intelligibility is always already articulated, even before appropriative interpretation. Discourse is the articulation of intelligibility. It therefore already underlies interpretation and assertion. What can be articulated in interpretation, and thus more primordially already in discourse, we called meaning. What is articulated as such in discursive articulation we call the whole of meanings. This whole can be broken up into meanings. As what is articulated of the articulable, meanings are always laden with meaning. If discourse, the articulation of the intelligibility of the “there,” is a primordial existential of disclosedness, and disclosedness is primarily constituted by Being-in-the-world, then discourse too must essentially have a specifically worldly way of Being.note

Discourse’s being spoken out is language. This totality of words, as that in which discourse has a “worldly” Being of its own, can thus be come upon as an innerworldly being, like something ready-to-hand. Language can be broken up into word-things that are present-at-hand. Discourse is existentially language, because the being whose disclosedness it articulates in terms of meanings has the way of Being of thrown Being-in-the-world, dependent on the “world.”

As the existential constitution of Dasein’s disclosedness, discourse is constitutive for Dasein’s existence. To discursive speaking belong, as possibilities, hearing and keeping silent. In these phenomena the constitutive function of discourse for the existentiality of existence first becomes fully clear. Initially, the task is to work out the structure of discourse as such.

Discoursing is the “signifying” articulating of the intelligibility of Being-in-the-world, to which Being-with belongs, and which maintains itself in each case in a particular way of concernful Being-with-one-another. Such Being-with-one-another is discursive as assenting and refusing, summoning, warning, as having things out, consulting, speaking up for someone, further as “making assertions,” and as talking in the manner of “giving a talk.” Discoursing is discourse about… The about-which of discourse does not necessarily, indeed for the most part does not, have the character of the theme of a determining assertion. A command, too, is issued about—; a wish has its about-which. Speaking up for someone does not lack its about-which. Discourse necessarily has this structural moment, because it co-constitutes the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world and is prefigured in its own structure by this basic constitution of Dasein.

The phenomenon of communication must, as was already indicated in the analysis, be understood in an ontologically broad sense. Assertive “communication”—giving information, for example—is a special case of communication grasped in principle existentially. In such communication the articulation of understanding Being-with-one-another is constituted. It brings about the “sharing” of co-attunement and of the understanding of Being-with. Communication is never anything like a transporting of lived experiences—opinions and wishes, for example—from the interior of one subject into the interior of another. Dasein-with is essentially already manifest in co-attunement and co-understanding. In discourse, Being-with is “explicitly” shared; that is, it already is, only unshared, as something not seized and appropriated.

All discourse about…, which communicates in what it speaks, has at the same time the character of expressing oneself. In discoursing, Dasein speaks itself out—not because it is initially encapsulated as something “inner” over against an outside, but because, as Being-in-the-world, it is, understandingly, already “outside.” What is expressed is precisely this Being-outside, that is, the particular way of attunement (of mood), which, as was shown, concerns the full disclosedness of Being-in. The linguistic index of the making-known of attuned Being-in, which belongs to discourse, lies in intonation, modulation, the tempo of discourse, “in the way one speaks.” Communicating the existential possibilities of attunement—that is, disclosing existence—can become an aim in its own right of “poetic” discourse.

Discourse is the articulation, in terms of meanings, of the attuned intelligibility of Being-in-the-world. Its constitutive moments are: the about-which of discourse (what is talked about), what is spoken as such, communication, and making-known. These are not properties that can merely be scraped together empirically from language; they are existential characters rooted in the constitution of Being of Dasein, which first make anything like language ontologically possible. In the factical linguistic shape of a particular discourse, some of these moments may be missing or remain unnoticed. That they often do not find “verbal” expression is only the index of a particular kind of discourse, which, insofar as it is, must in each case be in the totality of the structures mentioned.

Accordingly, attempts to grasp the “essence of language” have always oriented themselves to one single one of these moments, and have conceived language along the guideline of the idea of “expression,” of “symbolic form,” of communication as “assertion,” of the “intimation” of lived experiences, or of the “shaping” of life. But nothing would be gained for a fully adequate definition of language if one tried to push these various determining pieces together syncretistically. What remains decisive is first to work out the ontological-existential whole of the structure of discourse on the basis of the analytic of Dasein.

The connection of discourse with understanding and intelligibility becomes clear from an existential possibility that belongs to discoursing itself: hearing. It is not by chance that when we have not heard “rightly,” we say we have not “understood.” Hearing is constitutive for discoursing. And just as vocal utterance is grounded in discourse, so acoustic perception is grounded in hearing. Hearing as heeding… is Dasein’s existential Being-open, as Being-with, for the other. Hearing even constitutes the primary and owned openness of Dasein for its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, as the hearing of the voice of the friend whom every Dasein carries with it. Dasein hears because it understands. As understanding Being-in-the-world with others, it is “in thrall” to Dasein-with and to itself, and in this thrall it belongs.note

On the basis of this existentially primary ability to hear, something like listening is possible, which is itself phenomenally still more primordial than what psychology “initially” defines as hearing: the sensing of tones and the perceiving of sounds. Listening, too, has the way of Being of understanding hearing. “Initially” we never, ever hear noises and complexes of sounds, but the creaking wagon, the motorcycle. We hear the column on the march, the north wind, the woodpecker tapping, the fire crackling.

It already takes a very artificial and complicated attitude to “hear” a “pure noise.” But the fact that we initially hear motorcycles and wagons is the phenomenal evidence that Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, always already dwells alongside what is innerworldly and ready-to-hand, and initially not at all alongside “sensations,” whose swarm would first have to be formed in order to provide the springboard from which the subject leaps off in order finally to arrive at a “world.” As essentially understanding, Dasein is initially alongside what is understood.

Even in explicitly hearing the discourse of another, we initially understand what is said—more precisely, we are already in advance, together with the other, alongside the beings the discourse is about. We do not, on the other hand, initially hear what is spoken out in the vocal utterance. Even where the speaking is indistinct, or the language even foreign, we initially hear unintelligible words and not a pure manifold of tone-data.

In “natural” hearing of the about-which of discourse, we can, to be sure, at the same time hear the way in which it is said, the “diction”—but this too only in a prior co-understanding of what is spoken; for only so is there the possibility of assessing the how of its being said in its appropriateness to the thematic about-which of the discourse.

Likewise, speaking in return, as an answer, initially arises directly from understanding the about-which of the discourse, which is already “shared” in Being-with.

Only where the existential possibility of discoursing and hearing is given can someone listen. Someone who “cannot hear” and “must feel” may perhaps be very well able to listen—and precisely for that reason. Just-hearing-around is a privation of understanding hearing. Discoursing and hearing are grounded in understanding. Understanding arises neither from a great deal of talking nor from busily hearing around. Only one who already understands is able to listen.note

Another essential possibility of discoursing, keeping silent, has the same existential foundation. One who keeps silent in talking with others can “give to understand”—that is, develop understanding—in a more owned way than one who never runs out of words. Speaking a great deal about something does not in the least guarantee that understanding is thereby advanced. On the contrary: long-winded talking about things covers over, and brings what is understood into a sham clarity—that is, into the unintelligibility of the trivial. But keeping silent does not mean being mute. Someone who is mute, on the contrary, has a tendency to “speak.” Someone who is mute has not only not proven the ability to keep silent; they even lack any possibility of proving such a thing. And no more than someone who is mute does one who is by nature accustomed to speaking little show that they keep silent and are able to keep silent.

Because discourse is constitutive for the Being of the “there”—that is, for attunement and understanding—and Dasein means Being-in-the-world, Dasein, as discoursing Being-in, has already expressed itself. Dasein has language. Is it chance that the Greeks, whose everyday existing had been largely transposed into talking with one another, and who at the same time “had eyes” to see, defined the essence of the human being, in their pre-philosophical as well as their philosophical interpretation of Dasein, as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον [the living being that has discourse]? The later interpretation of this definition of the human being in the sense of animal rationale, “rational living being,” is not “false,” to be sure, but it covers over the phenomenal ground from which this definition of Dasein is taken. The human being shows itself as a being that discourses.

In the end, philosophical research must at some point resolve to ask what way of Being belongs to language at all. Is it an item of equipment ready-to-hand within the world, or does it have Dasein’s way of Being, or neither of the two? What kind of Being does language have, such that it can be “dead”? What does it mean ontologically that a language grows and decays? We possess a science of language, yet the Being of the beings it takes as its theme is obscure. Even the horizon for the question that would investigate it is veiled. Is it an accident that meanings are in the first instance and for the most part “worldly,” prefigured by the significance of the world, and indeed often predominantly “spatial”? Or is this “fact” existential-ontologically necessary, and if so, why?

The present interpretation of language was meant only to point out the ontological “place” of this phenomenon within Dasein’s constitution of Being. Above all, it was meant to prepare the analysis that follows. Taking a fundamental way of Being of discourse as its guide, and in connection with other phenomena, that analysis attempts to bring the everydayness of Dasein into view in an ontologically more primordial way.

In going back to the existential structures of the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, the interpretation has in a certain way lost sight of Dasein’s everydayness. The analysis must win back this phenomenal horizon, which it had thematically set out. The question now arises: what are the existential characters of the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, insofar as, as everyday, it maintains itself in the way of Being of the they? Does a specific attunement belong to the they, a special understanding, discoursing, and interpreting? The answer to these questions becomes all the more urgent when we recall that Dasein is in the first instance and for the most part absorbed in the they and mastered by it. Is not Dasein, as thrown Being-in-the-world, thrown precisely in the first instance into the publicness of the they? And what does this publicness mean, if not the specific disclosedness of the they?

If understanding must be conceived primarily as Dasein’s potentiality-for-Being, then an analysis of the understanding and interpreting that belong to the they will let us gather which possibilities of its Being Dasein, as the they, has disclosed and appropriated to itself. These possibilities themselves, however, then reveal an essential tendency of Being of everydayness. And this tendency, once adequately explicated in ontological terms, must finally unveil a primordial way of Being of Dasein—in such a way, indeed, that from it the phenomenon of thrownness we have indicated becomes demonstrable in its existential concreteness.

Initially, what is required is to make the disclosedness of the they, that is, the everyday way of Being of discourse, sight, and interpretation, visible in certain phenomena. With reference to these, it may not be superfluous to remark that the interpretation has a purely ontological intent and is far removed from any moralizing critique of everyday Dasein and from “philosophy-of-culture” aspirations.

The expression “idle talk” is not to be used here in a disparaging sense. As a term, it signifies a positive phenomenon, one that constitutes the way of Being of everyday Dasein’s understanding and interpreting. For the most part, discourse expresses itself, and it has always already expressed itself. It is language. But then understanding and interpretation always already lie in what is expressed. Language, as expressedness, harbors within itself an interpretedness of Dasein’s understanding. Like language, this interpretedness is not simply something present-at-hand; its Being is itself of Dasein’s kind. Dasein is delivered over to it in the first instance, and within certain limits constantly. It regulates and distributes the possibilities of average understanding and of the attunement that goes with it.note

Discourse that expresses itself is communication. Its tendency of Being aims at bringing the hearer to participate in the disclosed Being toward what the discourse talks about.

Owing to the average intelligibility that already lies in the language spoken when one expresses oneself, the communicated discourse can be understood to a large extent without the hearer entering into a primordially understanding Being toward what the discourse is about. One understands not so much the being that is talked about; rather, one already listens only to what is said in the talk as such. This is what is understood; what the talk is about is understood only approximately, superficially. One means the same thing, because one understands what is said in common, in the same averageness.

Hearing and understanding have clung in advance to what is said in the talk as such. Communication does not “share” the primary relation of Being to the being talked about; rather, Being-with-one-another moves in talking with one another and in concern with what is said in the talk. What matters to it is that there be talk. Having-been-said, the dictum, the pronouncement now vouch for the genuineness of the discourse and of its understanding, and for their fidelity to the matter. And because this talking has lost, or else never gained, the primary relation of Being to the being talked about, it communicates itself not by way of a primordial appropriation of this being, but by way of passing the word along and repeating it. What is said in the talk as such spreads in ever wider circles and takes on an authoritative character. Things are so because one says so.

The groundlessness of idle talk does not bar its way into publicness; it encourages it. Idle talk is the possibility of understanding everything without any prior appropriation of the matter. Idle talk already guards against the danger of failing in such an appropriation. Idle talk, which anyone can snatch up, not only releases one from the task of genuine understanding; it also develops an indifferent intelligibility to which nothing is any longer closed off.

Discourse, which belongs to the essential constitution of Being of Dasein and helps make up its disclosedness, has the possibility of becoming idle talk, and, as idle talk, of not so much keeping Being-in-the-world open in an articulated understanding as closing it off and covering over innerworldly beings. No intention to deceive is needed for this. Idle talk does not have the way of Being of consciously passing off something as something. The groundless having-been-said and being-passed-along is enough for disclosing to be turned around into closing off. For what is said is always understood in the first instance as “saying,” that is, as uncovering. Idle talk is therefore, by its very nature, a closing off, in keeping with its characteristic omission of going back to the ground of what is talked about.

This closing off is intensified once again by the fact that idle talk, in which an understanding of what is talked about has supposedly been reached, holds back every new questioning and all debate on the strength of this supposition, and in a peculiar way suppresses and retards them.

This interpretedness of idle talk has always already established itself in Dasein. We come to know many things initially in this way, and not a few never get beyond such an average understanding. Dasein can never withdraw from this everyday interpretedness, into which it initially grows. In it, out of it, and against it, all genuine understanding, interpreting, and communicating, all uncovering anew and appropriating anew, are carried out. It is not the case that a Dasein, untouched and unseduced by this interpretedness, is ever placed before the open country of a “world” in itself, so as merely to look at what it encounters. The dominance of public interpretedness has even already decided about the possibilities of Being-attuned, that is, about the basic way in which Dasein lets the world matter to it.

Idle talk, which closes off in the way we have characterized, is the way of Being of Dasein’s uprooted understanding. It does not, however, occur as a present-at-hand condition of something present-at-hand; rather, being existentially uprooted, it itself is in the manner of constant uprooting. Ontologically, this means: Dasein that maintains itself in idle talk is, as Being-in-the-world, cut off from the primary and primordially genuine relations of Being to the world, to Dasein-with, and to Being-in itself. It keeps itself in suspension, and in this way it is nonetheless always alongside the “world,” with Others, and toward itself. Only a being whose disclosedness is constituted by attuned-understanding discourse, that is,

It lies, however, in the obviousness and self-assurance of average interpretedness that, under its protection, the uncanniness of the suspension in which Dasein can drift toward an ever-growing groundlessness remains hidden from Dasein itself in each case.

In the analysis of understanding and of the disclosedness of the “there” in general, we pointed to the lumen naturale [natural light] and called the disclosedness of Being-in Dasein’s clearing, in which something like sight first becomes possible. With a view to understanding, the basic kind of all disclosing that belongs to Dasein, sight was conceived in the sense of the genuine appropriation of beings toward which Dasein can comport itself in accordance with its essential possibilities of Being.

The basic constitution of sight shows itself in a peculiar tendency of Being of everydayness toward “seeing.” We designate it with the term curiosity, which, characteristically, is not restricted to seeing, and which expresses the tendency toward a peculiar perceiving letting-the-world-be-encountered. We interpret this phenomenon with a fundamental existential-ontological intent, not in the narrowed orientation toward knowing, which already early on, and not by accident in Greek philosophy, is conceived in terms of the “desire to see.” The treatise that stands first in the collection of Aristotle’s treatises on ontology begins with the sentence: πάντες ἄνθρωποι τοῦ εἰδέναι ὀρέγονται φύσει [All human beings by nature reach out for knowing]. The care for seeing lies essentially in the Being of the human being.note

It was Augustine above all who noticed the remarkable priority of “seeing,” in connection with his interpretation of concupiscentia [desire]. Ad oculos enim proprie videre pertinet: seeing properly belongs to the eyes. Utimur autem hoc verbo etiam in ceteris sensibus cum eos ad cognoscendum intendimus. But we also use this word “see” for the other senses when we put ourselves into them—in order to know. Neque enim dicimus: audi quid rutilet; aut, olfac quam niteat; aut, gusta quam splendeat; aut, palpa quam fulgeat: videri enim dicuntur haec omnia. For we do not say: hear how that shimmers, or smell how that gleams, or taste how that shines, or feel how that glows; rather, in all these cases we say: see; we say that all this is seen.note

What is the nature of this tendency toward mere-perceiving? What existential constitution of Dasein becomes intelligible in the phenomenon of curiosity?

Being-in-the-world is initially absorbed in the world of its concern. Concern is guided by circumspection, which uncovers what is ready-to-hand and preserves it in its uncoveredness. Circumspection gives all procuring and performing its path of procedure, the means of carrying it out, the right occasion, the appropriate moment. Concern can come to rest, in the sense of a restful interruption of performing, or as getting finished. In rest, concern does not disappear; circumspection, however, becomes free; it is no longer bound to the world of work. In resting, care settles into the circumspection that has become free. The circumspective uncovering of the world of work has the character of Being of de-severing. Circumspection that has become free no longer has anything ready-to-hand whose bringing-near it must concern itself with.

Curiosity that has become free, however, concerns itself with seeing not in order to understand what is seen, that is, to come into a Being toward it, but only in order to see. It seeks the new only in order to leap from it once again to something new. What matters to the care of this seeing is not grasping and knowingly Being in the truth, but possibilities of abandoning itself to the world. Hence curiosity is characterized by a specific not-tarrying alongside what is nearest. Hence, too, it does not seek the leisure of contemplative tarrying, but restlessness and excitement through what is ever new and through the changing of what is encountered.

Idle talk also governs the ways of curiosity; it says what one must have read and seen. Curiosity’s Being-everywhere-and-nowhere is delivered over to idle talk. These two everyday modes of Being of discourse and of sight are not merely present-at-hand alongside each other in their tendency to uproot; rather, one way to be drags the other along with it. Curiosity, to which nothing is closed off, and idle talk, for which nothing remains not understood, give themselves, that is, the Dasein that is in this way, the guarantee of a supposedly genuine “living life.” With this supposition, however, a third phenomenon shows itself, one that characterizes the disclosedness of everyday Dasein.

When, in everyday Being-with-one-another, we encounter the sort of thing that is accessible to everyone and about which everyone can say anything, it soon becomes impossible to decide what is disclosed in genuine understanding and what is not. This ambiguity extends not only to the world, but just as much to Being-with-one-another as such, and even to Dasein’s Being toward itself.

Everything looks as if it had been genuinely understood, grasped, and spoken, and yet at bottom it has not been; or it does not look so, and yet at bottom it has been. Ambiguity concerns not only the disposal over, and management of, what is accessible for use and enjoyment; it has already established itself in understanding as potentiality-for-Being, in the manner of projection and of the presenting of Dasein’s possibilities. Not only does everyone know and discuss what is at hand and what occurs; everyone also already knows how to talk about what is yet to happen, what is not yet at hand but “actually” ought to be done. Everyone has always already surmised and sensed in advance what others also surmise and sense.

For suppose that what one surmised and sensed were one day actually put into practice: then it is precisely ambiguity that has already seen to it that interest in the thing realized dies away at once. After all, this interest exists only in the manner of curiosity and idle talk, for as long as there is the possibility of noncommittal merely-surmising-along. Being-in-on-it, when and for as long as one is on the scent, refuses to follow once the carrying out of what was surmised begins. For with this, Dasein is in each case forced back upon itself. Idle talk and curiosity lose their power. And they are already taking their revenge.

But the time of Dasein that commits itself, in the reticence of carrying things out and of genuinely failing, is different from the time of idle talk, which “lives faster”; seen publicly, it is an essentially slower one. And so this idle talk has long since arrived at something else, at whatever is newest at the time. What was surmised earlier and has now been carried out has come too late in view of what is newest. In their ambiguity, idle talk and curiosity see to it that what is genuinely and newly created is outdated for publicness by the time it emerges. It can become free in its positive possibilities only when the covering idle talk has become ineffective and the “common” interest has died away.

The ambiguity of public interpretedness passes off talking-over-in-advance and curious surmising as what is actually happening, and stamps carrying out and acting as something belated and of no importance. The understanding of Dasein in the they is therefore constantly mistaken in its projections as regards the genuine possibilities of Being. Dasein is always ambiguously “there,” that is, in that public disclosedness of Being-with-one-another where the loudest idle talk and the most resourceful curiosity keep the “bustle” going, there where, day in and day out, everything happens and, at bottom, nothing.

This ambiguity always plays into curiosity’s hands what it is looking for, and gives idle talk the semblance that everything is being decided in it.

This way of Being of the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world, however, also pervades Being-with-one-another as such. The Other is initially “there” in terms of what one has heard about the Other, what one says and knows about the Other. Idle talk initially inserts itself into the midst of primordial Being-with-one-another. Everyone first and initially keeps watch on the Other: on what comportment the Other will adopt, on what the Other will say about it. Being-with-one-another in the they is not at all a closed-off, indifferent side-by-side, but a tense, ambiguous watching-out-for-one-another, a secret listening-in-on-one-another. Under the mask of the for-one-another, an against-one-another is at play.

It should be noted here that ambiguity does not first spring from an explicit intention to dissemble and distort, and that it is not first called forth by the individual Dasein. It already lies in Being-with-one-another as thrown Being-with-one-another in a world. Publicly, however, it is precisely hidden, and one will always resist the claim that this interpretation fits the way of Being of the interpretedness of the they. It would be a misunderstanding if the explication of these phenomena sought to prove itself through the agreement of the they.

The phenomena of idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity have been set out in such a way that a connection of Being already indicates itself among them. The way of Being of this connection must now be grasped existential-ontologically. The basic kind of Being of everydayness is to be understood within the horizon of the structures of Being of Dasein obtained so far.

Idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity characterize the way in which Dasein, in everyday life, is its “there,” the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world. As existential determinations, these characters are not present-at-hand in Dasein; they help make up its Being. In them and in their connection of Being there unveils itself a basic kind of Being of everydayness, which we call the falling of Dasein.

The fallenness of Dasein must therefore not be taken as a “fall” from a purer and higher “primal state.” Of this we not only have no experience ontically; ontologically, too, we have no possibilities or guiding clues for interpreting it.

Dasein, as falling, has already fallen away from itself as factical Being-in-the-world; and what it has fallen prey to is not some being that it first comes up against, or perhaps does not, in the course of its Being, but the world, which itself belongs to its Being. Falling is an existential determination of Dasein itself, and asserts nothing about Dasein as something present-at-hand, about present-at-hand relations to beings from which it “descends,” or to beings with which it has subsequently entered into a commercium [interchange].

The ontological-existential structure would also be misunderstood if one wanted to ascribe to it the meaning of a bad and deplorable ontic property, one that might perhaps be eliminated at more advanced stages of human culture.

In our first pointing to Being-in-the-world as the basic constitution of Dasein, and likewise in our characterization of its constitutive structural moments, the analysis of the constitution of Being left the way of Being of this constitution phenomenally unnoticed. It is true that the possible basic kinds of Being-in, concern and solicitude, were described. But the question of the everyday way of Being of these ways to be remained undiscussed. It was also shown that Being-in is anything but a merely contemplative or active standing-over-against, that is, a Being-present-at-hand-together of a subject and an object. Nonetheless, the semblance was bound to remain that Being-in-the-world functions as a rigid framework within which Dasein’s possible comportments toward its world run their course, without touching the “framework” itself in its Being. But this supposed “framework” itself helps make up the way of Being of Dasein.

Idle talk discloses to Dasein its understanding Being toward its world, toward Others, and toward itself, but in such a way that this Being toward … has the mode of a groundless floating. Curiosity discloses anything and everything, but in such a way that Being-in is everywhere and nowhere. Ambiguity hides nothing from Dasein’s understanding, but only in order to hold Being-in-the-world down in the uprooted everywhere-and-nowhere.

Only with the ontological clarification of the way of Being of everyday Being-in-the-world that shows through in these phenomena do we obtain an existentially adequate determination of Dasein’s basic constitution. What structure does the “movedness” of falling show?

Idle talk, and the public interpretedness contained in it, is constituted in Being-with-one-another. It is not present-at-hand within the world as a product detached from Being-with-one-another, existing for itself. Nor can it be volatilized into a “universal” that, because it belongs essentially to nobody, is “actually” nothing and occurs “really” only in the individual Dasein that speaks. Idle talk is the way of Being of Being-with-one-another itself; it does not first arise through certain circumstances that act on Dasein “from outside.” But if Dasein itself, in idle talk and public interpretedness, presents itself with the possibility of losing itself in the they, of falling prey to groundlessness, this means: Dasein prepares for itself the constant temptation to fall. Being-in-the-world is in itself tempting.

Having in this way already become a temptation to itself, public interpretedness holds Dasein fast in its fallenness. Idle talk and ambiguity, having-seen-everything and having-understood-everything, develop the supposition that the disclosedness of Dasein, thus available and prevailing, could guarantee Dasein the security, genuineness, and fullness of all the possibilities of its Being. The self-certainty and decidedness of the they spread a growing sense that there is no need of owned, attuned understanding. The they’s supposition that it is nurturing and leading a full and genuine “life” brings a tranquilization into Dasein, for which everything is “in the best of order” and to which all doors stand open. Falling Being-in-the-world, tempting itself, is at the same time tranquilizing.

This tranquilization in unowned Being, however, does not lure one into standstill and inactivity; it drives one into the unrestrained “bustle.” Being-fallen into the “world” does not now somehow come to rest. The tempting tranquilization intensifies falling. With particular regard to the interpretation of Dasein, the opinion may now arise that understanding the most alien cultures, and the “synthesis” of these with one’s own, leads to Dasein’s complete and, for the first time, genuine enlightenment about itself. Versatile curiosity and restless knowing-everything feign a universal understanding of Dasein. At bottom, however, it remains undetermined and unasked what is actually to be understood; it remains not understood that understanding itself is a potentiality-for-Being that must become free solely in one’s ownmost Dasein.

This alienation, in turn, cannot mean that Dasein is factically torn away from itself. On the contrary, it drives Dasein into a way of Being to which the most exaggerated “self-dissection” matters, a way of Being that tries its hand at every possibility of interpretation, so that the “characterologies” and “typologies” it displays themselves already become too many to survey. This alienation, which closes off from Dasein its ownness and possibility, even if only as the possibility of a genuine failure, does not, however, deliver it over to beings that it itself is not; rather, it forces it into its unownness, into a possible way of Being of itself. By its own movedness, the tempting-tranquilizing alienation of falling leads to Dasein’s getting entangled in itself.

The phenomena we have pointed out, temptation, tranquilization, alienation, and self-entanglement (entanglement), characterize the specific way of Being of falling. We call this “movedness” of Dasein in its own Being the downward plunge. Dasein plunges out of itself into itself, into the groundlessness and nullity of unowned everydayness. But this plunge remains hidden from it by public interpretedness, and hidden in such a way that it is interpreted as “ascent” and “concrete life.”

The kind of movement of the downward plunge into and within the groundlessness of unowned Being in the they constantly tears understanding away from projecting owned possibilities, and tears it into the tranquilized supposition that it possesses, or can attain, everything. This constant tearing-away from ownness, while always feigning it all the same, together with the tearing-into the they, characterizes the movedness of falling as a whirl.

Falling does not merely determine Being-in-the-world existentially. At the same time, the whirl reveals the character of throw and of movedness that belongs to thrownness, which can force itself upon Dasein in its attunement. Thrownness is not only not a “settled fact”; it is also not a closed-off fact. It belongs to the facticity of this fact that Dasein, as long as it is what it is, remains in the throw and is whirled into the unownness of the they. Thrownness, in which facticity lets itself be seen phenomenally, belongs to Dasein, for which, in its Being, this Being itself is what matters. Dasein exists factically.

But does this demonstration of falling not bring out a phenomenon that speaks directly against the determination by which the formal idea of existence was indicated? Can Dasein be conceived as a being in whose Being its potentiality-for-Being is what matters, if this very being, in its everydayness, has lost itself and, in falling, “lives” away from itself? Falling prey to the world, however, is a phenomenal “proof” against the existentiality of Dasein only if Dasein is posited as an isolated I-subject, as a self-point from which it moves away. Then the world is an object. Falling prey to it is then reinterpreted ontologically as presence-at-hand in the manner of an innerworldly being.

Nor does the phenomenon of falling give something like a “night view” of Dasein, an ontically occurring property that might serve to supplement the harmless aspect of this being. Falling unveils an essential ontological structure of Dasein itself, one that is so far from determining its night side that it constitutes all its days in their everydayness.

The existential-ontological interpretation therefore also makes no ontic assertion about the “corruption of human nature,” not because the necessary evidence is lacking, but because its problematic lies prior to any assertion about corruption and incorruption. Falling is an ontological concept of movement. It is not decided ontically whether human beings are “drowned in sin,” in the status corruptionis [state of corruption], whether they walk in the status integritatis [state of integrity], or whether they find themselves in an intermediate stage, the status gratiae [state of grace]. But faith and “worldview,” insofar as they make assertions one way or the other, and if they make assertions about Dasein as Being-in-the-world, will have to come back to the existential structures we have set out, provided that their assertions at the same time lay claim to conceptual understanding.

The guiding question of this chapter asked about the Being of the “there.” Our theme became the ontological constitution of the disclosedness that belongs essentially to Dasein. Its Being is constituted in attunement, understanding, and discourse. The everyday way of Being of disclosedness is characterized by idle talk, curiosity, and ambiguity. These in turn show the movedness of falling, with its essential characters of temptation, tranquilization, alienation, and entanglement.

With this analysis, however, the whole of the existential constitution of Dasein has been laid bare in its main features, and the phenomenal ground has been gained for the “summarizing” interpretation of the Being of Dasein as care.

Being-in-the-world is a structure that is primordially and constantly whole. In the preceding chapters (Division One, Chapters 2–5) it was made phenomenally clear as a whole and, always on this basis, in its constitutive moments. The preview of the whole of the phenomenon given at the outset has now lost the emptiness of the first general sketch. Admittedly, the phenomenal multiplicity of the constitution of the structural whole and of its everyday way of Being can now easily obstruct the unified phenomenological view of the whole as such. But this view must remain all the freer, and be held in readiness all the more securely, now that we pose the question toward which the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein as such is striving: how is the wholeness of the structural whole we have pointed out to be determined existential-ontologically?

Dasein exists factically. We are asking about the ontological unity of existentiality and facticity, or about the essential belonging of the latter to the former. On the basis of the attunement that essentially belongs to it, Dasein has a way of Being in which it is brought before itself and disclosed to itself in its thrownness. Thrownness, however, is the way of Being of a being that in each case itself is its possibilities, in such a way that it understands itself in and from them (projects itself onto them). Being-in-the-world, to which Being alongside what is ready-to-hand belongs just as primordially as Being-with Others, is in each case for the sake of itself. The self, however, is in the first instance and for the most part unowned, the they-self. Being-in-the-world has always already fallen.

Can we succeed in grasping this structural whole of Dasein’s everydayness in its wholeness? Can the Being of Dasein be brought out in a unified way, such that from it the essential equiprimordiality of the structures we have pointed out becomes intelligible, together with the existential possibilities of modification that belong to them? Is there a way to obtain this Being phenomenally on the basis of the present starting point of the existential analytic?

Negatively, this is beyond question: the wholeness of the structural whole cannot be reached phenomenally by assembling its elements. That would require a blueprint. The Being of Dasein, which ontologically supports the structural whole as such, becomes accessible to us in a full look through this whole to one primordially unified phenomenon, a phenomenon that already lies in the whole in such a way that it ontologically founds every structural moment in its structural possibility. The “summarizing” interpretation therefore cannot be a gathering-up of what has been gained so far. The question of the basic existential character of Dasein is essentially different from the question of the Being of something present-at-hand. Everyday environmental experience, which remains directed ontically and ontologically toward innerworldly beings, cannot offer Dasein in an ontically primordial way for ontological analysis.

An understanding of Being belongs to the ontological structure of Dasein. In being, Dasein is disclosed to itself in its Being. Attunement and understanding constitute the way of Being of this disclosedness. Is there an understanding attunement in Dasein in which it is disclosed to itself in a distinctive way?

If the existential analytic of Dasein is to retain fundamental clarity about its function in fundamental ontology, then, in order to master its preliminary task, bringing out the Being of Dasein, it must seek one of the most far-reaching and most primordial possibilities of disclosure, one that lies in Dasein itself. The kind of disclosing in which Dasein brings itself before itself must be such that in it Dasein itself becomes accessible in a certain way simplified. With what is disclosed in it, the structural wholeness of the Being we are seeking must then come to light in an elemental way.

As an attunement that satisfies such methodological requirements, the phenomenon of anxiety is taken as the basis of the analysis. Working out this basic attunement, and characterizing ontologically what is disclosed in it as such, starts from the phenomenon of falling and marks anxiety off from the related phenomenon of fear analyzed earlier. As a possibility of Being of Dasein, anxiety, together with Dasein itself as disclosed in it, provides the phenomenal ground for explicitly grasping the primordial wholeness of Being of Dasein. Dasein’s Being unveils itself as care. The ontological working-out of this basic existential phenomenon requires that it be marked off from phenomena that might initially be identified with care. Such phenomena are will, wish, addiction, and urge.

The ontological interpretation of Dasein as care, like every ontological analysis, lies, with what it gains, far removed from what remains accessible to the pre-ontological understanding of Being, let alone to ontic acquaintance with beings. It should come as no surprise that what is known ontologically strikes the common understanding as strange, since it is acquainted only with what is ontically familiar. Nevertheless, even the ontic starting point of the ontological interpretation of Dasein qua care attempted here might seem far-fetched and theoretically contrived; to say nothing of the violence one might see in the fact that the traditional and well-tried definition of the human being is left out of account. Hence the existential interpretation of Dasein as care needs a pre-ontological confirmation.

The analytic of Dasein, which presses forward as far as the phenomenon of care, is meant to prepare the fundamental-ontological problematic, the question of the meaning of Being in general. In order to direct our gaze explicitly toward this from what has been gained, beyond the special task of an existential a priori anthropology, we must, looking back, grasp still more penetratingly those phenomena that stand in the closest connection with the guiding question of Being. These are, first, the modes of Being explicated so far, readiness-to-hand and presence-at-hand, which determine innerworldly beings whose character is not that of Dasein. Because the ontological problematic has so far understood Being primarily in the sense of presence-at-hand (“reality,” “world”-actuality), while the Being of Dasein remained ontologically undetermined, we need a discussion of the ontological connection between care, worldhood, readiness-to-hand, and presence-at-hand (reality).

Beings are independently of the experience, acquaintance, and grasping through which they are disclosed, uncovered, and determined. But Being “is” only in the understanding of that being to whose Being something like an understanding of Being belongs. Being can therefore be unconceptualized, but it is never completely not understood. In the ontological problematic, Being and truth have been brought together since ancient times, if not actually identified. This documents the necessary connection between Being and understanding, even if its primordial grounds perhaps remain hidden. For an adequate preparation of the question of Being, then, we need an ontological clarification of the phenomenon of truth. This is carried out initially on the basis of what the preceding interpretation has gained with the phenomena of disclosedness and uncoveredness, interpretation, and assertion.

The conclusion of the preparatory fundamental analysis of Dasein accordingly has as its theme: the basic attunement of anxiety as a distinctive disclosedness of Dasein (§ 40); the Being of Dasein as care (§ 41); the confirmation of the existential interpretation of Dasein as care in terms of Dasein’s pre-ontological self-interpretation (§ 42); Dasein, worldhood, and reality (§ 43); Dasein, disclosedness, and truth (§ 44).

One of Dasein’s possibilities of Being is to give ontic “information” about Dasein itself as a being. Such information is possible only in the disclosedness that belongs to Dasein, which is grounded in attunement and understanding. To what extent is anxiety a distinctive attunement? How is Dasein, in anxiety, brought before itself by its own Being, so that the being disclosed in anxiety can be defined phenomenologically as such in its Being, or so that this definition can be adequately prepared?note

With the aim of pressing forward to the Being of the wholeness of the structural whole, we take as our point of departure the concrete analyses of falling that were carried out last. Absorption in the they and alongside the “world” one concerns oneself with reveals something like a flight of Dasein in the face of itself as an owned potentiality-for-Being-a-self. Yet this phenomenon of Dasein’s flight in the face of itself and of its ownness seems to be the least suited of all to serve as the phenomenal ground for the investigation that follows. For in this flight Dasein precisely does not bring itself before itself. In keeping with the ownmost tendency of falling, the turning-away leads away from Dasein. But with phenomena of this kind, the investigation must guard against confusing ontic-existentiell characterization with ontological-existential interpretation, or

Existentielly, it is true, the ownness of Being-a-self is closed off and pushed aside in falling. But this closedness is only the privation of a disclosedness, which reveals itself phenomenally in the fact that Dasein’s flight is flight in the face of itself. In what the flight is in the face of, Dasein is precisely coming up “behind” itself. Only because Dasein, ontologically and essentially, is brought before itself at all by the disclosedness that belongs to it, can it flee in the face of itself. In this falling turning-away, to be sure, what the flight is in the face of is not grasped; indeed, it is not even experienced in a turning-toward. But in the turning-away from it, it is disclosed, “there.” On the basis of its character of disclosedness, the existentiell-ontic turning-away gives the phenomenal possibility of grasping existential-ontologically that in the face of which Dasein flees, as such.

Accordingly, orienting the analysis by the phenomenon of falling does not in principle condemn it to having no prospect of learning something ontologically about the Dasein disclosed in that phenomenon. On the contrary—here of all places, the interpretation is least at the mercy of an artificial self-apprehension of Dasein. It merely carries out the explication of what Dasein itself discloses ontically. The possibility of pressing forward to the Being of Dasein by interpretively going along with it and following after it within an attuned understanding increases, the more primordial the phenomenon is that functions methodologically as disclosing attunement. That anxiety accomplishes something of this kind is, initially, only a claim.

We are not entirely unprepared for the analysis of anxiety. It is true that it still remains obscure how anxiety is ontologically connected with fear. Obviously there is a phenomenal kinship. An indication of this is the fact that the two phenomena mostly remain undistinguished: what is fear gets called anxiety, and what has the character of anxiety gets called fear. We shall try to press forward to the phenomenon of anxiety step by step.

We called Dasein’s falling prey to the they and to the “world” it concerns itself with a “flight” in the face of itself. But not every shrinking back in the face of..., not every turning away from..., is necessarily flight. Shrinking back in the face of what fear discloses—in the face of the threatening—is founded in fear, and it has the character of flight. The interpretation of fear as an attunement showed that what fear is in the face of is in each case a detrimental innerworldly being, which approaches from a definite region, draws near within nearness, and may stay away. In falling, Dasein turns away from itself. That in the face of which it shrinks back must, as such, have the character of threatening; yet it is a being with the same way of Being as the being that shrinks back: it is Dasein itself.

The turning-away of falling is therefore also not a fleeing founded on a fear of innerworldly beings. A character of flight grounded in this way belongs to the turning-away all the less, since the turning-away precisely turns toward innerworldly beings, as absorption in them. Rather, the turning-away of falling is grounded in anxiety, which in turn is what first makes fear possible.

To understand what is said about Dasein’s falling flight in the face of itself, we must recall Being-in-the-world as the basic constitution of this being. That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is Being-in-the-world as such. How does that in the face of which anxiety is anxious differ phenomenally from that in the face of which fear is afraid? That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is not an innerworldly being. Hence it can essentially have no involvement. The threat does not have the character of a definite detrimentality that strikes what is threatened in a definite respect, with regard to a particular factical potentiality-for-Being. That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is completely indefinite. This indefiniteness not only leaves factically undecided which innerworldly being is threatening; it means that innerworldly beings are not “relevant” at all.

Accordingly, anxiety also does not “see” a definite “here” and “there” from which the threatening approaches. That what threatens is nowhere is what characterizes that in the face of which anxiety is anxious. Anxiety “does not know” what it is in the face of which it is anxious. But “nowhere” does not mean nothing; rather, it contains region as such, the disclosedness of world as such for essentially spatial Being-in. What threatens therefore cannot approach from a definite direction within nearness either; it is already “there”—and yet nowhere; it is so near that it constricts one and takes one’s breath away—and yet nowhere.

In that in the face of which anxiety is anxious, the “it is nothing and nowhere” becomes manifest. The obstinacy of the innerworldly nothing and nowhere means phenomenally: that in the face of which anxiety is anxious is the world as such. The complete insignificance that makes itself known in the nothing and nowhere does not mean that the world is absent. It means that innerworldly beings in themselves are so completely without consequence that, on the basis of this insignificance of the innerworldly, the world in its worldhood is all that still obtrudes itself.

What constricts is not this or that, nor is it everything present-at-hand taken together as a sum; it is the possibility of the ready-to-hand as such, that is, the world itself. When anxiety has subsided, everyday discourse usually says: “it was really nothing.” This way of talking does in fact hit ontically upon what it was. Everyday discourse is directed toward concern with the ready-to-hand and talking about it. That in the face of which anxiety is anxious is nothing of what is ready-to-hand within the world. But this nothing of the ready-to-hand, which is all that everyday circumspective discourse understands, is not a total nothing. The nothing of readiness-to-hand is grounded in the most primordial “something,” in the world. The world, however, belongs ontologically and essentially to the Being of Dasein as Being-in-the-world. If, then, what turns out to be that in the face of which anxiety is anxious is the nothing—that

Being anxious discloses the world as world, primordially and directly. It is not as if we first abstract from innerworldly beings by deliberation and think only of the world, in the face of which anxiety then arises. Rather, anxiety, as a mode of attunement, is what first discloses the world as world. This does not mean, however, that in anxiety the worldhood of the world is conceptually grasped.

Anxiety is not only anxiety in the face of..., but, as attunement, at the same time anxiety about.... That about which anxiety is anxious is not a definite way of Being and possibility of Dasein. The threat is, after all, itself indefinite, and therefore cannot penetrate threateningly into this or that factically concrete potentiality-for-Being. That about which anxiety is anxious is Being-in-the-world itself. In anxiety, what is ready-to-hand in the environment sinks away, and so do innerworldly beings in general. The “world” can offer nothing more, and neither can the Dasein-with of Others. Anxiety thus takes away from Dasein the possibility of understanding itself, in falling, in terms of the “world” and the public interpretedness. It throws Dasein back upon that about which it is anxious: its owned potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world.

Anxiety reveals in Dasein its Being toward its ownmost potentiality-for-Being, that is, its Being-free for the freedom of choosing and seizing hold of itself. Anxiety brings Dasein before its Being-free for... (propensio in... [inclination toward...]) the ownness of its Being as possibility, which it always already is. But this Being is at the same time that to which Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, is delivered over.

That about which anxiety is anxious reveals itself as that in the face of which it is anxious: Being-in-the-world. The selfsameness of what anxiety is in the face of and what it is about extends even to being anxious itself. For being anxious, as attunement, is a basic way of Being-in-the-world. The existential selfsameness of disclosing with what is disclosed—such that in the latter the world is disclosed as world, and Being-in as an individualized, pure, thrown potentiality-for-Being—makes it clear that with the phenomenon of anxiety a distinctive attunement has become the theme of our interpretation. Anxiety individualizes Dasein and thus discloses it as “solus ipse” [oneself alone].

That anxiety as a basic attunement discloses in this way is, once again, most impartially attested by Dasein’s everyday interpretation of itself and its everyday discourse. Attunement, as was said earlier, makes manifest “how one is.” In anxiety one feels “uncanny.” This expresses, first of all, the peculiar indefiniteness of that alongside which Dasein finds itself in anxiety: the nothing and nowhere. But uncanniness here also means, at the same time, not-Being-at-home. In our first phenomenal indication of Dasein’s basic constitution, and in clarifying the existential meaning of Being-in as distinct from the categorial meaning of “insideness,” Being-in was defined as dwelling alongside..., Being-familiar with.... This character of Being-in was then made visible more concretely through the everyday publicness of the they,note

Now it becomes phenomenally visible what falling, as flight, flees in the face of. Not in the face of innerworldly beings; on the contrary, it flees precisely toward them, as the beings alongside which concern, lost in the they, can dwell in tranquilized familiarity. Falling flight into the at-home of publicness is flight in the face of the not-at-home, that is, in the face of the uncanniness that lies in Dasein as thrown Being-in-the-world, delivered over to itself in its Being. This uncanniness constantly pursues Dasein and threatens, though not explicitly, its everyday lostness in the they. This threat can factically go together with complete security and self-sufficiency in everyday concern. Anxiety can arise in the most harmless situations. Nor is there any need for darkness, in which one commonly feels uncanny more easily.

When we interpret Dasein’s uncanniness existential-ontologically as the threat that strikes Dasein itself from itself, we are not claiming that in factical anxiety uncanniness has also always already been understood in this sense. The everyday way in which Dasein understands uncanniness is the falling turning-away that “dims” the not-at-home. The everydayness of this fleeing, however, shows phenomenally that anxiety as a basic attunement belongs to Dasein’s essential constitution of Being-in-the-world—a constitution which, as existential, is never present-at-hand, but itself always is in a mode of factical Dasein, that is, in an attunement. Tranquilized, familiar Being-in-the-world is a mode of Dasein’s uncanniness, not the other way around. The not-at-home must be conceived existential-ontologically as the more primordial phenomenon.

And only because anxiety always already latently determines Being-in-the-world can Being-in-the-world, as concernful and attuned Being alongside the “world,” be afraid. Fear is anxiety that has fallen prey to the “world”—unowned anxiety, hidden from itself as such.

Factically, then, the mood of uncanniness mostly remains existentielly not understood. Moreover, given the predominance of falling and publicness, “owned” anxiety is rare. Anxiety is often “physiologically” conditioned. This fact, in its facticity, is an ontological problem, not only with regard to its ontic causation and the form of its course. A physiological triggering of anxiety is possible only because Dasein is anxious in the very ground of its Being.

Still rarer than the existentiell fact of owned anxiety are attempts to interpret this phenomenon in its fundamental existential-ontological constitution and function. The reasons for this lie partly in the neglect of the existential analytic of Dasein as such, but particularly in the failure to recognize the phenomenon of attunement. Yet the factical rarity of the phenomenon of anxiety cannot deprive it of its suitability to take on a fundamental methodological function for the existential analytic. On the contrary—the rarity of the phenomenon is an index that Dasein, which for the most part remains covered over from itself in its ownness by the public interpretedness of the they, becomes disclosable in a primordial sense in this basic attunement.

It is true that it belongs to the essence of every attunement to disclose, in each case, the full Being-in-the-world in all its constitutive moments (world, Being-in, self). But in anxiety there lies the possibility of a distinctive disclosing, because anxiety individualizes. This individualization fetches Dasein back from its falling and makes ownness and unownness manifest to it as possibilities of its Being. These basic possibilities of Dasein, which is mine in each case, show themselves in anxiety as they are in themselves, undisguised by innerworldly beings, to which Dasein in the first instance and for the most part clings.

To what extent has this existential interpretation of anxiety gained a phenomenal basis for answering the guiding question of the Being of the wholeness of Dasein’s structural whole?

With the aim of grasping ontologically the wholeness of the structural whole, we must first ask: Can the phenomenon of anxiety, and what is disclosed in it, give the whole of Dasein phenomenally and equiprimordially, in such a way that our searching gaze toward wholeness can find fulfillment in what is thus given? The entire content of what lies in it can be registered in a formal enumeration. Being anxious, as an attunement, is a way of Being-in-the-world; that in the face of which anxiety is anxious is thrown Being-in-the-world; that about which anxiety is anxious is potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world. Accordingly, the full phenomenon of anxiety shows Dasein as factically existing Being-in-the-world. The fundamental ontological characters of this being are existentiality, facticity, and Being-fallen.

Dasein is a being for which, in its Being, that very Being is what matters. The “it matters...” has become clearer in the constitution of Being of understanding, as self-projecting Being toward one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being. This potentiality-for-Being is that for the sake of which Dasein in each case is as it is. In its Being, Dasein has always already put itself together with a possibility of itself. Being-free for one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being, and thus for the possibility of ownness and unownness, shows itself in anxiety in a primordial, elemental concretion.

This structure, however, concerns the whole of Dasein’s constitution. Being-ahead-of-itself does not mean anything like an isolated tendency in a worldless “subject”; it characterizes Being-in-the-world. But to Being-in-the-world it belongs that, delivered over to itself, it has always already been thrown into a world. Dasein’s being abandoned to itself shows itself primordially and concretely in anxiety. Grasped more fully, Being-ahead-of-itself means: ahead-of-itself-in-already-Being-in-a-world. As soon as this essentially unitary structure is seen phenomenally, what was brought out earlier in the analysis of worldhood also becomes clearer. There it emerged that the referential whole of significance, which constitutes worldhood, is “anchored” in a for-the-sake-of-which.

And again: Dasein’s factical existing is not only, in general and indifferently, a thrown potentiality-for-Being-in-the-world; it is always also already absorbed in the world it concerns itself with. In this falling Being alongside..., there announces itself—explicitly or not, understood or not—the fleeing in the face of uncanniness, which for the most part remains covered over, along with latent anxiety, because the publicness of the they suppresses everything unfamiliar. In ahead-of-itself-already-Being-in-a-world there lies essentially included the falling Being alongside the innerworldly ready-to-hand that is concerned with.

Because Being-in-the-world is essentially care, Being alongside the ready-to-hand could be grasped in the previous analyses as concern, and Being with the Dasein-with of Others encountered within the world as solicitude. Being-alongside... is concern, because as a way of Being-in it is determined by Being-in’s basic structure, care. Care does not, say, characterize only existentiality, detached from facticity and falling; it embraces the unity of these determinations of Being. Nor, therefore, does care mean primarily and exclusively an isolated comportment of the I toward itself. The expression “self-care,” formed by analogy with concern and solicitude, would be a tautology.

In Being-ahead-of-itself, as Being toward one’s ownmost potentiality-for-Being, lies the existential-ontological condition of the possibility of Being-free for owned existentiell possibilities. The potentiality-for-Being is that for the sake of which Dasein in each case is as it factically is. But insofar as this Being toward the potentiality-for-Being is itself determined by freedom, Dasein can also comport itself toward its possibilities without willing it; it can be unowned, and factically it is so in the first instance and for the most part. The owned for-the-sake-of-which remains unseized; the projection of its own potentiality-for-Being is left to the disposal of the they. In Being-ahead-of-itself, therefore, the “itself” in each case means the self in the sense of the they-self.

As a primordial structural wholeness, care lies existentially-a priori “before” every factical “comportment” and “circumstance” of Dasein; that is, it is always already in every one of them. The phenomenon therefore by no means expresses a priority of “practical” comportment over theoretical. The merely intuitive determining of something present-at-hand has the character of care no less than a “political action” or taking one’s ease and amusing oneself. “Theory” and “practice” are possibilities of Being of a being whose Being must be defined as care.

Hence, too, the attempt fails to trace the phenomenon of care, in its essentially indivisible wholeness, back to particular acts or drives such as willing and wishing, or urge and addiction, or to build it up out of these.

Willing and wishing are ontologically and necessarily rooted in Dasein as care; they are not simply ontologically indifferent lived experiences occurring in a “stream” that is completely indefinite as to the meaning of its Being. The same holds no less of addiction and urge. They too are grounded in care, insofar as they can be purely demonstrated in Dasein at all. This does not rule out that urge and addiction are ontologically constitutive also of beings that merely “live.” The ontological basic constitution of “living,” however, is a problem in its own right, and can be unfolded only by way of reductive privation from the ontology of Dasein.

Care is ontologically “earlier” than these phenomena, which, of course, can always be adequately “described” within certain limits without the full ontological horizon needing to be visible, or even known at all. For the present fundamental-ontological investigation, which aims neither at a thematically complete ontology of Dasein nor, still less, at a concrete anthropology, it must suffice to indicate how these phenomena are existentially grounded in care.

The potentiality-for-Being for the sake of which Dasein is itself has the way of Being of Being-in-the-world. Accordingly, the relation to innerworldly beings lies ontologically in it. Care is always—even if only privatively—concern and solicitude. In willing, a being that is understood, that is, projected upon its possibility, is seized as something to be concerned with, or as something to be brought into its Being through solicitude. That is why to willing there belongs in each case something willed, which has already determined itself in terms of a for-the-sake-of-which. Constitutive for the ontological possibility of willing are: the prior disclosedness of the for-the-sake-of-which as such (Being-ahead-of-itself); the disclosedness of what can be concerned with (the world as the in-which of Being-already); and Dasein’s understanding self-projection upon a potentiality-for-Being toward a possibility of the “willed” being. In the phenomenon of willing, the underlying wholeness of care shows through.

Dasein’s understanding self-projection, as factical, is always already alongside a world that has been uncovered. From this world it takes its possibilities—and it does so, in the first instance, in accordance with the interpretedness of the they. This interpretation has from the outset restricted the possibilities open to free choice to the range of what is familiar, attainable, tolerable—of what is proper and fitting. This leveling off of Dasein’s possibilities to what is initially available in everyday life at the same time brings about a dimming of the possible as such. The average everydayness of concern becomes blind to possibilities and tranquilizes itself with what is merely “actual.” This tranquilization does not rule out an extensive busyness of concern; it awakens it. What is then willed is not positive new possibilities; rather, what is available is changed “tactically” in such a way that the semblance arises that something is happening.

Tranquilized “willing” under the guidance of the they nevertheless does not mean that Being toward the potentiality-for-Being is extinguished, but only that it is modified. Being toward possibilities then shows itself mostly as mere wishing. In wishing, Dasein projects its Being upon possibilities that not only remain unseized in concern, but whose fulfillment is not even considered or expected. On the contrary: the predominance of Being-ahead-of-itself in the mode of mere wishing brings with it a lack of understanding of factical possibilities. Being-in-the-world whose world is projected primarily as a wish-world has lost itself, without a hold, to what is available—yet in such a way that what is available, as the only thing ready-to-hand, is never enough in the light of what is wished for. Wishing is an existential modification of understanding self-projection which, having fallen prey to thrownness, merely hankers after possibilities.note

In hankering, Being-already-alongside... has priority. Ahead-of-itself-in-already-Being-in... is modified accordingly. Falling hankering reveals Dasein’s addiction to being “lived” by the world in which it in each case is. Addiction shows the character of Being-out-for.... Being-ahead-of-itself has lost itself in an “only-always-already-Being-alongside....” The “toward” of addiction is a letting oneself be drawn by that which the addiction hankers after. When Dasein, as it were, sinks into an addiction, it is not merely that an addiction is still present-at-hand; rather, the full structure of care is modified. Having become blind, Dasein makes all possibilities serve the addiction.

The urge “to live,” by contrast, is a “toward” that brings its impetus along with it from itself. It is “toward at any price.” The urge seeks to crowd out other possibilities. Here too Being-ahead-of-itself is unowned, even though being assailed by the urge comes from what does the urging itself. The urge can override the attunement Dasein has in each case, and understanding. But Dasein is then not, and never, a “mere urge” to which other comportments of controlling and guiding are sometimes added; rather, as a modification of full Being-in-the-world, it is always already care.

In the pure urge, care has not yet become free, although it is care that first makes it ontologically possible for Dasein to be urged on from itself. In addiction, on the other hand, care is always already bound. Addiction and urge are possibilities rooted in Dasein’s thrownness. The urge “to live” cannot be annihilated; the addiction to being “lived” by the world cannot be rooted out. But because, and only because, both are ontologically grounded in care, they can be modified ontically and existentielly by care as owned care.

The expression “care” means a basic existential-ontological phenomenon which is nevertheless not simple in its structure. The ontologically elemental wholeness of the structure of care cannot be traced back to an ontic “primal element,” just as surely as Being cannot be “explained” in terms of beings. In the end it will turn out that the idea of Being in general is just as little “simple” as the Being of Dasein. The definition of care as Being-ahead-of-itself—in-already-Being-in...—as Being-alongside... makes it clear that this phenomenon, too, is still structurally articulated in itself. But is this not the phenomenal indication that the ontological question must be pushed further still, so as to bring out an even more primordial phenomenon that ontologically sustains the unity and wholeness of the structural manifold of care?

In the foregoing interpretations, which finally led to bringing out care as the Being of Dasein, everything depended on gaining the appropriate ontological foundations for the being that we ourselves in each case are and that we call “human being.” To this end, the analysis had from the outset to be turned out of the direction of the approach that has been handed down but is ontologically unclarified and fundamentally questionable—the approach prescribed by the traditional definition of the human being. Measured against that definition, the existential-ontological interpretation may seem strange, especially if “care” is understood merely ontically as “worry” and “distress.” We shall therefore now cite a pre-ontological testimony, even though its evidential force is “only historical.”

But let us bear in mind that in this testimony Dasein speaks out about itself “primordially,” not determined by theoretical interpretations and without aiming at any. Let us note, further, that Dasein’s Being is characterized by historicality—though this has yet to be demonstrated ontologically. If Dasein is “historical” in the ground of its Being, then an assertion that comes out of its history and goes back into it, and that moreover lies prior to all science, acquires a special weight—though never a purely ontological one. The understanding of Being that lies in Dasein itself expresses itself pre-ontologically. The testimony cited below is meant to make clear that the existential interpretation is not an invention, but that, as an ontological “construction,” it has its ground and, with it, its elemental prefigurations.

sumpserunt Saturnum iudicem, is sic aecus iudicat: ‘tu Jovis quia spiritum dedisti, in morte spiritum, tuque Tellus, quia dedisti corpus, corpus recipito, Cura enim quia prima finxit, teneat quamdiu vixerit. sed quae nunc de nomine eius vobis controversia est, homo vocetur, quia videtur esse factus ex humo.’ “Once, when ‘Care’ was crossing a river, she saw some clayey soil; thoughtfully she took a piece of it and began to shape it. While she is pondering to herself what she has made, Jupiter comes along. ‘Care’ asks him to bestow spirit on the shaped piece of clay. Jupiter gladly grants her this. But when she then wanted to give her own name to what she had formed, Jupiter forbade it and demanded that his name be given to it.

This pre-ontological testimony acquires a special importance in that it not only sees “care” as that to which human Dasein belongs “for its lifetime,” but also in that this priority of “care” emerges in connection with the familiar conception of the human being as a composite of body (earth) and spirit. Cura prima finxit: this being has the “origin” of its Being in care. Cura teneat, quamdiu vixerit: this being is not released from this origin, but held fast by it, pervaded by it, as long as this being “is in the world.” “Being-in-the-world” bears the stamp of “care” in accordance with its Being. This being receives its name (homo) not with regard to its Being, but in relation to what it consists of (humus).

The history of the meaning of the ontic concept “cura” even lets further basic structures of Dasein show through. Burdach draws attention to a double meaning of the term “cura,” according to which it means not only “anxious exertion” but also “carefulness” and “devotion.” Thus Seneca writes in his last letter (ep. 124): “Among the four natures that exist (tree, animal, human being, god), the last two, which alone are endowed with reason, differ in that god is immortal and the human being mortal. Now in their case, the good of the one, namely god, is perfected by his nature; that of the other, the human being, by care (cura): unius bonum natura perficit, dei scilicet, alterius cura, hominis.”note

The perfectio [perfection] of the human being—becoming what one can be in one’s Being-free for one’s ownmost possibilities (projection)—is an “accomplishment” of “care.” But equiprimordially, care determines the basic way of this being according to which it is handed over to the world it concerns itself with (thrownness). The “double meaning” of “cura” means one basic constitution in its essentially twofold structure of thrown projection.

Compared with the ontic interpretation, the existential-ontological interpretation is not, say, merely a theoretical-ontic generalization. That would only mean: ontically, all of a human being’s comportments are “full of care” and guided by a “devotion” to something. The “generalization” is an a priori-ontological one. It does not mean ontic properties that constantly turn up, but a constitution of Being that always already underlies them. Only this constitution makes it ontologically possible for this being to be addressed ontically as cura. The existential condition of the possibility of “the cares of life” and “devotion” must be conceived as care in a primordial, that is, ontological, sense.

On the other hand, the transcendental “generality” of the phenomenon of care and of all fundamental existentials has the breadth that provides the ground on which every ontic interpretation of Dasein in terms of a worldview moves, whether it understands Dasein as “the cares of life” and need, or in the opposite way.

The “emptiness” and “generality” of the existential structures, which obtrude themselves ontically, have their own ontological definiteness and fullness. Hence the whole of Dasein’s constitution is itself not simple in its unity, but shows a structural articulation, which is expressed in the existential concept of care.

The ontological interpretation of Dasein has brought the pre-ontological self-interpretation of this being as “care” to the existential concept of care. The analytic of Dasein, however, does not aim at an ontological foundation for anthropology; its purpose is fundamental-ontological. This purpose, it is true, has tacitly determined the course of our considerations so far, the selection of phenomena, and the limits to which the analysis has pressed forward. But with regard to the guiding question of the meaning of Being and its working-out, the investigation must now explicitly secure what has been gained so far. This cannot be achieved, however, by an external summary of what has been discussed. Rather, what could only be roughly indicated at the beginning of the existential analytic must, with the help of what has been gained, be sharpened into a more penetrating understanding of the problem.

The question of the meaning of Being becomes possible at all only if there is something like an understanding of Being. Understanding of Being belongs to the way of Being of the being we call Dasein. The more appropriately and primordially we have been able to explicate this being, the more surely will the further course of working out the fundamental-ontological problem reach its goal.

In pursuing the tasks of a preparatory existential analytic of Dasein, the interpretation of understanding, meaning, and interpretation arose. The analysis of Dasein’s disclosedness showed further that, with this disclosedness, Dasein, in accordance with its basic constitution of Being-in-the-world, is revealed equiprimordially with regard to world, Being-in, and self. Further, in the factical disclosedness of world, innerworldly beings are uncovered along with it. This implies that the Being of these beings is always already understood in a certain way, even though it is not appropriately conceived ontologically. The pre-ontological understanding of Being does indeed embrace all beings that are essentially disclosed in Dasein; but the understanding of Being itself has not yet articulated itself in accordance with the various modes of Being.

The interpretation of understanding showed at the same time that, in the first instance and for the most part, understanding has already shifted itself into the understanding of the “world,” in accordance with the way of Being of falling. Even where what is at stake is not only ontic experience but ontological understanding, the interpretation of Being takes its orientation in the first instance from the Being of innerworldly beings. In doing so, the Being of what is initially ready-to-hand is skipped over, and beings are first conceived as a present-at-hand nexus of things (res). Being acquires the meaning of reality. Substantiality becomes the basic determinacy of Being. Corresponding to this displacement of the understanding of Being, the ontological understanding of Dasein, too, moves into the horizon of this concept of Being.

Therefore not only the analytic of Dasein, but the working-out of the question of the meaning of Being in general, must be turned out of its one-sided orientation toward Being in the sense of reality. What must be demonstrated is this: reality is not only one way of Being among others; rather, it stands ontologically in a definite nexus of foundation with Dasein, world, and readiness-to-hand. This demonstration requires a fundamental discussion of the problem of reality, its conditions and its limits.

Under the heading “problem of reality,” various questions are mixed together: 1. whether the beings supposedly “transcendent to consciousness” are at all; 2. whether this reality of the “external world” can be adequately proved; 3. to what extent these beings, if they are real, can be known in their Being-in-themselves; 4. what the meaning of these beings, reality, signifies at all. With regard to the fundamental-ontological question, the following discussion of the problem of reality treats three things: a) reality as a problem of the Being and provability of the “external world,” b) reality as an ontological problem, c) reality and care.

In the order of the questions about reality just listed, the ontological one—what reality means at all—comes first. But as long as a pure ontological problematic and methodology were lacking, this question, if it was explicitly raised at all, necessarily became entangled with the discussion of the “problem of the external world”; for the analysis of reality is possible only on the basis of appropriate access to the real. And intuitive knowing has always been regarded as the way of grasping the real. Such knowing “is” as a comportment of the soul, of consciousness. Insofar as the character of the in-itself and of independence belongs to reality, the question of the meaning of reality becomes linked with the question of the possible independence of the real “from consciousness,” or of the possible transcendence of consciousness into the “sphere” of the real.

The investigations that come before a possible ontological question about reality have been carried out in the foregoing existential analytic. According to it, knowing is a founded mode of access to the real. The real is essentially accessible only as innerworldly beings. All access to such beings is ontologically founded in Dasein’s basic constitution, Being-in-the-world. Being-in-the-world has the more primordial constitution of Being of care (ahead of itself—already Being in a world—as Being alongside innerworldly beings).

The question whether there is a world at all, and whether its Being can be proved, makes no sense as a question posed by Dasein as Being-in-the-world—and who else should pose it? Moreover, it remains burdened with an ambiguity. World as the in-which of Being-in, and “world” as innerworldly beings, the with-which of concernful absorption, are lumped together, or not even distinguished in the first place. But world is essentially disclosed with the Being of Dasein; with the disclosedness of world, the “world” has in each case also already been uncovered. Admittedly, it is precisely innerworldly beings in the sense of the real, of what is merely present-at-hand, that can still remain covered over. But even the real can be uncovered only on the basis of a world already disclosed. And only on this basis can the real still remain hidden.

The entanglement of the questions—the confusion of what is to be proved with what is proved, and with that by means of which the proof is carried out—shows itself in Kant’s “Refutation of Idealism.” Kant calls it “a scandal of philosophy and of universal human reason” that there is still no cogent proof of the “Dasein of things outside us,” one that would strike down all skepticism. He himself presents such a proof, and he does so as the grounding of the “theorem”: “The mere, but empirically determined, consciousness of my own Dasein proves the Dasein of objects in space outside me.”note

First of all, it must be expressly noted that Kant uses the term “Dasein” to designate the way of Being which in the present investigation is called “presence-at-hand.” For Kant, “consciousness of my Dasein” means consciousness of my presence-at-hand in Descartes’ sense. The term “Dasein” means both the presence-at-hand of consciousness and the presence-at-hand of things.

The proof of the “Dasein of things outside me” rests on the fact that change and permanence belong equiprimordially to the essence of time. My presence-at-hand—that is, the presence-at-hand of a manifold of representations given in inner sense—is change that is present-at-hand. But determinacy in time presupposes something permanent that is present-at-hand. This, however, cannot be “in us,” “because it is precisely through this permanent that my Dasein in time can first be determined.” With the change that is present-at-hand and empirically posited “in me,” something permanent that is present-at-hand “outside me” is therefore necessarily co-posited empirically. This permanent is the condition of the possibility of the presence-at-hand of change “in me.” The experience of the Being-in-time of representations posits, equiprimordially, what changes “in me” and what is permanent “outside me.”

The proof is, to be sure, not a causal inference, and is therefore not burdened with the drawbacks of one. Kant gives, as it were, an “ontological proof” from the idea of a being that is temporal. At first it seems as if Kant had given up the Cartesian approach of a subject found in isolation. But this is only semblance. That Kant demands a proof for the “Dasein of things outside me” at all already shows that he takes the subject, the “in me,” as the base point of the problematic. And the proof itself is accordingly carried out by starting from the change empirically given “in me.” For only “in me” is the “time” that sustains the proof experienced. Time provides the ground for the proof’s leap into the “outside me.” Moreover, Kant emphasizes: “The problematical [idealism], which...

But even if the ontic priority of the isolated subject and of inner experience were given up, Descartes’ position would still be retained ontologically. What Kant proves—granting for once the legitimacy of the proof and of its basis at all—is the necessary co-presence-at-hand of beings that change and beings that are permanent. But this coordination of two things present-at-hand does not yet mean even the co-presence-at-hand of subject and object. And even if that were proved, what is ontologically decisive would still remain covered over: the basic constitution of the “subject,” of Dasein, as Being-in-the-world. The co-presence-at-hand of the physical and the psychical is ontically and ontologically completely different from the phenomenon of Being-in-the-world.

Kant presupposes the distinction and the connection between the “in me” and the “outside me”—factically with justification, but without justification in terms of what his proof sets out to do. Likewise it has not been demonstrated that what is established about the co-presence-at-hand of what changes and what is permanent, with time as the guiding thread, also holds for the connection between the “in me” and the “outside me.” But if the whole of the distinction and connection between the “inside” and the “outside” that the proof presupposes were seen—if what is presupposed with this presupposition were ontologically grasped—then the very possibility of holding that the proof of the “Dasein of things outside me” is still outstanding and necessary would collapse.

The “scandal of philosophy” does not consist in the fact that this proof is still outstanding, but in the fact that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. Expectations, intentions and demands of this kind grow out of an ontologically inadequate way of positing that from which, independently and “outside” of it, a “world” is to be proved as present-at-hand. It is not the proofs that are inadequate; rather, the way of Being of the being that does the proving and demands proof is underdetermined. Hence the semblance can arise that by demonstrating the necessary co-presence-at-hand of two things present-at-hand something has been proved, or has even become provable, about Dasein as Being-in-the-world. Dasein, rightly understood, resists such proofs, because in its Being it always already is what subsequent proofs deem it necessary first to demonstrate to it.

If one wanted to conclude from the impossibility of proofs for the presence-at-hand of things outside us that this presence-at-hand must therefore be “accepted merely on faith,” the inversion of the problem would not be overcome. The prior opinion would persist that, fundamentally and ideally, it ought to be possible to carry out a proof. By restricting oneself to a “belief in the reality of the external world,” one affirms the inappropriate approach to the problem even when this belief is expressly given back its own “right.” One goes along in principle with the demand for a proof, even though one tries to satisfy it by a route other than that of a stringent proof.

Even if one wanted to appeal to the claim that the subject must presuppose, and indeed unconsciously always already does presuppose, that the “external world” is present-at-hand, the constructive positing of an isolated subject would still remain in play. The phenomenon of Being-in-the-world would be as little reached by this as by demonstrating a co-presence-at-hand of the physical and the psychical. With presuppositions of this kind, Dasein always already comes “too late,” because insofar as it makes this presupposition as a being—and otherwise the presupposition is not possible—it is, as a being, always already in a world. “Earlier” than every presupposition and comportment of Dasein is the “a priori” of the constitution of Being in the way of Being of care.

Believing in the reality of the “external world,” whether rightly or wrongly; proving this reality, whether adequately or inadequately; presupposing it, whether explicitly or not—attempts of this kind, which have not mastered their own ground in full transparency, presuppose a subject that is initially worldless, or not sure of its world, and that fundamentally must first assure itself of a world. Being-in-a-world is thereby made to rest from the outset on apprehending, supposing, being certain and believing—a comportment that is itself always already a founded mode of Being-in-the-world.

The “problem of reality,” in the sense of the question whether an external world is present-at-hand and whether it can be proved, turns out to be an impossible one—not because its consequences lead to aporias that cannot be settled, but because the very being that is thematic in this problem, as it were, refuses such a way of posing the question. What is to be proved is not that and how an “external world” is present-at-hand; what is to be demonstrated is why Dasein, as Being-in-the-world, has the tendency first to bury the “external world” “epistemologically” in nullity, only then to prove it. The reason for this lies in Dasein’s falling and in the shift, motivated by it, of the primary understanding of Being to Being as presence-at-hand. If the question is posed “critically” within this ontological orientation, then what it finds as initially and solely certain to be present-at-hand is a mere “interior.”

The many attempts to solve the “problem of reality” that have been worked out by the varieties of realism and idealism, and by the positions mediating between them, cannot be discussed at length in the present investigation. As certainly as a kernel of genuine questioning is to be found in all of them, so mistaken would it be to try to arrive at a tenable solution of the problem by reckoning up what is correct in each. What is needed instead is the fundamental insight that the various epistemological schools go astray not so much as epistemological theories; rather, because they neglect the existential analytic of Dasein altogether, they never even gain the ground for a phenomenally secured problematic. Nor can this ground be gained by subsequent phenomenological improvements of the concepts of subject and consciousness. These do not guarantee that the inappropriate way of posing the question will not persist after all.

With Dasein as Being-in-the-world, innerworldly beings are always already disclosed. This existential-ontological assertion seems to agree with the thesis of realism that the external world is really present-at-hand. Insofar as the existential assertion does not deny the presence-at-hand of innerworldly beings, it agrees in its result—doxographically, as it were—with the thesis of realism. But it differs in principle from every realism in that realism holds the reality of the “world” to be in need of proof and at the same time provable. Both of these are precisely negated in the existential assertion. What separates it completely from realism, however, is realism’s lack of ontological understanding. For realism tries to explain reality ontically, through real causal connections between real things.

As against realism, idealism—however opposed and untenable it may be in its result—has a fundamental priority, provided it does not misunderstand itself as “psychological” idealism. When idealism emphasizes that Being and reality are only “in consciousness,” this expresses an understanding of the fact that Being cannot be explained by beings. But insofar as it remains unclarified what this understanding of Being itself means ontologically, how it is possible, and that it belongs to the constitution of Being of Dasein, idealism builds its interpretation of reality in a void. That Being cannot be explained by beings, and that reality is possible only in the understanding of Being, does not after all release us from asking about the Being of consciousness, of the res cogitans itself.

If the term idealism amounts to an understanding that Being can never be explained by beings but is, for every being, always already the “transcendental,” then idealism holds the only right possibility of a philosophical problematic. In that case Aristotle was no less an idealist than Kant. If idealism means tracing all beings back to a subject or consciousness whose only distinguishing features are that they remain undetermined in their Being and are characterized at most negatively as “unthinglike,” then this idealism is methodologically no less naive than the crudest realism.

There remains the possibility of placing the problematic of reality before any orientation by “standpoint,” with the thesis: every subject is what it is only for an object, and vice versa. In this formal approach, however, the terms of the correlation, like the correlation itself, remain ontologically undetermined. Yet fundamentally the whole of the correlation is necessarily thought as “somehow” in being, and hence with regard to a definite idea of Being. Of course, if the existential-ontological ground has first been secured by demonstrating Being-in-the-world, then the correlation just mentioned can subsequently be recognized as a formalized, ontologically indifferent relation.

Discussing the unexpressed presuppositions of the merely “epistemological” attempts to solve the problem of reality shows that this problem must be taken back into the existential analytic of Dasein as an ontological problem.